Author | Lightnews

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

@jbranchaud.bsky.social

1.2K followers 370 following 1.4K posts

Free-Range Software Dev and Consultant ✨ PostgreSQL • Ruby on Rails • TypeScript • React ✨ 🏃🐈🍹🎱 (he/him) | Chicago | Work with me: visualmode.dev

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · Nov 15

The Ruby language and community have given me so much, so I thought I'd give a little something back as #RubyConf wraps.

Introducing Ruby Operator Lookup!

A one-stop directory for all the operators and symbols you'll see in Ruby programs. There are sooo many 😅

www.visualmode.dev/ruby-operators

Screenshot with a heading "Ruby Operator Lookup" and subheading "and lots of special character syntax as well". There is a search box for searching through the operators and then a couple dozen buttons each displaying different operators and special characters.

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 8h

Extremely cool to hear that someone recommended it 😊

That's a great idea. I'll see if I can figure out how to add that to the search and/or just add additional links for those that go to the % page.

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 12h

I finally figured out that in VSCode/Cursor, if I hit cmd+p and type out the name of a file I want to create, I'll eventually filter everything else out and have a single option to create that file and the intervening directories if necessary.

Screenshot showing the Cursor "File Quick Finder" with the name of a non-existent file typed out. It says "No matching results" and then below that is an action to "Create File".

Reposted by 🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

MisterJayEm @misterjayem.bsky.social · 12h

*because of terrorism

Chicago Tribune @chicagotribune.com · 12h

Commentary: Just six months ago, my daughter would beg me for cotton candy from one of the after-school vendors, and we’d stay on the playground a little longer before heading home. Now, the vendors are gone, the playground is closed and the small routines have quietly disappeared because of fear.

Allison Pleas: Fear of ICE is stealing the simple moments in my Chicago neighborhood

The environment around my daughter’s predominantly Latino school has changed: The vendors are gone and the playground is closed.

trib.al

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Reposted by 🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 14h

No one should have to put up with this shit but in particular kids should not have to put up with this shit

Block Club Chicago @blockclubchi.bsky.social · 14h

Indoor trick-or-treat events. Candy dropoffs. Neighbors patrolling with whistles.

This is how Chicagoans are helping kids have a safe and ICE-free Halloween this year: blockclubchi.co/47qJSzi.

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Reposted by 🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

shawn @mulchy.bsky.social · 17h

heartbreaking and infuriating

“They choked me very hard and then they punched me in the eye, all while asking me why am I resisting when I was not resisting at all,” he said. They then knocked him to the ground and put him in handcuffs.

In the end, federal agents took the entire family into custody: Arnoldo Carrillo Jr., his father, Rosario; his mother, Martha; his 24-year-old sister, Sarai and their 14-year-old brother Eli. Arnoldo and Sarai were both released. Rosario, Martha and Eli are still in custody.

While Arnoldo and his siblings are all U.S. citizens born and raised in Indiana, their parents do not have legal status. Martha, who has an expired visa, was sent to the ICE facility in suburban Broadview, but has since been sent to a facility in El Paso, Texas. Rosario, who is undocumented, is being held at the Hammond, Indiana Police Department.

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Reposted by 🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

armando l sanchez @mandophotos.bsky.social · 2d

Border Patrol officers stand outside their vehicles at a gas station near Bridgeport Tuesday in Chicago. Earlier in the day students from Little Village Lawndale High School held a walk out to protest recent immigration enforcement actions in the area.

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 2d

I'm finding I like my tooling way better when I make (Neo)Vim act more like an IDE than when I make an IDE act more like (Neo)Vim.

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 3d

And PR opened -- would ya look at me contributing to open-source 😅

github.com/nebulab/erb-...

fix: account for utf-8 multi-codepoint text by jbranchaud · Pull Request #81 · nebulab/erb-formatter

This addresses the bug reported in Issue #80

github.com

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 4d

I know a big part of this is probably due to not having 200 chrome tabs open (yet), but the difference in battery life between my 2020 Intel MBP and this new M4 MBP is astounding.

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 4d

Always fun to browse this list of fzf utility functions, especially the ones for git.

`fbr` (for displaying a quick picker of recent git branches) is a favorite

github.com/junegunn/fzf...

