I found an interesting piece by Leo Tolstoy: https://www.marxists.org/archive/tolstoy/1900/slavery-of-our-times.html on wage labor: Slavery exists in full vigor, but we do not perceive it, just as in Europe at the end of the Eighteenth Century the slavery of serfdom was not perceived. People of that day thought that the position of men obliged to till the land for their lords, and to obey them, was a natural, inevitable, economic condition of life, and they did not call it slavery. It is the same among us: people of our day consider the position of the laborer to be a natural, inevitable economic condition, and they do not call it slavery. And as, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, the people of Europe began little by little to understand that what formerly seemed a natural and inevitable form of economic life-namely, the position of peasants who were completely in the power of their lords-was wrong, unjust and immoral, and demanded alteration, so now people today are beginning to understand that the position of hired workmen, and of the working classes in general, which formerly seemed quite right and quite normal, is not what it should be, and demands alteration. #Modus Vivendi #What is it to be done?

It's been said we are in the age of pricing. The Age of Commodity. I had a lot of thoughts about that when I was reading this paragraph from Harper's review (“Were all going to be dead soon.”): In the United States, it was reported that the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world's twelfth-richest person, secretly gave $50 million to an organization supporting the campaign of the Democratic presidential candidate; and that the Tesla and SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk, the world's richest person, had been warned by federal prosecutors of the potential illegality of his practice of giving $1 million each day to a randomly selected swing-state voter who signed a petition for his super PAC that backs the Republican presidential candidate. ^{1 2 3 4} In Moldova, where last month it was reported that the Russian government had paid at least 130,000 people more than $15 million to vote against joining the European Union, authorities announced that they had identified an additional $24 million also directed toward purchasing the votes of 20 percent of the entire electorate; violence erupted at polling stations across the country of Georgia, where international observers warned of Russian “vote-buying” in its parliamentary elections and whose president said that the elections' results “cannot be accepted” and should be opposed with protests in the streets; and police in Mozambique shot and killed at least ten of the thousands of demonstrators marching against the ruling party's claim that it had just won more than 70 percent of votes nationally. ^{5 6 7 8 9} Days before Uzbekistan's parliamentary elections, a would-be assassin fired five bullets at the car of the country's former head of communications, who was lobbying for reforms to protect press freedoms; and in Bulgaria, hackers published a list of more than 200 businessmen and government officials who are alleged to have bought votes under the direction of the former owner of 6 of the country's 12 largest-circulating newspapers. ^{10 11 12} It was reported that an internal battle in the Iranian government over the 85-year-old ayatollah's successor would likely be won by his second son, a former de facto commanding officer in the Basij who was accused of rigging the 2009 election in favor of the incumbent, who later accused him of embezzling money from the treasury; the Vietnamese parliament elected a military general to replace its president, who, while being investigated for bribery, resigned from the presidential office he'd taken over from his predecessor, who himself had resigned after 539 of his subordinates were implicated in multiple corruption rackets; and Tunisia's incumbent president, who last month arrested dozens of members of the nation's largest opposition party, was inaugurated for a second term. ^{13 14 15 16 17 18} “Vipers,” he said at his swearing in, are “circulating.” ¹⁹ #Politics

I told some people before about my conspiracy theory of Google making Chromium development experience completely difficult, requires many adhocs setups, extremely slow and difficult to fork it to customize the interface/behavior, as a purpose of them trying to limit the possible Chrome clones. I'm now considering that AWS (Amazon) is making services like CloudWatch so terrible to search and trace, so you have to use something much more expensive like Live Tail. I'm aware that such a behavior is common in product design, some apps will be more feature-rich on the mobile app rather than on the web interface (usually because the app is more profitable, data-collection-wise), but it's an interesting instance to see such a usage with cloud providers. #Programming

• [2025-10-24 Fri 13:29]
  Found a video of Messiri talking about his model and the incident. https://youtu.be/qs7Dp8ckFO8

[2024-10-17 Thu 18:27]

I was reading Messiri's "Rehlati al-fikriah", and he mentioned something very interesting there about Paul Fussell, the renowned literary historian, apparently he was one of his PhD external examiners. But that's not the interesting thing, it is what he mentions about him: being a homosexual pervert. I was shocked from the information that Messiri mentioned about him, that I quickly jumped to Wikipedia searching for anything with the keyword "gay", "homosexual", etc.. Nothing (surprisingly) was there, I started to think that Messiri might have linked to some other Paul Fussel. I then tried to search Google with keywords like "homosexual" "Paul Fussel", still, nothing there. I was finally certain that either Messiri is talking about someone else, or this information were discrete. Then I read a post on HN that was talking about Kagi, a less screwed (suckless) search engine, it quickly linked me to the information Messiri mentioned about Fussel (his wife article about their relationship and how he would like to enter a room full of guests naked) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnacdOIoTBQ I don't frequently post here, or anywhere, unlike past times. Lately I explored one of my friend's music library, he told me how it's extremely diverse, he was correct about it. I later wondered if that has anything to do with a disorder that he suffers from, which relates to his ear. I wonder if how his music changes has anything to do with how that acoustic disorder affect his music taste. I also wondered if there's anything about me that affects my frequency of writing here. Sometimes it's fascinating —even if you believe in free will— how unfree we might be. How we might have the wrong ideas because the search engine chooses not to be helpful enough, or have different views due to a biological state. Related.

