~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

Of trance, exploration, and rationality - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-26T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

Trance is the first music genre that piqued my interest. I enjoy practically every type of music, though trance speaks to me in ways others do not. Perhaps it is because I have to be in a certain state of mind to listen to it. A song with lyrics is impressed as something more limited in my head even if it is otherwise expansive. I can interpret it in multiple ways, though it is already giving me plenty to work with and thus it potentially precludes certain thoughts. Whereas the soundscapes of trance inspire in me the impression of a higher order of openendedness.

I am a philosopher because I have an innate desire for exploration. I am curious and have developed the fortitude necessary for journeying. I have a propensity to cover the compass and depth of whatever it is I am interested in. The key here is interest, which is an irrational disposition. I can rationalise it, of course, such as me being interested in refining my computing environment because it helps me write more effectively. Though I can sense that the interest is there prior to any reasonable plan I can come up with.

Behind every rationality there is a deep-seated emotion. To save money, for example, requires an astute sense of managing resources across time. This is about purposeful and coherent sequences of action. The entire endeavour is rational. Though the reason that compels one to save money will be something like the pursuit of comfort, to ease some pain, to satisfy a want that comes from the body. This is no longer a matter of reason: the body does the talking at that level the way it does for every animal.

Analytically, the body and the mind are two distinct magnitudes. We talk of them as being separate. Those this is a figment of analysis. There is no disembodied mind of ours that we can run tests against and, by the same token, there is no mindless body of our own to be studied in isolation. We are embodied mind and thus exhibit the multifacetedness of having a connection to the spatiotemporal as well as the transcendent. Ours is the state of in-between-ness, which is a microcosm of the cosmos, else a fractal.

In thought, there is no separation between that which can be and that which is. What I am thinking of already is there as thought. If I speak of potentiality, I refer to something that I cannot think of beside potentiality itself, for thought reifies whatever concept as actual. To the mind, then, there is no distance and no disconnect. There is no here or there, no before or after. All that is, is. Furthermore, there is no distinction between ideas qua ideas. The idea of something benign is equally an idea as something deleterious. Whether they contribute or not to some state of affairs, itself an idea of a constitution representing a case whose factors are ideas, is not a matter of ideas as such.

In sensation, in all that the body brings, there is separation of space and of time as well as difference of quality or modality, else the way in which something becomes present. The potential is not the actual. The proximate is not the distant. The remedy is not the poison. To the mind these are equal notions as notions that the body establishes as distinct through bundles of associations which it reveals. The mind derives meaning from “poison”, for example, because it connects that idea to the idea of the consequences of poisoning and then to the resulting sensations. It is the body that lives through the experience of poisoning in what is a partial reconstitution of its structure.

As embodied mind, every form of life in the cosmic continuum of life represents the unison of abstraction and instantiation. The abstract dog is that which describes all actual and potential instances of dogs. Each specimen extends and particularises the abstraction. Though dog itself cannot contain in it all the particularities, as those will contradict each other: it cannot be both short-haired and long-haired, black and fawn, etc. For the abstraction to be all-inclusive, it is devoid of particularities, to the point where it is not descriptive of any one specific specimen.

Descriptiveness is germane to the embodiedness of mind, for therein the abstract and its instantiations acquire meaning. To the cosmic mind, then, the realm of physics is the realm of meaning.

Coming back to trance music, its art form admits to the indeterminacy of direction within the boundaries of expression. Like the landscapes and seascapes I have been exposed to, it engenders in me a sense of awe, of possibility that is saturated with opportunity and danger. Through exploration I confirm that the here is not there even though it will become a here once I am there. Why? Because I can. And this no longer is a matter of reasonableness.

🔷 Consider making a donation.

Sunday, October 25, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-25T14:57:39.000Z

The notebook situation from a few years back

For the past two days I've automatically reached for quxnet via the CLI (quxterm). I didn't expect this.

I've been wondering about Mastodon, lately. It seems that no matter how I aggressively I cull my feed, it remains saturated with tiresome and repetitive takes and topics that I'm tired of talking about. Going back to Twitter has been A Thing recently, but that's not happening with me. It might just be time for a break.

