Robert Draper writes about Nancy Pelosi in The New York Times Magazine:

Pelosi is something of a paradox in the world of politics. A Gallup poll five months ago found her favorability rating to be at a dismal 29 percent, and yet — unlike other unpopular political figures such as Trump and Hillary Clinton — her 31 years in public life have been free of scandal. She has been excoriated from the right as the quintessence of California limousine liberalism. But she is also a practicing Catholic whose first career was as a stay-at-home mother of five children, with little in common with — and at times little patience for — the new generation of activists in her party, to whom she sometimes refers as “the lefties.” Pelosi — who with her husband, the investor Paul Pelosi, owns a large house in San Francisco’s upper-crust Presidio Heights as well as a Napa Valley vineyard — is indeed rich. But 29 members of Congress, 18 of them Republicans, are richer.

What sets her apart from other legislators of her stature is her gender. Pelosi has been known to say: “No one gives you power. You have to take it from them.” The leitmotif of her three-decade ascent is that of a woman wresting power away from a male-dominated political machine, until one day the machine discovered she was its master.

Pelosi is tough, smart, and talented. The Democrat should be thankful for her leadership.

I am glad that the release of WordPress 5.0 has been pushed back. After testing out Gutenberg, the new, controversial editor, I can see why Matt Mullenweg is pushing hard to get it into core. Gutenberg will define WordPress as a powerful CMS and no longer just a blogging platform. It gives users more flexibility to create richer experience.

I can also see why it is alienating many designers and developers. For this blog, which I have intended to keep simple from the start, I won’t be using Gutenberg. I have no photos, no video, no audio, and no gallery. It is just simply text. I do put up large hero images once in a while, but they do not go into the database. I want the complete control of the text. My theme still just have 3 files. I don’t see the need to use Gutenberg, but I will see if I can develop a theme from scratch like I always had in the past decade just for this site.

I played with the new Twenty Nineteen. It looks impressive, but the theme has tons of files. I might be wasting my time developing a theme from scratch. I just have to roll with what already developed and just customize it for my needs. Once WordPress 5.0 is out and Twenty Nineteen is officially released, I’ll use it to develop a theme for Scalia Law School. It will be beneficial for the school sites than my own personal site.

Gutenberg isn’t solid yet, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. It is understandable that people don’t like new changes, but they will get around to it.

David Armstrong writes in The New Yorker:

Opposition to vaccination is almost as old as vaccination itself. But Web sites like [Joseph] Mercola’s have helped drive the modern anti-vaccination movement. Most scientists consider vaccination one of the greatest public-health advances of the twentieth century, helping to control or even eradicate diseases such as smallpox, polio, and measles in the U.S. Studies have found that vaccines can have side effects, but they are almost always minor, like redness and swelling.

Anti-vaxxers blame vaccines for an increase in the rate of autism diagnoses among American children. From 2000 to 2014, the number of children diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorder increased to one in fifty-nine from one in a hundred and fifty. [David] Ayoub and others have argued that vaccines are one reason for this increase, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluded that “studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing ASD,” and the World Health Organization has issued a similar finding. Prominent anti-vaxxers include celebrities such as the actress Jenny McCarthy and the lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Before becoming President, Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting in 2014 that a “healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – autism. Many such cases!”

A study published in September found that Russian trolls and sophisticated Twitter bots tried to foment confusion about vaccination and create a false equivalency between pro- and anti-vaccination arguments. The authors of the study, from George Washington University and other research institutions, warned, “Such strategies may undermine the public health: normalizing these debates may lead the public to question long-standing scientific consensus regarding vaccine efficacy.”

Please vaccinate your kids.

James Bridle discovers horrific videos targeting children for page views. He warns:

Children’s cartoons getting assaulted, getting killed, weird pranks that actually genuinely terrify children. What you have is software pulling in all of these different influences to automatically generate kids’ worst nightmares. And this stuff really, really does affect small children. Parents report their children being traumatized, becoming afraid of the dark, becoming afraid of their favorite cartoon characters. If you take one thing away from this, it’s that if you have small children, keep them the hell away from YouTube.

Yes, watch his TED talk and keep your kids the hell away from YouTube.

Ngày xưa mới qua Mỹ tôi nghe nhạc rap để học tiếng Anh. Giờ đây tôi cho mấy thằng nhỏ nghe rap Việt để nó học tiếng Việt. Mấy hôm nay nghe bài “They Said” của Bin Z có câu: “Nghe nói em đẹp tự nhiên không có sửa hả? / Nghe nói trai Sài Gòn không có cửa hả?”

Đán nói nó hiểu hai câu và dịch lại tiếng Anh như sau: “That means a beautiful girl has no milk and a boy has no door.”

Đán will turn seven on Thursday. We’re planning on taking him to his favorite sushi buffet to celebrate. Tonight he misbehaved; therefore, I told him that we will cancel the celebration if he doesn’t get his act together. He responded, “You hate me and you think I am fucked.” His words cut through me like a knife. I told him I was hurt and furious. I was holding Vương in my arms so I yelled at him and told him to get out of my room.