I'm reorganizing my bibliography, found out that there are many titles that I felt nostalgic towards. Many titles are related to people I used to discuss with or phases in my life. Some of them are:

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (Russell, B.)

one of the very first books I've ever read.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Campbell, J.)

I really miss that era of exploring Campbell and psychoanalysis… used to be in a very fun communities.

The Human Web (McNeill et al.)

It was a very hard job for me to get a paper version of this book, I remember reading it in public transportation, in winter.

Being Mortal (Gawande, A.)

Same as previous one, I read it in the same era.

The Naked Ape (Morris, D.)

I've some of the dearest memories with this book. I remember recommending it to somebody, they were too shy to discuss the sex chapter and I found that funny, we never talked or met again.

Your Inner Fish (Shubin, N.)

one of the first books ever that I read about evolution, recommended to me by my neighbor after he saw the documentary.

Totem and taboo (Freud, S.)

My first book to read by Freud, first book to get me very invested into the psychoanalysis theory as well. I even made infographics for this book. It also introduced me to many other European orientalists.

Group Psychology (Freud, S.)

Second book to read for Freud, was recommended to me by the same friend who recommended "Your Inner Fish".

Differential Equations for Dummies (Holzner, S.)

very bad memories with this one.

Algorithms (Sedgewick, R.)

This was my alternative for the common algorithms reference, I don't even remember the name of that reference anymore.

Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis (Shaffer, C.)

My first algorithms book, one of the books that I completed 100% of it. I truly loved it, I had a TODO note to thank the author, but I never did.

So many other memories with the rest of the list! خُلِقتُ أَلوفاً لَو رَحَلتُ إِلى الصِبا لَفارَقتُ شَيبي موجَعَ القَلبِ باكِيا.

• [2025-05-23 Fri 17:26] Sometimes I wonder whether that feeling is healthy.

#Modus Vivendi

I really like Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's PDFs (preview here), however, they do not allow you to download it without a subscription. It's actually good enough for a subscription if you compare it to the HTML. For someone like me, my HTML appetite can not hold more than few long articles, SEP average entry is about 50 pages or so, that's not a long article even. Here's how I get their entries as nice PDFs without subscription, simply save the article part of the HTML page into a file, and using pandoc run: vpandoc concept_of_religion.html --pdf-engine=xelatex -o concept_of_religion.pdf --variable=documentclass:book -V geometry:b5paper -V margin=3cm -V mainfont="Times New Roman" #Philosophy

I'd always prefer a Lisp. But ideally, Go wins (more at The Prefect Programming Language) by its unauthoritarian package manager and not using exception handling. As aforementioned @ A thought about Clojure, I think Clojure is the modern day Lisp that works very good for interactive programming and rapid development. But here's another killer feature of Go that roughly does not exist elsewhere: the great STD. With Go, I can feel very comfortable writing a Go application without the need of checking the internet for questions or 3rd-party libraries, eventually I might need to, but if compared to any other tool I've ever used, it's amazing (back in the day when I used C# I'd need a web browser always running alongside to my IDE). I do not have internet connection those days and while playing tracks I thought of building a simple CLI to handle my audio tracks synchronization, I know how to do it without reinventing the wheel in Go, with only using the STD, with Clojure, it's going to be unrapid developement. #Go #Programming

I wrote on The Prefect Programming Language my thoughts about what would be the prefect language out there, and what would be the nearest thing of it. It's C and this is not going to change (any far at least), however, perfect is not always practical. I still believe in Lisp-like syntax superiority and I love the flexibility of dynamic typing and dynamic loading, and C has both already. Still C lacks many things like a proper build system (that convince everybody) and packaging.

From the list on that article, I'd be left with Julia and Go, Julia has two downsides of the Centralized Package Repository and the use of Exception handling. And Go has the downside of not having a REPL. For me, when it comes to the real world, the issue with centralization does not matter more than the issue of getting the work done (i.e. REPL weights more).

Going more practically from there, I see a high potential with Clojure, it does not have the OOP trash like Common Lisp and it is a Lisp, it is not too new like Jack, and it can interlope with Java. Perhaps it's the go-to language for me right now. Displacing Common Lisp. #Clojure #Programming

I am considering reading Don Quixote. But I'm still unsure. I think there are so many books that are propagated around and everywhere merely because of pseudointellectuality. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy was one of those novels that I had a similar experience with. It's one of the most unreadable novels in my opinion, however, it's always considered either #1 or #2 best works by people who post book ratings on book communites. After I read it back then, due to the severe amount of recommendation, I was surprised that it's hardly a plain, and very long, novel, I tried to find later someone to discuss my view with him about the novel, I could only find people majored in literature who can discuss it, but theoretically only, and I found out that most of the people who recommenced it to me never actually read it. #Literature

