croft: traditional Scottish term for a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon
I had been struggling to write for many years. Back then I was dreaming of having a blog with lots of entries. Now I do. I admired the people who did and now I'm one of them. The feeling now is: this blog is so old. It's ten years old. I am definitely not the same person I was then. Most of these texts no longer reflect my opinions and thoughts. I’m probably ashamed for most of them (so don't read…
Not all political decisions are the same. Some are easier to make but potentially less effective while others harder to make and effective yet potentially dangerous. It’s important that we understand what each decision we make is and when to make which kind. One category is blanket decisions. These are either mandates or bans. For example, deciding to ban all CFCs (ozone depletion chemicals) or…
Have you ever thought that universities are boring and we might be able to make one that's not? Well, my friends and I went ahead and started one. We call it Shoshin College and it’s here, in London, England — in-person only. How can we be not boring? We're not sure; remains to be seen. We have heaps of new ideas and we'll be putting them to the test in the following months. Of course, one new…
Dear friend, I appreciate your so-called engineering mindset. It's great to aim to approach things rationally, to understand things from the ground up, to do analysis of how systems work and how each components contributes to each functionality. Many times this is a breath of fresh air in a world that's clinging to emotional reassurance without substance and illusions or ignorance in the form of…
I. In the bottom section of Y Combinator's website we read: Make something people want. Make. Something. People. Want. Make. It's about making. Creating. Crafting. This is about art. Not fine art, but the art — or craft — of whatever one is creating. Something. In other words make anything. We don't care what it is. As long as— People. As long as people want it. People can be anyone. Anyone…
This is the Matrix and I am Neo. Not because I am the One — I'm not. The reason I am Neo is because I really can fly, I really can stop bullets, I really can download knowledge to my brain. The reader might expect that I justify the above but instead I will continue with even more outrageous claims: I really can control my thoughts. I really can overcome my trauma. I really can solve all my…
We cannot presuppose a democratic society before its existence. We can only identify a democratic system in a society after such society has existed for a nontrivial amount of time; insofar as democracy means the existence of rule alteration processes in a way that updated rules take into consideration the opinion of society members previously not taken. We can set out to create a democratic…
What is a decision and why does it matter? I. One could claim that decisions do not matter insofar they are not actions. Decisions are not facts. They are just something someone said and maybe someone else (and even everybody else) agreed; yet they are not something that happened in reality. There is a United Nations climate change conference that's happening every year since 1995. Numerous…
On my way to an anthropology lecture today, I learned much more about humans than I could expect of the lecture. To clarify: the content of the lecture was great yet, with respect to understanding humans, engaging in applied anthropology is inherently unsurpassable. While I was cycling through Upper Street in Angel, there was a couple (or maybe three) high-end SUV automobiles, all of whom driving…
Laniakea Books is a publishing house in London, England, which publishes public domain books only. Public domain books are books which their author has relinquished all copyrights and allows everyone to change, remix, share, sell any modifications of these books. Why? Inspiration for Laniakea Books comes from childhood. When I was a kid I learned there is this thing called patents. If you think of…
1 July 2023 is a totally not important date for the world but it just happened that I was born exactly 29 Earth circles around the Sun before that date. The thing is, while the Earth is rotating around itself it also constantly changes the orientation of this axis. It takes 26 thousand years to come back to where it was, so the Earth isn’t in the same place as it was 29 years ago with respect to…
It’s a few hours after watching the Fight Club for the second time in my life that I write these words. It's been more than decade since I watched it for the first time and even though I had liked it, I hadn't realised its significance; or that it gives us the answers to all our problems. Isn’t it surprising that two of the most important films of our generation, The Matrix and Fight Club , both…
