~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

smol contract - erock's devlog

2026-11-09T03:14:00.000Z

I like limitations. I like frameworks that force me to be creative. The unix philosophy is a great example. Lately I've been thinking about the type of projects I like building and using. I see it as an extension to the unix philosophy. It's also not quite the suckless philosphy. It sits somewhere in-between them.

smol contract

Write programs that solve a well defined problem.

Write programs that behave the way most users expect.

Write programs that a single person can maintain.

Write programs that compose with other smol tools.

Write programs that can be finished.

status 003 - erock's devlog

2026-11-09T03:14:00.000Z

I wish I wrote more on this blog. It seems like all of my blogging energy is going towards pico, there's just a lot going on over there. I try not to talk about it too much over here since it gets enough of my attention.

I have so many project ideas and not enough time to work on them. It's getting to the point where I wish I could work on my side-projects fulltime. Pico doesn't generate enough revenue to make that a reality and I make way too much money as an SWE to justify the haircut, but I often catch myself daydreaming.

I wrote a post about this previously but I think about that first xkcd post all the time.

=> /floating

I'm a pretty risk adverse person but opportunities are presenting themselves and I can't help but wonder where they would take me if I just dove head-first into them.

Anyway, I can't really talk about that because there's nothing to talk about yet.

project updates

https://zmx.sh

I've spent most of my development time working on zmx which has been a ton of fun. I've been energized by the community engagement and am steadily adding features to it. I've been daily driving zmx ever since it was announced mostly just works. I'm definitely noticing some weird glitches where rehydration is putting the terminal in a slightly weird state, but nothing that a ctrl+L, a quick SIGWINCH, or pressing enter on the prompt hasn't fixed. Basically, the end-user can mostly recover when rehydration falls short. I just love the simplicity of it. It's a complete tool that competes with behemoths like tmux without all the complexity. So freaking cool.

https://pico.sh

Antonio and I have really ramped up development here. We have so many ideas on improvements and features we can build on top of pico it's making us dizzy. We have really ambitious goals here and a foundation that is rock solid. I can't talk too much about our plans yet but expect major changes to the platform this year.

https://starfx.bower.sh

This project is still actively being worked on, mostly by other contributors -- like Jacob. He's doing a great job working on it and has some interesting ideas around how we can support sync engines like yjs, electric, etc. He has some proof-of-concepts that we plan on iterating over the next month.

https://ghostty.org

Since I'm using libghostty for zmx I've been slowly dipping my toes into the terminal emulator code. I have even submitted some PRs -- one of which was accepted recently! I'm heavily leaning on code agents to help me navigate the codebase but I'm slowly acclimating myself to it and I'm excited to help contribute to such an awesome project.

dev tool updates

neovim -> kakoune

I can't believe I'm saying this but I switched from neovim to kakoune. How did this happen?! Kakoune is such a great editor. I don't have any plugins installed and it has completely replaced neovim. Once I uderstood how powerful select -> action is, there was no going back. I still love neovim, but it's tinkering hell. I remember when I first built neovimcraft years ago, there were only around 150 plugins on that site. Now there's over 1100! There is no way that any editor needs that many plugins. I mean honestly, how many plugin managers and fuzzy pickers do we need? I think vim, and by extension, neovim are both stuck. They have decades of confusing key commands they have to continue to support. It's not a cohesive experience. I spent a couple of months trying to force all my pickers into the quickfix window because it's built-in and is essentially the OG picker. But it just isn't well thought out at all. I'm going to write a separate post about kakoune because it deserves it.

=> https://kakoune.org

=> https://neovimcraft.com

end

I think that's it for now, thanks for taking the time to read, and feel free to reach out.

On the trade-conquest continuum, Western empire, and the political centre - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-11-09T00:00:00.000Z

This is my recollection of comments I made at a local gathering on matters of strategy. My commentary incorporates elements of history, geopolitics, economics, and human nature, though it retains a largely theoretical and macroscopic perspective. What I cover herein is a continuation of recent essays on the general direction of European Union politics in relation to Russia, China, and the Middle East, among others:

Notes on the underclass, materialism, corruption, religion, and ethnicity (2026-10-01)
Notes on European geopolitics in Ukraine and the Middle East (2026-10-14)
Welfare versus warfare considerations in Europe (2026-11-03)
From European austerity to warmongering (2026-11-04)

The trade-conquest continuum

We rely on models to understand the world. A complex reality is reduced to simple elements. By examining the model, we get a sense of the mechanics at play. The model is not reality. It is, at best, an approximation. To understand the laws of supply and demand, for example, does not make you an effective investor. It simply gives you a framework with which to make sense of events in their most basic formulation.

My theory, then, is that trade and conquest exist on a continuum. Their difference is one of degree or emphasis in how they use certain means over others. Yet both work towards the same goal: to gather resources from disparate parts of the planet in order to increase the quantity and/or quality of goods in circulation.

Both the businessperson and the conqueror want power through which to secure access to resources, whence comes enrichment. In practice, the businessperson and the conqueror are the same person or social class.

Consider a simple world of a peace-loving Greek merchant who travels from Athens to Egypt on a boat. He transports olive oil and brings back grain. These are ancient times when boats are relatively small and flimsy. Each vessel can only carry a limited amount of food and water for its crew.

The logistics impose their own realities. If the benevolent Greek merchant does not want to make any stops on the way to Egypt, such as at Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus, he will have to fill the boat with supplies for sustenance. This is a several-day trip. Not making any stops is bad business because there is no room left for the olive oil and then for the grain.

So our do-gooder merchant must stop along the way. Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus are three obvious destinations. On each island, the merchant will fill up his stock of food and water. This requisition means that (i) there exists a local economy that can supply those goods and (ii) the people there are positively disposed towards the merchant.

In the ancient world it is impractical to have a thriving settlement close to the seaside. It is exposed to pirate raids. The coast itself is arid land, saturated with sea salt, and thus unsuitable for agriculture. Herding is not an option either as there is insufficient grass. Settlements must be established further inland, while the coast is either abandoned completely or covered with fortifications.