I like thinking about names, they usually reflect people's dreams and values, many times I feel devastated when contemplating names, like when find a convicted thief named Ali I usually think that their parents did find great values in the historical character of Imam Ali that they wished to recall in their child, and how sad it went. I personally believe that names have a great effect on us. Which is not debatable [from a theory-of-complexity perspective]. But how can they shape our personalities? A study once showed that boys who are given names more common among girls are more likely to develop behavioral problems when they reach puberty(Figlio 2005), but the reason behind that itself is very obvious (likely to be). What about their effect on our innersole? I think there should be. The priming effect is one that proves it, however, it's very controversial, but let me tell you about it. Priming is the idea that exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. The stimulus itself can be a subliminal stimuli, for example, if someone were to read you an article about people in a retirement home, your subconscious recalls old people, who walk very slow, the Priming theorists believe that this might actually cause you to walk slightly slower as result of your subconscious thinking. And if you were to experience the same thing but with talking about top football players, you might walk faster. Interesting theory no? Unfortunately it has great problems in documenting the experiments(Bower 2012).

My friend sent me this episode from a pop-science TV series [Arabic]; https://youtu.be/CFeW61i_MLA it has English subtitle. I'd love to share Nietzsche view of the matter(Nietzsche 1998, no. 17): Goodness and malignity. At first men imposed their own personalities on Nature: everywhere they saw themselves and their like, i.e. their own evil and capricious temperaments, hidden, as it were, behind clouds, thunder-storms, wild beasts, trees, and plants: it was then that they declared Nature was evil. Afterwards there came a time, that of Rousseau, when they sought to distinguish themselves from Nature: they were so tired of each other that they wished to have separate little hiding-places where man and his misery could not penetrate: then they invented “nature is good.” #The Power of Understanding Human Nature

I think I've a nice tip on that, although it might sounds very naive, it really helped me personally. I think that the reason behind post-achievement depression is that we forget why we wanted whatever we achieved or that we no longer possess the same perspectives that made us want that thing, the reason behind that is usually the long period that is dedicated on achieving it, in which you are likely to change more. That's why it's most common in academia especially with people getting their Ph.D after 5 years of work or even more. So basically we forget why we want something and how we felt towards wanting it (think of it like someone working 2 years to earn an Ijazah believing it to be a great achievement, but they turn atheist in the second year). So my tip is basically a usage of intensive imagination in a different stages of what we want.

And this does not have to be a protection from depression to be honest, but it

can be used as a refreshing method to really understand our passions and what we "really" want (not what we ought to by collective consciousness or propaganda): think of yourself getting it and estimate your happiness or satisfaction.

• [2025-04-12 Sat 18:40] As of now, I'm not really sure if this method will work properly for most people, as most of us generate these delusional views about how things are going to be like after the achievement. See also: On Depression. #Modus Vivendi

• [2025-09-27 Sat 00:04]
  Just remembered something funny that happened a long time ago too. Not very related to this story but I will put it here anyway, I was trying out some new themes for Emacs a long time ago, and most of the themes that you will try, would have this warnning shoutted out by Emacs that choosing this theme can actually execute Lisp code, which is correct and should be carefully considered. However, between switching to the new theme from your current theme, Emacs switches to the default Emacs theme. And I fell in love! I didn't know that this was the default theme, I thought that this was the one I had just chosen then (the message was omitted for unkown reason). The next day I spent the whole day debugging why my theme is now black.

It's always recommended to check what your vendors/origins provide before looking for third-party solution. I learnt that the hard way years ago when I was in the Digital Signal Processing class and trying to take math notes, I was new to Org-mode and the Emacs rabbit whole that time and I wanted to use Org-mode for this mission. I came across this program from reddit, it's called "math-preview", I thought that this was the utility I need to write LaTeX equations inside Org. I spent hours trying to install it (npm tragedy), and even after getting it to work, I was getting Elisp errors inside Emacs. I do not remember how it ended though, perhaps someone told me that Emacs does what I wanted out of the box? Anyway. It's only a fun memory now :) #Programming

I've been experiencing random impulses of depression lately, perhaps a part of what's diagnosed as mood swings and mood disorders. While I can not decide precisely what's going wrong I'm trying to do my best to overcome it. I'm sharing my experience here.

I know so many literature descriptive anthology pieces about depression, however, I really like al-Ghazali's(al-Ghazali 2002, p.135):

For God put a lock upon my tongue so that I was impeded from public teaching. I struggled with myself to teach for a single day, to gratify the hearts of the students who were frequenting my lectures, but my tongue would not utter a single word: I was completely unable to say anything. As a result that impediment of my speech caused a sadness in my heart accompanied by an inability to digest; food and drink became unpalatable to me so that I could neither swallow broth easily nor digest a mouthful of solid food. That led to such a weakening of my powers that the physicians lost hope of treating me and said: “This is something which has settled in his heart and crept from it into his humors; there is no way to treat it unless his heart be eased of the anxiety which has visited it.”

فكنت أُجاهد نفسي أن أُدرس يومًا واحدًا تطييبًا للقلوب المتخلفة إلي، فكان لا ينطق لساني بكلمة ولا استطيعها البتة، حتى اورثت هذه العقلة في اللسان حزنًا في القلب، بطلت معاه قوة الهضم ومراءة الطعام والشراب: فكان لا ينساغ لي ثريد، ولا تنهضم لي لقمة؛ وتعدى إلى ضعف القوى، حتى قطع الأطباء طمعهم من العلاج وقالوا: هذا أمر نزل بالقلب، ومنه سرى إلى المزاج، فلا سبيل اليه بالعلاج، إلا بأن يتروح السر عن الهم الملم.

