>https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/6392/47421

Nobel Peace prize tends to go to people who identify with hard left wing in general, and VERY often are Marxist (and even more often take Marxist-friendly, anti-capitalist positions without admitting to being Marxist).

Wow, such a stupid take, I'm surprised that it comes from a top user of the politics SE community, I wonder what else stupid things this user might have posted as answers.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris

He is a longtime friend and collaborator of Paul Graham. Along with cofounding two companies with him, Graham dedicated his book ANSI Common Lisp to Morris and named the programming language that generates the online stores' web pages RTML (Robert T. Morris Language) in his honor. Graham lists Morris as one of his personal heroes, saying that Morris is "never wrong."[21]

In Philosophy obscurantism is defined as the practice of "deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject". Apparently many philosophers and authors have found a good use of obscurantism. Karl Popper has criticized Hegel of using it when he talked about sound (Popper 2013). And John Searle says that Foucault used to do it to make sure he will be sound to the French intellectuals.

Today, I read this post Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity, which talks about an attitude similar to Foucault's with the French intellectuals, that is, designing complex over simpler one, so mangers can say that your intellect has merit to it, since simple design, although sometimes so difficult to achieve, might be perceived naively. Generally, I'm interested and curious about the sociology of knowledge, that's how I call it because I'm unaware of a good term, but I define it as the field that ask questions like, was a subject of knowledge affected by utilities? Like a novelist making their novel different to serve commercial purpose, or a moviemaker changing the story because they can not afford an actress to cooperate, or in this case, an engineer creating complexity out of no-where to ensure credibility.

Looks like obscurantism seems to be a social strategy in any place where recognition depends on appearing profound. The simple solution looks trivial, while the convoluted one looks intelligent. In such environments, complexity becomes a signal rather than a necessity, and obscurity a currency of prestige. Maybe then we should really question our measures of what counts to be profound. #Philosophy

From Who Writes the Bugs? A Deeper Look at 125,000 Kernel Vulnerabilities;

• Commits made on weekends are 8% less likely to introduce vulnerabilities, but those vulnerabilities take 45% longer to fix.
• Saturday commits have the highest vulnerability rate (9.55%), while Sunday commits have the lowest (6.99%).
• The Linux kernel is primarily developed by individuals (50.1% of commits), with Intel being the largest corporate contributor (8.4%).

#Programming

There are two aspects to this. The desire to learn and the utility of learning. These are two very different things. Arguably the best programmers I have known have been explorers and hopped around a lot. Their primary skills have been flexibility and curiosity. The point here was their curiosity, not what they were curious about. Curiosity enabled them to attack new problems quickly and find solutions when others couldn't. Very often those solutions had nothing to do with skip lists or bubble sort. Studying algorithms is useful for general problem solving and hey, as a bonus, it helps sometimes when you are solving a real world problem, but staying curious is what really matters.

We have seen so many massive changes to software engineering in the last 30 years that it is hard to argue the clear utility of any specific topic or tool. When I first started it really mattered that you understood bubble sort vs quicksort because you probably had to code it. Now very few people think twice about how sort happens in python or how hashing mechanism are implemented. It does, on occasion, help to know that but not like it used to.

So that brings it back to what I think is a fundamental question: If CS topics are less interesting now, are you shifting that curiosity to something else? If so then I wouldn't worry too much. If not then that is something to be concerned about. So you don't care about red black trees anymore but you are getting into auto-generating Zork like games with an LLM in your free time. You are probably on a good path if that is the case. If not, then find a new curiosity outlet and don't beat yourself up about not studying the limits of a single stack automata.

by jmward01. Although I disagree a bit, I believe that cs fundamentals are very essentials to programming and can be never replaced, we had software libraries and STDs out there much before having agentic models, but I like the emphasize on curiosity #Modus Vivendi

• [2026-03-16 Mon 15:15]
  Same did Hal Finney, who was also in the group.

TIL that, not only K. Eric Drexler was a part of the Extropians mailing list, he also "arranged to be cryonically preserved in the event of legal death". My man is really not into death.

From YOU JUST REVEIVED:

Before I continue, I will answer the obvious question: Did I actually receive 999999 minutes? Yes, indeed I did. But unfortunately, I was only given 7200 minutes to spend my 999999 minutes and I could only spend them 1 minute at a time.

In fact I feel a bit revived knowing that the Vodafone's bs is not something that goes on in my country. #Egypt

Noticed today that I had a playlist from a year ago called: "No. 2". It includes all the music I enjoy with "No. 2". I used to think of 2 as a favorite number too, as a kid. #Music

Last week I had an argument with my Mother of which I was righteous and she was in error. In the end, I managed to convince her of my points. She accepted them. But then she said, “Okay, what about mercy?”. She told me then about a man from town who once had a serious argument with his distant brother. Time passed. And when he finally saw him, he chose to forgive everything. That story stayed with me. After the discussion was over and the house grew quiet, I began thinking about moments in my life, times when I insisted on being right, when I held onto pride, when I could have been softer but wasn’t. And I cried.

I was also reading recently Aristotle’s 10 Rules for a Happy Life (See 07:10 Rules for a happy life from Aristotle) and I thought that the missed one thing mercy. When I was young at the Kutab, there was that activity we used to do when we were learning about a new Hadith or Nathr, we called it practical activities, for example if we were reading today a text about being kind to someone who is ill, visiting the burial grounds, or doing some kind of prayers, we would go outside and try to do these things (it was very fun activity to look for someone who is ill and to make them a good visit, I remember doing my first open-source intelligence activities in a similar situation). I decided to do the same thing with the virtues that Aristotle presented, and to add mercy to them. Everyday, I will read these questions, and contemplate how much of these I've implemented throughout the day, and how can I do more of them tomorrow. #Modus Vivendi

As long as sorrow is quiet and humble, I do not fear it; if it becomes vehement and passionate, sophistical so that it deludes me into despondency, I arise, I brook no rebellion, I will have nothing in the world cheat me of what I have from God’s hand as a gift of grace. ~Kierkegaard #Main Principles

I have but one prayer, I will throw myself to the ground and implore the eternal power that governs the world for one grace, early and late, that I be allowed to repent. ~Kierkegaard

From (Tolstoy 1927)

To love means to desire that which the beloved object desires. The objects of love desire opposing things, and therefore, we can only love that which desires one and the same thing. But that which desires one and the same thing is God.

Man beginning to live, loves only himself, and separates himself from other beings in that he constantly loves that which alone constitutes his being. But as soon as he recognises himself as a separate being, he recognises also his own love, and he is no longer content with this love for himself and he begins to love other beings. And the more he lives a conscious life, the greater and greater number of beings he will begin to love, though not with such a stable and unceasing love as that with which he loves himself, but nevertheless, in such a way that he wishes good to everything he loves, and he rejoices at this good, and suffers at the evil which tries the beloved beings, and he unites into one all that he loves.

