Chomsky mentioned that the co-host of the NPR program "all things considered" had a statement on print saying that Chomsky is the only person that is not allowed to be hosted.

Chomsky claims also that in the gulf war, the NPR was pressured by people in Boston, which is the ideological center of the NPR and also some of the places in which Chomsky is pretty known, to host him:

I was told that I'm allowed to have two and half minutes, however, they insisted that I write out what I was gonna say, send it to the central office so they can insure that's okay, and once they approved it I had to read it, and they prerecorded it to make sure to make sure I was not going to ad a phrase that went off the limit.

Later, he had a bestseller book that they were pressured to interview him for a review about it:

And then we had a prerecorded 5 minutes interview with Robert Siegel. It was actually announced. At 5 O'clock they announced that they are going to have a review of this book and the publisher contacted me said it's great. It got 05:25 the program stopped and there were 5 minutes of music. at 05:30 they announced the next segment. And people starting calling me and asking what happened to the review.

After 10 minutes I got a call from the manager of the whole thing in Washington who said you know sounds very strange we got many calls saying that your review didn't appear we knew that it did I see right in my program here, so I said I do not know, after 10 minutes later she called me back she said that she was overruled for the first time ever by some higher- who heard the announced in first 5 minutes and canceled it.

#Chomsky #The limits on the (allowed) freedom of speech

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

SCHEDULED: <2024-05-01 Wed>

CLOCK: [2023-10-20 Fri 13:53]–[2023-10-20 Fri 14:10] => 0:17

The first appear of such laws in history was in April of 1463 under the governess of Edward IV, sumptuary laws dictated what color and type of clothing, furs, fabrics, and trims were allowed to persons of various ranks or incomes. In the case of clothing, this was intended, amongst other reasons, to reduce spending on foreign textiles and to ensure that people did not dress "above their station". #History #United Kingdom

CLOCK: [2024-07-20 Sat 06:31]–[2024-07-20 Sat 07:06] => 0:35

page 380 in Understanding power: the indispensable chomsky shows an important article in the wall street journal. Also see it's footnotes in the foot notes book.

How democracy is ruled? Noam Chomsky explains in (Chomsky 2002) how democracy in its current shape is immune to real change, in the United States of America for example with Bill Clinton administration:

Just to give you an indication, right after the 1992 election, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article just informing its readers that there was no reason to fear that any of the alleged “lefties” around Clinton would do things differently when they got into office. Of course, the business community already knew that perfectly well, as you can see by taking a look at the stock markets towards the end of the election campaign. But in any event, the Wall Street Journal explained why, if by some accident Clinton or any other candidate did try to initiate a program of social reform in the United States, it would immediately be cut off. They simply stated what’s obvious, and they gave the numbers.

The United States is deeply in debt—that was part of the whole Reagan/Bush program, in fact: to put the country so deeply in debt that there would be virtually no way for the government to pursue programs of social spending anymore. And what “being in debt” really means is that the Treasury Department has sold a ton of securities—bonds and notes and so on— to investors, who then trade them back and forth on the bond market. Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, by now about $150 billion a day worth of U.S. Treasury securities alone is traded this way. The article then explained what this means: it means that if the investing community which holds those securities doesn’t like any U.S. government policies, it can very quickly sell off just a tiny signal amount of Treasury bonds, and that will have the automatic effect of raising the interest rate, which then will have the further automatic effect of increasing the deficit. Okay, this article calculated that if such a “signal” sufficed to raise the interest rate by 1 percent, it would add $20 billion to the deficit overnight—meaning if Clinton (say in someone’s dream) proposed a $20 billion social spending program, the international investing community could effectively turn it into a $40 billion.

program instantly, just by a signal, and any further moves in that direction would be totally cut off.

In Poland:

Similarly, there was a great article in the London Economist—you know, the big free-trade pop-ideology journal—about the fact that Eastern European countries have been voting Socialists and Communists back into power. But the basic line of the article was, don’t worry about it, because as they said, “policy is insulated from politics”—meaning, no matter what games these guys play in the political arena, policy’s going to go on exactly the way it is, because we’ve got them by the balls: we control the international currencies, we’re the only ones who can give them loans, we can destroy their economies if we want to, there’s nothing they can do. I mean, they can play all of the political games they want to, they can pretend they have a democracy if they like—anything they please—so long as “policy remains insulated from politics.