There's always something different in 1st millennium depression literature (check out Foucault's "History of Insanity"), perhaps it's the most non-casual (at least not from an intellectual perspective) form of depression ever recorded.

al-Ghazali depicted later what helped him survive this state, which was basically Sufism (Read the Sufism chapter of his book if you are interested in more details. Also check: Why a Sufi approach to healing mental illness is so powerful). I think that this approach might not be very helpful. Not specifically Sufism, but intellectual changes generally ([2025-04-19 Sat 14:00] although many will argue otherwise)

As I mentioned my depression was (is?) swinging, I got the feeling of "I'm alright now, that was it, it's overcame" many times before suffering a next wave.

The latest "solution" I've reached so far is routine, and I know that the recipe I'm going to put now is battle-tested because I've tried it when I was and was not in depression, that is; not just keeping self busy but with a purpose to get to the next level.

What I've been doing for example is setting a list of activities to do. I've a very (very) long bucket list myself, so it is not really about lacking organization but doing something at all. The list should be something doable, easy and not critical, most importantly it should be insulated from anything you would have in a normal to-do-list (i.e. do not add stuff related to you work, study or whatever). I believe it should be crowded as well but not too much. The mere purpose is to keep yourself busy, apparently one of the most naive advice for depression is the one that seems to work. The tasks need to be productive, do not add - play a a video game or whatever. Do things that next morning you will feel good about the fact you have done them.

When I get up feeling depressed and awful, I push myself into the list, simulating to myself that only after finishing this item, this pain is going to vanish, and before I even try harder I'd be occupied in getting the first item of the list done. Once I'm done with it I proceed with the next item on the list, and so on. By end of the day if I'm not feeling better already for all the things I have done, I know for certain that I will feel great the next day and I will have a severe desire to go into the same action list just like the day before.

The trade-off here is: 1. You can develop the routine regardless of your state, if you feel so good today you do it and if you do not you do it. 2. It produces something, so even if it does not help healing, at least you are getting things done (I say productive and depressed is better than unproductive and depressed). #Modus Vivendi

• [2024-02-11 Sun 05:38] I think this method still works fine after all these months, perhaps the only thing to focus on more is crisis management.
• [2024-04-04 Thu 15:34] Well for the most part now I can confirm that this works, empirically.
• [2024-08-05 Mon 23:08] I didn't mention that if you're suffering from some kind of clinical depression (major depressive disorder) you should seek professional help. I thought that was too obvious.
• [2025-04-19 Sat 14:02] Something else that I think I should have mentioned here is how different it is to have the willing not to be depressed. This is perhaps the most important step in healing from depression for me, and I really regret every time I was extremely depressed and decided not to help myself because I thought it wouldn't make that much of a difference, but it completely will. God helps those who help themselves. Always help yourself to get out of depression, like they say, be the one you always wished to have helping you. If you think having a cup of tea, a good workout, or a walk might even slightly change your mood, do it. Or even if you don't think it will, but you believe that you might like it, do it. For me, I found out that doing my favorite activities that are mostly about me and taking care of myself, and making sure that I am doing the best for me to have a good time, that was always the best way for me to get out of depression.
• [2025-12-22 Mon 22:02] Sports really help. As well as a good diet.

• [2025-12-28 Sun 17:47] I wrote about this here Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

A startup or the like would be vastly interested in having a name that is easy to remember and not necessarily expressive, such as viber, YouTube, Google, etc., which is understandable, what I can never understand why would a software library do so? Why having a library named glun or marmot, can you guess which one of these is the IMAP server and which is distributed SQLite replicator? This does not make any sense. Imagine if you are talking with your team about a workflow that involves a set of these application "the server runs oliva which uses palette to make the rain interface looks better", a segment of my poor brain processing power would be already RIP processing what these strange words are supposed to mean before actually start thinking about the main statement. I believe that the domination of this type of naming (random names of mascots or anime girls) is relatively new, most old software had either a very meaningful name (cat-concatenation) or at least a name to which you can link (PostgreSQL). Now an assignment for you, try to guess what does the software named isso do? Please always give your software/library a meaningful name. Stop using anime girls names for naming utilities.

Update: try to tell what do these pieces do before clicking the link:

• quetz
• squoosh
• mamba
• pluto
• boa
• apheleia
• watermill

#Programming

People usually misunderstand the boundaries of computing i.e. what a computer is actually capable of. Due to the mediocre state of software industry that reinforces computing illiteracy, this is not going to change any soon. An example of this is ad-blocking, some people won't bother checking whether it is possible to purge annoying ads from their experience, they just accept it as the way it works. This is true for other aspects too, there was a reason why people were surprised by the LLM thing. IMHO this is the main reason why federated social networks such as Pleroma and Mastodon will never become a thing, because it's too complicated for normies to understand that such a thing is even possible. They already have their own understanding of how computing should be done. #Programming #What We Lost #Computers Are No Longer Used.

