Requirement

You are on a web page, using JavaScript, and have a reference to an element node. And you want to select the immediate children of that node using the general syntax used by querySelectorAll, maybe with some extra constraints. What do you do?

Failed attempt

The CSS syntax for children of a node is using the greater-than character, something like this: #parentNode > *, but as soon as you try in JavaScript parentNode.querySelectorAll('> *') you get an error: '> *' is not a valid selector.. That doesn't work...

Solution

The solution is using the :scope pseudo-class. In a "traditional" selector, it represents the element the method is called from, in our case #parentNode. The code becomes parentNode.querySelectorAll(':scope > *') and now it all works. In simple CSS it makes no sense as it just works exactly like :root.

:scope is widely supported in this particular scenario, since Chrome 27 and Firefox 32 and Safari 7, meaning it was completely supported at the end of 2014.

But it also has a secondary use, as a stand-in for the scoped element in the @scope CSS at-rule, which is something newly available in 2025 and frankly, pretty sweet. You can follow the documentation and even use it in your web sites made for modern browsers, but that's not in the... scope... of this blog post, though.

Hope that helps!

  Barbara Hambly has her own voice, that's for sure. The book is good, not perfect, but certainly feels unique. The characters are flawed, but make the best of what they've got, using cunning and planning, their minds always in conflict with their hearts. The first book in the series was the same, it seemed to be a standard fantasy story, but the characters' depth changed everything.

  Dragonshadow sees the couple of dragonsbane and witch having to battle demons, both outwardly and inwardly. There are some heartbreaking things that are happening, only the characters don't break down into crying and spitting emotional messes, they act the best way they think possible to defeat their enemies and save the people they love. And that includes some dragons.

  Damn it, I might need to read the rest of the series now. 

  Alien: Colony War is a classical Alien story in the "Aliens / Predator / Prometheus Universe": state, corporate and military corruption and greed, individual bravery and struggle, xenomorphs and mothers willing to protect their children, the occasional psychopath. Entertaining. I feel the author understands and respects the Alien universe.

  Alien has a successful recipe, one that unlike other franchises, no one yet tried to deconstruct, reinvent or turn into something else. Yes, I am also talking about Alien: Earth, if you look into it, it's the same story. I am talking about a world filled with despondency: indentured human work, a cold corporate profit driven mentality in the ones holding most resources, a general callousness towards loss of human life, monstrous viscerally terrifying monsters. And in this world, there is the human (and sometime synthetic) individual spirit of survival, decency and bravery. And the feelings evoked by this kind of scenario are also pretty formulaic: a mother protecting her child most of the time, but sometimes just protecting their friends, or the memory of a loved one.

  If you look closer, you will see that any attempt to get rid of this, at least in movie form, has failed. Even when putting a strong women lead like in Prometheus or AVP movies, if all they fought for was mere survival, it didn't count. Brilliant acting by Michael Fassbender, but no one cared about a scientifically curious and totally amoral synth. Predators hunting xenos didn't excite anyone, either.

  I feel like David Barnett understands this deeply. Even if he is writing in an extended universe (see the Black Goo or even the Engineers) he just mentions it in passing and keeps to the tried and true: a colony where stranded people have to survive a xenomorph infestation intentionally started for political and economic reasons.

  It's not like the most brilliant book ever. It's a well written, light, easy to read, formulaic Alien story, but it's entertaining, makes you feel something and in the end forces you to consider if you want to read another in the universe or not.

  I am wondering, is Alien the next Star Trek? If multiple authors are willing (and are allowed) to write in this shared universe, with the understanding that an Alien story has to follow a certain template, thus combining the familiar with the creative, will this (or be allowed to) grow into a rich universe, full of interesting characters and subtle but deeply scouring satire of modern capitalism? When people will just be OK to create an episodic lower budget series focusing on the characters and the world and not on the gimmicks that make certain writers feel smarter than everybody else, will this become the next big scale science fiction franchise?

  Bottom line: entertaining and respectful new addition to the Alien universe. Maybe I will just have to read more in this vast universe that is growing under the floor and above the ceiling tiles of 2020s science-fiction. 

  Wow, I really loved this book! I started reading it because of the title, expecting to read about how technology evolves ever faster and leaves people in the dust. I mean, it's very apropos these days. But then I've read the first chapter and it was a standard biographical analysis of a scientist in the 20th century. And then there was another, then an entire story about another.