Our world is now one full of applications. Not the computerised ones, although it’s full of those too. The form-that-you-need-to-fill ones. Applications for jobs, for universities, for conferences, for loans, for house shares, for changing countries, for support, for licenses, for volunteering—not even free work is unconditionally accepted. I find these applications exhausting. I have filled in…
Let’s attempt to paint what democracy is through its various characteristics and facets. Let’s also talk about the negative space. Understanding what democracy isn’t will help us see the limits of our definition and descriptions. Democracy is not a recipe; it is not a set of rules, which once we apply, we will be able to make decisions that everybody is happy with. To achieve democracy we need to…
I. The philosophy of Posthaven II. The reason startups get acquired III. Sympathy for Posthaven’s founders IV. Suggesting alternative futures for startups V. Conclusion I. The philosophy of Posthaven Posthaven is pretty awesome. From their pledge section: We’ll never get acquired. [...] We’ll never raise money. [...] Posthaven is a long-term project that aims to create the world’s simplest, most…
This is in response to this blog post: https://prog21.dadgum.com/80.html In 2010, James Hague, a recovering programmer , gave some advice to new programmers. He said, if you are someone who would write something like this: Hey everyone! I just learned Erlang/Haskell/Python, and now I'm looking for a big project to write in it. If you've got ideas, let me know! ...then, you're doing it wrong. He…
What are we going to do now that AI will take all our jobs? I. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted 1 that, in 2030, society would be so productive that we would barely need to work. Presumably, the more technology we create, the more productive we become, the less work we need to do. Of course, this isn’t what has happened. We do have the most technology ever, yet we work more than ever 2 .…
There is a graffiti piece in Finsbury Park that reads “Poor is cool”. “Poor is definitely not cool”, Charlie responded when she saw this. “Rich and privileged people say that because they’ve never truly felt the pain of being poor.” When experiencing privilege, I have felt it’s very hard to cede it. What I understand of Charlie’s argument is that if people experience true destitution—and they can…
This is how to setup a nostr relay, fast! First, get an Ubuntu 22.04 VPS somewhere. Second, add its IP to a domain name. Then: ssh root@yourdomain.com apt update apt upgrade apt install -y curl build-essential gcc make librust-openssl-dev protobuf-compiler libprotobuf-dev cd /var/ mkdir nostr adduser deploy # all empty, keep hitting enter chown -R deploy:deploy nostr Then, install Rust: sudo -i -u…
This contains spoilers about season 1 of The White Lotus . I. The White Lotus Season 1 (2021) is about freedom: Black masseuse is exploring an opportunity to become free of her job enslavement. Trophy wife realises the deal she signed—marriage with assholic Shane—was actually her enslavement. Sophomore non-white girl wants to help non-white guy find freedom. Hotel manager enslaved by the rich…
This is an adaptation of a talk I gave at HiP Berlin , in December 2022. Ontology is the study of being. On (“ ον ”) is the Greek word for being. In this instance, we will talk about how hope is . A synonym in our use case would be categorisation. As in: what kinds of hope are there? This text is about one of these categorisations. There are many others, with which we will not concern ourselves.…
There is nothing that she hates more than “wasting her time”. Of course, for me, any second spent with her is the farthest thing from waste. But, in my book, time waste is impossible in general. It has been impossible since I realised what the content of life is. Or maybe what it isn’t. It isn’t to produce as much as possible. Yet, the argument of having control over one’s time, I do consider very…
Caution, full of spoilers. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a brilliant, genius depiction of post-modern life, in a post-modern way. We have all the answers to our problems, we know we do. They are what the movie says. It’s love. It’s ignoring everything except one thing. It’s tackling depression (the bagel). It’s resisting fighting because we’re confused. We live everything, through the…
Ted Lasso Season 2 — SPOILERS AHEAD In Ted Lasso (season 2, episode 8) Phoebe, Roy Kent’s niece, is expelled from school because she swears. Roy swears incessantly. Her teacher swears, Keelly swears, Rebecca swears. Everyone swears, not just her micro-bubble—everyone in the Ted Lasso universe (as a reflection of our real world society) swears. Yet Phoebe, an 8 year old girl, along all the other…
In our Western societies state is expected to be a State-as-a-service. People expect to pay taxes—just as they pay for a service, eg. Dropbox—and then enjoy the benefits. These are nice neighbourhoods, public transport, high quality public schools, free healthcare, et al. Everything with no complicated administrative processes or bureaucracy. The important bit, here, is that citizens don’t care…