Don't believe him. He is useful to take the first step towards mental health, after that you can put him in the corner and let him collect dust. Don't forget to live, being a dreamer is an endless hole. Don't expect redemption from nietzsche's philosophy. I have also too often said to myself: ''what's the point of my life, others will fly higher!'' and justified my inactivity with this. And yet here we are. It would be a sin to live but not to live at the same time. Distrust your skeptical thoughts which think to see a change in the world in the direction of the ''superman''. Life flies by and at the end you have spent it with dreaming. Be grateful to the dear god, even if only out of virtue. Do not forget the affirmation of life. Too many among us do not really live. #Nietzsche

ScienceDirect.om have some nice pages called "overview" that are created "using heuristic and machine-learning approaches to extract relevant information from our extensive collection of content". I usually skip browsing the site itself and jump to the dio directly through some scripting shenanigans, I think this is why I missed it for very long time. It's really useful that I wanted to let you know that it does exist.

"To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit. Much of the prison and the mould still remaineth in him: pure hath his eye still to become." ~ Thus Spoke Zarathustra #Nietzsche

• [2025-11-29 Sat 18:32]
  Reflecting on this now as a full time Safari user makes me feel weird.

I don't use browser history. I think it is one of the worst features that were included in the new standards of web browsers. When web history was a thing for the first time it was a little bit useful since there were no search engines to use, so you would either memorize the URLs that you are using or retrieving them from the history. Now it's only included as a pretext for proprietary browsers to spy on you. However, I still believe it is a very bad idea to keep browsing history even if you compile your browser by yourself. Imagine keeping a camera on your 'safe' room that records shots of you, but it's totally safe since your room is very safe place so none will be able to gain access to it. This seems fine but why even bother guarding such a thing that is even not that useful, but could be very dangerous too if someone seizes? This is the same way I treat (or used to treat) browsing history. Recently I was reading the nyxt browser specifications and found out that they are using tree-style-like history instead of linear history that other browsers use. I decided to give it a try (the tree history not nyxt, it's a RIP already to me) to see how can it be useful. I noticed that I'm being a little more productive because I tend to browse less of shitty web content when I know that my history is recorded, perhaps thinking that someone will review my history and judge me :). I will update here later to inform you, dear readers, whether it does worth keeping this dangerous thing in your machine. #Programming

Leaving Emacs splash image for Amor Fati. I think it looks much more lovely this way, forby a perpetual remainder of the most precious principle that I've ever learned; Amor Fati! #Modus Vivendi

I remember years ago when I was watching Black Mirror, an interesting show about the dystopian dark future of technology, I recommended it to some people I knew, I thought it might help me to consolidate my arguments against the influence that modern technology (like social media sites) has against them, how they can be tracked and controlled; however all of them couldn't complete the show, not even more than one episode. "I don't feel comfortable watching this", they said.

At this point I felt they would think it would be discourteous of me to ask about "why?" or even to refer to them that this means that there is something wrong: having a TV show or an idea to make you feel 'uncomfortable' means nothing but having a great fragility in your mind, and it is in a very weak state.

This actually made me to think more about how most of people nowadays treat comfort, they sanctify it. Which is a big issue in my opinion, simply comfort does not lead to anything but a stable (in the sense of a bad incessantness) state of existence. I personally consider the absolute seeking of comfort to be one of the fetid thoughts a man could have, for thee supposed to make a change, and a change is never led by comfort. "For believe me, the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!"¹

Comfort is a key of ignoring all self-vulnerabilities; you don't feel comfortable to go on a fight with someone (if you had to for any reason), which might be a wise idea (refer to Les Passions de l'âme which is a great book by Descartes that explain why all passions and feelings are useful, including fear) if they are much stronger than you; however this clearly highlight an obvious vulnerability in your body power, working on it will definitely change the fight to be a great idea, but accepting the "I don't feel comfortable" to do so will only keep you in your low levels.

“Where your fear is, there is your task” — Carl Jung.

“Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave, that was so dreaded, has become the center.” ― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.

Where you fear, there is your mission. #Modus Vivendi

ولو كانت الكُتُب تُلتقى بصفتِها كُتباً، لا بصفتِها غرائز ورغبات، لتغيّر الاقتصاد السياسي للكتُب كُليّة. والكُتبُ تخلق أثرَها ليس بما فيها، بل بالرّغبات التي تخلُقُ بوالرّغبات التي تُلصَقُ بها.

— عباس ابراهام.