  I love science popularizing books, but this one felt vibrant and weird. Also, quite hard to believe real. Not only were the geniuses of the era connected through meaningful and consequential causal anecdotes, but there were depictions of their most personal feelings, sexual fantasies, shameful thoughts. I know people back then were heavy into journaling, but I doubt they would have gone there.

  And then when the book ended, Benjamín Labatut admits that only the first chapter was fully factual and the rest veered into fantasy. Did this anger me? No! It made me want to read stories like that - that would be real. If there is not enough material, sure, fantasize away. Does that make me a bad person, falling into the thing I usually scoff against: entertainment beats reality? I don't think so. Because not only was I enjoying the heck out of the book, I also had the feeling that these stories are ... hyperreal. They went places that most people don't dare go into, especially if they were factually supported by evidence. Also, the stories were uplifting, energizing, adulating the insanity that is also genius, the manic energy to go as far as possible whether it breaks or makes you.

  When We Cease to Understand the World starts with Prussian Blue, discussing cyanide, chemical weapons and the guy that both made them and allowed humanity to grow four times in size without dying of hunger: Fritz Haber. A Jewish German who made the gas that would be used to kill his relatives in the next war. The same process produced the Prussian Blue color used by Adi to paint until he got angry about the terms of Germany's surrender and turned into Adolf.

  Then follows Schwarzschild’s Singularity, about the guy who found solutions to Einstein's equations while on the frontline when even Albert himself struggled for months to do so. He died soon after, not by getting killed in battle, but from a very rare disease that killed him in days.

  The Heart of the Heart discusses both Shinichi Mochizuki and his idol Alexander Grothendieck, both brilliant mathematicians that revolutionized the field in ways that people still struggle to get their minds around

  Finally, the largest and I suspect the most fantastic one, When We Cease to Understand the World, about Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, both discovering or envisioning what lay at the foundation of reality when delirious from disease, manic emotions and overwork.

  Reading the book is like getting dropped in a world of actual giants, as far from what one would call a normal human as we are from ants, then making us feel what they feel and understand their drive and majesty. I guess one has to be grateful to the Chilean Dutch author for daring to stretch the truth into even more truth, to make one feel that individual greatness can still mean something.

Highly recommended book!

There is a video on the internet called "Anything that comes out of a writer is fiction." where the author says "Fiction is a human tool we developed to give reality a human shape to understand what is presented to us, and that goes on at all levels. It is part of perception. There is a large part of fiction in perception itself." This book clearly reflects that belief.

  So you read a book, and it's not great. It's something that you imagine you could spin up in a few months after a writing course. The ideas are derivative, the characters are cardboard cutouts and the writing is merely decent. It does push some emotional buttons, so you enjoy it as much as one can and then reach its end. And the acknowledgements come.

  Are these things designed to feel small and powerless? The author starts with the family and close friends and then goes on with the editor, the proofreader, the publisher, the marketers, the people who "battle tested" their ideas, the other authors who lied the book was amazing, planet Earth for supporting their weight and growing ego... It just goes on and on and on, like movie end credits. A special thanks to the government of Canada for not taxing me out of existence. Thank you Amazon for allowing me to self publish. Thank God that I didn't get early onset dementia while writing the book. Thank my family and friends for allowing me to write the book in peace while they did all the work and felt left out for it.

  Somehow, after reading that part, I started feeling I could never write a book. Worse, that most people would have a terrible time trying and failing. I have no friends in publishing, I am not a native English speaker, my wife would support me up to a point then demand attention and whoever I know that likes books would endlessly make fun of me for writing that badly. Do we really need an army of supporting people to manage to publish a shitty book? Oh, I couldn't have done this without the garbage man who regularly cleared out the mountain of takeout boxes!

  Yes, I get it, you're grateful, but maybe somewhere there should be some pumping yourself up. I am so glad I stuck to the writing classes that allowed me to write this up! I love that I knew it was a mediocre idea to start with, but I finished the thing, as opposed to angry jealous bloggers who haven't even had the guts to start. Yes, people helped me, but if they didn't, someone else would have or I would have just cut ties with them, because who needs friends who can't support one's passion? That kind of thing. And there is almost never a blurb for the learning process that helped them get there. It's always the last leg people who get the credit. I am sure there are writing teachers that cry themselves to sleep at night.