CLOCK: [2023-08-04 Fri 12:00]–[2023-08-04 Fri 12:27] => 0:27

People just had their girlfriends killed off by policy. Things got real bad. The Replika community exploded in rage and disappointment, and for weeks the pinned post on the Replika subreddit was a collection of mental health resources including a suicide hotline.

Oh God. For a while I couldn't believe that there is such a thing as erotic chatbots; I thought that this whole article is just a prolonged satire.

rms comment made me laugh though;

The article shows how an emotional chatbot running nonfree software, or a copy that belongs to anyone but the user, puts the user in a terribly vulnerable situation.

What I understood is that he believes that the situation is actually bad because the user can not obtain ownership over the nonfree software, otherwise he could be fine. Maybe I will use this as an example of how having views that descends from a particular single major can frequently lead to injudicious views.

Another note is the notation of 'pet', this is related to my other post on Porn as a media platform for sexual violation; this 'pet bot', and almost any akin 'adult industry' will have a similar effect on the propagandizition of sexual violence and commodification of women bodies.

• [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

CLOCK: [2023-08-07 Mon 11:04]–[2023-08-07 Mon 11:36] => 0:32

Listening to Chomsky talking about linguistics urges me to study cognitive science again. I've been reading The Polymath: Unlocking The Power of Human Versatility lately, a fantastic book which advocates for having multi disciplines. I already hold some knowledge in various topics (can be checked from my Books list); though I think this only qualifies me as a "dabbling dilettante" as how the book describes, I want to pickup a discipline in which I will be good at just as I am in computer science. But not sure what that can be. I thought of statistic and I started a new statistics book, though I still believe that this still a computing science area. It's hard for me to get into chemistry (a disciple that I'm really interested in) because it feels vague; sometimes I wish if I were a chemist who are looking for a cs class; surprisingly computer science is one of the most open-access disciple to exist. I will start to consider linguistics.

#Chomsky #Linguistics

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 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.

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

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

Watching philosophy of sex.

We might say: A person consents to P when they understand what P is, agree to do P, and are not coerced, i.e. are not under duress. But what counts as coercion; what counts as duress? (for example, is saying, have sex with me or I will not give you some of my cake, coercion?)

A Nozickian account: X coerces Y into sex when:

1. X aims to make Y acquiesce to sex;
2. If Y doesn’t acquiesce, X will threatens to bring about some consequence that is less desirable to Y than acquiescing to sex;
3. X's threat is credible.

Then we can compare the two actions to detect coercion; if you go with the one that is not sex, but still being better with it, then it is not coercion (and therefor not a threat): you can go okay without a chocolate cake rather than being raped.

Problem: “Have sex with me or I'll break up with you.” Is than an acceptable threat? Mostly no. What about a woman that's not happy with her sex life and she tells her partner: we need to work that out or I'm going to leave. Sounds okay. But according to Nozickian's approach this is coercion because it's worse in this case not to have sex.

One way to fix the Nozickian account is to make coercion relative to what's normal or expected. Sex is normal/expected in relationships.

Wertheimer: “X coerces Y into sexual relations when (1) X proposes to make Y worse off relative to where Y has a right to be if she does not acquiesce and (2) it is reasonable for Y to succumb to X's proposal.”

Billionaire case: Frank is a billionaire, Sarah the mother of a child with a serious illness that she can't afford the treatment for. Frank offers to pay on the condition that she have sex with him weekly for a year.

On the one hand, Sarah has no good options, which seems to undermine her ability to make a voluntary choice.

On the other, we often have to choose the lesser of various evils. If you face either chemotherapy or death, doctors aren't coercing you into chemotherapy.

For Wertheimer, this is not coercion because Sarah doesn't have a right to Frank’s money.

Argument from the Chihuahua: In this example, the Chihuahua was brought into my house without my consent. Dougherty suggests that the same kind of thing is going on with Victoria and Chloe.