I find the 'books community' (wherever it is, goodreads or some social network groups) to be one of the most asinine and silly ideas I have ever seen. Books are about ideas, not about books themselves. Who do you think might be responsible for that reducing of books into mere objects fixated upon themselves rather than their profound ideas? Those who were too indolent to comprehend the rudimentary fundamentals of them. "books did not work for me," says some dropout from a preparatory school or whatever, they saw books merely as inanimate objects that contained some inconsequential material. This is the essence of the term 'bookworm,' a decent description by an individual who was unable to grasp someone else's discipline (some philosophical idea, mathematical branch, physic, or anything) that happened to be written in a collection of papers (book) and, therefore, reduced it to a level they could comprehend - that being books, not ideas on them. The reasons underlying the formation of these communities are purely pseudointellectuality. Books are not about books. It is the ideas contained therein that possess significance, not the books themselves. If those ideas were introduced somewhere else that have more features than the print text format, no one would read books. #Modus Vivendi

Days and events hold no inherent specialty, for they are but mere markers of time. Their occurrence brings no inherent alteration, nor do they impact any change. On the morrow, Ramadan shall commence and, as is the custom, many shall choose to amend their ways. Some will stop listening to music, others shall stop mistreating themselves, and the like. Though I find the overall notion commendable, the idea of it being a limited-time resolution does not sit well with me. I have encountered those who abstain from music only during Ramadan, and this perplexes me. They either normalize their misdeeds in their subconscious or are foolish enough to believe that their actions during Ramadan are different from the rest of the year. I suspect it to be the former, for it is a curious thought that they accept their wrongdoing as acceptable for most of the year but not during Ramadan. Do they desist from theft and other unethical behavior solely during Ramadan? This is questionable. If you believe that certain things are bad, why you are not trying to apply yourself to them? Especially that it's pretty possible through 30 days, or you are not looking for virtues out of resolutions? #Modus Vivendi

René Descartes contributes to a long tradition of philosophical inquiry into the nature of "the passions", I find inspiration in many of Descartes writings, however I hesitate to share them because I don't find reading them separately will add actually any value. However I found this work "Les Passions de l'âme" has many useful independent points.

2023-03: currently there are only two of them, I will add the rest when I'm able to make enough time. - [2025-12-22 Mon 21:57] Looks like I never did! I might reread the book and put them in the Anthology inchallah.

Composed c. 1700. First published 1717. #Modus Vivendi #Poetry

It makes me so curibus whatever happened in some era of software history that converted user from an intelligent adventurer that we have to consider their understanding, give them warnings and provide them with helpful logs; into a really stupid creature that live without a mind, and we have to restrict ane control. We have to hide error messages (not to "expose internals") and popup a stupid so-called friendly "oh no, something went wrong, we are so sorry for that!". The reason why I don't understand the current situation of software industry is we already have been through it. Related: Computers Are No Longer Used #Programming

I'm getting through a new adventure recently, chess programming ([2025-12-22 Mon 21:54] I stopped quickly) posted a while ago about studies related to Chess and Brains and there is something that I find very effective in chess so far, that's a discipline. Chess is purely an abstractive game[I agree with Stefan Zweig description of calling chess a game as Disparagement: "And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad’s coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new; mechanical in structure, yet made effective only by the imagination; limited to a geometrically fixed space, yet with unlimited combinations; constantly developing, yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere; mathematics calculating nothing; art without works of art; architecture without substance – but nonetheless shown to be more durable in its entity and existence than all books and works of art; the only game that belongs to all nations and all eras, although no one knows what god brought it down to earth to vanquish boredom, sharpen the senses and stretch the mind."], you are playing for survival (even when you are playing for win), doing something fancy or fashionable doesn't mean anything no matter in which context, if it doesn't boost or neutralize you in computer evaluation number, or sometimes if it is not a part of a plan, then it's basically useless.

I will elaborate on that later when I publish my chess collection soon, this post was created instead to share with you a similar discipline that I found Nietzsche talking about, that's pity. Pity as a feeling really fits in many examples of how our feelings can be unnecessary heavy loads in our brains. Pity only yields on two possible outcomes 1. "Generously" pity someone (we tend to simulate an effect of solidarity in feeling pity, so we do it as a matter of generousness, which, of course, makes us feel great) 2. Barely help them to get the feeling that you already did all you can (like when you really pity those poor kids, so you donate some amount of money, but you are not really willing to investigate the reason behind it to give them a real hand of help). Let's move to the text, I will leave the Arabic translation as well because, as I mentioned before, I find it more poetic .([2025-12-22 Mon 21:56] Some of this –I mean the feeling, pity, has to do with what Tolestoy mentioned of how he felt in What is it to be done?)

Larochefoucauld is certainly right when, in the most noteworthy passage of his self-portrait (first printed 1658), he warns all those who possess reason against pity, when he advises that it be left to those people of the commonality who (because their actions are not determined by reason) require the passions if they are to be brought to the point of aiding a sufferer or energetically intervening in a case of misfortune; while pity, in his (and Plato' s) judgment, enfeebles the soul. One should, to be sure, manifest pity, but take care not to possess it; for the unfortunate are so stupid that the manifestation of pity constitutes for them the greatest good in the world. - Perhaps one can warn even more strongly against this having pity if one understands this need felt by the unfortunate, not precisely as stupidity and intellectual deficiency, as a kind of mental disturbance that misfortune brings with it (that, indeed, is how Larochefoucauld seems to conceive it), but as something quite different and more suspicious. Observe children who weep and wail in order that they shall be pitied, and therefore wait for the moment when their condition will be noticed; live among invalids and the mentally afflicted