As life is love, why not suppose that my “self,” that which I consider to be myself and love with a special love, is perhaps the union I made in a former life of things which I loved, just as I am making a union of things now. The other has already taken place and this one is taking place.

Life is the enlargement of love, the widening of its borders, and this widening is going on in various lives. In the present life, this widening appears to me in the form of love. This widening is necessary for my inner life and it is also necessary for the life of this world. But my life can manifest itself not only in this form. It manifests itself in an innumerable quantity of forms. Only this one is apparent to me. #Leo Tolstoy #Modus Vivendi

I was trying today to hide the notch on my M4 Macbook. I tried to use topnotch.app before, it has the problem of not being open source, but moreover it does not work nicely with dynamic wallpaper or folder wallpapers (whoever there's another reason not to use it even with single wallpaper). Another app I tried was only-switch. Which didn't work as well. I gave up and decided to (ask Claude to) write (generate) a script that will add black padding to my wallpapers. Code. #Programming

I wonder if Artemisia Gentileschi was the one who agreed to the marraige of Tassi, and not her father:

As was typical of the time, the major issue of the trial was the fact that Tassi had violated the Gentileschi family's honor, and not the fact that he had violated Gentileschi herself. In the words of history professor Elizabeth S. Cohen: "The law gauged damage to economic and social assets rather than suffering and psychological trauma."

Overall, I didn't find her art so interesting.

I read before that Reddit does not allow users to change their usernames for a technical difficulty (or that's what they claim), they say that they've made the bad design decision of coupling usernames to their database scheme so bad. I was trying to work with mutlipass recently and found out that it does not support renaming instances, which I found strange, the issue has so much activity, anyone could have implemented that simple feature right? Well I decided I'm the one.

However, it turned to be much harder than letting users to clone and delete instances. Here's why from my comment there:

For anyone wondering why this was not implemented so far, it's actually a lot more invasive than just changing a label. I decided to have a look on the codebase and try to implement it myself. It looks like Multipass was built with the instance name acting as the primary key across the entire stack.

To safely rename an instance today, we have to atomically touch: 1. The Daemon's memory, swapping the key across 5+ different state maps while ensuring no race conditions. 2. On-disk storage i.e. renaming the actual vault/instances/<name>/ directory where the VM image lives. 3. Updating the internal JSON databases where paths are hardcoded to the old name. 4. the guest's etc/hostname is baked into the cloud-init ISO at creation time. We have to regenerate cloud_init.iso and rely on the instance picking up the new hostname on its next boot (which isn't always reliable depending on what the user has modified inside /etc/cloud).

#Programming

The desktop app for Apple Music is so good, but also so buggy. I assume that this has to do with the fact that it's a system app, probably linked with many dynamic libraries or NSs so updating or releasing it is not as easy as the weekly spotify release. #musql

(defun salih/fix-ef-dark-modeline (&rest _)
  (when (eq (car custom-enabled-themes) 'ef-dark)
    (set-face-attribute 'mode-line nil
                        :background "#0000"
                        :foreground nil
                        :box nil
                        :inherit nil)
    (set-face-attribute 'mode-line-inactive nil
                        :background "#0000"
                        :box nil
                        :inherit nil)
    (set-face-attribute 'doom-modeline-bar nil
                        :background "#000000")
    (set-face-attribute 'doom-modeline-bar-inactive nil
                        :background "#1a1a1a")))


(add-hook 'enable-theme-functions #'salih/fix-ef-dark-modeline)


(setq ef-themes-variable-pitch-ui t)


(setq ef-themes-variable-pitch-ui nil)     ; variable pitch for UI (mode line, tabs, etc.)
(setq ef-themes-mixed-fonts t)           ; mix variable + fixed pitch (great with org)

(setq ef-themes-headings
      '((1 . (variable-pitch extrabold 1.4))
        (2 . (variable-pitch bold 1.25))
        (3 . (variable-pitch semibold 1.15))
        (t . (variable-pitch 1.1))))

(salih/fix-ef-dark-modeline)

No more purple modeline #Programming #Emacs

William-Adolphe Bouguereau has two interesting paintings: A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros and Elegy. What's interesting is, in the former, it looks like a girl is fighting against love in a very joyful way, she is smiling and having fun in saying no, so does Eros enjoying her slight resistance of love, it's almost like he is saying I know you want love. The latter painting, I would believe, takes place in the same location, years after, the angel looks haggard, exhausted and almost depressed, the girl looks heartbroken and sad, it's like Eros had won his first battle in the former painting, and here we see how it ended. #Art

I was reading Anonymous' message to Scientology right now. I love how literate their messages are, it's sad that you can no longer write like that without people thinking you are GPTing. #LLMs

A shared The Sweet Siesta of a Summer Day, John William Godward with a girl, and she observed the tiger mat. Since then I can not unsee it in all of his paintings. And I noticed it today in the The old, old story. Here are my favorite details from it so far.

TIL that if you have a directory called “internal” in Go, and you try to import it from another package that is outside of the root, the Go compiler will return an error. All this time I thought that “internal” is a convention but turns out it’s also a compiler rule #Go

How I'm feeling towards Clarice Lispector:

Clarice Lispector on music:

Music belonged to the same category as thought, both vibrated in the same movement and species. It possessed the same quality of a thought so intimate that upon hearing that music, the thought itself was revealed

#Music #Clarice Lispector

RT: it should actually be illegal for me to a) see richard hanania post an article by nicholas decker about how sex trafficking is fake and b) recognize both those people’s names

Because there is also a great beauty in animals. And in any case, all that exists is beautiful, error as much as truth

Kevin Boone shows an interesting reason of why Linux might never become popular; making Linux more consumer-friendly would likely strip away the power, configurability, and culture that attract technical users. #Programming

Jonny:

What you may not realize is, you’ve actually signed up to be unpaid tech support for Microsoft’s “Visual Studio Installer”. You might notice GitHub Issues becoming less about your code and more about broken builds, specifically on Windows. You find yourself explaining to a contributor that they didn’t check the “Desktop development with C++” workload, but specifically the v143 build tools and the 10.0.22621.0 SDK. No, not that one, the other one. You spend less time on your project because you’re too busy being a human-powered dependency resolver for a 50GB IDE.

Oh God. This touched a part in me. #I really hate Microsoft #Programming

Just a kind reminder that this is because in number arithmetic theory, every number can be broken down into a unique product of prime numbers; if 1 were considered prime, you could multiply it endlessly into any factorization and that uniqueness would disappear. #Mathematics #Prime Numbers

My favorite quotes from the Clarice Lispector bot.

All of a sudden, in a first experience of the shame, he felt inside him a horribly free and painful movement, a vague urge to shout or cry, some mortal thing opening in his chest a violent clearing that might have been a new birth

What I write is more than mere invention, it’s my obligation to tell about this one girl out of the thousands like her. And my duty, however artlessly, to reveal her life.