  I get that writing has become an industry, but even the tiniest of self published authors in dark corners of the Internet just feel the need to drop pages of acknowledgements at the end. How about: hey, I did it, so you can too! People have written books while working two jobs and taking care of their children, surely you can at least try! You don't need an army to find something to love and do it by yourself.

  Don't even know why I started to write this anymore. Book end credits? Come on! It's pissing me off! I want to thank my mother for spawning me with hands that are coordinate enough so I can type. It feels like a self eating snake, an industry that generates its own blurb about the industry, like a little boys club with stupid rules for joining in. Maybe these awful things are forced upon them when they get the series deal. Oh, you have more ideas in this universe? Well, I am sure you will. Meanwhile write me a nice thank you, why don't you? AARRRGGHHRGR!

  If you're into heroic space opera, this is pretty fun. The only problem is that it ignores any science and sometimes logic, but if you can get over that, the experience is pretty fun.

  The Last Watch starts with the standard rich rascally aristocrat thrown against his will into military service, where he proceeds to be better than everybody even when doubting his own self worth. Not only is he forced into conscription, but he is sent to a station at the edge of the universe that monitors no one gets in. Yeah, I told you it was stupid. And while everybody is bored out of their skulls watching absolutely nothing doing absolutely nothing, it starts doing something and adventure follows.

  The main character is sympathetic enough, even if a terrible cliché, the tough but fair and ultimately motherly female commander is OK, the science and technology are completely made up, so one can safely consider this fantasy and the finale is pretty epic, even if mostly nonsensical.

  And yes, the author's pen name starts with initials because she's a woman and somehow that became a thing, but the book is not bad. It's just not very good.

  Bottom line: J. S. Dewes presents us with an easy to read and enjoy and then absolutely forget space opera adventure. If you can get around the nonsense, it's enjoyable.

  Our Lady of the Artilects is like a cyber Da Vinci Code: religion, artificial intelligence, demonic possession and villainous plans that threaten the entire world. It's well written, with very intriguing ideas, but ultimately a little pulpy. It also feels a little outdated in relation to what AI means today.

  The time is a few hundred years into the future. The world is divided between a new Roman Empire ruled by Christians and an Islamic Caliphate ruled by Islamists after an event which reconciled the two faiths, making their alliance overwhelmingly powerful. There are hints that other nations with other religions may have been left alone, but that part is not explained. A third party, just as powerful, is China, which after the Uighur "crackdown" went even further and massacred 100 million Chinese Christians that wanted more religious freedom. There are also robots - called artilects - which seem to be powerful and intelligent, yet too expensive to be affordable to the general public and each one kind of custom made. Like Rolls Royce cars, but humanoid.

  The story begins with a Vatican AI specialist who is also an exorcist being sent to investigate the possible demonic possession of an artilect. The Roman Emperor sends an enforcer to help and nefarious third parties are also present. And stuff just gets weirder and more complicated from there.

  I liked how Andrew Gillsmith wrote the book. Even if the plot went a bit weird and a bit holy (not holly :D) I was kept interested enough to read the entire book. If you liked stuff like the Robert Langdon series and cyberpunk, you will probably love this, too. It got a little too ecumenical for me, but still a good read. Apparently the genre is called incensepunk?

  If you liked Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, you're going to like The Forgetting Moon. Complex world building, a lot of characters, a medieval slightly magical world, cruel violence and feudal machinations.

  I only got this book because Brian Lee Durfee also has a YouTube channel where he discusses books and writing. The channel isn't great for me, but the book is really good. The writing is solid, there are clear signs that the author has an outline of the entire story with consistent plot and character behavior. In short, if you want a captivating, terrifying magical war of kingdoms grimdark fantasy, this is for you.

  It's not all great. One of the things I really hate in fantasy is the prophecy angle. People do stuff because of something that was foreseen, and the readers know that it has been foreseen, so it will happen, so the reader knows it will happen. It robs of the agency of the characters. The only good prophecy angle is when they all find out it was all bullshit. This is further confounded by active characters that can see some of the future. It's like the spoilers are published in the book!

