A long time ago I coded up a feature for SocialCoder which converts a link - any link - to a short URL. I use it all the time for sharing links to volunteer profiles and to volunteer opportunity listings.

The feature doesn't care what the link contains, it just hashes the URL, including any query params, and returns a shortened code.
More recently, around Christmas time, I added another feature where I can click a button to send a template notification to a charity that their new listing has been reviewed and published. I call it a next-steps email.
For the past few weeks, its all been working well. Its nice to keep automating things that previously were done by hand.
Fast forward to today.

A new opportunity listing is posted by a charity.

I review and publish it, tweet about it, then click a button to send the charity an emailed notification of next steps.
All very much business as usual, except that I normally tweet about it *after* sending that next-steps email to the charity. I don't know why I deviated from my normal routine, not that its a big deviation, nor should it matter.
But, oh, what a difference that slight deviation from my normal workflow did make.
Turns out I accidentally tweeted out a shortened link that results in the site sending a next-steps email to the charity. Anyone following that link will result in another email being sent.
Almost immediately my inbox gets spammed with flying in as people click on that link, also spamming the poor charity, and proper flustering me I can tell you.
At this point I had no idea what was going on.

Could it be a mail provider problem? Unlikely.

Maybe a bug, an infinite loop or recursion in my code? More likely.
I restarted the site, but the emails kept coming.

I changed the notification email address so that it would only spam me, and not the charity.
And still the emails came.

But now that it was just me being spammed, and not the charity rep, I was able to calm down enough to see what had happened.
A relatively easy fix, and a forehead-slapping moment.

You could say it was a learning moment. So what did I learn?
Lesson 1.

Don't use HTTP GET when a POST is more appropriate. If the request parameters were in the body of the request, and not in the URL, the link would have been fine to share.
Lesson 2.

The feature that sends email should not have been available to anonymous users.

In coding terms, the controller action was missing an [Authorize] attribute. yeah ...oops.
Lesson 3.

Although the consequences of this mistake were relatively minor, affecting only me and the charity rep's Inbox, I still needed to calm down before I could see the problem clearly enough to effectively trouble-shoot. Maybe I'm drinking too much coffee. Maybe.
Lesson 4.

Being able to code a fix, run unit tests, and deploy that fix, all within within minutes is such a valuable thing.

Thank you to the @Azure team who made this so easy.
- end for now -

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
**Thread on Bravery of Sikhs**
(I am forced to do this due to continuous hounding of Sikh Extremists since yesterday)

Rani Jindan Kaur, wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh had illegitimate relations with Lal Singh (PM of Ranjit Singh). Along with Lal Singh, she attacked Jammu, burnt - https://t.co/EfjAq59AyI


Hindu villages of Jasrota, caused rebellion in Jammu, attacked Kishtwar.

Ancestors of Raja Ranjit Singh, The Sansi Tribe used to give daughters as concubines to Jahangir.


The Ludhiana Political Agency (Later NW Fronties Prov) was formed by less than 4000 British soldiers who advanced from Delhi and reached Ludhiana, receiving submissions of all sikh chiefs along the way. The submission of the troops of Raja of Lahore (Ranjit Singh) at Ambala.

Dabistan a contemporary book on Sikh History tells us that Guru Hargobind broke Naina devi Idol Same source describes Guru Hargobind serving a eunuch
YarKhan. (ref was proudly shared by a sikh on twitter)
Gobind Singh followed Bahadur Shah to Deccan to fight for him.


In Zafarnama, Guru Gobind Singh states that the reason he was in conflict with the Hill Rajas was that while they were worshiping idols, while he was an idol-breaker.

And idiot Hindus place him along Maharana, Prithviraj and Shivaji as saviours of Dharma.