✍️ Reply by email

Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics: on goals, institutions, sin of exaggeration - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-25T00:00:00.000Z

In this 1-hour video I read from the opening chapter of Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle, and comment at length on themes of ranking goals in projects, of having a notion of success versus failure, of determining what we are actually working towards, of what exactly it means for some realities to be instituted as such, and of the one sin from which all others derive which is the sin of exaggeration.

Next time I will comment on eudaemonia, which is mistranslated as “happiness”, but we will get there.

I notice, by the way, that the laptop is too shaky. I will check if I can fix this next time.

🔷 Consider making a donation.

Weeknotes W2 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-25T00:00:00.000Z

Storm Boelo has been passing through Scotland for the last many hours, and high winds are expected to remain for the rest of the day. This weekend has thus been one of staying inside and staying cosy: of drinking tea (and the remainder of the coffee I had in a bag in the cupboard), making zines, and watching some television.

The winds as I write feel slightly less intense than they were in the morning, but suffice to say I am much happier – and safer – staying indoors than I would be bracing the wind.

The highlights

The theme of this week has been to try new things. I have been listening to new music, getting back into anime, and writing more zines.

In terms of anime, I started watching Catch Me at the Ballpark, a show about the life of vendors and patrons that work at a Japanese baseball stadium, as well as the players. I love the silent mascot, Sun-Shiro. I love wholesome anime and manga. The question I have on my mind right now is How does Murata feel about Ruriko?

With regard to zines, this week I followed through on one of the ideas that has been in the back of my mind for months: to make a mini zine with my typewriter. The way I did it was to fold the mini zine first, and then put the folded zine through the typewriter roller. I am not sure if this was the most effective method (the keyboard seemed to jump and skip a letter more often) but it was fun and had me finding joy in embracing the imperfections; the typos, the winding words (literally) and more.

I also got to use the scanning function in my printer for the first time (either in a long while, or ever). What magic! I put a piece of paper into the machine, scan it, and then I have a copy that I can view on my computer and print again. I might need to play around with the settings a bit as some of the text in the copied document is a bit fainter than I would like, but suffice to say such experiments will be done with great joy.

Making zines by hand and with my typewriter and folding zines by hand has been a refreshing break from the computer. While the computer remains part of my workflow – for looking up words, for scanning, and more – I can get really focused while using my typewriter, just as I do when I am typing a blog post on my computer. With regard to looking up words, I actually dusted off a few of the reference books on my shelf. I brought out the “pocket” thesaurus (there is no way it would fit in one’s pocket) and used it to come up with words. My interactions with this book even inspired a poem.

Part of me wonders whether I should do some writing that is exclusively printed in zines and shared either with friends or by trading. And I am also thinking about new topics about which I could write a zine. How to write HTML? A HTML element reference guide? A series of haikus? A photo zine?

Speaking of creative work in the physical world, last night I had an idea. Maybe I should make a “Keep imagining :)” sign in the vein of the “Believe” sign in Ted Lasso. It might be nice to have a little motivational message somewhere close. In tandem, I have stowed away in the back of my mind the intention to purchase a print of an artwork when I go to a museum so that I can bring a bit more colour to the walls around.

In terms of studying, I finished all the textbook reading I needed to do this week, went through our materials on evaluating information, worked on my first assignment, and looked ahead to the next one to help me prepare. The first assignment is due next week. I have almost finished, but have a few things to edit before I am ready to submit the work. I will also get my final grade for my first year next week, to which I am looking forward.

Music corner

This week I listened to a mix of jazz, hip-hop, pop, and electric music. Here are a few songs I really enjoyed:

Sleeper (We Like It Here) by Snarky Puppy (h/t Thomas for the recommendation)
This cover of Taylor Swift’s Cowboy Like Me by Alice Kristiansen
Calgary by Bon Iver, specifically the recording of the now decade-old performance of the song at the Sydney Opera House, and this recording of Bon Iver performing Skinny Love in 2008.
Collective Imagination by Baldower (this is the artist who makes music at the Beyond Tellerrand conferences that I love)
True Colours by Cyndi Lauper
tanagers in paradise by ioflow
Decksandrumsandrockandroll by The Propellerheads
The Joy of Living by Amamelia
And so much more…

I also started using Bandcamp this week. There is so much great music on there! If you use Bandcamp, I would love tips on how to make the most of the website.

