Posts tagged "TIL"

Today I learned you can use AppleScript to resize windows to a specific size. Simpler than I imagined if you can figure out what the positional params map to. tell application "Firefox Nightly" set bounds of front window to {110, 120, 1310, 1020} end tell

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Today I learned about the different definitions of twilight (civil, nautical, and astronomical). Basically, the angle of the sun is used as a proxy for when the sunlight is no longer visible. But what one person might consider officially “night” is still bright enough to impact an astronomer’s view, hence...

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Today I learned that the marine layer common on the California coast is due to the unusually cold water temperature relative to the air. The big temperature difference between air and water causes cold air to get trapped at ground level. Because ocean evaporation is trapped in the cool air...

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Today I learned that the Spanish phrase for the US “Estados Unidos” (EE.UU.) uses double letters because the word for “states” is plural. Apparently we also do this in English with page (p.) vs pages (pp.).

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Today I learned that the Christmas Bird Count started as an alternative to Christmas day “side hunts”. Framing bird watching in contrast to hunting makes me want find some people to go birding with. I just might have to sign up at some point.

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Today I learned the dish my family calls “egg in a hat” is called “hole in egg” by my in-laws and neither of those are the most recognized names. A quick search online reveals there are dozens of other names. Some were close like “egg in the basket” or “egg...

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Today I learned that both the US and Canada have policies to support dairy farms. The US typically does it by stabilizing commodity prices and subsidizing exports while Canada restricts supply with quotas. That also puts into context why the local Dairy store in Blaine, WA has signs about Canada’s...

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Today I learned of the term do-ocracy which is a phenomenon I’ve witnessed but never had a name for. I think it’s helpful to acknowledge spaces where work is done by those who self-select and what impacts that can have on the community.

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Today I learned what the “closed” in closed captioning means. It’s the ability to turn the captions off rather than having the text as part of the video. Ben’s post is also a good reminder of the difference between captions and subtitles.

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Today I learned that the Clippers used to be based in San Diego. Feels like something I should have known given the city’s history with major sports teams and the controversy with moving without NBA approval. Sounds like the Clippers are coming to Oceanside! Well, the Ontario G-league team. ...

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Today I Learned about geek codes. Seems like a fun sub-culture creation. Here’s to hoping I created this correctly… -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS d- s+: a C$ !U P-- L+ !E W+++ !N !o K--? w- !O? M !V PS+@ PE@ !Y !PGP-- !t 5? !X !R*...

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Today I learned there’s such thing as a “Large Flying Duck Orchid” and the name really does fit. It’s found in South Eastern Australia.

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TIL Error('message') and new Error('message') are equivalent in JavaScript. I’ve always used new.

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TIL that “nother” is a word with a long history, even if informal.

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TIL that AM and PM (short for the latin ante meridiem and post meridiem) are styled lowercase with a preceding space and punctuation in most style guides “10:10 a.m.” or “6 p.m.” rather than uppercase. Or if the style is upper case, small caps are recommended with no punctuation such...

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Today I learned that the standard CSS definition for gray is darker than darkgray. 🙈 Turns out things can get inconsistent if you combine two different lists of color names.

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Today I repaired our noisy clothes dryer and I have a new respect for how the box I used to take for granted works. Also grateful for the wealth of home repair knowledge on YouTube.

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Today I learned that before 1921 the Colorado River was called the Grand River.

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TIL there are lots of groundhogs predicting the weather https://groundhog-day.com/

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Today I learned that 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident, the movie The China Syndrome came out in theaters describing a nuclear meltdown that “could render an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable”.

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Today we saw what looked like a goldfish in the harbor. Apparently a “Catalina Goldfish” is officially called a Garibald and is California’s state fish.

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TIL that they make earplugs specifically for concerts. As someone with sensitive ears I need to look into these for the next time I go to a concert in person.

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TIL you can emulate the as const type suffix in JS with a helper function. (source) /** * Identity function. Coerces string/number literals to value-as-type. * @template {string|number} T * @param {T} v * @return {T} */ function toConst(v) { return v; } const five = toConst(5); // --> Type...

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TIL Slack has a reaction limit 😅

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This week I learned that the Spanish translation of the word percent “por ciento” is literally “of one hundred” which makes the English make a lot more sense.

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Today I learned that people are intentionally drinking charcoal. Seems like an odd way to empty your Christmas stocking.

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