Writing — I tear things out of me in pieces the way a harpoon hooks into a whale and rips its flesh…

Her perfume is a crazy mystery. When inhaled deeply it touches the intimate depth of the heart and leaves the inside of the entire body perfumed

Needing is always the supreme moment. As the most daring joy between a man and a woman comes when the greatness of needing is such that we feel in agony and fright: without you I could not live

I could not understand and you could not understand that dispensing with hope — really means action, and today

Every day it will be the same thing: right at dusk I start to get melancholy and thoughtful. I know that the first drum on the mountain will make the night, I know that the third will already wrap me in its thunder.

Now I shall write you everything that comes into my mind with the least possible amount of policing. Because I feel attracted to the unknown

Hell, because the world held no more human meaning for me, and man no longer had human meaning for me

How ingenuous Joana seemed. She spoke of love in such a clear and straightforward manner for it was certain that nothing had been revealed to her so far through love

And so I ask you questions and these will be many. Because I am a question.

Through the living roach I am coming to understand that I too am whatever is alive. Being alive is a very high stage, it is something that I only reached now (Related to 02:43 alive, lit from within)

But all that was too refined for my human hoof. And I, I wanted beauty.

I could not understand and you could not understand that dispensing with hope — really means action, and today

Music belonged to the same category as thought, both vibrated in the same movement and species. It possessed the same quality of a thought so intimate that upon hearing that music, the thought itself was revealed

The cold runs down her back with icy feet but she is in no mood to play, she huddles up, wounded and unhappy. She dries herself without love, humiliated and miserable, wraps herself in the dressing-gown as in a warm embrace

Its essential quality was not to have any quantity, not to be measurable and divisible because everything which could be measured and divided had a beginning and an end. Eternity was not that infinitely great quantity that exhausted itself; eternity was succession.

I want inside this night that is longer than life, I want, inside this night, life raw and bloody and full of saliva. I want this word: splendidness, splendidness is the fruit in its succulence, fruit without sadness

Because there is also a great beauty in animals. And in any case, all that exists is beautiful, error as much as truth

Because what I suddenly found out is that the moment had come not only to understand that I must no longer transcend, but the instant had come to really no longer transcend. And to have now what I used to think should be for tomorrow

You will never read what I’m writing. And when I’ve noted down my secret of being—I shall throw it away as if into the sea

And I have no fear of failure. Let failure annihilate me, I want the glory of falling

Through the living roach I am coming to understand that I too am whatever is alive. Being alive is a very high stage, it is something that I only reached now

And if the whole business really is based on invading my privacy, then they should pay for it. They say that’s how it’s done in the United States

I've been, proudly, attributed many times that I do have the God-gifted attribute of having really good mornings. And every day, I do my best to also have the attribution of being a person who is able to have good evenings, and good days, good weeks at some point. I'm take pride of being able to achieve that in my lifetime. And I will hold the hope of having, eventually and after my wither and death, the attribution of being able to have a good, exceptional and extraordinary life.

Andromache in Frederic Leighton's painting does not look very sad, however, the surroundings of her look extremely sad, and the whole story too. Leighton shows her standing alone, dressed in dark clothing. My feeling is, the parts that hurts or supposed to be sad is how everyday life continues around her. Not caring much about her war or tragedy, and she herself have to carry on to continue living, she can not even stress enough sadness, you can't maintain genuine sadness for a long time, even if you wanted to. Related: Oh fuck, you're still sad?

I love when I red and feel warmth through my body when I'm engaged in intellectual activity or when doing an interesting reading. As if life insists on showing itself the moment it stirs within me. I love when I feel heated but not because of overstimulation but just for being so filled with live and sensation, I love how a self that's full of life reminds itself how not untouched by the life it is, but responsive to it. Lit from within, unmistakably alive. My poetry:

• [2026-02-17 Tue 20:30] Found this from Clarice Lispector:

  Through the living roach I am coming to understand that I too am whatever is alive. Being alive is a very high stage, it is something that I only reached now

#Modus Vivendi #Poetry

Apparently, the Arabic translator of (Hoffer 2010) found that Erich Fromm's interpretation about something is not pretty accurate from his point of view, so he decided to just remove it.

TIL about the #NoEstimates movement in software development:

• #NoEstimates, An Introduction. | Allen Holub
• The NoEstimates Movement
• How To Estimate Software Development Time - YouTube

#Programming

Today I looked deeply at the Courtyard of a Mosque at Broussa by Frederic Leighton, it's a 1867 painting;

I genuinely miss when mosques looked like this, simple and messy yet cozy and very beautiful. When I was young, my Father used to take me to a mosque in our town were I used to do Hifz. It was called the Wastani mosque but this was only the colloquial name, as I grown up to learn that the name in the official government references is "The Antique Mosque" المسجد العتيق in Arabic. Although it didn't have a courtyard, that mosque had a very similar architecture and as similar dome. I never thought that it was beautiful when I was young (again, I used to go everyday for at least 4 years continuously, doing Kuttab with Dad), I just accepted it as a part of the town.

It had the same redness in the artwork, and sometimes a beautiful yellow vectors of light coming from the open fractals of the dome, that aging and its wither have produced. It was really beautiful. For some reason it reminds me of houses in Cinema Paradiso (1988).

Later, when I was in high-school, I found a book about the history of my town and other nearby towns, it was written by an agricultural engineer from the Ottoman empire, the book surprisingly mention the mosque by its name, and I realized how this mosque is old then and I decided that "once I get time" I will spend some time there again, preferably with my dad. However, I didn't expect to come back to town to find that people are happy that they demolished the mosque and are rebuilding it, by the help of an anonymous donor (it's been said that, that donor, is an ex-infamous drug dealer who was trying to repent to God, thus he rebuilt so many mosques around the areas and built new ones too, which is likely, I don't expect a lot of intellect from someone who builds a mosque instead of a school or any other utility needed much more than a mosque nowadays), and I felt sad for I couldn't find any pictures of the mosque. I know that some people filmed some places of it in some few occasions, but it never captured the beauty it had.

I learnt that I should never say "Once I get the time for it" again, for it may never be possible again. That being said, once I have the time, I will learn how to do good painting, and I will paint this beautiful mosque from my own memory.

