austraz

I know of three languages that compile to JavaScript: CoffeeScript, which brings in Python idioms; TypeScript, which brings in static typing; and Elm, which is purely functional and looks sort of like Haskell.

JS itself, of course, is JS with Ruby idioms.

These are the four genders.

(I had the vague sense that, even though Ruby and Python are conventionally considered to be very similar, they encourage different patterns of thought. It looks like the ecosystem backs that up. But I could be completely wrong about CoffeeScript -- I still haven't looked into it much.)

Usually I'm most productive on the last day of my weekend.

I've settled into a routine of talking to people until they're all asleep and then working, but on the last day of the last weekend I figured I'd try to work through it.

I didn't get anything done!

Maybe it's one of those Zen things, where if you aim too intently at the target, your arrow will get stuck fifty feet up a tree in the opposite direction. And maybe it's more important to build and tend to healthy routines than to focus in an object-level manner on Doing The Thing.

Who knows!

People who aren't in America: what are the common fruits in your country?

I lived in Germany for a while, and ate a lot of Johannisbeeren - which are unheard of in America. A few years later, I looked them up and found out that, in English, they're called currants, and they were banned until recently because the plants they grow on can carry some sort of tree blight.

In America, the common fruits are:

- Many varieties of apple, most of which can be eaten raw (although IMO they're better cooked), but some of which are expected to be cooked. Common American apple cultivars have been optimized for shipping well rather than tasting good; the only ones I'd eat raw are obscure cultivars from farmer's markets, especially the Roxbury Russet. Russeted cultivars in general are likely to be better than the average apple, since russeting is considered undesirable, and newer apple cultivars are subject to optimization pressures that preindustrial ones weren't.

Speaking of apples, we have the folk hero Johnny Appleseed, a Swedenborgian (not that anyone would know what that is) who traveled the land planting apple seeds. The thing about that is that apples don't grow true to seed - they're propagated by grafting. Apples grown from seed aren't likely to be very edible, and would have instead been used for fermenting into cider.

- A few varieties of pear, which are eaten raw, sometimes with cheese. Pears have a subtle enough taste that pear juice is commonly used in organic products as a sweetener, instead of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.

- A few varieties of orange. Orange juice is conventionally drunk with breakfast.

- Grapefruits, and occasionally other large citruses, such as the pummelo. We have special grapefruit spoons with serrated edges to eat these - the walls of gristle between the edible segments are thick enough that, instead of eating them, we slice the fruits in half and scoop the edible parts out, conveniently avoiding all the textural problems of oranges.

- Strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. There are no notable differences in cultivar between the first three of these; for blueberries, there's the standard variety, and then the smaller, stronger-tasting, and seasonal "wild blueberry", which is just a different species. I think these are specific to the East Coast, possibly even New England. Strawberries, like the edible parts of apples, are technically vegetables.

- Grapes. Table grapes come in a few different colors, but taste like cardboard and are only used for texture. Concord grapes - the grapes that actually taste like grape jelly - are, unfortunately, seasonal, and are also one of the best fruits.

- Cantaloupes, honeydews, and watermelons. The honeydew is mostly used for color as a component of fruit salad; it doesn't taste like much.

- Pineapples, which are also technically vegetables. Pineapples contain bromelain, an enzyme mixture that can break down proteins; as a result, pineapple juice can be used to tenderize meat. This also means that pineapples partially digest your mouth when you eat them.

- Kiwis, a recent edition to the American fruit canon. Kiwis are occasionally stocked in the exotic produce sections of grocery stores. This is not a good sign for those stores.

- Bananas, which are very cheap, because if a banana-growing country raises its prices the US overthrows its government and replaces it with a new one that doesn't do that.

There are some other fruits which, as a degenerate urbanite, I've grown accustomed to having available, but which aren't consistent or likely to be available everywhere:

- Quinces, a distant relative of apples and pears. Quinces have to be cooked, but they're good, and most apples have to be cooked anyway. Most Americans are wrong about apples.

- Prickly pears, another of the best American fruits. They are filled with seeds; the first time I had a prickly pear, I didn't realize they were edible, and tried to juice it. Prickly pears do not produce very much juice.

- Starfruits, which were invented by a retired lawyer in the 1970s, and which ought to be the national fruit of America for precisely this reason. Starfruits are very good, and very dissimilar to any other fruit.

- Mangoes and papayas, both of which have two common cultivars. For papayas, there's a green, football-sized variety that tastes like a cantaloupe but tropical, and a yellow, grapefruit-sized variety that I probably had once and forgot. Footballs are substantially larger than grapefruits. For mangoes, there's a green or red, grapefruit-sized variety that tastes sort of rancid to me, and a smaller yellow variety that also tastes rancid to me.

- Various edible Sapindaceae; mostly lychees, which are good, and rambutans, which are not. It is occasionally possible to find Spanish limes, and things that look like Spanish limes but are unlabeled, probably because no one knows what they are.

- Japanese persimmons. Grocery stores are not good at persimmons; I don't buy them because they're as likely as not to rot on the shelf, and I don't know of a good way to tell. There are also American persimmons, but as far as I know, they haven't been commercialized.

- Guavas, which are not terribly interesting.

- Feijoas, which are very expensive but look like limes. The cashier won't be able to tell the difference.

- Cherimoyas, which are even more expensive (up to $8/lb) and just taste sort of tropical. There's a fruit related to the cherimoya that's native to America, the pawpaw, but it doesn't ship well so hasn't been commercialized.

- Dragonfruits, which are similarly expensive, and come in two varieties: a tasteless red kind and a very good yellow kind.

- Horned melons, which are like cucumbers, except the fruit consists entirely of orange-like, seed-bearing vesicles. I think they'd be interesting in mixed drinks, but there isn't much else that can be done with them; grocery stores mostly stock them because they have a long shelf life.

- Cape gooseberries, which aren't gooseberries (they're closely related to the tomatillo) and have an aftertaste of rancid semen.

- Kumquats, which really don't ship well but sometimes grocery stores try to sell them anyway. (Then again, neither do strawberries. Strawberries mold so easily that a light rain can wipe out a whole crop.) The kumquat is a small, bitter citrus, about the size of a grape, which is eaten whole.

Dreamwidth doesn't have a mobile site as far as I can tell, but is still technically usable on mobile.

I'm visiting family for Christmas and there's no internet connection here.

I feel like I'm obligated to use capital letters. This is a relic of an earlier time, and that's what we did then. When in Rome, etc.

Oh, the post box overlaps with the tag dialog and whatnot. So it isn't very usable on mobile after all. Sad!