  Another thing that bothered me is the weird behavior of the characters, especially the female ones. At one time they are proud, the next they are meekly following instructions. One moment they want to defeat everybody in battle, the next they are scared little children. At times they are proud royalty knowing everything that happens in their realm, and at other times they are OK with their castle being infiltrated by enemy spies they can't control. And it's not often that it happens, but it does happen eventually: the character decides to do something in the heat of the moment that just happens to be what the author needs to happen. Come on, Durfee!

  But the story is vast and quite interesting. I don't intend to read the other books any time soon mostly because it requires that much investment. But who knows, maybe I will get back to it.

  Funny enough, the winning Alien formula: female motherly protagonist fighting for her virtual family's survival, was not present in the original film and the mostly unsuccessful attempts introduced stupid concepts like the black goo. Alien: Inferno's Fall combines both and it's decently done. I think it needs more rating.

  It's not like it's perfect, the title alone is remarkably dumb for example, but it's a typical Alien story, with all the tropes we've learned to love: the motherly figure fighting with all her maternal instincts to protect her family, the indentured service economy run by sociopathic management, the synths that are more than synths, the Colonial Marines, alien ruins, arrogant Engineers, the black goo and, of course, a lot of terrified running from monstruous xenomorphs which usually doesn't really help.

  Phillipa Ballantine's writing is decent, too. It didn't spark joy or anything, but it kept me on the edge of the proverbial seat. So if you're into the Alien universe and lore, this is something you should read. If you have no idea what a xenomorph is or what the black goo is, then you should not read this and instead see the movies.

  This seems to be her first book in the Alien universe and she has written another (Alien: Seventh Circle), so even if this story didn't add much, it could be said that it's the setup for the next book(s). I don't know. And I don't know if I will ever read another Alien book. I am interested in the world building and stories, but it's mostly curiosity, not excitement.

  One of my pet peeves with the Alien franchise is (other than that it's a franchise) is the black goo mutagen lazily introduced in Prometheus. It was a subpar Alien movie, it was mostly stupid and it introduced so many breaking changes in the universe. If you think about it, there is little difference between that substance and the mutagen in TMNT. Maybe Disney and Paramount should pull a Spider Man and join the two franchises together. Who needs Predators when you have teenage ninja turtles? It makes that little sense!

  Bottom line: a decently written but formulaic book in the Alien universe. It plays around with existing concepts, without committing to anything truly unique or novel. Good for a long airplane flight.

  When I was a child I was playing with my friends and solemnly declaring that being 40 is terrible and that we would never ever want to reach that age. Now I am 49 and... well, yes, I was a bit right... but now I am considering my next moves in my life. Things like "I've worked so hard so far, now I should enjoy the fruits of that labor" and "Maybe I should switch my career to something completely different" and "People have started a new life at 50 before".

  And it would be easy to dismiss the fanciful exuberance of youth and shrug it off as something from the past if it weren't happening it continuously. The universe, with its wonderful sense of humor, makes me revisit a lot of my past edicts, whether they were positive or negative, and forces me to consider the opposite as true. All the damn time!

  Am I smug about something like having hair on my head, perfect vision, being a good software developer and so on? Hah! God laughs and makes me bald, needing glasses and destroys software as a business in just a few years. I guess with all of those jokes about software developers being gods we had it coming, like poor Nietzsche. Do I dismiss command line tools and npm and Vim and the Linux way of life as masochistic when you have smart tools like Visual Studio that work perfectly with a wonderfully designed .NET ecosystem? Everybody goes Node.js and Python and color terminals. Do I feel pride in my mental sanity? Then... oh, wait, that hasn't happened yet. Or has it?

  In a way, this is something people have praised in stories: the opportunity to rethink your certainty and revisit your beliefs, to learn from life and turn intelligence into wisdom. But it's also such a waste... you get to understand things when you are out of time and energy to do anything with it. Should I become a teacher? It never works. Youngsters don't listen, they need to experience. I've been there, I know, and I was a nerd, not a bad boy. And it's not even the end of the road. Past wisdom routinely gets revealed as hubris, delusion or wishful thinking. Also stupidity.

  I did mentor people and it felt good. Some have even been grateful for it and felt that it helped them on their path in life. Yet every time someone asks me if I am prepared to mentor at a new job I am a bit reluctant. Am I smart enough to teach anyone anything? Will I make or break those people? I am perfectly happy to peer-to-peer knowledge, but a position of authority such as "mentor" feels wrong.