TIL Lisp languages are one of the least with boilerplate. Maybe this also has to do with the fact that it's least languages that are token effective #Programming #Lisp Programming Language

قرأت الإخوة كرامازوف منذ حوالي 9 سنوات وكنت مغرمًا بشخصية إيفان فيدوروفتش من بداية القصة، وكان بداية غرامي بعقله في الفقرة التالية:

وأذكر جيدًا أني توقفت لوهلة عند قراءة هذه الفقرة منذ 9 سنوات، كما فعلت في قراءتي الثانية للرواية منذ عامين، وكما فعلت اليوم أيضًا. وأذكر أني في غير مرة حاولت أتخيل كيف كان هذه المقالة بتخيلي لشخصية إيفان. واليوم قد عزمت على أن أسرد هذا التخيل. كتب إيفان فيدوروفتش:

يحتج المدافعون عن السلطة الكنسية بأن الدولة، بوصفها مؤسسة زمنية محضة، عاجزة عن بلوغ ضمير المجرم، وبالتالي عاجزة عن إصلاحه إصلاحاً حقيقياً. فالسارق يُودع السجن ثم يُطلق سراحه، فلا يلبث أن يعود إلى السرقة، لأن السجن حبس جسده ولم يمس روحه. أما الكنيسة، بأسرارها ورعايتها الروحية، فهي وحدها القادرة على إحداث التحول الباطني الذي يمنع التكرار. وهذا الاحتجاج، في حدود ما يدعيه، صحيح تماماً. فإنني زرت كثيراً من السجون ولم أقابل مجرماً واحداً تحول فيها إلى إنسان صالح، بينما زرت كثيراً من الأديرة ولم أقابل فيها راهباً واحداً لم يتب عن ماضيه.

ويحتج المدافعون عن السلطة المدنية بأن المحاكم الدينية، إذ تنطلق من مقدمات ميتافيزيقية لا يقبلها جميع المواطنين، لا تستطيع أن تفصل في المنازعات بالحياد اللازم. فالمحكمة المدنية، حين تستند إلى العقل والبرهان وحدهما، تقدم العدالة للمؤمن وغير المؤمنعلى حد سواء. وهذا الاحتجاج أيضاً، في حدود ما يدعيه، صحيح تماماً. فإنني حضرت كثيراً من المحاكم الكنسية ولم أشهد فيها حكماً واحداً لم يتوافق، بطريقة عجيبة، مع ما تقتضيه المصلحة اللاهوتية، بينما حضرت كثيراً من المحاكم المدنية ولم أشهد فيها حكماً واحداً أفسدته اعتبارات ما وراء الطبيعة.

والآن، ما الذي يترتب على هاتين الحقيقتين اللتين يبدو أنهما تناقضان إحداهما الأخرى؟

يترتب عليهما أمر في غاية البساطة، وأعجب كل العجب كيف لم يلحظه أحد قبلي. إذا كانت الكنيسة وحدها قادرة على إحداث الإصلاح الأخلاقي الحقيقي، فإن كل مؤسسة تدعي إصلاح المجرمين هي بالضرورة إما كنيسة متنكرة في ثياب أخرى، وإما مؤسسة فاشلة تمارس الاحتيال على نفسها وعلى المجتمع. ولننظر إلى السجون الحديثة: فيها قساوسة يزورون النزلاء، وفيها برامج للتربية الأخلاقية، وفيها أخصائيون نفسيون يستمعون إلى اعترافات المذنبين ويسعون إلى تغيير قلوبهم. فما هذه المؤسسات إلا أديرة نست اسمها الحقيقي. السجان فيها رئيس دير، والأخصائي النفسي كاهن اعتراف، ومجلس الإفراج المشروط مجمع كنسي يقرر من استحق الغفران. كل ما فعلته الحداثة أنها أعادت تسمية الأشياء مراعاة لمشاعر من يكرهون المصطلحات الدينية.

وإذا كانت المحكمة المدنية وحدها قادرة على تحقيق العدالة النزيهة، فإن كل محكمة كنسية تدعي الإنصاف هي بالضرورة إما محكمة مدنية متنكرة في أثواب كهنوتية، وإما مؤسسة ظالمة تخلط بين السلطة الروحية والمصلحة الدنيوية. ولننظر إلى المحاكم الكنسية حين تنظر في قضايا الاختلاس أو النزاع على الأملاك: هل تستشير النصوص المقدسة أم تستعين بالمحاسبين والمساحين؟ الجواب معروف. فالكنيسة، في ممارستها القضائية الفعلية، مؤسسة علمانية ترتدي الجبة والإكليل. إذًاالمحاكم الكنسية والمحاكم المدنية هي المحاكم ذاتها، وكانت كذلك منذ البداية.

ستقولون: إذا كانت المحاكم متماثلة في جوهرها، فكيف نفسر اختلاف أحكامها؟ لماذا تحرم الكنيسة من تطرده الدولة إلى السجن؟ ولماذا تفرض الدولة الغرامة حيث تفرض الكنيسة الكفارة؟ والجواب أن الأحكام ليست مختلفة في الحقيقة، بل هي الحكم ذاته معبراً عنه بلغات مختلفة. فالحرمان الكنسي هو السجن في صورة روحية، إذ ما السجن إلا إقصاء المذنب عن المجتمع ومنعه من المشاركة في حياته، وهذا بعينه ما يفعله الحرمان. والكفارة هي الغرامة في صورة تعبدية، إذ ما الغرامة إلا انتزاع شيء ذي قيمة من المذنب لقاء ذنبه، وهذا بعينه ما تفعله الكفارة. القاضي المدني الذي يحكم على رجل بخدمة المجتمع قد أعاد اختراع الكفارة الكنسية من غير أن يستخدم اللاتينية. والأسقف الذي يمنع خاطئاً من تناول القربان المقدس قد أعاد اختراع الحبس الانفرادي من غير أن يبني جدراناً. كل عقوبة هي العقوبة ذاتها، وكل إصلاح هو الإصلاح ذاته، وكل محكمة هي المحكمة ذاتها. والتنوع الظاهري بينها ليس إلا خطأ في الترجمة بين لغتين تقولان الشيء نفسه. فإن قلتم: لكن الكنيسة تقدم ما لا تستطيع الدولة تقديمه، وهو الخلاص الأبدي. فالدولة قد تصلح الإنسان لهذه الحياة، لكن الكنيسة تعده لما بعد الموت. أقول: انظر إلى خطاب المصلحين العلمانيين. إنهم أيضاً يدعون إعداد الناس للأبدية، لكنهم يسمونها أسماء أخرى: الأجيال القادمة، مستقبل الإنسانية، حكم التاريخ، ذاكرة العالم. فالملحد الذي يعمل على تحسين العالم يؤمن أن ناتج عمله سيستمر إلى ما لا نهاية، وأن الأجيال التي لم تولد بعد ستذكره بالثناء أو اللوم. أي أنه يسعى إلى الخلود ذاته، ولكن بعد إزالة الغلاف الديني عنه. أورشليم الجديدة تحولت إلى اليوتوبيا، والملكوت تحول إلى التقدم، لكن التصميم المعماري واحد. فإن قلتم: لكن الدولة تؤسس نفسها على العقل، بينما تؤسس الكنيسة نفسها على الوحي. أليس هذا الفرق جوهرياً وحاسماً؟ أقول: ما الوحي إلا العقل منسوباً إلى الله؟ وما العقل إلا الوحي منسوباً إلى الإنسان؟ والفيلسوف الذي يعلن "أنا أفكر إذن أنا موجود" يزعم أنه تلقى يقيناً لا يقبل الشك من مصدر مطلق لا يخطئ، وهذا بعينه تعريف الوحي عند اللاهوتيين. الفرق الوحيد أنه يرفض تسمية هذا المصدر باسمه التقليدي. التنوير، في المحصلة، مسيحية بإضاءة كهربائية بدلاً من الشموع.