Argument from the concept of consent: To consent that X does P to you is to waive your right that X not do P to you. But how to determine which particular rights you waive?

Dougherty: the rights you waive are the rights you intend to waive.

Victoria has the right to refuse to have sex with people who don’t care about the environment. She can consent to sex with an environmentalist, without consenting to sex with somebody who isn’'t an environmentalist.

Victoria only waives her right not to have sex with an environmentalist. So Chloe's deception invalidates her consent.

Problem: isn't deception just part of the game? People lie about all sorts of things. It seems absurd to treat that as rape.

Subjectivism: consent is a matter of having a particular mental state, e.g. thinking something like “I agree to have sex with X."

Performativism: consent is behavioural; it involves performing certain actions, such as uttering “I agree to have sex with you.”

• Case 1: X is completely paralyzed, and desperately wants to have sex with Y but can't communicate this. To his delight, Y has sex with him anyway.
• Case 2: X and Y have just started dating. X falls asleep. While X is asleep, Y has sex with her. X is perfectly happy for Y to do this, but hasn't told this to Y.

The subjectivist would say that in these cases, X consented (Y just didn't know that X consented). The performativist would say that X didn’t consent.

1. The only way to assess whether or not consent obtains is by examining people’s behaviour. Response: deliberation is a mental process, but the only way to tell whether deliberation occurred is by examining behaviour.
2. Consent is morally transformative. If a person doesn’t know whether or not you consent, he acts wrongly if he has sex with you. On subjectivism, consent can't be morally transformative. Consent itself is impotent, since we can't read minds.

Your consent matters because of the difference it makes to what other people have a reason to believe. Response: distinction between harm and culpability. The subjectivist can grant that, if X hasn't expressed her consent, Y has acted wrongly and is culpable.

#Philosophy #Philosophy of Ethics

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 #Mythology

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

#Nietzsche #Poetry

"I will not add, I will diminish; I will train myself down to the standard of what is unchangeably true. Day by day I drop off my redundancies; ere long I shall have stripped my ribs; when I die, they will but bury my spine." —Mardi

كنيسة المغارة حيث السيدة مريم العذراء وطفلها السيد المسيح، قد أقاما ثلاثة أشهر خلال رحلة هروبهما من الرومان. تقع هذه المغارة أسفل كنيسة القديسين سيرجيوس وواخس المعروفة باسم كنيسة أبو سرجة. بجوار مدخل الكنيسة، البئر الذى يعتقد أن مريم العذراء والسيد المسيح بقيا يشربان منه خلال فترة إقامتهما هنا فى رحلتهما.

#Christianity

#Cinema

Manged to use Emacs as a music player I hate the MusicPD so much. I don't know a lot about music processing (actually, I rembember back then in school, I was very interested in the music processing chapter in signals, but for some reason I don't recall, I gave up it totally), but sometimes baiscally I think that "some" things shouldn't be "that" difficult to get it to work (that's why I think MS' Windows is a horrible OS), and MusicPD is very difficult to get it to work.

My first music player when I used GNU/Linux for the first time was cmus, I still love it. But after time, I think it was that "watershed" in 2021 that made me use Emacs over vim. I couldn't stand simple & minimal music player like cmus (bloat it or burn it😂), I moved to musikcube, and it was just prefect. The only problem was when I cloned my hard disk using Clonezilla, some files got corrupted. So when I had a queue with 500 songs, and the 12th song has a 'lost' byte of data, the whole queue is not going to play after this song is loaded (unless i resume it myself). And from here my suffer began, I moved to various QT music players (Clementine, Amarok, Strawberry, ELissa, etc..). I even used Spotify. I tried ncmpcpp but hell no MPD.

Today I was listening to this song Don't Wanna Leave You Now, Honey, I don't wanna leave you now🎵.

And I realized how much I don't want to leave Emacs. So I told myself with a wojak extied face-mask: damn it I will do that MPD shit. I looked up emms, I thought I would need configuration upon mpd (I accepted my destiny) but just M-x emms worked.

Well, today was not good at all, but I'm glad I can listen to music peacefully again.

(screenshot) #Programming #Emacs