Michelle Wolf was killing it at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Her roasts were spot on. They sparked controversial because they stung like a motherfucker. What she delivered was the meticulous art of roasting. If you find her jokes offensive, you just have a brittle-ass soul. Props to Michelle. You did it, my sister.

Tara Westover’s gut-wrenching memoir recounts the story of a resilient daughter who grew up in a destructive, dangerous environment. Her father who had bipolar distrusted the government, its healthcare, and its educational system. Her mother suffered brain injury from a family’s tragic car crashed—no one was treated. One of her brothers was violent and abusive toward her, their siblings, and his girlfriends. Westover’s only way out of the family was education. After working in her dad’s junkyard for many years without schooling, Westover took the ACT test and enrolled in college. At seventeen, she stepped in to a classroom for the first time without knowing the cause of the Holocaust and the meaning behind the word “nigger”—even though her brother had called her that all the time at home. Through study hard and determination, she graduated from Brigham Young University and awarded a PhD in history from Trinity College. The vivid detail of her transformation from suffering to success is frightening yet empowering. If you are in doubt about the true value of education, get Educated.

Kimberly Harrington:

I have no problem lying about “being in a meeting” when I’m with my kids and no problem lying to my kids about “needing to work” when I’m on Facebook.

I have flexible morality and rigid immaturity.

I have kids who have forced me to do everything in my life with greater efficiency and the professional assumption that I’m now less efficient after having kids.

Read the rest of Harrington’s essay on The New Yorker. I should read Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words in the near future.

It’s hard to believe our first born turns nine today. Đạo will be nine years older than our forthcoming boy. Time has flown by so fast, but it has been a joy watching him grow. He is our guinea pig for parenting. We learn our lessons and mistakes from raising him and apply to his younger brothers.

Đạo enjoys reading. We read every night before bed. He has been fascinated with history, particularly about the wars. He has been giving some historical facts that I did not know before. Last Monday, he told me something intriguing, yet it escaped my mind. I can’t even recall what it was about. I am getting old. I should have written it down.

Like most kids, Đạo loves playing games on the iPad. He would get addicted even, if we just let him play for hours. For that reason, we always try to take the boys out as much as possible, especially on weekends. He still likes to play with Lego. I am terrible at Lego; therefore, he had to learn to build everything on his own. Now he builds his own battleships and war aircrafts to play with.

Personality wise, Đạo is charming. He interacts with everyone from adults to kids younger than his age. Even Đán’s friends like to hang out with him. When playdates end, he doesn’t get emotional attachment. He’s fine with saying goodbye to friends and not feeling sad.

Đạo is still afraid of being alone. He doesn’t want to sleep by himself. He wants me to rub his back every night to soothe him to sleep. I got annoyed sometimes, but then I feel bad.

He argues and fights with Đán constantly. It gets worse when their cousin is around. Each tries to get the cousin to be on his side. It irritates the heck out of me. I always have to break them all up until they all can play together.

At the end of the day, Đạo is still my little boy. I am looking forward to learning to code with him using Dash and Dot. Happy birthday, kiddo!

Nicholas Kristof and Jessica Ma:

That’s mostly because of malaria. Mosquitoes spread the blood-borne disease, killing about 445,000 people per year. That figure doesn’t even include deaths from dengue fever, yellow fever, Zika or West Nile viruses.

Check out the well-executed interactive piece on The New York Times.

I implemented service workers on this blog and my web-based books by reading Jeremy Keith’s posts on the subject and modifying his JavaScript file for my own needs. Even though I was able to get service workers to work, I did not understand everything that went into the file.

Thankfully, his latest book, Going Offline, explains the ins and outs of service works in clear, comprehensible details. Jeremy has a gift for not only showing the hows but also the whys. With his vast knowledge of the history of the web and his unbiased assessment of progressive technologies, Jeremy makes a strong, convincing case for service workers.