والآن أنتقل إلى التوصيات العملية. أولاً: يجب على المحاكم الكنسية أن تعترف رسمياً بأنها محاكم مدنية ترتدي أثواباً مختلفة. وأرى أن يُصدر البابا مرسوماً بذلك، يُتلى في جميع الكاتدرائيات صباح أحد الآحاد، ثم يُحرق فوراً بعد تلاوته حتى لا يبقى له أثر مكتوب. ثانياً: يجب على المحاكم المدنية أن تعترف رسمياً بأنها مؤسسات دينية تستخدم مصطلحات حديثة. وأرى أن يُصدر البرلمان قانوناً بذلك، يُنشر في الجريدة الرسمية، ثم تُسحب جميع النسخ من التداول في اليوم التالي. ثالثاً: يجب تشكيل لجنة مشتركة من رجال الدين والقضاة المدنيين، مهمتها الاجتماع مرة كل شهر للاتفاق على أنهم يفعلون الشيء ذاته، ثم الافتراق والعودة إلى التظاهر بالاختلاف أمام الجمهور. رابعاً: يجب إنشاء كرسي جامعي جديد، يُسمى "كرسي علم التماثل بين المتناقضات الظاهرية"، يشغله أستاذ لا يؤمن بشيء ولا يكفر بشيء، مهمته إصدار تقارير سنوية تؤكد أن كل شيء هو كل شيء آخر، وأن الخلافات كلها لغوية. أما التمويل، فأقترح أن يتشارك فيه الفاتيكان والجمهورية الفرنسية بالتساوي، على أن يدّعي كل منهما أمام أنصاره أنه يدفع أقل.

#The Brothers Karamazov

Strive for conciseness and clarity in oral or written reports. If there is one bane of an executive's existence, it is the man who takes a half hour of rambling discourse to tell him what could be said in one sentence of twenty words. There is a curious and widespread tendency among engineers to surround the answer to a simple question with so many preliminaries and commentaries that the answer itself can hardly be discerned. It is so difficult to get a direct answer out of some men that their usefulness is thereby greatly diminished. The tendency is to explain the answer before answering the question. To be sure, very few questions admit of simple answers without qualifications, but the important thing is to state the crux of the matter as succinctly as possible first. On the other hand, there are times when it is very important to add the pertinent background or other relevant facts to illuminate a simple statement. The trick is to convey the maximum of significant information in the minimum time, a valuable asset to any man

Be extremely careful of the accuracy of your statements. This seems almost trite, and yet many engineers lose the confidence of their superiors and associates by habitually guessing when they do not know the answer to a direct question. It is certainly important to be able to answer questions concerning your responsibilities, but a wrong answer is worse than no answer. If you do not know, say so, but also say, ”I'll find out right away." If you are 'not certain, indicate the exact degree of certainty or approximation upon which your answer is based. A reputation for dependability and reliability can be one of your most valuable assets. This applies, of course, to written matter, calculations, etc., as well as to oral reports. It is definitely bad business to submit a report to the boss for approval without first carefully checking it yourself, and yet formal reports are sometimes turned in full of glaring errors and omissions.

This is a corollary of the preceding rules: An executive must know what's going on. The main question is: How much must he know—how many of the details? This is always a difficult matter for the new man to get straight. Many novices hesitate to bother the boss with too many reports, and it is certainly true that it can be overdone in this direction, but in by far the majority of cases the executive's problem is to extract enough information to keep adequately posted. For every time he has to say, "Don't bother me with so many details," there will be three times he will say, “Why doesn't someone tell me these things?" Bear in mind that he is constantly called upon to account for, defend, and explain your activities to the ”higher-ups," as well as to co-ordinate these activities into a larger plan. In a nutshell, the rule is therefore to give him promptly all the information he needs for these two purposes

Never invade the domain of any other division without the knowledge and consent of the executive in charge. This is a very common offense, which causes no end of trouble. Exceptions will occur in respect to minor details, but the rule applies particularly to:

1. The employment of a subordinate. Never offer a man a job, or broach the matter at all, without first securing the permission of his boss. There may be excellent reasons why the man should not be disturbed.
2. Engaging the time or committing the services of a subordinate for some particular project or trip. How would you feel, after promising in a formal meeting to assign one of your men to an urgent project, to discover that some other executive had had the gall to send him on an out-of-town trip without attempting to notify you? Yet it has been done!
3. Dealings with customers or outsiders, with particular reference to making promises or commitments involving another division. In this connection bear in mind especially that, when you are in the “field” or the “districts,” you are on the premises of the district manager or local office, and that all transactions must be with the manager’s permission just as if you were in his home.
4. Performing any function assigned to another division or individual. Violations of this law often cause bitter resentments and untold mischief. The law itself is based upon three underlying principles:

(a) Most people strongly dislike having anyone “muscle” into their territory, undermining their job by appropriating their functions. (b) Such interference breeds confusion and mistakes. The man in charge of the job usually knows much more about it than you do, and even when you think you know enough about it, the chances are better than even that you’ll overlook some important factor. (c) Nine times out of ten when you’re performing the other fellow’s function, you’re neglecting your own. It is rarely that any engineer or executive is so caught up in his own responsibilities that he can afford to take on those of his colleagues.

There is a significant commentary on this last principle which should also be observed: In general you will get no credit or thanks for doing the other fellow’s job for him at the expense of your own. But it frequently happens that, if you can put your own house in order first, an understanding of and an active interest in the affairs of other divisions will lead to promotion to a position of greater responsibility. Many a man has been moved up primarily because of a demonstrated capacity for taking care of other people’s business as well as his own.

In all transactions be careful to “check in” everyone who has a right to be in. It is extremely easy, in a large corporation, to overlook the interests of some division or individual who does not happen to be represented, or in mind, when a significant step is taken. Very often the result is that the step has to be retracted or else considerable damage is done. Even when it does no apparent harm, most people do not like to be left out when they have a stake in the matter, and the effect upon morale may be serious.

Of course there will be times when you cannot wait to stand on ceremony and you’ll have to go ahead and “damn the torpedoes.” But you cannot do it with impunity too often.

Note particularly that in this and the preceding item the chief offense lies in the invasion of the other man’s territory without his knowledge and consent. You may find it expedient on occasions to do the other man’s job for him, in order to get your own work done, but you should first give him a fair chance to deliver the goods or else agree to have you take over. If you must offend in this respect, at least you should realize that you are being offensive.

Promises, schedules, and estimates are necessary and important instruments in a well-ordered business. Many engineers fail to realize this, or habitually try to dodge the irksome responsibility for making commitments. You must make promises based upon your own estimates for the part of the job for which you are responsible, together with estimates obtained from contributing departments for their parts. No one should be allowed to avoid the issue by the old formula, “I can’t give a promise because it depends upon so many uncertain factors.”