Đán’s behavior has changed drastically over the last year. At school, he failed to follow his teachers’ instructions. At home, he ignored our words. What irritated the heck out me was that he did what we asked him not to do. His misbehaves drove me nuts. I am extremely frustrated, but I can’t turn him away. I am working hard to bring out his charmness, selflessness, and hilariousness. He has those qualities in him, but he chose not to use them.

The failure is on me. I let my emotion takes over when I get furious and frustrated. Instead of spanking or yelling, I just shut myself down and out.

Lúc trước mỗi lần lạc mắt kính tôi phải tìm cho ra. Tôi đi lẩn quẩn quanh nhà như thằng mất trí. Càng tìm kiếm tôi càng bực tức với chính mình cho dù chỉ chuyện nhỏ nhặt. Giờ đây để lạc một cái tôi đeo cái khác cho đến khi cái bị thất lạc tự hiện ra.

Trong cuộc sống tôi cũng muốn áp dụng như thế. Không để những chuyện nhỏ nhặt khiến mình căng thẳng. Những việc gì không theo ý muốn của mình cũng nên coi nhẹ. Càng không thể để những gì mình tìm không được khiến mình bực bội. Không được cái này mình tìm cái khác. Hơi sức đâu mà phải tự mình làm khổ chính mình. Càng già tôi càng muốn sống nhẹ nhàng hơn.

Không háo thắng. Không tranh giành. Không đua đòi. Không ganh tị. Sống với những gì mình có. Sống với cuộc sống của riêng mình. Sống với chính mình. Dĩ nhiên là nói dễ hơn thực hành. Tôi vẫn chưa thật sự làm được những điều đó. Tôi không phải là một người hoàn hảo nhưng tôi tự biết mình cần làm gì để cuộc sống và tinh thần được yên tĩnh.

A few articles on fonts for your reading pleasure:

• Bethany Heck dives deep into Windsor, “a typeface of British origin that’s found its way into the ‘Ugly American’ vernacular,” designed by Eleisha Pechey. It’s a pleasure and informative read as always.
• Thomas Bohm argues for more existing typefaces with more character and language support than new similar typefaces with only basic support.
• Arun Venkatesan explains “Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?.”
• Rumsey Taylor shows how did Choc, a quirky calligraphic typeface drawn by a French graphic designer in the 1950s, end up on storefronts everywhere in New York City.

I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and I don’t even like eating the plain turkey, but I appreciate the long five-day weekend. I spent most my time with my kids. These days I have to compete with the iPad. To get the three older boys off their device, I have to take them out of the house. We went out to eat and to fun places, but the most enjoyable time for us was getting back to nature.

I posted most of our activities on Facebook so our family members, especially my mom can see what her grandchildren are doing. Every time I talked to her over the phone she told me the joy of seeing them. I feel conflicted about Facebook. On one hand, I despise the platform. The way it fucks with our data and the way it mishandles misinformation. And yet, it is the only platform that even my mom knows how to use. Besides Facebook and YouTube, she would never venture out to this blog. Most of my family members don’t either, which is good. I still have my own space to truly be myself.

I am also feeling guilty that most of my Facebook posts are about living life. I give the impression that I am living a wonderful life and that I am such a great dad. The reality is not as rosy and I have my flaws as a parent. This blog captures the raw, unfiltered side of that. It appears as if I am living two different lives on two separate platforms. On Facebook, I locked down my privacy to only friends. I even went through and took out people I don’t know too well. I have refrained from posting political views.

This blog is still open to the public. I write anything I want without filter. I can be truly be myself through words, not photos of my kids. This blog I will keep, but I can shut off Facebook any time I feel like I have enough of it. The rest of the social media networks, I am pretty much done with.

Mary Norris explains the classic grammar mixup of who vs. whom:

My test for the correct use of “who” or “whom” in a relative clause—“who I know will use it judiciously”—is to recast the clause as a complete sentence, assigning a temporary personal pronoun to the relative pronoun “who/whom.” “I know she will use it”? Or “I know her will use it”? No native speaker of English who has outgrown baby talk would say “her will use it.” The correct choice is clearly “she”: “I know she will use it judiciously.” If the pronoun that fits is in the nominative case, acting as the subject (“I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” “it,” “we,” “you,” “they”), then the relative pronoun should also be in the nominative case: “who I know will use it judiciously.” Yay! I got it right.

Suppose I had written that I turned over the comma shaker to a colleague who I have known for years. Recast the relative clause as a complete sentence with a personal pronoun: “I have known she for years”? Or “I have known her for years”? This time the correct choice is “her,” which is in the objective case (“me,” “you,” “him,” “her,” “us,” “you,” “them”); therefore the relative pronoun should be in the objective case (“whom”). I should have written, “I turned over the comma shaker to a colleague whom I have known for years.” Boo! I got it wrong.