This poses a technical problem for the merchant. Going all the way from the coast to some inaccessible highland is an expensive and time-consuming endeavour. His incentive is to have a commercial centre around the port and source everything he needs from there. The centre of commerce may then handle the logistics with its own hinterlands, so that the highlanders can still live where it is safe for them.

Port towns emerge. They attract businesspeople and artisans. Security forces are there too, to staff the watchtowers, defend the perimeter, keep the burgeoning market in order, and ensure safe passage for boats.

In case where you cannot see where this is going, I am giving you a thumbnail sketch of colonialism. The Greeks founded many such port-towns, else colonies. The modern cities of Marseille, Naples, Odessa, Yalta, Trabzon, Tripoli in Libya, are only a few of many examples. As one ancient Greek comedian put it, the Greeks are frogs around a pond: they just hang around the shores.

Those colonies were, in effect, transit stations. Nothing like the colonies of the Western European powers which divided all of Africa among themselves. So “settlements” is a more accurate term, though those can still evolve into “colonies” in the modern sense once they assume control over their surrounding lands. A relatively small group of settlers was stationed at the coast and was doing business with the lands further in. In some cases, such as in Cyprus, Greeks lived further inland, though the norm was for them to interact with foreign peoples.

The point though is to understand the mechanics, which are a function of the logistics of trade, which itself depends on technology. For someone to do commerce between the Greek mainland and Egypt, they depend on a network of allies along the way. Without those allies, the business endeavour is not viable.

Those alliances have to be stable, such that a futures market—the stock exchange!—can be relied upon. Which means that there is a powerful incentive for those allies to also be involved in the broader business. Bonus points if those allies are of the same cultural background and can more easily reach consensus among themselves.

Much of what I have described here holds true for all trade and all possible transit stations. Imagine wanting to do commerce from the Netherlands to China. Now you understand why the African coastline as well as all the island nations in South-East Asia are essential for a Dutch businessperson.

None of this is specific to seafaring nations. Overland trade follows the same logic. The Silk Road is one obvious example with its numerous commercial centres and empires along the way. The same pattern, albeit now with outright militarist means, is discerned in large migratory waves. The Goths sacked Rome, for example, only to eventually establish themselves as trading partners in the region. We are always observing the trade-conquest continuum. Outright violence is how a group/nation gains a seat at the table and how it is subsequently promoted/relegated in significance.

As you can easily imagine, if the incentives are strong, which they always are when it comes to survival, people will be willing to fight even if they start out as peaceful merchants. War is the continuation of trade, the preparatory phase for the prevailing conditions of a given arrangement of commerce, and the catalyst for the formation of a new order in which trade shall occur anew. It happens because, in its most basic sense, people need to secure resources and have a tendency to demand more than the absolute essentials. The computer is not absolutely essential for me to live nor for you who is reading this on some digital device, yet here we are.

You cannot understand war if you are not willing to think in very practical terms about the logistics of life and then about what exactly you need to conduct trade in a manner that is reliable and sustainable. It is a mistake to think that the affluence you have now is your default condition. As soon as you withdraw into isolationism, you give others the space to move in. Nature does not leave a vacuum behind. This may be what you want, though understand that if you then need to trade with those people, they will be in a stronger bargaining position. More on this point later.

Furthermore, you cannot make sense of imperialism if you decouple it from your everyday spending habits. Concretely, if you need your coffee each morning, bananas on demand, black pepper for your soy bean meal, fertiliser for your crops, plentiful energy for your travels, a ready-made infrastructure for your vacations, and so on, you are already depending on a network of global connections that is underpinned by legal-institutional arrangements which themselves are backed by the potentiality of brute force. You literally cannot live that life in a remote village governed by autarky (self-sufficiency).

To continue with the Greek example. The Greek mainland is mountainous, rocky terrain surrounded by long infertile coastlines. This land makes for hardy, unruly, and sparsely populated communities. As a result, the Greeks were and remain relatively small in terms of population count. Compare their numbers to the vastly richer and far more interconnected neighbouring lands of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt… What you see today could not be much different than what was always the case: the baseline of Greece is ruggedness, which compels its people to seek an exit to the sea, hence trade and with it latent conquest.

Business, coercion, and bargaining

Even if we assume well-meaning agents, trade is always volatile because people do not control the weather. In my simple example, there may not be enough olive oil in a single year or a decade. Or it may have rained so much that the taste is not palatable anymore.

Our peace-loving Greek merchant goes to the Egyptians with his meagre produce and the Egyptians are not impressed. He cannot sell anything and so he cannot bring grain back home. What does this actually mean for the poor Greeks? Starvation or malnutrition, of course. Maybe they do not have to go to war with the Egyptians, but they still need to figure out alternatives. Perhaps they can peacefully expand further inland in all of their settlements. But if the hardship persists then war with somebody will be an appealing value proposition.

I say “value proposition” because it is exactly that: a cost-benefit calculation.

Now think practically again about bargaining. In its most basic form, the goods sell themselves. The olive oil is so tasty that the Egyptians are willing to trade half the Nile for it. But they will otherwise drive a hard bargain to push down the price and maximise their profits. They need food just as much as the Greeks do.

War or the threat thereof is advantageous to improve one’s bargaining position in international affairs. If the other side has valid reasons to fear that the threat is actionable, they will be more willing to make business under favourable terms. Welfare and warfare go together.

Take the Strait of Hormuz, for example. You already know how much of an impact it has on the global economy and how it is directly linked to the cost-of-living crisis in Europe. Suppose there is no war. Arabs and Iranians are exporting oil and gas to Europe. For whatever reason, they decide that the price is not fair to them anymore. Maybe they have endured years of drought and they need the extra money to pay for their desalination infrastructure. They have to renegotiate the price, else they will die. How do you gain a seat at the table or promote yourself while there? Well, by coercion of course.

