From callbacks to promises via currying

Saucy code

4/27/2022

Recently, I’ve been working on some social and gamification features in a web application. I decided to use a backend service called [brainCloud][1] instead of implementing all of the database stuff myself. The brainCloud service stores things like player statistics, leaderboards and social relationships (i.e. who’s friends with who?), and provides an HTTP API to read and write the data. They also provide a [Javascript client library][2] to make it easier to work with those APIs.

After my experience with Beijing Confidential, I felt compelled to expose myself to writing about China by native and contemporary authors. China in Ten Words wasn’t exactly what I was looking for—I wanted more focus on modern China, i.e. what is it like now—but it was still an enlightening read.

Each of the ten essays in this collection is a meditation on a Chinese phrase, which are all shown on the cover, in case you’re too lazy to open to the table of contents.

I was a bit impatient through the first half of the book, which deals with the author’s childhood during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s. It covers ground that doesn’t feel new to me because of my time with other books. I wanted him to get to the present day, which he does indeed do towards the second half. I would say that the earlier parts of the book do lay an important foundation for the rest of it, because as a whole, the book can be seen as a compare-and-contrast exercise between the time of Mao’s rule and today.

In one memorable passage, Yu describes an incident during his childhood, when he and some other kids enacted vigilante justice against a man who was illegally trading food stamps. The kids physically assaulted the man, but the man didn’t retaliate; instead, he broke down and cried in remorse.

In contrast, Yu recounts a story from more recent times, where an unlicensed street vendor stabbed and killed a government official who was trying to enforce the rules by shutting down the shop.

Yu sees this as a breakdown in the morality of the country. He seems almost nostalgic for the black-and-white authoritarianism of Mao’s day, as opposed to the everyone-for-themselves mentality of today. He acknowledges the brutality of the past, especially for the violent acts of his youth, but suggests that there was some value in unity, where everyone agrees what’s right and wrong. The man that Yu and the other kids assaulted didn’t retaliate because he knew he was breaking the rules.

So China moved from Mao Zedong’s monochrome era of politics-in-command to Deng Xiaoping’s polychrome era of economics above all. “Better a socialist weed than a capitalist seedling,” we used to say in the Cultural Revolution. Today we can’t tell the difference between what is capitalist and what is socialist—weeds and seedlings come from one and the same plant.

• Yu Hua

Personally, I’ve seen this attitude from the older generations of my family, who seem to believe that obedience is paramount. I don’t always agree, but I’ve been trying to recognize where they’re coming from. This book has further enlightened me to the differences between the two cultures that I inhabit.

I’m clearly two years late on this, but when I recently looked back at my post of favourite albums of the previous decade, I couldn’t help doing this again, if only to leave myself something to look back on in another 10 years.

1. 12 Bit Blues - Kid Koala (2012)
2. The Navigator - Hurray for the Riff Raff (2017)
3. Lonerism - Tame Impala (2012)
4. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West (2010)
5. Trouble Will Find Me - The National (2013)
6. Love & Hate - Michael Kiwanuka (2016)
7. The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monae (2010)
8. A Moon Shaped Pool - Radiohead (2016)
9. Art Angels - Grimes (2015)
10. I Am Easy to Find - The National (2019)

Bonus List - Favourite Songs That Aren’t on the Aforementioned Albums

In no particular order:

• “begin again” - Purity Ring, Another Eternity (2015)
• “Piss Crowns are Trebled” - Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress (2015)
• “Wide Open” - Chemical Brothers (feat. Beck), Born in the Echoes (2015)
• “The Heart Wants What it Wants” - Selena Gomez, For You (2014)
• “Blood and Rockets - Movement I, Saga of Jack Parsons - Movement II, Too the Moon” - The Claypool Lennon Delirium, South of Reality (2019)
• “Good Intentions Paving Company” - Joanna Newsom, Have One On Me (2010)
• “Optimist” - David Byrne & St. Vincent, Love This Giant (2012)
• “Time” - Hans Zimmer, Inception (2010)
• “Do I Wanna Know?” - Arctic Monkeys, AM (2013)

Bonus Bonus List - A couple of artists who have been incredibly prolific during the 2010’s, and who don’t have any specific works that I especially love, but still, I like almost everything they do

• Lana Del Rey
• Run the Jewels