Month: March 2024

A Trustworthy Saying

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If we died with Him,
We will also live with Him.
If we endure, we will also reign with Him.
If we deny Him, He will also deny us.
If we are faithless, He remains faithful,
For He cannot deny Himself.

I cannot begin to express to you how good the Lord is.

A Paraphrase of Psalm 7

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Shiggaion of David, which he sang to Jehovah. Concerning the words of a Benjamite [named] Cush.

1 Oh LORD, my God: in You I have put my trust.
Save me from all my persecutors.

2 Rescue me, [2] or they will tear my soul
Like a lion,
And rip me in pieces,
While there is no one to deliver.

3 Jehovah, my God, if I have done this –
If there is iniquity in my hands;

4 If I have repaid evil to anyone who was at peace with me,
Or plundered anyone who was my enemy without cause –

5 Then let the adversary pursue my soul, and overtake it.
In fact, let him trample my life to the ground,
And lay my glory in the dust.

Selah

6 Arise in your anger, oh Lord;
Lift yourself up because of the rage of my enemies.
Awake, for me – pronounce judgement.

7 Let the congregation of the peoples gather around You;
Return to the heights and rule over them.

8 Jehovah will judge the peoples.
Judge me, Jehovah, according to my righteousness,
And according to my inner integrity.

9 Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end,
But establish the righteous;
For the righteous God tests the hearts and minds.

10 My shield is carried by God,
Who saves the upright in heart.

11 God is a righteous judge –
A God Who is angry [with men] every day.

12 If they do not turn back, He will sharpen His sword.
He has bent His bow and made it ready.

13 He has prepared his deadly weapons.
He has aimed His arrows at the pursuer –

14 Look how he conceives evil,
Is pregnant with trouble,
And gives birth to lies.

15 He has made a pit.
He has dug it out –
He has fallen into the hole he made.

16 The trouble he causes will [be] return[ed] onto his own head.
His violence will come down onto his own skull.

17 I will praise Jehovah according to His righteousness,
And will sing praise to the name of The LORD Most High.

Unit Testing a Linked List

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I believe integration tests are the most valuable type of automated test. A linked list is usually part of a standard library, so that makes it a great example of a candidate for integration testing.

My guideline is, “one test per requirement.” For example, for a Linked List, I would probably start with one test for each of the following:

1) Can values be prepended, 2) inserted at a given index, and 3) appended?

4) Can values be removed without compromising the list’s integrity?

5) Can the list be traversed forward and (for doubly linked lists), 6) backward?

7) Are we preventing out-of-bounds access?

8) Any potential type safety requirement

9+) Each potential memory efficiency requirement

…) Each potential runtime requirement

TikTok

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Aside from LinkedIn, I have not had any social media accounts since 2019.

Studies show the average person spends over 6 hours per day looking at screens, with almost 3 of those hours spent on mobile devices, consuming a constant stream of audio-visual content. Human brains are not optimized for this type of continuous, passive consumption; they are optimized for in-person conversations and kinetic interactions with a physical environment.

While I understand the challenges the upcoming potential TikTok ban poses for creators and employees, I believe dopamine-driven apps that bypass critical thinking and offer little lasting value ultimately create a societal net negative.

The proposed TikTok ban in Congress raises a crucial question: how can we foster healthy online habits that prioritize meaningful interactions over mindless scrolling?

Anhedon

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One tone, and an empty mind
Is the greatest sound that makes the body blind.

Questions in the ether;
My slow thinking is seeing
The big picture.
You can’t comprehend the details.
As you inhale,
I’m analyzing from every conceivable angle.

I can’t speak, I can’t eat, think, or sleep.
Heard that somewhere but it sounded cheap.
Have you ever gone for days, mind in a haze,
Wishing you could focus on something – anything –
Trapped, lost in a malaise?

Give me a break.
The systems you’re creating are at stake.
I could fix it – tear down and rebuild –
Listen, blind leader!
You’re making a mistake.

Remember when I said one tone – empty mind?
How long until the body goes blind?

Gaza Shooting

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The incident surrounding the aid trucks in Gaza city yesterday is a real tragedy. The worst thing anyone could do would be to minimize it. It’s also important that we be mindful of the context.

1) Israel is at war with Gaza. The government of Gaza, Hamas, is still dedicated to the annihilation of every last Jewish civilian living in the nation of Israel. The war will only end when either Hamas has been permanently neutralized, or every last Jewish civilian has been horrifically slaughtered.

As the Palestinian activists like to remind us, the war I’m referring to didn’t begin on October 7th; while Israel has only officially been at war with Gaza since then, various Palestinian militant groups have been at war with Israel continuously since 1948.

2) The details surrounding the incident are unclear. There is lots of video footage of perfectly healthy Palestinian men standing and walking around, shouting about what they saw and how badly they were injured – but the only publicly-available video of the incident is a bit of blurry, aerial footage from an IDF drone, that doesn’t clearly show the exact sequence of events.

3) I’ve been reading news reports claiming that the Health Ministry in Gaza releases reliable numbers. This is absolutely false. It is a matter of public record that the Health Ministry in Gaza routinely inflates civilian casualties. This means that even the 120 number from the shooting that happened yesterday is likely inaccurate.

4) There are conflicting, unreliable accounts:

– Palestinian eye witnesses say that Israel attacked an aid convoy. The IDF is saying that the soldiers were there to protect the convoy.

– Palestinian eye witnesses say that the IDF opened fire on them from the convoy. (Notice that this is already a contradiction – did the IDF attack the convoy? Or did they attack the civilians from the convoy)? IDF soldiers who were present said that they only fired “warning shots,” or that they only “shot them in the legs” (Yeah, right). They are also saying that most of the civilians who died were either hit by the aid trucks as they tried to escape, or were caught up in a stampede.

– English-speaking news outlets painted a picture of docile civilians being viciously attacked without warning while they were patiently waiting for their food. IDF soldiers who were present are saying that the civilians swarmed the aid trucks, putting the drivers and IDF soldiers at risk. Palestinian eye witnesses also admit to this, explaining that they were desperate after weeks of having nothing to eat but pet food.

– The IDF has not released an official statement about what “actually” happened, pending an investigation. Of course, Hamas, which was supposedly not present at the incident, has already released an official statement, without performing any type of investigation.

5) There is a distinct possibility that the IDF did something wrong here. If that’s the case, then everyone involved needs to be held responsible.

6) Do not forget that, in the middle of an on-going war with Gaza, Israel is facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid to the civilian population of a group they are at war against – this particular aid convoy was one among hundreds, which we have heard nothing about until now. (In fact, we have been repeatedly told that Israel is making it impossible for humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza).

Many people have compared the incursion into Gaza with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These people will be hard put to find an example of the Russian military delivering humanitarian aid by the hundreds of truckloads to Ukrainian civilians. [I got an email from a reader who is familiar with the situation on the ground in Ukraine, informing me that the Russian military does, in fact, provide humanitarian aid to Ukranian civilians in areas that it has taken control of].

If this war is an attempt by Israel to commit ethnic cleansing, then it is the most inept, half-hearted endeavor the world has ever seen.