One of my favourite companies got acquired . I’m always trying to figure out if I want to be happy when a company gets acquired. It’s usually acquired by a much bigger company. Founders and investors make a lot of money. Everyone looks ecstatic and everyone congratulates everyone else. But why? Why should we be happy they got acquired? Presumably, because of the money they made. Silicon Valley’s…
I recently came across the Open Insulin Foundation : We’re a team of biohackers with a variety of backgrounds, and skills, and relationships to insulin and diabetes from [...] around the world. We’re working to develop the first practical, small-scale, community-centered model for insulin production to make insulin accessible to all. [...] and: We envision a world [...] where people living with…
Pol.is is one of the most exciting things in digital democracy. Democracy in the digital world has many manifestations. It is said that the more people there are, the more difficult it is for democracy to exist. I think that’s true, but what I disagree with is that the existence of the virtual world makes democracy impossible. Yes, Facebook & Co. have made democracy significantly harder for…
Once upon a time, in universe with Greene number #2.3229 293827 +19 there was a student. He was wondering: how come new knowledge is published on scientific magazines which only university people have access to? We should enable everyone to access them so that they can research and advance humanity’s knowledge too. Right? So, he set up a server from inside the university to enable everyone outside…
There is a problem with web fonts. They are big in size. That’s why we have invented woff2 which uses brotli to compress them as efficiently as we know. But, I claim: it’s not enough—they are still unjustifiably big. The problem starts with humans having languages with uncountably many different characters. A webfont can be efficiently small if it includes characters only for the latin script. But…
In a few hundred years, when we talk about the past it’ll be this reflection that will inhabit the social consciousness: how did we ever think it was normal to treat people as slaves just because of their age? We will look back and disapprove of anyone who forced people do things they didn’t want to, just because—at that point—these people were alive for less than 18 years. What we think of slave…
I signed up for Revolut in 2015, shortly after it launched, amidst the Greek capital controls era. It has been seven years since I started using it as my main bank account. This is my review. In the beginning Having capital controls is quite crazy and Revolut was a breath of fresh air. Revolut was indeed a revolution in 2015, especially as an antagonist of the Greek banking system. I loathed every…
Approximately exactly 16 years ago, I was given a mantoux . I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was something else. It was just—one day the teacher said “next Monday, we’ll have the mantoux vaccination”. Fear bathed the entirety of the class, yet very few hesitated. The mantoux sting was supposed to be a small price to pay for eternal defense against an unknown disease. Turns out it’s not even…
When I start a new Django project I can never remember what are the steps to arrive at a functional boilerplate with one Django app, the simplest view to get started, and all dependencies set. This is a documentation of this process. Preparation We assume our project’s name is earth . We assume we have these installed: bash git python3 Setup project mkdir earth && cd earth git init python3 -m venv…
I. Technology. I love it as essence, as the way of making things that on the surface seem magical. I hate it as an industry, of what “big tech” has come to mean the last decade and how technology companies affect the world. I considered these two as separate concepts in my mind, yet as time passes they have converged. How can one love technology if the only way they can interact with it is through…
I think there is merit in being part of a community for a cause. The cause can be anything, from a hobby to a societal issue. Sometimes the creation of the community just springs out of conversations and shared values. Some other times it starts in the mind of one person. How do we start from that One person’s thought and end up in a community of shared ownership? We might unconsciously associate…
Vendor lock-in one of the saddest feelings when using software. It should be a calculated risk but usually it isn’t and thus ends up becoming an unforeseen limitation. It is a feeling of entrapment, a prison of sorts. “If only we could move our database to X tomorrow, just like that ”—with a finger snap. But even if it is calculated from the beginning, there is a yet better scenario; to escape it…
The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han might be the book I discussed the most since I read it, four months ago. Rarely does one read books that change their already formed views towards society. Even more rare of an event is when a book makes one doubt their life philosophies and long-established goals. I think The Burnout Society had such an influence for me and even though I was already leaning…