  Do you know I now want to find a job with an office? When everybody was going to the office, I was praising the wonders of working from home and lamenting the lack of such opportunities and how much time one wasted on the commute. Now that so many people do that, and I myself did it for six years, I want back in the office. And not even for the usual reasons people want that (i.e. getting away from their families) but for the sheer pleasure of socializing and being amongst people. If you know me even a little, you should find that extremely amusing.

  I believe people crave a stable identity that is also successful. Yet that almost never happens, especially now, when the world is being pulled from under our collective feet. If you build and cement your principles, you are labeled as stubborn, inflexible, maybe even pigheaded, and that even if those principles do fit reality and bring an advantage. A person who changes their world view as it suits them is "a leaf in the wind", untrustworthy, hypocrite. And in these times of intense polarization, people who have lived enough and were smart enough to gather some wisdom, see both sides, weigh them for pros and cons and think for themselves, those people have become the enemy, the dreaded centrists who can't choose a side and give their lives for the cause.

  Some folk have the great fortune to be born in power and wealth, surrounded by people telling them how wonderful they are and how they are never wrong. They are never forced to grow in any significant way. It's stable, it's successful, but it doesn't work either. The human brain finds a way to feel shitty about life anyway, find drama and conflict, something to complain about or brag for no discernable reason other than to make other people feel worse.

  What good even is wisdom, if all it shows you is that nothing is permanent, very few things if any are even real, that there is no purpose in life but the one you create, that everything has at least two sides that contradict each other without any of them being false and that our efforts are ultimately pointless, even if within our lifetimes they can be heroic and awesome and inspiring as well? It's a complication no one seems to need!

  Is growth supposed to lead to happiness? It doesn't feel fun when one is forced to grow, yet it does feel pleasant when the growing is done. Like sport. I always hated sport. Probably I will have to start doing that.

  As I write this I am looking at my dog. I don't know if he is generally happy, but I've seen him extatic and joyful and sad and determined and lazy and comfortable and anxious and scared. Can he explain why he felt all of those things? Certainly not. Can he think about it later on and decide on better responses? Doesn't seem like it most of the times. He does look regretful when doing some stupid thing, but then that is how people interpret it and he could just fake it. Right now he is sleeping next to me. That's important to him, to be next to me. If I leave for another room he will wake up and follow me, ask to be put on the sofa or whatever, then resume sleeping. My dog doesn't feel karma is a bitch, he doesn't strive to become better or understand the world, he just follows his instincts and emotions and enjoys the hell out of them. He seems content to love and be loved. Is love all we need?

  I know I am not saying anything revolutionary here, it's not even structured thought, it's more of an emotional journaling thing. A lot of other people have examined this better and to no definitive end either. I always thought that we humans are just smart enough to realize how stupid we are. Maybe that's the ultimate cosmic joke, to be pushed to think of problems that we have no ability to solve, feeling dumb while doing it.

  My instincts are telling me I should either wait and do absolutely nothing, or push through and reinvent myself. In other words, wait for the world to make sense again or push to make sense of the world as is. It's hard, because I've had half a century of training for a different life. Also because I am lazy, as a developer should be. In a sense, we've reached the pinnacle of software engineering by designing something that will do all our work for us. We overlazed ourselves. Maybe that's the answer! I should just lazily enjoy the rest of my life... ah, damn it, I am married! 

  Service Model has an amusing premise: what would robots do in a world that has slowly lost all humans? And in the beginning it's interesting, with a service robot accidentally killing its master during shaving and all the mechanisms of society trying to find out who did it and punish them, going through all of the rituals and all of the rules, regardless of the culprit admitting he did it and a recording of the fact being available.

  Adrian Tchaikovsky has a subtle subversiveness in his writing, usually describing something, but hinting at something else. In this story, the rigid standards of society are examined and found wanting. One can easily imagine the same story, but less extreme, happening in any environment bureaucratic enough.

  Alas, this is about robots, and after about 40 pages (10% of the book), the same amusing premise is still being presented and run with the robots going around in circles of pointless ritual. I am sure the story evolves into something better, but I didn't have the energy to grind to the very bland and boring beginning. I could have skipped ahead, but instead I've decided I would read something else.