Consider the “uncertain factors” confronting a department head who must make up a budget for an entire engineering department for a year in advance! Even the most uncertain case can be narrowed down by first asking, “Will it be done in a matter of a few hours or a few months—a few days or a few weeks?” It usually turns out that it cannot be done in less than three weeks and surely will not require more than five, in which case you’d better say four weeks. This allows one week for contingencies and sets you a reasonable bogie under the comfortable figure of five weeks. Both extremes are bad; a good engineer will set schedules which he can meet by energetic effort at a pace commensurate with the significance of the job.

As a corollary of the foregoing, you have a right to insist upon having estimates from responsible representatives of other departments. But in accepting promises, or statements of facts, it is frequently important to make sure that you are dealing with a properly qualified representative of the other section. Also bear in mind that when you ignore or discount another man’s promises you impugn his responsibility and incur the extra liability yourself. Of course this is sometimes necessary, but be sure that you do it advisedly. Ideally, another man’s promises should be negotiable instruments, like his personal check, in compiling estimates.

Cultivate the habit of “nailing matters down” to their simplest terms. The faculty for reducing apparently complicated situations to their basic, essential elements is a form of wisdom that must usually be derived from experience, but there are marked differences between otherwise comparable individuals in this respect. Some people seem eternally disposed to “muddy the water,” or they “can never see the woods for the trees,” etc. Perhaps a man cannot correct such an innate tendency simply by taking thought, but it appears to be largely a matter of habit—a habit of withdrawing mentally to a suitable vantage point so as to survey a mass of facts in their proper perspective, or a habit of becoming immersed and lost in a sea of detail. Make it practice to integrate, condense, summarize, and simplify your facts rather than to expand, ramify, complicate, and disintegrate them.

Many meetings, for example, get nowhere after protracted wrangling until somebody finally says, “Well, gentlemen, it all boils down simply to this …,” or “Can’t we agree, however, that the basic point at issue is just this …,” or, “After all, the essential fact remains that …”

This sort of mental discipline, which instinctively impels a man to go down to the core to get at the crux of the matter, is one of the most valuable qualities of a good executive.

SCHEDULED: <2027-12-01 Wed>

Reading (King 1944), such a fantastic book, I wish I read it earlier in my life, but I will still read again the future. I picked some from it here Interesting laws of Engineering but I stopped when I noticed that I was about to copy the whole book. A must read definitely.

will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire for knowledge, knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain.

#Philosophy #Modus Vivendi #Bertrand Russell

Kant’s deontology starts from a simple idea: morality isn’t about outcomes, vibes, or damage control, it’s about duty. An action is moral only if it could be willed as a universal rule and if it treats people as ends in themselves, not as tools. This is where autonomy comes in. So respecting someone means respecting their capacity to choose rationally. The moment you lie, you’re not just bending the truth, you’re hijacking another person’s decision-making. You’re feeding them fake inputs so they act the way you want, not the way they would choose if they actually knew what was going on.

Take a concrete, uncomfortable case: you know a man is cheating on his wife, and one day she asks you directly whether it’s true. From a Kantian perspective, lying to “protect her feelings” isn’t kindness, it’s paternalism. By lying, you deny her autonomy, you decide, on her behalf, that she shouldn’t know, that she can’t be trusted with the truth. Even if the truth causes pain, telling it respects her as a rational agent who has the right to make decisions about her own life with full information. That respect outweighs consequences. The ethical failure isn’t the discomfort that follows the truth but the quiet arrogance of thinking you’re entitled to rewrite reality for someone else. #Immanuel Kant #Deontological ethics #Philosophy

Reading (Hoffer 2010)

My Hugo build was taking almost 10 minutes.

Today I finally sat down to fix it. Ran hugo --templateMetrics and the culprit was immediately obvious:

Template                          | Total Time | Calls
----------------------------------|------------|------
_partials/resolve-roam-links.html | 9m 15s     | 866
_partials/native-backlinks.html   | 6m 58s     | 630

I wrote these partials naively. Each one iterates through all pages to build a lookup table (ID → URL, ID → title), uses it once, then throws it away. With ~440 pages, this meant O(n²) complexity. Each page triggers ~440 iterations, so 440 × 440 = ~193,000 iterations just for the ID map. Catastrophic.

The fix was embarrassingly simple, Hugo's partialCached function. Build the lookup tables once, cache them, reuse everywhere.

Created three new cached partials:

• global-id-map.html — ID → URL map
• global-title-map.html — ID → title map
• bib-data.html — bibliography parsing

Then rewrote the slow partials to call these with partialCached.

The build now happens in 1770 ms. 300x faster.

Remember kids, never rebuild data structures you can cache. #Programming

George Orwell's writing rules are quite interesting:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

TIL I learn that the WannaCrypt incident was based on a exploit developed by the NSA:

In 2017, the NSA discovered that the software was stolen by a group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers. Microsoft might have been informed of this and released security updates in March 2017 patching the vulnerability. While this was happening, the hacker group attempted to auction off the software, but did not succeed in finding a buyer. EternalBlue was then released publicly on April 14, 2017.

On May 12, 2017, a computer worm in the form of ransomware, nicknamed WannaCry, used the EternalBlue exploit to attack computers using Windows that had not received the latest system updates removing the vulnerability.: 1  On June 27, 2017, the exploit was again used to help carry out the 2017 NotPetya cyberattack on more vulnerable computers.

#Programming #Microsoft #CIA #I really hate Microsoft

Reading (Akash 2002):

It's strange what he is saying, John Chivington is not considered a "hero" at all. #hisotry #United States of America

TIL that early settlers used to call America "Israel" (Akash 2002).

#The right to sacrifice the other: the american genocides #Israel #Politics

#Herbert James Draper #Art

I need to suppress all these Scala suffering posts. Moreover I need to reply some emails, I also need to learn how to perform Etude, Op. 25 No. 11, and I generally need to do more good things.

Can we talk about how absolutely fucking ridiculous it is that I have to manually tell my language server to import a build that my build tool already compiled successfully? Like, SBT just sat there, downloaded all my dependencies, compiled my entire project without a single complaint, and then Metals (supposed to make my editor experience better, read this if you need to know my opinion about the name: read this if you need to know my opinion about the name) is over here acting like purecsv and shapeless are mythical creatures that don't exist. “Not found: object purecsv”? Really? Are you for real?? It's RIGHT THERE. You literally share the same project directory. Why do I need to remember some arcane M-x lsp-metals-build-import incantation every time I add a dependency or the moon enters the wrong phase? The whole point of LSP was to make this stuff seamless. #Scala

If Scala has a million haters then I'm one of them.

If Scala has only one hater then that's me.

If Scala has no haters then I'm dead. #Scala

RT: Software industry needs some standards:

Until software engineering adopts the same standards, certifications, consistency, and accountability as traditional engineering, along with real consequences, these arguments don’t hold much weight.