and ask yourself whether their eloquent moaning and complaining, their displaying of misfortune, does not fundamentally have the objective of hurting those who are with them: the pity which these then express is a consolation for the weak and suffering, inasmuch as it shows them that, all their weakness notwithstanding, they possess at any rate one power: the power to hurt. In this feeling of superiority of which the manifestation of pity makes him conscious, the unfortunate man gains a sort of pleasure; in the conceit of his imagination he is still of sufficient importance . to cause affliction in the world . The thirst for pity is thus a thirst for self-enjoyment, and that at the expense of one's fellow men; it displays man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear self: but not precisely in his 'stupidity', as Larochefoucauld thinks. - In the conversations of social life, three-quarters of all questions are asked, three-quarters of all answers given, in order to cause just a little pain to the other party; that is why many people have such a thirst for social life: it makes them aware of their strength. In such countless but very small doses in which malice makes itself felt it is a powerful stimulant to life: just as benevolence, disseminated through the human world in the same form, is the ever avail­ able medicine. - But will there be many honest men prepared to admit that causing pain gives pleasure? that one not seldom entertains oneself ­ and entertains oneself well - by mortifying other people, at least in one's own mind, and by firing off at them the grapeshot of petty malice? Most are too dishonest, and a few too good, to know anything of this puderzdum;* and they are welcome to deny if they like that Prosper Merimeet is right when he says: 'Sachez aussi qu'il n'y a rien de plus commun que de faire Ie mal pour Ie plaisir de Ie faire.'

Nietzsche, F., Zimmern, H., & Nietzsche, F. (2009). Human, all-too-human parts one and two. p. 51 Prometheus Books.

كان لاروشفوكو مصيبًا وهو يحذر في إحدى المواقع الأكثر روعة من البروتريه الذاتي كل ذوي العقل من الشفقة، في حين ينصح بتركها لعامة الشعب الذين يحتاجونها (لأنهم ليسوا مُسيرين بأحكام العقل) كي تدفع بهم إلى مساعدة من يعاني والتدخل بحزم عند حصول كارثة؛ في حين أن الشفقة تستنفد طاقات الروح وتنهكها بحسب حكمه. وفي الحقيقة ينبغي أن نعرب عن الشفقة وأن نحترس من أن نكون حاملين لها؛ ذلك أن الأشقياء في رأيه على غاية من السخافة تجعل ابداء الشفقة تجاههم أكبر فضل يمكن أن يمنحهم إياه العالم. ولعلنا سنحذر بأكثر من هذه الشفقة التي يحملها المرء في نفسه إذا ما اعتبرنا حاجة الأشقياء إليها، لا كسخافة ونقص ذهني واضطراب عقلي يرافق حلول المصيبة (ويبدوا أن لاروشفوكو يفهم الأمر من هذا الوجه)، بل كشيء مختلف تمامًا ومشبوه. لننظر بالأحرى بعين المتفحص إلى الأطفال الذين يبكون ويصرخون كي يستدروا الشفقة، ولذلك يظلون منتظرين اللحظة التي سيقع انتباه الآخرين فيها على حالتهم؛ ولنعايش عن قرب مرضى ومصابين بالإرهاق الذهني، ولنتساءل إن لم تكن تلك الشكوى والتأوهات التي يستعرضون بها تعاستهم تسعى في الحقيقة إلى إيلام المحيطين بيهم: فالشفقة التي يبديها هؤلاء نحوهم هي إذن عزاء للضعفاء والمتألمين، بما أنها تجعلهم يشعرون معها بأنهم بالرغم من ضعفهم يملكون سلطة واحدة على الأقل هي القدرة على إيلام الآخرين. يجد الشقي نوعًا من اللذة في هذا الشعور بالتفوق الذي يمنحه إياه إبداء الشفقة، ويتفاقم وهمه ليشعر بأنه ما يزال على قدر من الأهمية كي يثير الألم في العالم المحيط به. وبهذا يكون الظمأ إلى الشفقة ظمئًا إلى الالتذاذ بالذات، وذلك على حساب الآخرين؛ ويكشف لنا هذا الأمر عن الإنسان في كامل وقاحة حبه لذاته، وليس في سخافته كما يقول لاروشفوكو.

#Nietzsche

الحَرب بين أوفيديوس وأغسطس مثيرة جدًا للاهتمام، خصوصًا حيال شخصية أغسطس. فكَرت أنه كان يتزمت (i.e. اصطنع قراراته حيال أوفيديوس) لأظهار رجولته (وهو ما كان يتم في روما القديمة من خلال إظهار رفض المشاعر emotions)؛ بالطبع حتى التزمت في هذه الحالة مثير للأهتمام لأنه يتزمت ضد الشهوة التي يروج لها أوفيديوس (وهو أمر ليس بالسهل). ما جعلني أتراجع عن هذا الحكم هو أني رأيت أنه نفى ابنته جوليا إلى بانداتريا، وكان قد نفى أوفيديوس إلى تومس الدانوب قبلها لنفس السبب. أرجح أنه فقط كان رجلًا منضبطًا لقواعده بشكل لم نعد نراه هذه الأيام.