They withhold exports and keep the tankers at bay. The Europeans are feeling the pressure. They have to make a deal with the Iranians and the Arabs, or go to the Russians, or continue to pay the hefty price that the Americans place on their own exports. What does Europe do? The peaceful option is to become permanently poorer—good luck telling that to people who think they are the epicentre of the world! Another is to gear up for war, which is where we are now. This does not mean that Europeans have to fight, but only that the increased activity towards that end changes their bargaining power.

The possibility of coercion is part of deal-making. Same idea for the potentiality of war.

Now you already understand that this applies to international trade more broadly. Think about the average person who lives in the city. They consume fruits every day but have no idea about the seasonality of plants. Oranges do not grow year-round. It is entirely possible for a person to not recognise a raw walnut or to have never seen an almond with its shell before. They are disconnected from the actual work on the ground. Consider every kind of food at home, every interpersonal exchange that involves bargaining, and you can easily imagine what it takes to keep everything running smoothly and, more importantly, what makes it cheap. Unlike what Economics 101 would have you believe, there is an iron fist behind every invisible hand—and it is not gentle at all.

This all explains how pirates and businesspeople are fundamentally the same. The guns you use to fend off aggressors are the guns you rely on to get a better deal. The reason this does not happen as much in the domestic economy is because of what I mentioned earlier: security forces, i.e. the state even in its most primitive form, have assumed monopoly of violence over the area they control. There is a regulated space therein exactly because there is sovereignty, else supreme authority backed by preponderant force.

Europe’s naval and continental powers

Against this largely theoretical backdrop, I want to turn my attention to Europe and then the Western empire at-large. The macroscopic historical view of Western imperialism reveals a constant amid the incessant change: the centre of power shifts but the overall structures remain in place through a process of conflicts and alliances.

In very brief terms, we have the Romans moving their locus of power from Rome to Byzantium, later Constantinople (now Istanbul). They did it to retain control of their holdings in the Middle East. The Eastern Roman Empire persists for a millennium through ups and downs before it falls to the Ottomans while the Western part goes through a process of transformation that involves a lot of back and forth: we have among many others the Goths, the Frankish knights leading up to Charlemagne, the Crusades in the Middle East as well as the Christianisation of the Baltic nations by the Teutons, the integration of the Nordic kingdoms, the eventual emergence of Colonialism with the discovery of the Americas and the creation of new trade routes across all continents. We eventually reach modernity. The Ottomans are gone and the West has retaken most of the territories that once belonged to the Romans. Fast-forward to the 20th century when the naval empires of Europe disintegrate only for America to rise in their stead.

Two European powers that do not fit this trend are Germany and Russia. I consider Russia European in this context even though its reach is far broader. That is because its centre of power was and remains west of the Urals. Plus, the Eurasian Steppe makes it so that even Germany can, in theory, exert control deep into the Caspian Sea.

Germany and Russia are both continental powers. Their imperialistic version is as hegemon of the European continent, especially the wider region stretching from the North Sea to the Black Sea, with access to the Baltic Sea in between. They are natural antagonists though, as they will find themselves competing over the same resources, something that is ongoing in the Ukraine war.

For Germany, most of the natural space for its expansionism is towards its east and north, while for Russia it is towards its west and south. Always keep in mind the trade-conquest continuum. This is not about brute force per se: they can have alliances along the way and mutually beneficial trade arrangements. For example, German capital is invested in Poland.

The natural space for expansionism is governed by geography. Flatlands connect distant areas into easily traversable units. Whereas mountains, deserts, and large bodies of water create separate spaces. This is a matter of logistics, else technology and its attendant economics. Even with primitive means, it is relatively easy to go from Belgium to Germany. Whereas the same distance in absolute terms from Greece to its north across the Balkans is much more demanding because there are mountains in-between. To think of this principle in its most basic formulation, imagine riding a bicycle on flat ground as opposed to steep slopes.

The European integration process formally started in the 1950s. Since the 1990s it has been made manifest as the European Union and since the 2000s it has its own single currency, the euro, which continues to grow in importance. The trajectory is for political union, though the immediate next step is for a supranational military capacity.

With the European integration process, Germany has effectively become part of the West. It no longer is its own pillar the way it was during the time of the Prussians and then with the two World Wars. The EU is not a German empire per se, though it makes sense to think of it as a Franco-German tandem plus friends. A newer Carolignian Empire, if you will. France and Germany practically control the EU in many important ways across all institutions. To put it concretely, no decision is adopted that goes against both France and Germany.

Furthermore, the EU is the de facto political arm of NATO in Eurasia. Even though the Europeans seem to be chasing their tail at times, and continue to promote underwhelming leaders, they still have considerable economic power and military might. Only a fool would underestimate them.

Once we understand the EU as a Franco-German alliance at heart, we know that it is something special in the history of the continent. We also know that it is on a collision course with Russia, competing with it over influence across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, among others.

As I have explained at greater length before, the EU has an energy problem. To recap very briefly, it can get cheap energy from Russia or the Middle East and thus may improve its bargaining position vis-à-vis China. To pressure Russia into a good deal, the EU has expanded eastward and has, for the past decades, been trying to bring Ukraine and the Caucasus nations under its sphere of influence. Russia has the direct opposite drive. It wants to sell to the rest of Europe but only by improving its own bargaining power and thus increasing its profit margins. Holding on to Ukraine and Central Asia, and, further, neutralising the Baltic/Nordic nations is in its long-term interest.

With regard to the Middle East, European elites are strongly in support of Israel, even though electorates are not enthusiastic about it right now. Strategically, this makes perfect sense: Israel is a fortress state that disrupts the Arab world which, depending on how you want to look at it, stretches from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Israel’s location connects it to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, with relatively easy access to East Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the Arab Peninsula. Europeans have wanted this level of control for millennia: Israel is the latest iteration of a long historical trend.

Israel has hitherto been a destabilising force in the region, which is good business for Europe and the West at-large, as it strengthens its bargaining position towards the Arabs. The war in Iran, albeit frozen as of this writing, fits this same pattern.

The two energy corridors that Europe benefits from are the Eurasian Steppe and the Middle East. They both meet in Central Asia to the west of China, knocking on the door that reads “Xinjiang”, i.e. the Uygur lands. If you think the West actually cares about the human rights of the Chinese Muslims while it so happily bombs Muslims elsewhere, now you have a better sense of how the dots are connecting.

Greater control over this wider region also provides leverage against Turkey. The Turks are part of NATO though have historically carved their own space in international relations as a power broker between superpowers and a regional power in their own right. In other words, the Turks are not strictly Western in terms of allegiance. But if the Europeans achieve what they want, then they are necessarily putting pressure on Turkey to commit fully to the Western empire else risk its territorial integrity. The historical precedent of the Ottomans is not forgotten.

There is a third route, by the way, through water and land, that connects Iberia to the Gulf of Guinea. While critical, it does not have the direct effect of weaking Russia, China, the Arabs, the Iranians, and the Turks, all at once in the same way the aforementioned two corridors do.

Nationalism and the imperialist outlook

A common mistake is to think of nationalists and globalists as opposing camps. I will explain why this is not the case. Nationalism becomes globalist in its outlook through imperialism.

Consider once again the example of the benevolent Greek merchant travelling to Egypt. If most Greeks benefit from this exchange or acquiesce to it, then they have a shared interest in the success of the endeavour or are anyhow not opposed to the government backing the project. The administration will thus take care to remove all impediments to trade. They will be willing to support the merchant with a sturdier ship. The military will want to join along so as to deter pirates and to make bargaining more advantageous, as I explained earlier. Tax breaks will follow and other such interventions to boost the merchant’s competitiveness. In the figure of this merchant, the nation has identified its champion: he promotes the national interest through international dealings.

In this simplistic yet realistic scenario we identify both nationalism and capitalism. In its basic form, nationalism is the ideology of using the national interest as the sole guide to foreign affairs. Capitalism is state intervention in favour of capital owners. They go together, since nationalism that does not favour certain enterprises will not have strong business partners with whom to advance the national interest along the lines of the trade-conquest continuum.

From this we also get social stratification. Anyone who actively promotes the national interest enjoys preferential treatment over those whose labour does not obviously contribute to the stated objective. Even if we assume benevolent actors, we end up in a situation where, say, supporting the merchant is more economically significant than supporting the small game hunter.

The society as a whole is reconstituted to optimise for one class. The beneficiaries of the intervention establish their dominion over the rest of society, branding themselves as aristocrats. From there, everything is in place for the ruling elites to extract more value from the nation than what is strictly necessary for their business. They may even think they deserve as much, since they are the promoters, indeed the embodiment, of the national interest. “Where would the nation be without us?” is a question they will raise.

Consider, further, that imperialism creates the conditions for war. By accumulating riches, the nation/class has made itself a target. Others are keen on getting some of that treasure for themselves. The elites must therefore actively suppress or sabotage any force that might rise against them. This means that they have to deny space and to snuff out any movement whose values and conduct could inspire opposition to the establishment. Theirs is a totalising project: to be everywhere and to act preemptively.

Nationalism easily flows into globalism and produces capitalism. Think of this as a cycle. Ethnicity is not eradicated. Local communities still develop their own sense of identity and eventually define themselves in juxtaposition to others along lines of language, culture, and geography. From anational interconnectedness the ethnically defined peoples may choose to push back to create their own independent communities with which to get a better bargain in terms of trade-conquest. Those will be driven by an ethnic form of nationalism, which itself will turn increasingly globalist through the continuous want for trade-conquest… The cycle invigorates itself.

What breaks the loop is isolationism. It moves away from the trade-conquest paradigm, choosing autarky instead. Though even then, this is not an initiative that can survive unilaterally. For as long as there are parties in the world that do trade-conquest, and for as long as imperialism has a totalising propensity, every isolationist is destined to servitude and/or genocide.

America is not the Western empire

With this big picture view in mind, it is time to factor in the insight about the shifting locus of power. America became the de facto leader of the Western world in the aftermath of World War II, culminating in its unipolar moment after the Cold War. The French and the British were weakened by the two World Wars and eventually lost control of their colonies. Though the imperial influence did not go away. There was a different foreman in town, eager to pick up the project from where the previous management had left it. The rise of America thus represents the shift of the centre from Paris and London to Washington.

Every nation-state is an instituted reality. It represents a constitutional order which itself is an arrangement of converging interests manifesting as a stratified society. National borders are expedient in safeguarding the national champions but are otherwise not central to the logic of capital accumulation. Those who control capital see nations as expendable tools. They use them for as long as they are useful. Then they move on to the next country that is capable of sustaining the trade-conquest agenda.

My sense is that America is rapidly declining as the foreman of the Western empire. They still have money and guns, but they have reached a point where their people think they are entitled to the opulent life without having to rely imperialism. In other words, the Americans do not understand how they are beneficiaries of the trade-conquest continuum.

Their role as effective foreman is hampered by their domestic politics. We see this in how unpopular the war in Iran has turned out to be but also in how Zionism no longer has the sway it once did. It remains the dominant ideology of the military-industrial-financial complex, though the average American is not on board anymore.

The pro-Palestinian camp is gaining ground at the grassroots level, even though it has not yet translated its wants into concrete policy. Should the owners of capital in America reach the conclusion that they can no longer control politics there, they will shift their money elsewhere. A new foreman will thus emerge.

Should that happen, I think everything is pointing towards Israel and, by extension, the European Union with its supranational military capacity. But Israel in particular. They are leading the offensive in the Middle East. They serve as a springboard into East Africa and the Indian Ocean. Their influence is already extending to Cyprus, the Balkans, and the Caucasus via Azerbaijan. With more money the imperialists will do to Jerusalem what the Romans did to ancient Byzantium, shifting the political centre of the empire accordingly. Zionism may be discontinued in the process, as the mood shifts from ethnic nationalism to globalism. Though this is beside my point right now.

I will not be surprised at all if the intimate ties between the Mossad and the Five Eyes (intelligence agencies of USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) evolve into other forms of cooperation, such as the British military bases in Cyprus coming under Israeli control in some kind of agreement that is peddled as the removal of the last vestige of colonialism from the island.

My point here is that Israel cannot be treated in isolation as a generic nation-state. The empire is looking for ways to remain relevant in this century as well.

A lot can change, though the overall structure is this one. In conclusion, we have to understand the world as-is in order to know what kind of interventions are possible. If we want to influence a certain outcome, we have to reason about its nature, identify its contributing factors, figure out how best to disrupt them, and act accordingly. I know it is easier to say “I am against THIS” though I also understand that such sentiment is not enough on its own to create actionable alternatives.

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Weeknotes W4 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-09T00:00:00.000Z

Last weekend was so busy that I was too sleepy to write my weeknotes at my normal time. Thus, herein is a condensed version of my weeknotes.

Editorial note

In Weeknotes W1, I said that weeknotes would be a four-week-long experiment, with my writing one weeknote every week for four weeks. I have been enjoying the process, and so I think I am going to keep this going. I am not setting another goal, but will continue with this format for as long as I find it interesting.

Highlights of the week

Last week I:

Attended an academic conference online for the first time. I don’t think I was completely the target audience – there were so many words used that I have not yet encountered in my studies – but I enjoyed almost all of the talks to which I listened. The event was two days long. The only downside was that lunch was 30 minutes, and there wasn’t really another break between the rest of the talks.
Went to the Edinburgh Zine Fair. There were at least 20 vendors, collectively selling the widest variety of zines. I bought one zine that lists supermarket reviews of sardines, another on the introduction of Britain’s decimal currency, and a few more miscellaneous ones. The highlight of the event was getting to talk with other people who make zines. I asked one person how they made zines so small, and they shared that they like to use the pieces of paper left over. I love this concept, and feel inspired to try and make a few smaller zines.
Decided that I would participate in Writing Month. I am setting myself the goal of publishing one poem on my website every day this month. It has been going well so far. A side effect of this goal of trying to publish a poem every day is that I have many drafts of things that intrigued me but are not ready for publication. For the last few days, my poems have been haikus, a format I may write about in the future.
I made a few changes to Artemis:
- I moved to use the “lingua” Python package for language identification, which is being used to add the country code before a post title in Artemis if the post’s language is not my primary language. See “Brainstorming the multi-lingual reading experience for Artemis” for a write-up with background. This is only implemented for me right now, but I would like to roll it out to more people. To do so, I will need to add a feature for people to be able to set their default language, and a feature flag so people can toggle this on and off.
- I am working on code to turn words in a post title that appear all in upper case to sentence case, while trying my best to ensure abbreviations are not affected. I think it is going to take some time to get this right.
- I fixed a bug in the reading interface, and then fixed another bug introduced by my fix.
Visited a free exhibition at the Royal Academy of Scotland. I liked Paul Furneaux RSA’s “Sound of Water” (no date) and Waller Hugh Paton RSA’s “Ardentinny on the Clyde” (1872). The latter painting used colour in a way that reminded me vaguely of Seurat, although the ground was much more real than that in Seurat’s pointillist renderings.

This week I plan to focus on my upcoming art history assignment, look through as many of my notes as I can, and read some of the zines I got at the weekend.

Thoughts, wandering

Many of the notes below are copied from my notes this week, or are inspired by them.

The joy of the first smell of coffee in the morning.
I made things with paper before I made things with computers.
How a story or a song can hold us — the suspense of waiting for the next line in a song.
I visited a cafe with an old, red, telephone on the wall. The coffee was great. I wonder if that telephone works.
Baristas talking about Tumblr made me smile. It’s nice to hear people chatting about Tumblr. The cafe had matcha white chocolate cookie, chocolate tahini, chai loaf, jamaretti (TIL!) among other delicious treats. I got a matcha white chocolate cookie. It was so good!

Also:

Me: I have an idea for something I want to add to my website. Also me: Where do I begin? Still me: I have no idea where to begin. Now: It's TV time.

Miscellanea

Send in the clowns! Dreamlike images – in pictures is a wonderful collection of photography. I especially like the “New York City, 2018” photo with the lady walking across the street, the “Brussels, 2025” photo with the lady at the bar, and the “Brussels, 2022” photo that is an “homage to Edward Hopper’s iconic painting Nighthawks.”
I thought this video on “Dimensions of Programming” (14 years old now) was interesting.
This week I learned that there is a commercial history to Captain Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition. I haven’t read the linked paper, but watched a presentation on the topic at the aforementioned academic conference that referenced this paper.
I love the calendar on the Action for Happiness website (which I think I learned about via Frances’ website).
Jane Eyre has been translated more than 618 times. Prismatic Jane Eyre uses this as a basis for academic inquiry. (I haven’t looked too much into this beyond hearing a presentation this week, but it definitely feels worth linking here.)
I enjoyed Thamara’s post “Be silly, be unapologetic, be free”.
This week I learned kitchen foil does run out.
A message I sent in the IndieWeb chat this week:
- “We’re not the only people who talk about buying domains. I’m listening to an NFL podcast and the hosts are talking about buying a domain.” Quoting from the podcast:
  - What are we doing with this domain?”
  - “We’re going to start a Sumo league, Travis.”
- The podcast to which I was listening was New Heights. I ended up listening for an hour, and learned a lot.
I liked Jim’s write-up on “Addition by Subtraction”.
Shellsharks’ Scrolls newsletter (always a great read!) linked to a web page called “Audio Description in Art and Museums”, where the page’s author, Brett, has curated links related to the topic. I haven’t explored this much yet, but suffice to say I have many bookmarks as a result of this page.
I enjoyed the episode of In Our Time on The Evolution of Trees.

Action for Happiness website Addition by Subtraction Audio Description in Art and Museums Frances’ website lingua Brainstorming the multi-lingual reading experience for Artemis Prismatic Jane Eyre Shellsharks’ Scrolls newsletter Be silly, be unapologetic, be free The Evolution of Trees Sound of Water Ardentinny on the Clyde commercial history to Captain Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition Send in the clowns! Dreamlike images – in pictures New Heights Dimensions of Programming

The web used to belong somewhere - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-11-08T14:10:00.000Z

There are a couple of related ideas I found myself writing about here and there, either on the IRC server or on Quxnet. Ideas and thoughts about what the web used to be, how it used to feel, about how things have changed, and what can be done to bring at least some of the old web back.

We often point fingers at the big social media platforms, with their relentless algorithmic curation as the cause for the awfulness of the modern web. Maybe we blame the SEO folks, or the influencers. There’s a multitude of different characters who each played their role in turning the “old web” into “today’s web”. And I’m not going to pretend they didn’t play a role, because they did.

What I am going to argue for, though, is that there’s something else that has contributed a lot more to the changes that we’ve seen over the past few decades, and that’s the fact that the web used to belong somewhere. And I mean that in the physical sense. I’m not the first one to say this; you can find plenty of other posts out there making this exact point. But it’s a point worth repeating.

There was a time when in order to go online you had to physically go to a specific place: a desk in the house, an internet cafe, a computer lab. The web wasn’t always with you, and you were not always in it and with it. You had to go somewhere, do what you needed to do, and then leave.

BRB? AFK? Acronyms from what feels like a distant past. You are never away from the keyboard today, because there’s a phone following you around everywhere all the time. The internet feels exhausting these days because it’s always there. It’s become what feels like an inescapable presence, for better or for worse.

I’ve been particularly unhappy over the past few weeks, for a variety of reasons. And one thing I noticed is that every time I’m in a down phase of life, I can go look at my phone usage and it’s inevitably higher than it should be. At least for me, there’s a 1:1 correlation between how good I feel and how much of a presence the phone is in my life. And the phone is just a proxy for the web because browsing is 95% of what I do on my phone, since I don’t game and I don’t have social apps.

And that’s quite ironic considering I make websites for a living. I build for the web, and at the same time, spending more time than necessary on it makes me terribly unhappy.

But it feels different when I can leave the web behind, when I can get up from my chair, leave my desk, and the web is no longer with me. That feels healthier. The problem is that most of the world doesn’t work that way anymore. If you leave and come back, you’ll probably have a hard time catching up with everything that has happened while you were away because everybody else is not taking a break. And so even if we managed somehow to get rid of algorithmic curation and infinite scrolls and all those things, the web would still not feel like the “old web”. Because the web used to belong to a place. It sadly doesn’t anymore.

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espresso - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-08T00:00:00.000Z

Cosy glass, white wisps —
Bubbling dual espressos.
Morning steams and flows.

the meadows, edinburgh - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-08T00:00:00.000Z

Amber triangle —
Stillness in the graceful air.
Foliage falling.

EmacsConf 2026 community panel comments I made - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-11-08T00:00:00.000Z

The following is my recollection of comments I made during the recording of the EmacsConf 2026 community panel (the Q&A session will happen live during the conference): https://emacsconf.org/2026/talks/community/.

It is not a transcript though it is true in spirit.

We had 1 minute per answer.

Starting with Emacs

1 What made you start using Emacs, and what kept you using it?

It is the potential of interconnectedness. With Emacs I can draw linkages between different parts of my workflow, such as from the email client or RSS feed reader to the agenda. It also is the transferability of skills: when I write a custom function that works, say, for programming then that same function can be used while writing emails (e.g. a “focus mode” that also enlarges the font size and switches the cursor from a box to a bar shape). Software freedom is another important consideration because it empowers me to do my personal computing as I want and Emacs is by far the best in this regard.

Contributing to Emacs

2 What took you from using Emacs to actively contributing to the community - participating in forums, writing Elisp, organizing meetups, answering questions?

One is organic. By using Emacs, I configure it by programming it. The more I do that, the more I learn how to write Emacs Lisp. I eventually reach a point where I can produce patches for existing libraries and also develop my own packages. This organic growth blurs the lines between user and developer as well as passive user and active contributor. The other part is a sense of stewardship. I am inspired to give back to the commons. I recognise that I benefit from the freedom I receive and thus assume the duty of empowering others to do the same.

Emacs in daily life

3 How does Emacs show up for you in real life - colleagues, meetups, friends? How did those connections form?

I talk to Emacs users on video calls. I have even met a few in person who wanted to visit me for other reasons as well (one case was a funny story about “a Greek philosopher who is actually alive”). Those connections form naturally over time. I find that there is concordance of spirit. People who use Emacs have some character traits in common. I can see a little bit of myself reflected in them and a little bit of them reflected in me. Each person has their individuality. Though we all answer a certain call that compels us to explore the depths and the lengths.

Learning from other communities

4 If you know other software communities, what’s one thing Emacs could learn from them?

I think this is not specific to software. What is true for the Emacs community is true for communities in general. It is about the potential for participation. People must feel that they are part of something greater than themselves; something that will be there even after they are gone. Thriving communities create involvement through a variety of means and thus engender the belief that one can move from the notional periphery to the centre, from observer to member. Concretely, livestreams, bug squashing events, social gatherings, virtual or in-person conferences, and even face-to-face meetings, all help create a sense of belonging and togetherness.

What to change for next year

5 What’s one concrete thing you wish existed in the Emacs community a year from now?

Uphold the standard of excellence. Keep doing what we do and increase it in intensity and/or frequency wherever possible. Those who chase fads have a spectacular rise followed by an equally spectacular fall. What has made Emacs—and communities in general—stand the test of time is unflinching commitment to their core tenets. Those are the qualities that made them interesting in the first place. In practice, this is about focusing on quality and letting the quantity come about organically. People come and go. To prioritise quantity is to attract opportunists and, in the process, to erode the soil we stand on.

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While we're un-retiring things: daily.baty.net and Tinderbox - Baty.net

2026-11-07T10:36:01.000Z

Creativity doesn’t drive my blogging; software does. So daily.baty.net is back in rotation and is once again built using Tinderbox.

Tinderbox is special. I've been preaching this for more than 20 years. However, my use of Tinderbox has slowed down in recent years due to the distraction that is Linux. I felt I needed to move away from macOS-only software. I shouldn't have.

I've been "going ham" with Tinderbox recently, and it feels good. I used to live in its Map views, but that was back when I was working. Now, I use it mostly as a fancy outliner (it's a really good outliner) and as a blogging tool.

Tinderbox manages daily.baty.net. For a minute I was using Eleventy, but no longer. Tinderbox's export features are complex, and sometimes I get lost, but they're also very flexible and powerful.

Long story short, when I'm experiencing the rush that comes with rediscovering Tinderbox, I want to use it for everything, so I brought it back and I'm posting daily notes there instead of journal entries here.

In case you were wondering.

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blooms into time - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

Before morning glows
Breathing space. Blooms into time —
The burgeoning light.

frosted ground - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

Near-frosted ground holds —
The earnestly sleepy sky.
Birdsong awakens.

the coffeeshop - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

Fresh golden pastries —
Early treats of the new day.
Flowing espresso.

About effort and contentment - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal in which I comment about the sincerity of effort and the resulting emotional stability.

I publish what I write because I am happy with my effort. I give it my undivided attention and I try to the best of my abilities. I thus know that this is a reflection of who I am and of what I can do right now, given the prevailing conditions. By publishing it, I grant myself the freedom to proceed unburdened.

The more I do this, the better I become at productivity in general and intellectuality in particular. Each publication chronicles my efforts at self-improvement: they speak to my unyielding competitiveness and the attendant commitment to excellence.

Prior works are thus of a lesser quality than current works, assuming my present ability is still improving. Therefore, my contentment cannot be a function of achieving perfection but of something else altogether: emotional stability. I am neither dismayed nor elated by my efforts. What I did yesterday belongs to the past: it is not enough anymore. I am eager to try anew.

The moment I have nothing to add other than “I used to” is when I quit. This is what makes me as sharp as the owl’s talons: for as long as I am around, I am decisive.

To perfect what I wrote, say, ten years ago, I would have to keep editing it until the present. But if I were to do so, then I would lack the skills I have developed in the meantime. As such, I would continue to think that my current ability leaves something to be desired; something inchoate, elusive, frightening.

No task can be concluded then. This, in turn, engenders feelings of regret, resentment, failure. Those create the conditions for their continuation by manifesting as low self-esteem. This is a matter of habit, of compounding regrets, and of a prevailing sense of self-deprecation.

People who lack confidence in some capacity of theirs have gotten used to relevant patterns of behaviour that are underpinned by second thoughts. They are stymied by that lingering “what if”. Theirs is the state of mind that plays and replays scenaria in order to distract from the here-and-now of the attendant emotional instability.

First comes the admission: why am I not looking at the cause of guilt? Then comes its rectification. To achieve contentment one must do the deed in earnest. They have to offer it their undivided attention, such that they dispel all doubt. Every ounce of conscience is instrumentalised in pursuit of this singular objective.

Publishing my works, which are replete with strong opinions and unequivocal statements, constitutes a form of emotional compaction. I am untouchable because even at the depths of my heart, I understand that I could not have offered any more of my vitality. My best self in the moment is the only reality I can achieve and may aspire towards. Anything beyond that is a form of self-punishment.

Those who say “I should be up there” when all they can achieve is down here, they are already harming themselves. Theirs is the desire for attention that even pity can satisfy. They are sabotaging the very initialisation of the project by setting the bar so high that it can only intimidate them into inaction, which then justifies the misplaced want to be pitiable.

Holding on to works denies the future self from becoming. It hinders the potential for betterment. Sincere effort to the best of one’s current abilities is a form of skyward gratitude: it recognises, respects, and honours whatever one is endowed with. From recognition comes the outlook of excellence, which consists in making more out of less: leading everything to the best it can be, such that even an objectively low level is already impressive given the initial conditions.

Lack of self-confidence masquerades as a concern for what others may think. It may be expressed as fear or as yearning for validation. This fundamentally is a distraction. The others are irrelevant when the self is already expressing contempt for its state of being.

Change comes from within as does contentment, even if others are involved in an ancillary role. It starts with respect for the little things. Here is the honest effort, which is the honourable effort. One by one, it proceeds through minor wins to cultivate the ethos of correctness: to perform the deed without distractions, to admit that the end product is a reflection of one’s current ability, and to continue the same way until the end.

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The Woodmans (2010) ★★★★ - Baty.net

2026-11-06T11:03:56.000Z

A documentary about Francesca Woodman and her family. I love her work.

Francesca was a troubled genius who ended her life way too soon.

The movie was grim and kind of depressing. Her parents were indifferent, jealous, narcissistic, and aloof. Her dad was a failed artist and ended up stealing is daughter's visual language after her death. I never new that and it pissed me off.

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Nature’s layers - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-06T00:00:00.000Z

Leaves moulting by day
Nature’s layers, all visible —
Silver veins: the heart.

Fançais: Comme d’habitude - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-11-06T00:00:00.000Z

Je préfère la stabilité dans ma vie. Mes expérimentes matérielles sont limitées. Par exemple, je change rarement le logiciel que j’utilise chaque jour. Ma vie est simple et prévisible en général. J’aime écrire et, quand je n’utilise pas l’ordinateur, je travaille dehors. Mais je suis très intéressé à explorer des idées et leurs connections. Donc la stabilité matériel facilite l’expérimentation intellectuel.

Cet article est un petit aventure que je fais ce soir pour explorer mes idées. Je ne sais pas que est-ce que je vais écrire après cet phrase. Ce n’est pas important: rien va changer immédiatement dans ma vie. La stabilité va persister.