Jeremy’s technical writing is as superb as always. Similar to his first book for A Book Apart, which cleared up all my confusions about HTML5, Going Offline helps me put the pieces of the service workers’ puzzle together. If you want to turn your website into a progressive web app, which requires HTTPS, service workers, and Web App Manifests, this book is for you.

Eric Columbus explains Rosenstein’s strategic moves:

By surviving, Mr. Rosenstein has preserved not just his job but also the integrity of an investigation into, among much else, possible wrongdoing by the president. Like the bamboo that bends but does not break in the wind, he has shown a flexibility that may have helped preserve our institutions despite the raging storm.

Read the article to find out how “Mr. Rosenstein had set a trap for Mr. Trump, into which the president eagerly jumped.”

I have been blogging since 2003. The past several years have been cold in the blogosphere. Most personal bloggers I followed moved to Facebook. Most designers and web developers I kept in my Feedly shifted to Twitter or Medium. I understand why people have abandoned their blog. Keeping a blog is not easy. A personal blog requires time, commitment, and technical. You don’t make money on blogging either. Some people can make a decent living from their blog, but not too many.

Having blogging for fifteen years, I tried some ads in the past, but they didn’t add up much. Blogging is definitely the labor of love, especially in my case. Blogging has become my routine and obsession. It is a way for me to let anyone knows what I am thinking without telling them. Occasionally, I get in trouble because I forget some individuals who are close to me are reading. Other than those, I don’t know who reads anymore because I gutted Google Analytics on this site. Just the feeling of having someone somewhere reading my words is enough to keep me blogging. I don’t need to know details.

This year, I am glad to see the slow return of the blog. The web is still a great place to express yourself and blog is still the perfect platform. In recent months, I have abandoned Facebook, Twitter, Medium, and other social media network to focus only on this blog. This is the place where you can find me. If you want to keep update on what I am up to, simply visit this site or subscribe to my RSS feed. Yes, it still exists.

Thế là bốn mươi năm cuộc đời. Hai mươi năm đầu lãng phí tuổi thơ. Hai mươi năm sau cũng chẳng tới đâu. Bốn mươi năm nhìn lại thấy đời cũng không đối xử tệ với tôi. Tôi có mái ấm gia đình, công việc ổn định, sức khỏe, và đời sống bình an.

Tôi chỉ mong mỏi được cuộc sống thường. Không giàu không nghèo. Không bon chen không đua đòi. Không ganh ghét không chấp nhất. Không tham lam không tham vọng. Không căng thẳng không bệnh hoạn.

Lúc trước tôi xem tuổi tác cũng chỉ là một con số. Giờ thì khác. Số tuổi càng cao tôi càng lo lắng. Tôi đã tạo ra bốn mạng người tôi phải làm tròn trách nhiệm. Xung quanh người thân hết người này bị ung thư chết đến người kia. Tôi không muốn bị rơi hoàn cảnh đó nhưng làm sao tránh trước được.

Hai mươi năm nữa chẳng biết ra sao. Thôi thì hãy sống cho từng ngày. Tôi may mắn có được tình thương cha mẹ, anh chị, và vợ con. Thế là quá hạnh phúc ở tuổi bốn mươi. Tôi không muốn lo lắng lắm cho tương lai. Đến đâu thì chống chọi đến đấy.

Lauren Doyle Owens:

It’s been 10 years since the cancer. And those sad years that followed feel almost like another sickness I went through, a fever or drug interaction. I still have no idea why you stayed. Why you tolerated me. But I’m glad you did.

Nobody tells you how long marriage is. When you fall in love, when you have fun with somebody, when you enjoy the way they see the world, nobody ever says, “this person will change. And so you will be married to two, three, four, five or 10 people throughout the course of your life, as you live out your vows.” Nobody warns you. But you, my dear. There is something deep and hard and lasting inside of you. And I wish I had known, when I was searching again for my bedrock, that all I had to do was reach out my hand.

Beautifully written. Read the article at The New York Times.