David Chico Pham writes on technology, sourdough, and current events.

I think writing is suppose to be somewhat uncomfortable, confusing and painful. But I did not considered it might be unnatural thing to do. I suppose it can be argued that written word as a recent invention to our existence means that reading and writing is not a built-in human instinct but rather a deliberately taught thing. Adam Mastroianni shares 28 slightly rude notes on writing Number 10 is one that resonates with me:

Maybe it’s because writing is inherently lonely, or maybe it’s because the only people who would try to make a living from writing are messed up in the head.

Personally, I think the reason is far more sinister: making art is painful because it forces the mind to do something it’s not meant to do. If you really want to get that sentence right, if you want that perfect brush stroke or that exquisite shot, then you have to squeeze your neurons until they scream. That level of precision is simply unnatural.

My god. If you are not moved, I don't know what to tell ya.

@RaymondCool's comment captures the moment well:

Can you imagine the assignment? "your privilege is dying, your friends are enemies, you lost your daughter, everything you love, this is the point of no return, rage" dance to hide it all behind a couple extra drinks.

I've been there. Sometimes you gotta get lost in dance to find your way out.

I had a correspondence with Alex Petros, a core engineer on HTMX. We had some overlap when he was an engineer at the Washington Post. He said something that has stuck with me for several months. Building websites is needlessly complicated.

Most of what is on a page is largely static, but we insist on cutting edge frameworks that can scale to unicorn level performance. We are still just building HTML, CSS. The JavaScript is too much, in my view, to justify picking frameworks such as NextJS, Remix, etc.

I am exploring Astro and so far it has struck a great balance in it's partial hydration or architectural islands. In a sea of static contents, a section is marked for dynamic updates. It can sometimes feel like, it can't be this simple -- we must prove our value at work by abstracting further these tools.

It's a little bit of bullshit, and fooling ourselves.

Larry David for the New York Times Opinion, wrote a piece satirizing Bill Mahar's dinner with a dictator at the invitation of Kid Rock.

Larry David on Hitler is so charming:

I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit because if he wore that out, it would be perceived as un-Führer-like. That amused him to no end, and I realized I’d never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.

Subversive and cunning, the whole thing is brilliant. See?! Bill Mahar, this is the difference of being funny versus being played.

The clarity Te'Nehisi Coates brings to his writing and thinking is why he is so effective in driving uncomfortable truths. I keep revisiting his writing because it so closely resembles James Baldwin. It strikes like a hammer and cuts like knife. His words haunts me like a night of regrets and embarrassments.

Bill Maher had dinner with President Trump over the weekend. He had a fine time with him. Maher went on his show to tell his audience he is going to be bring the hard truth: President Trump is a fun hang at a private dinner.

In an opinion piece, Leon Krauze for the Washington Post lists examples of people visiting dictators and strongmen, and coming away charmed:

Herbert Matthews of the New York Times traveled to the Cuban mountains to interview Fidel Castro, then a little-known guerrilla leader. The reporter came back enthralled. “The personality of the man is overpowering,” Matthews wrote.

Joseph Stalin was remembered by close comrades such as Nikita Khrushchev as a man who could be jovial in private settings, telling jokes and singing Georgian folk songs late into the night — just before ordering purges that would cost thousands of lives.

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger were both startled during their historic 1972 visit to China: Mao joked with them, played with words and made them feel at ease — a deliberate mask concealing one of history’s most devastating authoritarian records.

Maher was charmed by him. I can't imagine Charlie Chaplin having dinner with Adolf Hitler and then being over the moon because Hitler autographed a movie poster of The Great Dictator

The brilliant and always direct, Adam Serwer of the Atlantic makes it very clear: we are in a constitutional crisis right now. Trump is openly shrugging at ¯_(ツ)/¯ a decision from the Supreme Court, but in the most unserious and contemptful way:

Last week, the Supreme Court instructed the Trump administrationto follow a lower court’s directive to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return...the Trump administration has chosen a third way: pretending it is complying while refusing to do so.

A character that nobody thought would become a central villain in the descend to madness, is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. As a senator he often was the most miserable person in the chamber. He never looked like he enjoyed the job. And when running for president, he was constantly humiliated by President Trump. Adam Serwer again:

During the Oval Office meeting, Rubio chimed in to say that “no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.

I hope when we are the other side of this, these folks face justice at the Hague. Secretary Rubio does not have any place in history besides standing next to Castro and Pinochet.

Trump is definitely planning on rounding up citizens on fake criminal charges, with no trial or legal recourse. He has found his secret police and gulag in ICE and El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). The Supreme Court is acutely aware of the dangers of such a plan:

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a statement joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson accompanying the Supreme Court’s order last week, which was issued with no public dissents, “The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.” More broadly, this matter is no longer just about deportations or undocumented immigrants. The Trump administration’s defiance of a Supreme Court order is a new step into presidential lawlessness, in that it suggests that the administration will not abide by any court orders it does not feel like complying with.

The Supreme Court is now faced with a real decision.

The Roberts Court will now have to decide whether to side with the Constitution or with a lawless president asserting the power to disappear people at will. This is not a power that any person, much less an American president, is meant to have.

I don't believe Chief Justice Roberts can save the nation from stomach flopping into the abyss. The fall is infinite. Looking up is to bare witness to the light shrinking into darkness. There is no going back.

As the great physicist Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Fundamentally my worldview, to a frustrating extend in my self-confidence, is does what I know is in fact true. I have a little voice in my head that says, "you're fooling yourself."

Very haunting. I can't wait to play it.

The teaser was pretty hot too: