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Emacs ‘denote-data’ testing live today, 2026-10-12, at 16:00 Europe/Athens - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-12T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

This evening I will do a live stream where I will continue developing the new denote-data feature for denote: it is an opt-in, in-memory cache with no dependencies that speeds up all sorts of operations.

I have made lots of improvements to it and it is already looking very promising, though I plan to develop it further and eventually write ert tests for it.

I will keep the chat on the side and shall respond to any questions about my programming but also any other issue (the other day I did a 5-hour live stream on the topic of “ask me anything” because my live streams tend to be that, anyway—recording here: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-10-08-ask-me-anything-emacs-tech-politics-life/).

Leaning into how my brain works - Baty.net

2026-10-11T15:15:55.000Z

For much of my life, I've thought that I wanted to be someone else. Or at least be a person like someone else. Sometimes I'd even try to be that person. "That person" has usually been whomever I happened to be reading or watching something about. It's never worked.

Instead, maybe I shouldn't work so hard at being whatever kind of person I find interesting this week. Maybe I should be the kind of person I already am. Except, what kind even is that?

Fair question! The short answer is that I like the discovery phase of everything.

I love movies in which something strange is going on and people are trying to figure out what's happening. The problem is that I lose interest once they figure out what's happening and begin solving, killing, or running from whatever it is.

Same with video games. The games I enjoy are the open-world type where I can just walk around and explore and discover things. I don't want to be rushed, or die, or have to start over at some "save point." I only want to think, "Ooh, what's in here!?" and then see what's in there. If I get stuck somewhere for too long, I lose interest and quit.

Which brings me to my two main hobbies, photography and computers.

Computers provide an endless opportunity for exploration. There are software tools, operating systems, and nearly infinite different ways of using them. I want to try them all. This is why I do things like changing my blogging software every few months or so. I want to know what it's like to use Hugo, WordPress, Ghost, Eleventy, BSSG, Kirby, Pure Blog, and so on. It's fun setting them up, but in order to get the feel for one, I have to go all in and use it for a while. Later, once I feel like, "OK, I get it," I move to something else. Some of the time, I realize what I'm doing, but other times I come up with "reasons."

Todo apps, text editors, note-taking tools, you name it, all have the same effect on me: I want to try them. I want to see how they're configured and what it's like to use them "for real."

I spent like a year working on a transition to Linux. It was great fun, but once I felt like I'd mostly figured it out and needed to get actual work done, I kind of wanted to just fall back to macOS.

You get the picture.

Speaking of pictures, I want to know what it's like to use a large-format film camera, or a TLR, or an ancient Barnack Leica, or whatever. What's it like to process color film at home? How does scanning negatives with a digital camera work?

Anyway, I'm beginning to understand that this is just the way I am, and I will probably always be this way. I'm never going to be that guy who always shoots film using the same camera. I'm not going to be someone who uses a 10-year-old MacBook but never thinks about trying anything else. And so on.

I'll keep trying things, getting to a point where I "get it" or get bored, and then try something else. I've always thought this was something I needed to fix, but maybe it's just who I am, and I should lean into it.

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Small Prophets (TV) - Baty.net

2026-10-11T10:28:23.000Z

"Small Prophets" (Apple TV) has exactly my kind of vibe. After 2 episodes it's my new favorite show. Probably because it was created by Mackenzie Crooke, who also did the great "Detectorists".

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En écrivant sans sujet - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-11T00:00:00.000Z

Ceci est une note sans sujet. Quand il y a un sujet, l’attention de l’écrivain est concentré sur l’effort de dire avec un peu plus ou beaucoup des mots quel est le point de l’article. Ça c’est l’expansion d’une idée: voici le titre et voilà tout qui est relevant.

L’écriture sans sujet est un processus d’exploration. Je ne sais pas que est-ce que je vais écrire maintenant. Il y a beaucoup des possibilités, mais je vais avoir seulement un résultat qui va être cette note même.

La note consiste en l’unité de pensée entre les paragraphes. L’absence d’un sujet ne change pas la nécessite de cohérence. Les phrases précédents conditionnent les phrases antécédents. Autrement, nous avons une collection des expressions sans relation.

Mais même si nous avons une collection des phrases, c’est possible de trouver leur unité de collocation sur un fichier commun, ou leur unité plus abstrait comme, par exemple, des expressions comme expressions.

Ça veut dire que mon projet ici d’écrire une note sans sujet est impossible. La note va toujours avoir la cohérence. Ces phrases vont avoir une certaine forme de relation. Donc je peux lui donner un nom. C’est ça le sujet!

En ce moment là, le sujet est l’absence de sujet ou, peut-être, un petite commentaire sur quelques qualités d’une note en général. Tout que je fais ici démontre le futilité de mes efforts. Mais ce n’est pas vraiment futile, parce que j’ai déjà compris que en écrivant nous pouvons trouver quelque chose d’intérêt.

L’apprentissage d’une langue étranger est comme ça aussi. L’objectif n’est pas tellement claire. Je ne sais pas que est-ce je vais faire exactement avec mon français. Écouter de la musique française? Lire les actualités? Écrire des articles? Quelque chose d’autre? C’est toujours l’exploration de les possibilités.

Wonders of Web Weaving, Episode 22 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-11T00:00:00.000Z

The twenty-second episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:

In Episode 22, I chat with Tracy, the author of tracydurnell.com about, how websites fit into writing, writing series of posts, websites as part of conversations, and more.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.

The episode was released on Tuesday, October 11th. I usually publish the blog post announcement on the day, but I forgot this week.

Tracy tracydurnell.com The twenty-second episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed

Saturday, October 10, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-10T09:19:51.000Z

Freight Elevator (2011)

This is fun: Triple-A Minesweeper

It's my grandson's 3rd birthday. He's so great I can hardly stand it.

The complicateder I make things, the oftener things break, and the difficulter they are to fix.

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Walking - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-10T00:00:00.000Z

I stand before Nature, looking up to a castle bathed in gold light. What are perfect places? I wonder if this is the closest I’ll find: with the air of home and the light of Day, with the breeze in the trees and history to see; with life in the moment and rhythm and movement; with gentleness bathing the Earth, winds propelling leaves into the air, painting the picture of the season.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Going on a long walk through the city has become something of a tradition for me over the last few weeks. I like to take the long way to run errands: through the beautiful, expansive parks in which I see so many other people walking as the sun beams through the trees; through the streets with beautiful architecture, whose buildings leave me in awe; walking on the paths I love, while holding an eye toward discovering new ones.

Every walk is different, my feet going where they would like, guided by direction and experience but also wonder and curiosity. “What if I take this path?” I can walk with and through the feelings in my own heart, while listening to whatever songs seem to fit the mood, the energy moving from my ears to my mind to my legs that walk forward and forward. Occasionally, a song asks me a question. "What the fuck are perfect places anyway?" (Lorde)

The light from the sky was anew today; the sun lowers as autumn progresses. Paths I usually take become blindingly bright by mid-day. Whereas other places – like the aforementioned castle, or the pastry shop into which an intense glow beamed, drawing attention to the pastries in the front while I enjoyed the pleasing scent permeating through the open door – are illuminated in a way that brings me joy.

I thought about the familiar and the new. How the places I walk were once new and, with time, and walking, became familiar – how there is a spectrum of familiarity: of the places I know well, and of the places I am yet to discover. Standing outside one of my favourite bookshops, enjoying the powerful, cooling autumn breeze that, until this week, I didn’t realise how much I missed, I thought about how life is a mix of what we know and what we experience for the first time. Every moment is new, but holds associations to what we know.

I have visited my favourite bookshop a few times since they moved. But I have never visited it today, on this exact date – therein, the familiar and the new, together.

By the end of my journey today I felt my legs more than any other day this week; tense from all the walking, from all the exploration. I enjoyed my favourite muffin for lunch while watching the world go by, carrying with me a book on art history that caught my eye earlier in the day. Later on, I started to read the first chapter of the book with excitement – a relaxing moment after an invigorating day.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

And now I write, holding onto a question I have been thinking about ever since I started my second year at university, one provoked by our present studies of art and its environments: what does Nature mean to me? This is one of those questions I’ll need to hold in my mind and my heart for a while. For now, however, the question lives here, in the story of today.

Comments on an autism self-assessment test - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-10T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

Earlier today I read Sacha Chua’s latest blog post with the title Continuing my experiment with (semi-)retirement. There I learnt about the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), which is a test to self-assess one’s potential autism.

As this is a topic that interests me, I took the test. My score is 12 out of 50, which suggests that I have, at the very most, some autism traits. Though I think even that is a stretch: I am not autistic.

As the authors point out in their introduction, such questionnaires do not constitute a final verdict. Their utility consists in being a screening tool. They capture a first impression, which can then inform further research. Beside that, it is helpful for everybody to be aware of neurodiversity because then we can better understand our fellow people.

Since I took the test, I will comment on a few questions that illustrate the caution I generally have when it comes to these sort of tools: if we take them at face value, we can reach preliminary conclusions that are not going to be helpful.

“I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own”

I answered “slightly disagree” but I could have picked anything.

My favourite activity of all time is football, which is a team sport. I love playing football. Though I do not care much about fan culture or even watching matches. I enjoy the physical contact, the shittalking, the fights, the camaraderie, the effort it takes to be an athlete. It is wonderful.

I have, furthermore, been involved in jobs that are sociable or people-oriented throughout. My current job, coaching, is all about working with others. I enjoy it greatly.

In short, I have a strong pro-social side.

Still, much of my life involves solo activities. Chief among them is my writing, as I am doing right now. This is not a multiplayer game. When you are writing as much as I do, then you necessarily spend plenty of time in your own world. You are absorbed in thought, you concentrate, you collect ideas, you piece them together into coherent statements and compelling narratives. Your solitude is what pushes you to venture deeper into the hinterlands of the mind, to explore what few will ever see and to eventually return with a story to tell them.

My hikes are similarly solitary even though hiking is not inherently so. There is nobody in my wider region who walks like I do. Or, at least, I have never met them in all these years.

I have, furthermore, explained how I experience loneliness in this specific regard. In short, there is a part of me, my intellectual side, for which I feel I have no peers. “Peers” not in the sense that I am smarter or more intense, which might also be true, but that there is nobody around who shares those interests or, anyhow, has the intellectual curiosity to go beyond the surface level.

The loneliness, in effect, is that I cannot bring friends into my world. It is as if I am a fish that has somehow befriended humans. I am saying “hey, come to my place sometime” only to then remind myself that humans cannot live at the bottom of the ocean. But these are the only friends I can have, since I actually I am no fish.

Those granted, I have a pronounced sense of autonomy. I want to be with others and enjoy it very much, but I will not go out of my way for the sake of sociability. Concretely, I remain committed to my lifestyle and will not violate it to be more likeable. For example, I will not start drinking alcohol just to be amiable. No.

This is what autonomy is, by the way: self-rule. People tend to focus on the “self” part and how many options they have while forgetting the other half. If you have rules, then you apply them consistently in accordance with practical reasonableness. Otherwise, you do not have autonomy long-term because one “cheat day” after another will lead you to habits that are harmful (e.g. excessive alcohol consumption) which will, in turn, undo whatever rules you once had in place: the cheat days will become your new normal.

I thus am a pro-social person who is also fine being alone. This kind of in-between-ness describes me in may ways, in fact. I do not quite fit in to any group. I think for myself and follow my own path.

“I tend to have very strong interests, which I get upset about if I can’t pursue”

These are two different things in practice. One is to have strong interests, while the other is how easy it is for a person to get upset.

The latter does not describe me at all. It is very unlikely for me to feel frustrated. I have patience and my overall lifestyle over the decades helps me regulate emotion.

In short, I am stable. I liken myself to a cube. It is not fancy. There is not much to it with a “wow” factor. It is basic, really, once we compare it to more elaborate shapes. But a cube is resilient. No matter how you toss it, it will still be there, balanced and reliable. Compare that to some statue chiselled out of marble, for example. You are afraid to touch the statue because you understand how fragile it is

About having strong interests, however, this is definitely descriptive of me. I am the kind of person who goes in depth and does not get distracted. I will commit to something and keep doing it indefinitely.

Whatever I do, I want to do it well. Maybe not to the point of being the best at it, but to at least feel that I gave it my undivided attention as well as a fair chance to make an impression on me.

Given these, I responded to this question with “strongly disagree”. I do not get upset if I do not get what I like. I am calm about it. But, yes, what I like, I show loyalty to it.

“New situations make me anxious”

My answer is strongly negative, because I normally cope well with unknowns. This is directly linked to emotional regulation. If you think of me as a soundwave, then you will notice that there are no sudden peaks and valleys. It is a more subtle kind of tune.

If new situations were to make me anxious, then I would not be a philosopher. Whereas I thrive in openness and open-ended-ness. I can tolerate uncertainty and keep a thought without feeling pressured to let go of it.

As a philosopher, I take every idea seriously and will give it its due. I do not dismiss anything without considering how it might be right. This may sound easy, until you realise that lots of thoughts can upset us if we are not prepared for them.

Beside that, even seemingly innocuous and safe ideas can be dangerous if you dig deep enough. This is because you might discover something that is true in a more profound way; true to the point where your world collapses in the new insight.

A person must be ready to deal with such an eventuality before they even commit seriously to philosophy. Otherwise, truth will haunt them. In other words, people who feel anxiety in the face of new situations had better avoid what I do.

You have to imagine this as a risky adventure. I will go all alone into the forest because, fundamentally, I know that I am the most dangerous animal out there.

Those granted, what exactly we mean by new situations can change the final answer to the questionnaire. Do new situations involve betrayal, for instance? Could we be describing a case where one’s life is in danger? Are they being chased down by the authorities? How far do we want to go in the direction of something causing distress before we eventually answer the test affirmatively?

“I am a good diplomat”

This is another one that is tricky to consider. I already covered autonomy and how that means that I will stand my ground. In one sense, this makes me a terrible diplomat, because I will say exactly what I think. If I am pushed around, I will push back.

Though here we have to factor in emotional control. The way I will say something with calm will not trigger a strong reaction. This is because I am effectively not raising the other person’s emotional alarms. They get my message without feeling threatened.

So I do not find myself in troublesome situations because of something I said. This makes me more of a good diplomat. Additionally, I am a good listener and can engage in conversation for hours. Doing so helps me understand the other person’s position. Beside what they are saying, I also discern subtleties in their body language. I can read between the lines and understand what their need in a given situation is. This is a valuable skill for a diplomat.

Now to further complicate all this, I also have a certain upbringing and lifestyle that makes me rugged. I do not have the comforts that some people do and am thus content with tolerating some rough situation. Plus, my competitiveness, as seen through my involvement with football, among others, gives me a feeling that pushing for some discomfort is benign. Though I counterbalance that propensity for toughness with common sense and an understanding of what each person can do.

Closing thoughts

I could go through each question, but you can already get what I am working towards. This is a tool that can help us make sense of ourselves and of others. It is, nonetheless, important not to identify with its results because it cannot capture nuance.

The commentary I have provided here shows that at least for some questions you can reasonably answer with a strong agreement or disagreement. But therein lies the trap: the results will look quite different if you keep doing that.

At any rate, we all have to educate ourselves about other people. We live among them and should know how to treat each other well.

Friday, October 9, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-09T10:20:52.000Z

Caution (2009)

STATUS: Sinking unwept into oblivion
TODO: Find a compass
WATCHING: Nothing worth watching
LISTENING: To the sounds of crickets

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The End of Oak Street (2026) ★★★ - Baty.net

2026-10-09T10:12:44.000Z

I had no intention of liking this, but I did like it. It's a lot of fun, but I wish they'd spent more time on the "why". Still...dinosaurs!

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About dogs, power, trust, and decadence - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-09T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

The other day I had a visitor from the region. My gate is always open. Anyone can walk to my window and check what I am doing inside. This is what a local community is about. Trust among people combined with transparency. The private space blends into the public space. I know them and they know me, which is exactly why we have things in common that we recognise and safeguard, hence the common good.

The visitor is an old man who is involved in hunting. We have known each other for several years already. He just dropped by to say “hello” and brought with him a fine gift for the dogs: meat. I was just finishing a video call, so I let him treat the dogs himself, which he did. It was safe for him since the dogs know him already.

Normally, my dogs are friends with each other and there are no fights in the house. But because I was no longer there the situation was different. Atlas, the top dog, growled at Oreeon to make him know that he should not touch his allotted portion. Atlas was asserting his dominance through aggression. Then Atlas went close to Oreeon’s meat to guard it, while still eating his piece. This is behaviour I do not tolerate and outright discourage.

Once I was done with the call, I went outside to check on what was happening. Having already noticed the body language, I went to Atlas and picked up the resource he was guarding. I then established eye contact with him and told him “no” in a stern tone with a clear voice. I did not resort to brute force, though I made it clear that he violated the rules. Then I offered the meat to Oreeon. The puppy was now confident in eating, without worrying that the top dog would attack him.

Dogs are domesticated wolves. They do not have the sensitivities we do. This is ordinary behaviour in the wolf world. Though dogs are also intelligent beings who are very similar to humans. With the appropriate guidance they will do the right thing. They are a great example of something I always point out: show me the deeds, as talk is cheap. Dogs will discern the patterns in your behaviour and will act accordingly. You lead by example, not with platitudes.

My dogs are trained to let go of whatever it is they are holding, including their most precious meal. I do not negotiate and am not playing games. I can reach in their mouth and take the bone they are chewing on, for example. My body language speaks of decisiveness. They know I am not fooling around. This is the most important trait of canine citizenship every dog handler must cultivate. Otherwise, dogs can be extremely dangerous. More so for the larger ones, like my own, though the same is true for those tiny breeds who are evidently aggressive while their reckless handlers pass it off as “my baby is upset right now”. No, my friend, your baby has not been trained properly and we are lucky you are handling a small dog.

There is formal training and then there is conditioning. Training is about spending a few minutes to focus on a specific routine, such as to teach the dog how to sit. Whereas conditioning is your overall relationship with the animal. This is where you ordinarily teach the dog what is accepted behaviour in the human world, always within the confines of the dog’s abilities.

I condition my dogs on a continuous basis through how I interact with them. It is about working with incentives and disincentives. I create associations between signals and consequences. I am consistent in my messaging, so they are confident in my words and body language: those always have the same meaning.

For example, whenever I am off the computer, I go check on them right away. Because I do this with unmistakable regularity, they have picked up on all the cues, such as me switching off the device or saying “goodbye” after a video call. They even are aware of the time this might happen. If it is around noon, for instance, they know we are not going anywhere, whereas if it happens during the evening then things are about to get fun. They start stretching and get excited for some playtime and/or a hike, since that is what I have established as the immediate result of me switching off the computer.

I have never used coercion against my dogs. I am firm in my words and strict in my body language. My consistency is enough to put me in charge, as I mean what I show. My dogs know to follow my lead because I have invested—and continue to do so—a lot of time in building mutual trust. I play with them throughout the day. I will touch and hold their paws or tail, for example. Dogs are touchy and insecure at first, as those are among their weak points. But I keep doing it to (i) prove to them that I am not a threat and (ii) to boost their self-confidence.

My benevolence also communicates the potential for harm: I am showing them in unambiguous terms that I have the means to get to their weak points very easily. They understand that I can overpower them at will. I do not do it because of who I am and how I am disposed towards them, not out of inability.

This is not something special only I do. Every carer, every parent, every dog handler, consists in this imbalance of power, at least at some point in the relationship. To be concrete, the parent can destroy the baby at any moment, but they instead use their resources to feed the child, to see it grow and prosper. It effectively is a transfer of energy, underpinned by love which is expressed as caring and as trust.

There is no caring without power. Benevolence alone cannot be care-giving. The lifeguard at the beach may only save lives if they are a supreme swimmer, for instance. This is no longer a matter of vibes and good intentions. It involves skill that has a mental and a physical dimension. The lifeguard necessarily overpowers those who are drowning though chooses not to drown them but to rescue them instead. Same for the mother who feeds her child. Not only is she powerful herself, she even has excess energy to offer it to the child.

What matters, then, is the framing of power so that it is used in benign ways. Which brings me to the topic of trust. It is about reasonably expecting that despite one’s capacity to cause destruction their demonstrated ethos is constituted thus that they will employ their power in the service of the common good. Of course, there can be betrayals, though this is the calculated risk we take in life: without even a modicum of trust, there is no closeness of any kind, no love, nothing but paranoia.

Power is not inherently good or bad. When used properly, it creates a safe space where there is freedom. It is the inappropriate application of it, else its misuse, that causes damage.

A man who is domestically abusive, for example, is mentally feeble while still being physically potent. He has not worked enough on his mentality. He is not in control of his passions. Situations easily compel him to do what he later regrets, which means that he has no clear idea where to go and no unflinching commitment to its cause. He has not broken free from his daemons. In being abusive, he is tacitly admitting that he is not in control of the situation because fundamentally he is his own victim, owning to the fact that he is not in control of himself either: the daemons are in charge.

At the political level, when people say that they support democracy, for instance, what they truly want is a system of collective decision-making that engenders a widespread sense of trust through its day-to-day processes. Trust that is the real value. To have the ceremonies of democracy like in the West, in the form of elections and televised debates, while ending up with the rule of wealth, i.e. plutocracy, is to miss the point entirely. It is how we have the Epstein class in charge; a class that if of course egregious because each of them at the personal level is governed by their most pernicious passions.

Justice is not a state of affairs we are entitled to. It does not happen on its own because some piece of primary law promises so or because the parliament has promulgated thus. In the tiny microcosm of my house, I am the authority that formulates and enforces the rules. There is justice because there is my sovereignty, the indisputable power I have over my dogs, which I exercise with prudence in the interest of care-giving and the preservation of the common good. In the grand scheme of a polity, this is the role of institutions at the political level and tutelary figures across social groups.

A society declines once the tutelary figures do not live up to their role. The teacher does not embody their teachings. The doctor is not a paragon of healthy living. The politician is only interested in their own enrichment. And so on.

Political decline is the manifestation of degeneracy that has already occurred at the moral level. Morality is the socially constructed character of a person and the defining quality of interpersonal relations. This is why we have the word “ethos” as distinct from “character”. The latter speaks of genetics and epigenetics, while the former refers to acculturation.

For the teacher to not embody their teachings, there has already been a shift in mindset, a loosening up of integrity, a malfunctioning or absence of checks, and an indulgence of some kind. Same for all authorities, to the point where a crisis in the economy, a crisis of institutions, a crisis of identity, necessarily follows from decadence of the mind, corruption, irresponsibility, unaccountability, and so on.

“Crisis”, which is a Greek word, literally means “judgement”, the same way “critical” as in “critical thinking” does. It is about discerning what is right and what is wrong, which in this context refers to patterns of behaviour or attitudes that contribute to the reproduction of society versus those which lead to its enfeeblement and subsequent annihilation.

Same for “criticism”, by the way. Only someone who understands the domain can formulate criticism, since only they can deliver judgement on what is missing and what is surplus to requirements. Criticism is the best thing that can happen to you, for it provides you with the insight to emancipate yourself from some falsehood. Otherwise, what is typically described as “criticism” is an opinion that has not been thought through.

Back to the point of decadence, there is in this regard no distinction between the personal, the interpersonal, and the collective in its present and intergenerational manifestations. Those magnitudes are harmonious only when there is concordance of ethos throughout.

Civilisations do go extinct. History is full of such cases. The Athenians executed Socratis and exiled Platon, Aristotelis, and Diogenis, among others. They did it because those figures were speaking the truth; a truth that is often painful; a truth that a sickly organism detests with every fibre of its being. Athenian civilisation was thus in free fall before it got officially wiped out by the empires of Alexander and then the Romans.

The Greeks did not disappear. They remained around as a people, though their culture disintegrated and became irrelevant for centuries before it could begin to take form again. In the meantime, what stayed behind was the Graeculus, the servile and self-disrespecting Greek, and then the Romios, the [East] Roman subject who even derided their own ethnonym of Hellenes and their ethnos of Hellas.

The West is in the same self-loathing predicament right now. Western people are complacent in their ways. In their own fantasy land, they believe they are entitled to all the institutions they think they have. They expect that the vaunted “fundamental values” will be offered to them simply for who they are and will always be around. There is no willingness in their heart to put in the hard work. What they want is more pampers, greater comforts, deeper immersion, and incessant “lalalala” to not hear the destruction in their midst.

Such is their implicit exceptionalism, which is nothing but the intellectual vanguard of a civilisation in decline. Instead of looking at the world around them and their own duty to be upright, they either adopt a victim’s narrative, such as a grand conspiracy of some sort that holds them back, or they wave their finger telling us how great they used to be. Whatever they do, they turn inward, tending to their own parochial wants without concern for the common good. This is what all zombie nations are left with: virtue-signalling and name-calling combined with opportunism before it all goes down in flames.

The Athenians were just as smug and ridiculous while they were vanishing. Those people, whom Westerners exalt as the progenitors of their own culture, did exactly that instead of heeding criticism and were consequently swept into the dustbin of history. You decline, you disappear. The gods do not bargain with you. There are no exceptions.

Back to my dogs, they are all sleeping next to each other right now. The sight is endearing. I want to give them a kiss, but will first finish writing this entry. I know that they are domesticated wolves who have the capacity to kill each other over scarce resources. No amount of training can take the wild animal out of them. The same is true for humans, but we pretend otherwise.

I am aware that my dogs can be violent but are conditioned not to. They defer to my authority instead. What I know even better, and what they understand as well, is that I am the werewolf among them who guarantees peace through vigilance; peace because I have the tools to bring destruction but choose not to; peace through a sense of the greater good; peace by wielding power, the power to provide care and be there for them.

My favourite tracks on The Life of a Showgirl: Encore - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-09T00:00:00.000Z

I visit the Taylor Swift Subreddit regularly to follow along with news in the community, to read fun questions, and to see art made by fans. Lately I have been thinking along the lines of slashdiv that it would be good to see more fandom discussions in the small web. Then, last night, I thought “I should write something explicitly about Taylor Swift!”, adding to my slowly growing collection of posts on her music, now aggregated under their own category page.

With the meta commentary out of the way, let’s get on with the show, girl!

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

My favourite track on The Life of a Showgirl (TLOAS) Encore is The Fate of Ophelia. I don’t know how many times I have heard the song, but I know it is many and the song never gets old. The music video is fun and exciting, the melody is upbeat, and the lyrics are resonant. The line “All that time you spent alone in your tower” is one of my favourite lyrics in the song, speaking as someone who sometimes wonders whether they are spending too much time themselves.

Here is where things get tricky. I think Opalite is my next favourite, for the same reasons as aforementioned: the music video is terrific (and inspired me to create a pet rock page on this website), the melody is great, and the lyrics are good too. And then, I think is has to be Babylon, for the strong songwriting. The bridge, as I mentioned in my first post about the new songs, met me at exactly the right time. “The self-harm of never being where you are […] You're missin' all the best parts”.

It may be recency bias, but the remainder of the Encore songs probably come next in my list of favourites, in this order: Pink Clouding, Cleveland!, Patient Zero. All of the new Encore songs are good but for different reasons. Pink Clouding feels Midnights-coded and has a great vibe. Cleveland! is pure fun. Patient Zero tells a great story, and makes me yearn for a “no body, no crime” music video. (On the note of looking back to past albums, what are the chances Taylor releases an acoustic album of the Eras Tour mashups one day?)

I wondered whether I should rank all the songs in the album, but I think I’ll stick to what I have said above. Long story short, the Encore songs went toward the top of my list of favourites from the album. But, I still enjoy – and know the lyrics to most – of the other songs. Cancelled! is fun to play on the guitar. Ruin the Friendship has vocals that stand out. Honey is, like Cleveland!, pure fun.

I have used “fun” four times in this post to describe various songs. I think that says something about the joy this album brings to me.

aggregated under their own category page good to see more fandom discussions in the small web

Live: Ask me ANYTHING (2026-10-10 16:00 Europe/Athens) - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-08T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

This Saturday, 10 October 2026, at 16:00 Europe/Athens time, I will do an “ask me anything” live stream. I have been meaning to do this for a long time, but I never found the chance for it.

Ask me a question about anything—literally ANYTHING—and I will give you an honest answer (e.g. Emacs, philosophy, technology, keyboards, politics, the hut, Français, and more!). It does not matter if the question is personal or sensitive. I will give you a complete answer to the best of my abilities. If you need any ideas, check the rest of my website, where I write at length on a broad range of topics.

The plan is to do a live stream for at least 1 hour. If there are many questions, I will extend it to 2-3 hour or, generally, for as long as needed. And if there are no questions, then I can do something related to Emacs or close the stream earlier—no problem!

I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again. - Baty.net

2026-10-07T16:00:21.000Z

Every so often I suffer from what I call "Emacs Fatigue". It's closely related to "Text File Fatigue". Using Emacs tends to pull one toward using it for everything, which is what I'd done. Then, I simply grow tired of staring at the same thing every day. When this happens, I "decide" to uproot my life and move my notes into something else. This time, that something else was Bear.

Bear is great. It's solid, beautiful, and refreshingly simple. It syncs flawlessly (for free) and runs on macOS and iOS. It's also inexpensive. It uses an SQLite database, which doesn't bother me. Databases are great at this stuff. All the "But but what if the database...?!" talk is mostly hearsay anyway.

The thing that made me twitchy was that it felt like my notes were "in there". It's not the database. It's the fact that everything is in an app, and that app makes me need to use that app. This is how I'd started to feel about Emacs, but mostly due to Org mode.

Bear is macOS and iOS only, which should be fine for someone like me who has "decided" to live on macOS. And yet, Linux continues to emit a low-grade hum in the back of my head that I can't ignore.

If my notes can't be in Org mode files, but I'm still drawn toward Emacs, what should I do? Denote! That's where they'd all started in the first place. I'd nearly forgotten that Denote handles Markdown files natively. One Emacs configuration change and I was back where I belong. And since Bear notes are already Markdown, all it took was an export and a (Claude Code-assisted) conversion script for file names, links, and attachments.

So yes, I've done that thing where I quit using Emacs only to come crawling back later. I know better, but knowing better doesn't stop me. Maybe I'll work on a sync/bridge between Denote and Bear. That would be neat.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-07T11:44:28.000Z

Gourd (2026)

So, someone recreated the entire Adobe Creative Suite, open-source, all platforms, in Rust. Artcraft. I haven't gone further than to launch PhotoCraft, but it sure is ambitious!

Regarding "vibe-coded" apps, my current feeling is this... If an app works the way I want it, I'll use it, regardless of how it was made.

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Emacs: spontaneous live new ‘denote-data’ feature (2026-10-07 at 18:00 Europe/Athens) - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-07T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

This is a spontaneous live stream. I am working on a new feature for my ‘denote’ Emacs package. The idea is to implement an optional in-memory cache that can help speed up certain operations.

Tuesday, October 6, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-06T10:16:58.000Z

End of a roll.

A couple of weeks ago, I moved all of my Denote (Org mode) notes into Bear app on my Mac. I was feeling trapped by Org mode. I was tired of always having to convert from .org to .md and back again, so I made the call to go all-in with Markdown, via Bear. Then I changed my mind. Instead, I changed Denote to use Markdown rather than org-mode. That's better.

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Sunset - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-06T00:00:00.000Z

Frozen light yellow clouds hover under a grey sky, illuminated by the horizon sun.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

“I have never seen the sky like that before”, I thought to myself while gazing with my whole mind and body in wonder. The colour of the sky has a certain magnetism. When I first notice the colours change for morning or night, I love to stop and look out the window, to appreciate everything that I can see: the gradient from the blue above through the grey clouds to the yellow, and then gold, clouds behind which the sun wavers between awareness and slumber; the yellow from the sun glows through to the peripheries of the clouds; skies, Heavens.

Looking to my right, I see that not all of the horizon is coated in golden clouds; some parts of the sky are blue. This is a sunrise of contrasting colours right next to each other on the horizon line. I will probably have seen a sunset like this before, but I can’t remember the moment when I have. The sunset reminds me that there is new in the old; that there will always be something new to see at sunrise and sunset; that, the more I look, the more I see.

The sun has the power to transform grey clouds into a painting of vivid colours that graces the sky at both morning and night. As I write, sitting comfortably with my keyboard and room illuminated by the soft remaining light of day, I notice the change in colours: the gold are now red; the yellow clouds are now again grey. The blue is still on the horizon. The ephemeral colours are forever awe-some, glowing into the future like an Impressionist painting.

About memory and nostalgia - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-06T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

Living in the present moment demands situational awareness. You pay attention to your immediate surroundings and you notice changes in your environment. Those you discern exactly because you have a mental representation of the setting. Change is understood as the difference between one representation and another.

When it rained heavily during this past Sunday’s early morning hours, the stream adjacent to my land brought down a lot of gravel and mud. I have taken care to build infrastructure there with the intent of making my areas less susceptible to flooding. My work has yielded great results. I sleep peacefully now even during heavy storms.

Mountains erode naturally, even though human negligence can greatly speed up the process. Over the course of millennia every existing system on this planet will disintegrate, though the capacity for integration will remain latent in its constituents.

Entropy does not undo systematisation. It does not stop the forces that turned the originary star dust into bacteria, and dog, and plant, and human, and Earth or, indeed, that gave that very dust its innate pattern qua dust. Entropy is the same process of transfiguration that engendered the forms in the first place, which remains in effect ceaselessly, such that existing forms give way to forms-yet-to-be in an ever-lasting flux.

It is, because it is becoming; it becomes, because it is.

Presence with memory

Our experience is similarly one of being and becoming. There is no fixed point to it. One may not cling on to their adolescence, for example. What many refer to as the “good old days” are but a representation whose traces remain imprinted in memory. It is not their lived experience anymore as it does not form part of their environment nor does it characterise their interpersonal relations.

Though memory is inherent to one’s presence. It stays with them and it produces consequences in their life, such as by underpinning future-oriented projects or by determining how they choose among mutually exclusive sets of outcomes. A memory, then, is ever-present. What generated it may have transpired, but the memory itself persists to condition each situation as it unfolds.

This is true for what is thinkable, such as feelings one has about what their grandmother told them when they were little. It also is the case for information that is encoded in the very fibre of our being, unconscious to us yet definitive of our condition. Evolution effectively is the compounding and subsequent reconstitution of encoded memories.

That I am able to type this out is an indication of memory embedded in muscle tissue. I do not actively think where to move my fingers as I input the individual characters. While I am thinking through these words, my focus is on their sequence and the meaning they form. Because I have memory at the level of the muscles, I do not need to expend my limited capacity for concentrated thought on the keyboard. My attention remains undivided, directed at the topic I am expounding on.

The layering of memory

I speculate that whatever we consider as supreme skill effectively is an extraordinary layering of memory. Talent, in this regard, is the capacity to establish layers of automaticity which free the person’s attention from more basic tasks to then channel it towards higher levels of complexity. When done to great effect, there is excellence.

I think as much because I know from my experience with football how much knowledge is involved in each part of the process. Walking and then running is already something that needs to be learnt. Keeping your balance is a skill as well. Controlling the ball with your feet is already a challenge unto itself. Knowing where you are on the field is another difficult part of the sport that you have to develop. Then figuring out where your teammates and opposition players are relative to you and the ball. These and others are all improved through continuous practice and the accumulation of experience.

The person with an elite talent, then, is one who incorporates inputs so effectively that there is no waste in their efforts. They learn quickly and integrate findings into their existing corpus of knowledge to great effect. Furthermore, they are able to discern patterns among the mental representations they have, such that they can better predict outcomes. To continue with the example of football, you can recognise a skilful player before they even touch the ball: they move around with purpose, knowing where to be at each phase of play.

The layering of memory down to the little things

Excellence thus manifests as situational awareness. It is about understanding the prevailing conditions so well that you are no longer inhibited by them. One may think of the surfer who succeeds only when they ride the wave, but who otherwise experiences degrees of failure. Excellence consists in one’s alignment or harmonious adaptation to their situation. The most excellent is the most aligned.

I can write regularly at length because of the aforementioned layering. Writing is a form of collecting one’s thoughts. This is the case regardless of the topic and skill level. Every act of writing involves focus, which only happens in a state of calm.

I have been practising all the little things for long enough that they are embedded in my life as second nature. Each article flows naturally and I am able to quickly put it together. This was not always the norm. I remember when I first had to write a 2000-word essay for college: it took me months to do it. Now I write as much practically every day. And the quality is superior to what I could have achieved back then. I quite literally am a different person in this regard.

The office setup is as I need it to be. The keyboard is configured to my liking. My computing environment is optimised accordingly. My room has plenty of light. It is quiet outside. I can listen to the birds right now, while I can look at Olympos in the distance. There are no notifications on my phone and I am not on social media anyway, so I do not feel pressured to direct my focus away from the screen every few minutes. Similarly, there is not much happening on my computer screen. It is largely static and text-centric. All these in concert facilitate uninterrupted creativity.

Though the tools alone do not make the artisan. There is also work to be done at the personal level. On the technical front, this is about practising the relevant skills, such as to read, to speak, to write, to think things through. All have attentiveness in common. Then there is the overall constitution of the person. Benign routines that are stable contribute to a state of vitality.

This has been my normality for many years. It actually improves over time in what may be likened to a process of compaction. Every single day I wake up feeling energetic. My emotional state is stable as well. I do not have mood swings. I do not feel demotivated one day and excited the next. Reading something does not upset, anger, or otherwise push me towards an extreme reaction. It might sound boring in this regard, but I describe it as “what you see is what you get”. So this alignment I alluded to is uninterrupted all the way down to who I am day-to-day.

It is not a matter of intelligence. Plenty of smart people feel they are not in a position to control their attention and life in general as much as they would like. Intelligence may affect the degree, such as how quickly may one acquire knowledge. Though it does not remove the need for layering. Again, I can think of the gifted kid who could perform all sorts of tricks with a football, yet owning to the absence of work on the fundamentals was not able to become a decent footballer.

What I describe here is about paying attention to the little things. To take care of every part such that they all contribute to something greater. Layering is akin to construction work. If you mess up the foundation, then you cannot build something stable on top. It also is like organising your room. If you misplace stuff, then whenever you need to bring something new in you must first remove what you had misplaced. Whereas putting everything where it ought to be saves you from the future trouble and makes you more efficient as a result.