  Not that I am a CSS guru, but it was surprising for me that I didn't know about the :is pseudo selector (and the very similar :where), especially since I have been heavily using :has.

  But wait a minute, you will say, why do I need a selector for being something? Don't all selectors do that by default? The answer is that these pseudo selectors support lists of selectors, thus acting like a kind of context block for CSS.

  Imagine that you want to style the icons in a container in a certain way, but the icon elements are both span and div with :after content and actual img. A classic CSS rule would look like this:

.container div[data-icon],
.container span[data-icon],
.container img {
 ...
}

but with :is this gets significantly simple:

.container is:(div[data-icon], span[data-icon], img) {
 ...
}

/* OR */

.container is:([data-icon]:is(span,div), img) {
 ...
}

The only thing to clarify is the difference between :is and :where, because they apparently work the same. Well, :where does not add specificity, while :is does add the specificity of the most specific selector inside it. .container a:is([data-icon],.myclass:hover) has the same specificity as .container a.myclass:hover while .container a:where([data-icon],.myclass:hover) has the same specificity as .container a.

Both :is and :where have been available for Chromium and Firefox (versions 88 for both) since early 2021, so they are relatively new but well covered.

  Ogres is another standalone novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It can be simply summarized as "capitalist Spartacus". In a world of genetic masters and meek servants, a hero emerges. The point of this is not another YA story about rebellion, but a pretext to dissect the social and economic mechanisms that power our civilization. Spoiler alert: it's not good.

  The biggest problem with this novella is that it's written in second person, which felt rather annoying. You that, you this... maybe it was a writing experiment, but I did not enjoy it. But other than that it was a short "what if" story that hit a lot closer to home than one might think. In a very science fiction way, it may have predicted a near future that is coming our way. Shudder!

  The classic rebellion plot is simple: describe a world with demonstrable injustice, raise the hero among the people, have them win at the end. The trick is to make the world building just close enough to reality to be relatable, but far enough so you don't start thinking too much about the similarities. The point would be an emotional catharsis, not a philosophical awakening. Well, by those terms, Ogres is an extremely transgressive story.

  But enough of that, because I don't want to spoil it. I liked the story, I liked the reason for writing it, the plot was masterfully crafterd, I did not enjoy the second person writing style, but still totally worth reading.

  And Put Away Childish Things has been published in both standalone and part of an anthology of three novellas published as one book. In the story, Adrian Tchaikovsky plays around with Narnia tropes, but sneakily focuses on the internal struggles of the protagonist, thus dissecting our own psychology when getting held captive by stories.

  What if the children books your grandmother wrote were actually about a real place? And what if that place was not as childish and wonderful as described? And what if it would give meaning to your empty life anyway? These are the questions in the story.

  While not perfect, I liked this novella. It's easier to fall in love with a story when it's short and the exploration of this one has not overstayed its welcome, nor did it meander into side quests or redundant characters. Fun! 

  While I enjoyed the Adrian Tchaikovsky novels and series I've read, I think I like this kind of novellas the most. In Elder Race we get a deconstruction of royalty asking help from the powerful wizard against a demonic threat trope. But in fact, this is one of the human diaspora colonies and there is no magic, only science and people who have forgotten it, yet the focus is on the internal perspectives of the characters and how they look at the same event from completely different places.

  I was a little surprised to see that this is part of a series. It felt standalone and, if anything, it should have been considered part of the general universe of the forgotten human colonies (Children of Time) rather than a separate Elder Race series. Anyway, I don't think that it required a continuation. As it is, we see the wizard who is actually an observer from the second wave of human expansion being beseeched by the local princess (of a culture regressed from the first wave) against evil magical forces encroaching on the human settlements. The princess has to prove herself in front of her family and the scientist has his own demons while he is battling clinical depression. Being completely alone on the planet and waking up every couple of centuries certainly doesn't help.

  The things lost in translation between the princess and the scientist is what makes this book shine and to feel different from just another fantasy story told from a modern scientific perspective. It examines the deeper interaction between people, transcending the pure science fiction angle. Now I am reading another novella from the guy and it's similar, but deconstructing Narnia type tropes. While I enjoy following longer narratives, I feel that this kind of short explorations of ideas is where sci-fi really stands out. Good stuff!