This entire modern industry was built on the opposite philosophy: agile. Move fast, break things. Ship iteratively with minimal design. Drop production? Just revert. Outage? Oops.

Software is still treated like a toy. It’s playdough in the hands of toddlers led by other toddlers. You might be among the 1% who do things properly.. but the other 99% don’t.

Related: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools #Programming

Part two of 21:02 About affairs.

So why is it a big deal whether it's punished structurally or not?

Because it actually has consequences. I will take forgiveness as a prime example, is forgiveness possible?. That question arrives too late and already assumes the wrong moral frame. The ethical question is not “can I forgive you?” but “what kind of world can exist after this?” And more precisely, who is now required to do the metaphysical labor of making reality continuous again?

So the person who breaks the structure gets to appeal to sincerity, remorse, growth, trauma, youth, confusion, loneliness, destiny. Meanwhile the person who was lied to is quietly conscripted into an ethical cleanup crew. If they forgive, they are mature. If they hesitate, they are bitter. If they refuse, they are cruel.

Let me iterate again over how affairs work, it does not just 'hurt', It reorganizes moral reality without consent. One person decides that continuity is optional and shared truth can be suspended temporarily and that another human being can live inside a partial fiction for an extended period of time aka unilateral world-editing.

And forgiveness is often proposed as a way to reverse that edit. But forgiveness cannot restore symmetry. It cannot un-know knowledge or make memory innocent again. At best, it offers a way to live with the fracture. At worst, it demands that the injured party perform moral theater in order to stabilize a structure they did not damage.

What people call forgiveness is often compliance dressed up as virtue. There is a strange ethical inversion at work. The one who violated trust is allowed complexity and their motives are examined, contextualized, humanized. The one who was violated is expected to be clean, generous, forward-looking, their anger is treated as a failure of character rather than a correct moral signal.

But doesn't refusing forgiveness keeps you trapped in the past? Well, being forced to live in a future built on unresolved falsity is not much better. Forgiveness that arrives before accountability is not healing, it is gaslighting with a moral accent.

There is no moral obligation to forgive someone who has restructured your world without consent.

Something that is often said also, is that, you gain "freedom" when you forgive, aka free yourself. freedom that requires denying the truth is not freedom but an amputation.

These are not tragedies because people feel too much or sensitive or love so much but ethical failures because someone decides that shared reality is negotiable. And once that line is crossed, the demand for forgiveness often becomes just another way to avoid paying the full cost of what was done.

Not every story needs reconciliation. Some need accuracy.

And accuracy, unlike forgiveness, does not care if it makes anyone comfortable.

One of the oldest jokes in compi-sci/engineering communities is Bjarne Stroustrup's "I Did It For You All…", which basically states that, Stroustrup made C++ the terrible language it is, for the sake that engineers can make money out of using it (I'm unsure what's this strategy is called, but I saw sometimes people picking very obscure tech at work that they're the only ones familiar with it, so they can secure job security):

Stroustrup: Remember the length of the average-sized ‘C’ project? About 6 months. Not nearly long enough for a guy with a wife and kids to earn enough to have a decent standard of living. Take the same project, design it in C++ and what do you get? I’ll tell you. One to two years. Isn’t that great? All that job security, just through one mistake of judgment. And another thing. The universities haven’t been teaching ‘C’ for such a long time, there’s now a shortage of decent ‘C’ programmers. Especially those who know anything about Unix systems programming. How many guys would know what to do with ‘malloc’, when they’ve used ‘new’ all these years - and never bothered to check the return code. In fact, most C++ programmers throw away their return codes. Whatever happened to good ol' ‘-1’? At least you knew you had an error, without bogging the thing down in all that ‘throw’ ‘catch’ ‘try’ stuff..

Interviewer: But, surely, inheritance does save a lot of time?

Stroustrup: Does it? Have you ever noticed the difference between a ‘C’ project plan, and a C++ project plan? The planning stage for a C++ project is three times as long. Precisely to make sure that everything which should be inherited is, and what shouldn’t isn’t. Then, they still get it wrong.. Whoever heard of memory leaks in a ‘C’ program? Now finding them is a major industry. Most companies give up, and send the product out, knowing it leaks like a sieve, simply to avoid the expense of tracking them all down..

Interviewer: There are tools…..

Stroustrup: Most of which were written in C++.

Interviewer: If we publish this, you’ll probably get lynched, you do realise that?

Stroustrup: I doubt it. As I said, C++ is way past its peak now, and no company in its right mind would start a C++ project without a pilot trial. That should convince them that it’s the road to disaster. If not, they deserve all they get.. You know, I tried to convince Dennis Ritchie to rewrite Unix in C++..

Interviewer: Oh my God. What did he say?

Stroustrup: Well, luckily, he has a good sense of humor. I think both he and Brian figured out what I was doing, in the early days, but never let on. He said he’d help me write a C++ version of DOS, if I was interested..

Interviewer: Were you?

Stroustrup: Actually, I did write DOS in C++, I’ll give you a demo when we’re through. I have it running on a Sparc 20 in the computer room. Goes like a rocket on 4 CPU’s, and only takes up 70 megs of disk..

Interviewer: What’s it like on a PC?

Stroustrup: Now you’re kidding. Haven’t you ever seen Windows ‘95? I think of that as my biggest success. Nearly blew the game before I was ready, though..

Interviewer: You know, that idea of a Unix++ has really got me thinking. Somewhere out there, there’s a guy going to try it..

Stroustrup: Not after they read this interview..

Interviewer: I’m sorry, but I don’t see us being able to publish any of this..

Stroustrup: But it’s the story of the century. I only want to be remembered by my fellow programmers, for what I’ve done for them. You know how much a C++ guy can get these days?

Interviewer: Last I heard, a really top guy is worth $70 - $80 an hour..

Stroustrup: See? And I bet he earns it. Keeping track of all the gotchas I put into C++ is no easy job. And, as I said before, every C++ programmer feels bound by some mystic promise to use every damn element of the language on every project. Actually, that really annoys me sometimes, eve. I almost like the language after all this time..

I'm starting to feel that the Scala authors did the same thing. They did it for us all. #Scala #Programming

If a programming language makes you feeling like it's necessary to use an IDE, then it's probably poorly designed, common examples are C#, Java, Scala. It's a lot of hassle to add a "dependency" for other project, for example, without doing a right click magic. In a good designed modular language, it's usually only an import statement #Programming

And then dying will be the end of something dazzling: dying will be one of the most important acts in my life. I’m afraid of dying: I don’t know what nebulae and milky ways await me ~Clarice Lispector

People who have affairs always speak as if they are the first humans to discover desire. I've mistaken novelty for transcendence a lot of time as a kid, but I'm surprised adults do it more often as if the shelves are not already heavy with the corpses of people who thought they were special. There's no criminal psychology to answer for affairs (i.e. why people do it?) but literature (as well as gossip, religion, court records and living memories, but I'm talking literature for this) answered it unironically many times. One of the greatest answers IMHO is Anna Karenina, it's rarely discussed in the context of exceptionalism, which is what I would like to do.