From memory to nostos

This brings me to the Greek concept of “nostos” (νόστος), which is a constituent of “nostalgia” (νοσταλγία). Nostos refers to one’s longing for home or, more generally, the want to be at the place where they belong.

Nostos necessarily covers themes of place and of space. What qualifies a specific location as home is that it exists in a wider space of peace, or calm, or sustainability, or generally one or more conditions which render it habitable, welcoming, interesting, and so on. There can be no viable place absent factors of viability inherent to the space.

The space that nostos describes encompasses people as well. If one is thinking of their village, for example, they are factoring in the kind of relations that are possible there, the familiarity with all the locals, the attendant sense of kinship, the perception of a shared destiny, and the resulting understanding of a common good that all agree to and aspire towards.

The village itself is no longer home if, for instance, it is turned into yet another theme park for tourists. There are no locals there with whom to develop a community centred around such a common good. The theme park attracts arrivists who come and go on the basis of business incentives, plus those who are keen on a fleeting connection with a simulacrum of local culture.

Wherein we discern the predictive power of memory. One may have an intuition of home without ever experiencing it. They have a sense of what would work for them as a space of viability and a niche carved therein. Memory thus has a future orientation as well.

One may harbour nostos for a bygone era. They may also have nostos for a potential state of affairs.

Pain in general

“Nostalgia” incorporates a second Greek word as a suffix: “algos” (άλγος). It literally means pain but can be more broadly understood as malaise. Algos is used in medicine, such as “myalgia” (muscle + pain-ness) and “neuralgia” (nerve + pain-ness).

Algos is thought of as something bad and it is indeed the case in the context of medicine. Though pain as such is a messaging system, a transmission mechanism to communicate some effect. If you are sitting all day, for example, you may feel discomfort in your back. This can develop into an injury, with varying levels of severity. What this is telling you is that you need to change your ways. Do not sit for so long. Maybe modify your desk setup. Check your physical conditioning. Et cetera.

Pain is the messenger. If all you do is silence the pain, such as with pain-killers, without addressing the reason it is there, then you are shooting the messenger: the problem persists and will return to haunt you.

In being a transmission mechanism, pain is neutral. It can still communicate a sensation whose longer-term effects are benign, such as the immediate discomfort of physical training which culminates in longer-term health benefits if sustained, but which can still be injurious if overdone.

The pain of nostos

Nostos consists in memory of a past world or projection into a possible future world. It can thus develop into a malaise when it detracts or distracts from the present by means of contradicting the prevailing conditions.

A person who is guided by nostos may feel unsettled where they are. They may sense that the world around them is inimical to their stay there. They may further believe that everything is falling apart and there is no way to take control over one’s milieu. Hence algos.

This is increasingly common nowadays for a variety of reasons, such as the ongoing industrial revolution in the wake of Artificial Intelligence. Plenty of jobs are becoming obsolete and many others are being radically transformed. There is great uncertainty about the nature of change and there also is concern about the pace of the transformation. Everything seems to be breaking and it is happening fast. A person may thus feel powerless in the face of magnitudes that are far beyond their control.

In this light, nostalgia can turn into depression. It is the longing for stability, which is so strong that it takes away from other considerations, such as the need for adaptability.

Though ours is a world of admixture. Nothing is purely good or bad. Whatever we get has elements of both. The result is thus subject to the application and extent thereof. In other words, it is a matter of degree. Even in this state of unrest, nostalgia in response to apparent powerlessness can inspire a root-and-branch rethink of priorities which can engender a bigger shift in one’s values and patterns of behaviour.

The individual may recognise the importance of community, for instance. They understand that it is no longer viable for each individual to live in their own filter bubble. They need to find the others and to be collocated with them.

Pain, then, becomes the driver for thoroughgoing reform whose telos is the cultivation of a sense of belonging, the formation of a shared destiny with others, and the establishment of a place that has the trappings of home.

Couched in those terms, it is a mistake to dismiss a view of the past as a rose-tinted representation of the world, such as what we had pre-AI. It is not about the past being faultless. Such is a strawman. But rather to appreciate how nostos comes forth as the distillation of the elements which are worthwhile even in the presence of the potentiality for harm and abuse. Those are clarified as important and then rendered in the conscience as irreducible components of a desired configuration of factors.

Future orientation depends on the ability to target what is worth having even in full knowledge of potential downsides inherent to it. The person who finds negatives in everything will eventually become nihilistic in their quest for perfection. Since nothing is ever going to be flawless, they will end up with nothing they accept as valuable. Nihilism become self-enfeeblement once it is totalised. It does so by removing all motivation.

There is no perfect home. What matters is an approximation that moves in the right direction. One understands that having a place where they belong is better than not having any, despite what it may make inaccessible. For example, to be home necessarily precludes the adventure of not being home. To make that judgement call is the sign of self-awareness, else maturity, and, more importantly, a precondition for drawing delineations between home and all that is non-home.

Moving my social identity to littleFedi - Baty.net

2026-10-05T13:09:29.000Z

As a habitual early adopter, I couldn't help but install my own instance of littleFedi and kick the tires. It didn't take long before I decided to move there.

I liked the software immediately. It was fast, simple (considering all the features), and easy to install.

I put up a poll on Mastodon asking if I should just go for it and migrate to littleFedi or should I post something on Mastodon pointing to the new handle. Within just a few minutes I had enough votes (13 to 0) in favor of fully migrating that I went for it.

An hour later and I'm now @jack@social.baty.net.

The nice part is that I'm in complete control of the software that my Fediverse identity runs on. The scary part is the same as the nice part.

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