Hey friends,

I was going to tell you a joke about time travel, but you didn't like it...

Thinking Too Hard

Have you ever tackled a problem only to learn that you spent an embarrassing amount of time going down the wrong path? Welp, that happened to me last week. I was pretty sure of something, but the farther I went the more I realized that this direction that wasn't going to get me very far, I was fighting the current.

I think in those moments it's easy to be discouraged, to think: "Man, what am I doing? I just wasted all this time!"

But I recently heard a story about Ferdinand Magellan. Yeah, that Magellan.

At one point, he attempted to determine how deep the Pacific Ocean was. He spliced together 732 meters (about 2401 feet) of rope and attached a cannonball to the end. When he reached the end of the rope and still had not reached the bottom he declared the ocean "fathomless", immeasurably deep.

I think there's a lot of "fathomless" areas in our lives where it seems like we'll never fully "arrive" or hit the bottom. But that's OK. I'm reminded that there's value in the DOING. My efforts didn't produce much measurable benefit but I still wound up learning a lot. Even if it's more of what NOT to do.

So don't be discouraged! Keep plumbing the depths! The goal is not to hit the bottom in one go, but to go deeper each time we set out!

Interesting Web Bits

• Now that GraphQL is well clear of the initial hype cycle, Matt Bessey gives us some critical opinions about GraphQL.
• Kai Sassnowski shows us what's going on in rigid body collisions.
• Not really new, but Mausritter is a delightful, tight TTRPG system for adventures with mice! And it's free!
• Matt Mullenweg shares some opinions now that WordPress is 21 years old. (Really, that old?! Time flies...).
• Google reminds us to not DRY our code prematurely. Grug approve.
• Looks like we might at some point get a native switch form element.
• If you haven't brushed up on CSS specificity, Bramus wrote a handy guide about some common misconceptions on how CSS specificity works.
• The Artemis rocket shows us that overcomplicating is easy, and simple is hard.