يلاحظ أن الحكم الذي أصدره على ابنته كان حُكمًا مخففًا، والحكم الأصلي في هذه الحالة عند الرومان هو الإعدام، والمتعارف عليه هو أن العاطفة جريمة ولكن التنازل الطبقي كَبيرة. والتنازل الطبقي هُنا كأن يعامل العَبد كإنسان (حتى العَبد المحرر أو المعتوق كان يبقى عبدًا بالتزمات، فهو ينتقل لطبقة المعتوقين وليس لطبقة الأحرار)، لذلك كانت عقوبة أوفيديوس عظيمة لأن دعوى الاستفادة المتبادلة مع النساء (وهُن يشكلات طبقة أخرى) تستنبط (implies) التنازل الطبقي.

وغَير طبقة النساء هناك طبقة تسمى الماترونات، والماترونة هي سيدة من طبقات النبلاء (الحاكم وأولياءه)، والماترونة تتصف ببعض صفات رِجال الرومان المتعلقة بالعفة والإيجابية، ولكن ليست الإيجابية التامة. ما فعلته جوليا بعلاقتها مع تايبيريوس يرتكب جريمة العاطفة ولكن الأهم هو أنه يُثبت كَبيرة التنازل الطبقي، وهذا جوابه المتعرف عليه هو الإعدام. من الواضح أن أغسطس كان لم يكن يرغب في تطبيق القانون على ابنته، لكنه لم يكن يرغب بالتهاون كذلك، وهنا صدر قانون جوليا عام 18 ميلادية، وهو يقضي بالنَفي خارج البلاد لمن يتركب إحدى تلك الكبائر بدلًا عن الإعدام. ماتت جوليا فيما بعد بسبب اعراضها عن الطعام.

#hisotry

I have mentioned before my perspectives on the social media dilemma here (I don't recommend reading it if you did not, I wrote it fanatically 3 years ago) I've been reading Nietzsche recently as you probably guessed, and he did have a staid yet poetic dissertation on the very topic. I've collected anthologies of his from different books and I'd like to share them here (My naive translation included).

The endeavour to avoid one's renown, the intentional offending of one's panegyrists, the dislike of hearing opinions about one's self, and all through fear of renown: instances like these are to be met with; they actually exist—believe it or not!

أن يخشى أحدهم شهرته، ويهين عن قصد هؤلاء الذين يثنون عليه، ويخاف سماع الأحكام التي تصدر في حقه، خشية الثناء،— هذا أمر موجود بالفعل، صدقوا أو لا تصدقوا!

Here is some one who, you perceive, wishes to praise you: you bite your lips and brace up your heart: Oh, that that cup might go hence! But it does not, it comes! let us therefore drink the sweet impudence of the panegyrist, let us overcome the disgust and profound contempt that we feel for the innermost substance of his praise, let us assume a look of thankful joy—for he wished to make himself agreeable to us! And now that it is all over we know that he feels greatly exalted; he has been victorious over us. Yes, and also over himself, the villain!—for it was no easy matter for him to wring this praise from himself.

/تنتبه إلى أن شخصًا يريد أن يثني عليك: تعض على شفتك، ينفبض قلبك، عسى أن تتركني هاته الكأس وشأني! لكنها لا تتركك، بل تدنوا منك! لتشرب كأس بذاءة لسان المادح العذبة، لتتغلب على الإشمئزاز والاحتقار الشديد اللذان يوحي بهما جوهر ثنائه، لتظهر على وجهك ملامح فرحة الاعتراف بجميل ثناءه. قد كان لطيفًا معنا. الآن وقد حدث ذلك تعلم أنه يشعر بالابتهاج، لقد انتصر عليك—وعلى ذاته كذلك، هو ذلك الحيوان! لم يكن من السهل عليه أن ينتزع من نفسه ذلك الإطراء./

REFUSING THANKS.—We are perfectly justified in refusing a request, but it is never right to refuse thanks—or, what comes to the same thing, to accept them coldly and conventionally. This

قد نرفض طلبًا، ولكن لا يحق لنا أبدًا أن نرفض الثناء، سيعتبر ذلك إهانة كبيرة، لماذا؟

And my favorite one:

He who bestows something great receives no gratitude; for in accepting it the recipient has already been weighed down too much. A refined soul is distressed to know that someone owes it thanks; a crude soul, to know that it owes someone thanks. When the gratitude of many to one throws away all shame, we behold fame.

من يمنح ما هو جليل لا يتلقى ثناءًا، لأنه بقبوله يكون قد أُثقل على كاهله الكثير بالفعل. النفس المُهذّبة تبأس لشعورها بأن هناك من يدين لها بالشكر؛ رُوحٌ فجة، كي تحس أنها مدينة بالشكر لشخص ما.

The last one from Human, all too human I think is the most missionary thesis of his in this topic:

The reason why the powerful man is grateful is this : his benefactor, through the benefit he confers, has mistaken and intruded into the sphere of the powerful man, —now the latter, in return, penetrates into the sphere of the benefactor by the act of gratitude. It is a milder form of revenge. Without the satisfaction of gratitude, the powerful man would have shown himself powerless, and would have been reckoned as such ever after. Therefore every society of the good, which originally meant the powerful, places gratitude amongst the first duties.—Swift propounded the maxim that men were grateful in the same proportion as they were revengeful.

I think one of the most reasons he was consistent (and it is hard to consistent for an intensive writer, they usually have many contradictions) for, is that he knew no one would read him then. #Nietzsche