Examples

:cherry_blossom: A command-line fuzzy finder. Contribute to junegunn/fzf development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 5d

Saw this one today on the NW side of Chicago: “Everyone is welcome here *except ICE*”

Sign on a cafe that says agents are not welcome and must show a valid warrant. Also includes a “Know Your Rights” section.

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 5d

It was likely this incident. bsky.app/profile/unra...

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 5d

It's not even 11am yet, and federal agents have gassed the northwest side of Chicago twice this morning.

Just before 10, NWSRR reports they detained two people in Irving Park, one of them known to be a US citizen: www.instagram.com/p/DQPKhmDEd4W/

Smoke (cm) section part of triple Cs canister

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 5d

A friend and their 2y/o kid got hit with teargas while out for a walk in their neighborhood this morning.

How has it become so routine for these reckless ICE thugs to snatch our neighbors and lob chemical weapons onto residential streets while they do it.

This is everyday across Chicago right now.

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 6d

I use cursor quite a bit. I was pairing recently with someone that uses VSCode and Copilot and they were *stunned* by the difference in quality of the tab-completions. Some of that might be model choice, but I also think Cursor is just doing a better job.

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 6d

Glad I was able to find a small repro like this so that I could share it with the project.

This is one of the weirdest bugs I've run into. Tempted to try to figure it out.

github.com/nebulab/erb-...

erb-format is deleting text from the copy of a template file · Issue #80 · nebulab/erb-formatter

I ran into this in a codebase and was able to put together this reproduction. $ erb-format --version ERB::Formatter 0.7.3 Here is the repro template where Case 1 gets mangled by the formatter where...

github.com

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 6d

this was only kind of a joke -- this is what erb-format does in this really narrow situation

screenshot of terminal where diff, produced by delta, shows how a file gets changed by `erb-format` by removing some characters from the copy text of the template.

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 6d

idea: a code formatter for template files, but in really specific circumstances it removes a couple text characters here and there

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Reposted by 🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

shawn @mulchy.bsky.social · 6d

it’s beyond comprehension that scenes like this have become routine in chicago.

masked soldiers are carelessly lobbing chemical weapons—that are banned from use during warfare—on random residential streets.

this is the third time feds have tear-gassed residents in chicago *this week!*

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 6d

Video from witness here from the moment CBP gassed neighbors who had gathered outside after the kidnapping.

Agent rolls a canister at the crowd out of the window of their car as they reverse away from people with whistles and bikes.

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 6d

Whenever I’m cleaning the guest bathroom before someone stays for the weekend, I like to leave a little bit of trash in the trashcan as a courtesy to provide them some anonymity when throwing things away.

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 6d

My newest @scriptkit.com script is a simple snippet helper for pasting the GitHub Styled Blockquote syntax into the focused text area, because I can never remember the syntax when I need it.

gist.github.com/jbranchaud/c...

A screenshot of a Vim session in a terminal showing the lines of code for a script that powers the overlaid ScriptKit dropdown offering to pick and paste one of the 5 styles of GitHub Blockquote syntax.

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Reposted by 🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

Aura Bogado @aurabogado.bsky.social · 7d

This brilliant little article gets at what I’ve seen but haven’t yet read: Chicago locals, regardless of status, are apprehensive about venturing out to restaurants and food stalls targeted by ICE. The result is a whole sector in economic and social crisis.
www.chicagomag.com/news/we-wont...

“We Won’t Survive if You Don’t Support Us”

ICE presence in Chicago has hurt the local economies in immigrant communities — which could in turn put a financial strain on the city at large.

www.chicagomag.com

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 7d

I need to get started on recording my Masterclass on Creating Pro High-Context Screenshots.

🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 7d

One of my favorite Tiny Desk Concerts - really cool how he was able to adapt his performance to a live setting like this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iQm...

Fred again..: Tiny Desk Concert

YouTube video by NPR Music

www.youtube.com

Reposted by 🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

Trek Glowacki @trek.bsky.social · 9d

It's very easy as someone with any number of privileges to lose sight of this fact but, to butcher a quote: the authoritarianism is here it's just not very evenly distributed.

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🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨ @jbranchaud.bsky.social · 9d

Not to brag, but I just posed what many LLMs are calling a "Great question!".