Ceci est un petit truc, un exercice d’expression des pensées. Mais la réflexion crée des conséquences matériel aussi. Si je trouve quelque chose profond ça va changer mes idées, mes valeurs, mes actions. Ma vie va être diffèrent, même si la changement est minuscule.

Mais la changement n’est pas mon objectif immédiat. Pour l’instant je veux continuer l’habitude d’écrire souvent en français. Ça me condition à penser directement dans cette langue. Il y a plusieurs phrases qui revient sans traduction. Je n’est pas besoin de réfléchir la phrase correspondent en anglais ou grec et de la traduire dans ma tête.

Pour moi, ceci est le signe que mes efforts créons des conditions matérielles. Ce n’est pas un exagération de dire que l’habitude change ma vie quotidien. Je ne suis pas le même personne parce que maintenant il y a plus de connections dans ma tête. Je suis un petit peu plus intelligent et éloquent. La réalité dont je comprends est plus vaste et les possibilités connus se sont multipliés aussi.

L’habitude est quelque chose que demande la patience et la persistance. Je fais un petit effort avec régularité et je sais que l’effet cumulatif de tous mes efforts va développer une nouvelle capacité: d’écrire, de lire, de parler, de communiquer en manière simple et super effectif. C’est amusant!

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More thinking on webmentions - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-11-05T11:00:00.000Z

Since I wrote about it, I kept thinking about the topic of webmentions, quoting, embedding, screenshotting, and the overall idea of connecting content on the web. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced this is two issues wrapped into one, and I suspect there’s no way to perfectly resolve the tension that exists at the core.

The first issue is a technological one or how do we make sure content that is related can get connected in a way that’s convenient and can scale across million of websites? The way I see it, that’s the issue webmentions attempted to solve, by building a system that allows websites to automatically send and receive links and make sure the web is maintained.

The second issue is more ideological and related to who has the right to do what in the context of other people’s content. Some people believe that since content is publicly posted, then it’s fair to be copied and distributed. Others don’t agree with that position. The line then becomes even blurrier when you start questioning what the difference is between including my post as a comment and quoting it in its entirety.

The first issue is one that can probably be solved. I’m confident we can figure out a way to automatically build links and connections on the web. Doesn’t seems like an unsolvable problem to me. The second issue, however, I think that’s just unsolvable. Because that's related to the way people see the web.

I think the point of personal sites is to be a node in a network. You don’t want the journey to end there. You want to help people move and go to different places, which is why I think linking is important. It’s also why I think embedding entire posts as comments is the wrong way to go. Because in doing so we’re not helping people discover new places.

In his post Greg wrote:

I’ve built a new blog, you’re reading it, that pulls in replies to all of my posts either micropub viewable elsewhere or simply cross-posted to other networks. I don’t really see any issue displaying them on my blog as they are public replies to my posts.

To come back to the original issue with webmentions, if I had them implemented here, Greg would receive a mention. And with an automated system, my post could then appear as a reply to his post. Is this post a comment to his blog post? It obviously isn’t. I am in part replying to a point he made, but I’m also talking about other things. I think it’s reasonable for me to be able to decide if something I wrote is a reply to his post or not.

What I’m trying to say here is that things are messy. Different people living in different societal contexts have different ideas for what’s considered right. And I don’t think we’ll resolve this issue anytime soon. I think treating entire posts other people write as comments is wrong. It’s their content, it’s their words, and the right thing to do is to link to their sites. But I can only speak for myself, and other people will have different ideas.

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Français: Pour toi et moi - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-11-05T00:00:00.000Z

J’ai écris quelque chose. Voilà! Cette note est un acte de communication. Il y a le point saillant: le sujet que je développe. Mais il y a aussi les points tacites. Par exemple, je suis grec et j’écris dans une langue étrangère. Je vais faire des erreurs parce que je ne connais pas tous let mots et, en plus, je ne vais pas chercher maintenant pour les traductions.

En écrivant, je communique avec toi. Si tu es ici et tu lis cet article, et même si tu ne répondes pas, tu va avoir une réaction. Ça va dire quelque chose qui est vrai pour toi, pour tes idées et tes valeurs. C’est possible que tu va découvrir un fait nouveau. Qui suis-je et qui est tu en ce moment là dans le contexte de cette acte de communication?

La langue est une réalité sociale qui consiste en la concordance d’esprit. C’est le compréhension mutuel entre moi, toi, tous les gens, des idées, phrases, message, émotions, de présent et futur, de ici et là.

Je crois que, fondamentalement, la moralité est une langue. C’est une mécanisme culturel de coordination entre les personnes ou/et de compréhension commune.

Voici un acte d’amitié. Le point tacite qui est maintenant le point saillant est que je te donne mon attention. Je faire l’effort de m’exprimer et de te dire “salut” avec plusieurs mots.

En plus, je joue avec les mots. Voici l’activité récréative. J’aime écrire et je crois que c’est très intéressant de parler aux langues étrangers. Pourquoi? Parce que je peux. Parce que je suis en processus de découvrir un fait qui est vrai pour moi.

Voilà le fait: j’ai écris cette note sans souci. J’ai fais un petit contribution à notre espace commun; l’espace notionnel de communication; l’espace où toi et moi existent comme voyageurs qui cherchent pour ça qui est concret et, en plus, ça qui n’est pas tellement claire.

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choice in the neue - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-05T00:00:00.000Z

Seeking character(s) —
Choice of sans, neue, serif
Glowing lettering.

Where should I write that down? - Baty.net

2026-11-04T20:14:49.000Z

When I want to write something down, I have to decide where to write it. Currently, the choices are...

My Tinderbox Daybook
TheBrain
TiddlyWiki
My Org mode daybook.org
Denote's journal entries
Org-journal
Baty.net
One of 5 of my "current" paper notebooks

The problem is obvious. The solution...not so much. You see, I refuse to give up any of the above. I've tried. It doesn't work.

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