Exceptionalism is the belief that rules are for other people. That patterns exist until I arrive. IMO affairs are not driven by desire which is (IMHO) common and boring. What drives affairs (I'm tired of implying that this is my humble opinion, so take it as an implicit from now on) is the conviction that consequences are negotiable if your interior life feels sufficiently profound.

Anna Karenina is not a story about love but about a woman who mistakes intensity for transcendence and sincerity for immunity. Anna does not think she is immoral she thinks she is honest. She thinks her suffering sanctifies her choices and that because her feelings are real, the structure of the world will rearrange itself around them. I used to think something similar, until I didn't (plot twist; the world does not).

Tolstoy was so damn merciless because reality is indeed merciless. Anna stepped outside the social order not quietly but so loudly, it acknowledge her pain as justification. The punishment is not divine or some sort of magic it's literally structural, just like mechanics (I need to assure you society does have dynamics, but maybe I can elaborate on that somewhere else. Or never.)

She lost anything socially speaking. Doors close. Rooms go quiet. People do not scream at her anymore. They simply stop seeing her as human. Vronsky does not turn evil but he turns finite. His ambition and pride assert themselves because love does not abolish psychology and for Anna’s identity, it collapses inward. People do not scream at her anymore because screaming still acknowledges a human subject. They simply stop recognizing her as one.

This is what structural punishment looks like, aka ontological downgrade. Anna becomes an inconvenience in the social grammar. A disruption. Something that makes others uncomfortable by existing. And discomfort is always managed by distance.

Vronsky does not become a villain (my guess is that it's a fantasy belongs to sentimental readers). However, like I mentioned, he becomes something much worse, finite. Psychology (or mind, for the lack of a better word) does not evaporate in the presence of passion. It waits then it collects its debt.

Now let's restate the obvious; the affair does not free her from social structure. It expels her from it. And outside structure there is no meaning, only exposure. Every glance becomes a trial and every silence becomes a verdict. Without shared norms, there is no shared reality.

This is why exceptionalism always fails. Not because society is vindictive, but because systems do not tolerate permanent exceptions. Anna believes her feelings should count as a new law and sadly laws are not persuaded by sincerity.

People love to say she was punished for loving too deeply. That is a so biased analysis. She was punished for believing depth conferred exemption and that her interior life outranked external order. For believing that because something felt necessary, it therefore was.

It's untrue that love destroyed her. Love survives all kinds of bad decisions. However, she mistook love for sovereignty. And, again, sovereignty claimed without structure always ends the same way: isolation, paranoia, collapse.

Now imagine the counterfactual people love to hide behind. What if she cheats and nothing collapses? What if the affair is civilized and almost elegant?

Structure is not only social but also epistemic. The moment one person knows, the system is already unstable, not emotionally but ontologically (very smart face emoji), knowledge is asymmetrical FYI. And asymmetry is unstable.

The one who knows becomes a structural weight by existing (even if no acts). They carry a truth that cannot circulate and truth that cannot circulate does not disappear but curdles. And the relationship no longer has a shared map of reality.

The cheated-on partner becomes something new that destabilizes systems simply by remembering. They do not need to accuse but you can say that just their knowledge changes the gravitational field for others.

Meanwhile, the cheater must now manage two realities; public continuity and the private deviation. This requires constant cognitive partitioning. A divided self is not tragic yet, but it is expensive and life becomes logistical, memory becomes selective, language bcomes strategic. and all of that over time erodes coherence aka entropy.

But actually let's suppose none of this erupts. Suppose everyone behaves impeccably. No confessions. No slips. Still, the structure has already changed.

The cheated-on partner now lives in a world where their perception is unreliable by design. They are expected to trust a narrative that excludes crucial data. Over time, this produces one of two outcomes: hypervigilance or dissociation. Either the world becomes a crime scene, or it becomes numb, both states love can not survive them.

People think tragedy requires exposure. It does not. Exposure is usually just the visible ending. The real punishment happens earlier, in structure. In the fact that once one person knows, the relationship is no longer a shared reality but a managed illusion.

This is why the fantasy of “no one gets hurt” is incoherent (I already proven that it is not possible). Hurt is not the metric, integrity is. And integrity, once breached, does not announce its departure. It simply stops doing its job.

Later, if you want structure, it looks like this:

• First, asymmetry of knowledge.
• Then, asymmetry of power.
• Then, asymmetry of reality.
• Then, slow institutional collapse of trust.
• Then, either revelation or emotional extinction.

People expect a sudden strike, instead, things slowly wear away, and when that happens, no one feels guilty.

Most people do not know how to gift flowers. Fewer still know how to receive them. Men usually perceive it a something that women like. And most women don't like flowers actually or have a reason for loving them but they blindly follow mimetic activity of how romance was introduced to them and how they define themselves as receivers of it. I love flowers differently. For me, to give a flower is to acknowledge finitude. I believe that roses, or any kind of plant, is a lovely symbol of life, and maybe of death too. It lives, it decays, and in that decay it reveals what all presence truly is, something already in the process of leaving.

When I give someone a flower, I offer my presence in the same way; alive, fragile, and implicitly dying. Not as tragedy, but as truth. Life happens precisely because it does not last.

And life happens. Sometimes the symbol dies, sometimes the connection renews itself and another living thing appears between us (let that be you getting something else alive from me, like another rose), and this state of continuous maintainability of a relationship between two, is symbolized, to me, in the process of gifting, taking care, and reestablishing something that is alive.

To gift a flower, to care for it, to replace it when it die, this is how I run feelings towards anyone, or anything at all, sustained attention to something alive. #Modus Vivendi

• [2026-02-13 Fri 01:20] I just noticed a Byron poem that relates to my notion of connection:

  So, we'll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright.

  For the sword outwears the sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest.

  Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a roving By the light of the moon.

A question that I had while reading Scala specs, is that why do we need Some at all? When we return an option of T, we are usually returning Some(T) or Nothing. But why not T or Nothing directly? I didn't see anything that makes Some make sense to me so far, other than it add an absence notation context (this is to say, that Some(T) means T in the context of the possibility of absence of T).

The reason that I found so far is that there is no runtime discriminator, which is basically a JVM limitation;

A runtime discriminator is data that tells you which alternative you have. Option looks like this:

sealed trait Option[+A]
case class Some[A](value: A) extends Option[A]
case object None extends Option[Nothing]

At runtime, an Option[A] value is either:

• an instance of Some, or
• the singleton object None

That class identity is the discriminator.

Pattern matching works because the JVM can ask:

isInstanceOf[Some[_]] ?
isInstanceOf[None.type] ?

Now remove Some and None

def findT(id: Int): T | Nothing

The issue here is that there is no value of type Nothing. It's compile-time only. I would even imagine that the type erasure in the JVM makes all the following equivalent:

User
User | Nothing
Option[User]

#Scala