Per the usual code, I was back to my books and working on Livtet. I managed to advance to the later stages of an interview process and I'm hoping for good news by the end of the month. There's also a potential of me picking up contract work. So far, August has been busy with reading and studying but there's growth and markers towards a bright September.

Reading

I'm still working on my abolitionist list for this month but I took some time to pick up some books I had hanging and hadn't finished yet.

Harlem Shuffle

This book is one I've been reading on and off; not because I didn't enjoy it but because the book was almost done. Big Mike's son has issue after issue crop up in his way of aiming to make a honest living. I got the audiobook to go with my borrowed digital copy and it felt like listening to a radio show; making the segmenting of the read even better. It takes place in a slightly alternate Harlem. It brings you through the development of the neighborhood and New York City in the 1960s. From riots to robberies, heists to heartache, this book is one I'll give to folks who are curious about New York City.

You Exist Too Much

A gripping tale of a Palestinian-American that's wrestling with love addiction^[1], family drama and trauma and having to come to age in themselves. I wish I read this sooner and it's another book I didn't want to end. There were so many moments where I yelled at the book saying "GIRL NO" or "DUMP HIM"; I saw myself in some of these moments. The nature of being a Palestinian-American isn't hidden as the evolving genocidal nature of Israel is highlighted in the book. The nature of folks advocating of violence to these people unintentionally, with notions of a "two-state solution". Those events have reverberations in how the main character sees themselves and I'm glad that folks are writing humanizing material like this.

Prisons By Any Other Name

This book was getting harder and harder to read. So far, the book's discussed the level of violence waged by the state and private institutions against mothers who don't fit the "model" of an ideal parent. It also mentions the nature of the foster care system and its history as a religious-now-state sponsored child kidnapping program meant to force Native folks into "civil conformity". I'm currently on the chapter around the evolution of community policing creating "open air prisons". This chapter has a focus in New York City, which is my home city. The description of how the helicoptering policing of both cops and good-intention neighbors reminds me so much of my hometown. These kind of stories are grounded as the authors make the connection between community policing and the community murdering of Native people and slave capture committees. This book is definitely one that'll remain in my library of recommendations and I'm hoping that we won't need an expanded version anytime soon.

I didn't expect to finish the book this morning but I managed to. The last chapter on imagining alternatives reminds me so much of a quote attributed to Sadiya Hartman, that one of the greatest crimes of oppression is how deeply it has policed our ability to imagine^[2].

The Trinity of Fundamentals

I'm reading this as part of the book club driven by Millennials are Killing Capitalism. I got this book last year when I went to 1804 Books's hub, the People's Forum, as well as a bunch of other books. I did not expect to be thrown so quickly into a world that was ripe with vigor and care.

For context, this book was smuggled out of the Zionist prisons set up in Palestine. It took 54 capsules of physical text to get this story, written over nine years. The way the book was written, I'm shocked that it hasn't covered things like the New York Times bestseller list. It's a gripping tale of the resistance development against occupation. It starts on a campus ground, showing the dynamism of the youth to learn and hold each other in political struggle while their homeland is being encroached by violence pushed on by the Reagan administration and the Israeli occupation. I'm doing my best not to run through this book because it's a page turner but it is hard.

Git Cute

I can't find much to say about this book; and in this case, this isn't necessarily a good thing. I don't want to speak ill of the author. I will say that I bought this book some time ago in support of them and in curiosity of what our experiences becoming a senior software engineer would look like. What I got from the book was something that, I think, you could find by examining software engineering culture on places like YouTube or Twitter. In fact, the book opens up with quite a bit about the nature of the marketing nature of software engineering (building a sort-of brand, for example). I can't say this is something I'd recommend.

Writing

I spent more time working on code this week — not much out of the blog. I did write about what I ended up working on. An extension system to Livtet using Lua; it was really rewarding!

Coding

As mentioned above, I got Lua working with Livtet. After writing that, I did a bit more tinkering to add in a stricter form for the system. The signatures for the API is a bit different but still has the same result. This was using another library, tealr, that also allows me to vendor a typed version of Lua via Teal. The difference is minimal but is more organized:

 local function items()
+ 	local user_profile = livtet.options:get("user_profile_url")
- 	local user_profile = livtet.options("user_profile_url")
 	local book_items = {}
 	for shelf, url in pairs(USER_URLS) do
 		local full_request_url = user_profile .. url
+		local feed_index = livtet.http:fetch_json(full_request_url)
-		local feed_index = livtet.fetch_json(full_request_url)
 		if feed_index ~= nil then
 			local first_url = feed_index["first"]
 			if first_url ~= nil then
 				book_items[shelf] = fetch_all_from_feed(first_url)
 			end
 		end
 	end

 	local books = {}

 	for shelf, book_list in pairs(book_items) do
 		for _, book_info in pairs(book_list) do
 			local book = expand_book(book_info)
 			table.insert(books, book)
 		end
 	end

 	return books
 end

I have yet to swap the use of things to use Teal as I'm still working on changing some things but I'm eager to report back on it.

Seeing

I spent a lot of time in my little garden. Here's some Jade that's been sprawling out more and more since I've brought it outside. I didn't realize how quickly and voluminous Jade could grow to be.