In this text I present the philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis in the context of the current sociopolitical landscape. Imaginary In 1975, the genius of Cornelius Castoriadis published L’Institution imaginaire de la société , aka The Imaginary Institution of Society . In this book, he said that every society has a set of core, underlying values and beliefs which constitute its foundation. They…
Once, I set out to write backend-based analytics for mataroa.blog . It was terrible. Slow, complex, ugly. Then, I rewrote it. It turned out great. I really like its simplicity and elegance. This is where I explain how. Mataroa is written in Python using Django, and the following snippets are from commit hash 7b6e5da84b8a93e9af37545b16a6ec2f874be97e . Django Model class Analytic (models . Model):…
Dear stranger, Tell me your thoughts. Are things actually bad or is it just me? Everybody says this is normal. This is what is supposed to happen. Yet it doesn’t feel normal. It feels like slavery. I am a slave. Worse than a slave. A slave both of body and of mind. Everyday, I wake up early. Too early, if you ask me. Starting 8am until 2pm I have work. We get 10-minute breaks every hour, yet we…
In case you’ve been living under a rock there is a thing called Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital currency, which many people are very excited about. In this post I hope to explain to you, dear reader, why it is exciting and why it’s actually lame. The technology behind Bitcoin and especially other cryptocurrencies is seriously cool. It was a warm summer evening in Tokyo when the legendary genius of…
I came across For the Love of Men by Liz Plank as a possible gift, and I initially started flipping through with no intent to read the whole thing. The blurb starts with: A nonfiction investigation into masculinity, For the Love of Men provides actionable steps for how to be a man in the modern world while also exploring how being a man has evolved. I'd love to listen to some actionable steps by a…
WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Medium, Ghost. Posthaven, Svbtle, Write.as. Blogging. The most elegant and natural process of idea diffusion on the web—since its infancy. Started barebones; developed massively; evolving continuously. I’m excited about the next step. Lately, in my social bubble of technology and startups, I notice a revisited focus to simplicity and minimalism. It’s probably part of a…
Time is scary. Everybody is afraid they will grow old. Even if death was not on the menu, being non-young is not fun. Fatigue, fragility, lack of agility. In this quest of fear facing one could turn to stoicism. One of the arcane techniques of this resurgent philosophy is negative visualization. One could imagine they are old and wary and experience it in their imagination, which will…
There is some colloquy in political discussions that Switzerland has the best kind of democracy. Introducing the Confederation Officially the Swiss Confederation , Switzerland is a federal democracy, theoretically, resembling that of the United States 1 . Instead of states, there are cantons. However, Switzerland, as a semi-direct democracy, also has a lot of mechanisms that enable direct…
I recently started a new Mastodon instance and went through the joy of setting up a Mastodon server. It was easier than expected, the process is very streamlined and detailed in the docs: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/prerequisites/ But, of course, the backup process depends on your setup. The docs here, too, are very helpful—in the sense of what you need to backup:…
There is—thankfully— consid erable collo quy on the quality of our world’s democracies. People talk about whether democracy is actually a good idea while others claim it’s just the least worse . In this text I will attempt to convince you that democracy is not only a good idea, but actually a great one. All this with a transcendental shift in our perception of democracy: Democracy is not a system;…
The content of this article is a set of 8 rules along with a CSS writer's workflow, grown out of developing small web projects. It's designed for simple layouts with minimal JavaScript interactiveness, and its top concern is code readability, rather than DRY . Ruleset 1. No preprocessors Using a preprocessor, such as Sass, for a few thousand lines of CSS code is a clear case of overengineering.…
Few would disagree that the educational system of the —so-called— Western world could be improved . Eight partially concrete concepts on a potential improvement follow. Less information. Slash the amount of information included in the courses. Aim to keep the essence, the fundamentals, the knowledge that a student is expected to either remember 10 years later or to have been influenced by it .…