found drama

• The cost of privacy
  James Coglan writing at The If Works:

  However, encapsulation does not need to be rigorously enforced by the machine, and using this style has all sorts of annoying costs that I’ll get to in just a second. Encapsulation is something you get by deliberately designing interfaces and architectures, by communicating with your team/users, and through documentation and tests. Trying to enforce it in code shows a level of paranoia that isn’t necessary in most situations, and this code style has plenty of costs that grossly offset the minimal encapsulation benefit it provides.

  It's an interesting analysis of the JavaScript faux privacy pattern-as-anti-pattern. The tl;dr version seems to be: use prototypes appropriately, and stop trying to be so damn clever.

  (tagged: encapsulation anti-patterns patterns James Coglan JavaScript )
• A Plea to SFF Writers for Variety in Pregnancy and Childbirth Depictions
  Kate Nepveu writing at Tor.com:

  SFF writers should also consider the society’s general attitude toward reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth. American society tends to consider visible pregnancy as a reason to lower social barriers, both conversationally and physically. (Never, ever, ever touch someone’s pregnant belly without permission. While you’re at it, don’t give unsolicited advice or tell horror stories, either.) Are pregnancies public property (figuratively or literally) in your SFF society, something intensely private, somewhere in-between? Are they generally approved of, disapproved of, considered a harmless quirk? Is childbirth scary and mysterious, unexceptional, the big event or a precursor to a more socially significant milestone? How tightly linked is reproduction to sex, both in the sense of how the gametes get together and in the sense of the identities of the parent(s)?

  (tagged: science fiction writing pregnancy )
• Glimpses of Humanity in Choreographed North Korea
  At The Atlantic. I thought we were done with this sort of thing? Flashbacks to the Cold War going on here.
  (tagged: research militarism North Korea )
• Sometimes, When "All the Facts are In," It’s Worse: The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Report
  The Infamous Brad. tl;dr: no one was in charge, and everyone that should have been in charge is feinting with "I thought I'd been clear to everyone else when I said _____"; also that Mk-9 pepper spray is illegal in California.
  (tagged: violence politics news law enforcement history )
• Time Machines: Robots, Rockets and Steampunk
  At Shelburne Museum this summer. Can't wait.
  (tagged: Vermont Shelburne Museum )

About Rob Friesel