Thoughts, wandering

I need to fix the search feature on my website. I think I tried to add too many features at one time when I built it a few weeks ago and, as a result, the feature isn’t working especially well. The words start small echo in my mind.
I have been thinking about re-building a DVD collection over time. I purchased The West Wing on Amazon before I deleted my account there, and so now I am having to re-purchase episodes I want to watch on Apple TV. If I had kept my DVD boxset, I would have saved a lot…
I am interested in how songs are written. I tried to write one this week, sort of. I wouldn’t say what I wrote was any good, but I did try, using a cadence from a line of a Bon Iver song to help give me a rhythm along which I could write words. I am not good at singing, but it was nice to try something new.
Even though I bookmarked a lot of links to include in my weeknotes this week, I still feel like I read so much more.
I am slowly working my way through The Story of Art. It is a fascinating read.
I have closed down rainfall [dot] scot, my website that reported how much rain fell in different areas in Scotland with comparisons across the same month in different years (e.g. see all rainfall for all March months in the last five years). I used this website, but two factors came at the same time that would mean a complete rewrite. First, the site was my only site using PHP. I turned off PHP after the announcement of the vulnerabilities this week. I upgraded PHP, but then I realised it might be better if I rewrite the software to Python, a language with which I am more familiar. I started doing the rewrite, only to realise the government open data API I was using, from SEPA, has updated, and the government’s website itself has updated. It still doesn’t slice the data the way I was, but the update looks good. Alas, however, I was already not too excited about a ground-up rewrite, and having to navigate a new API added to the friction of moving, so I decided to retire the project. Maybe I will bring it back one day.
I like slowly tending to the HTML of my website, making tiny changes when I see places that I want to improve.
I keep my personal email inbox in an open tab at all times. This week I realised that it might be adding unnecessary stress to my days. I end up spending so much time getting into the headspace to really consider and provide a thoughtful response to an email that emails stack up for a few days, or weeks. I think I am going to try to keep the tab closed and check in less regularly. Any thoughts on how to think about this are most welcome.
My process for writing weeknotes, which, this week, involved going through many bookmarks, feels like it requires a different working mode from my other writing; here, fragmentary thoughts formed as bullet points are part of the form, and the work on the "Miscellanea" section involves a degree of curation. I don't have any further comments, but suffice to say I am happy I am embarking on this experiment.

Miscellanea

!complexity’s article “disconnecting from feeling hopeless” met me at the right time. I still believe small changes can make all the difference.
Via The Guardian: “‘It’s magic’: scientists rediscover how to make ancient Roman colour-changing glass”. All I can say is Wow.
This week I was thinking about how Artemis could better support multi-lingual reading. In that post I linked to a fascinating talk about languages on the internet. The talk is 19 years old, but is still full of insights.
I loved reading V.H.’s contribution to the IndieWeb Carnival this month: “Flyleaves, foldouts and frontispieces: Celebrating overlooked pages”. As of writing, there is still time to participate in this month’s Carnival.
Veronique’s collection of images and web pages related to zines, curated in the Zines > Screens are.na channel, is so inspiring.
More zine links:
- How to Look Up
- 51 Ideas for Your Next Zine
Today is crisp sandwich day (“crisp” in the British sense of the word). To all of those partaking in an appropriate celebration, may your sandwiches be most tasty. (Alas, I don’t really buy crisps, so I am missing out this year, but I will never miss a moment to appreciate a sandwich.)
- My site’s seasonal emoji code is why I remember things like this. It is always a joy to go to my website and be reminded of an event like this. It is also the 16th anniversary of the release of Taylor Swift’s Speak Now album, commemorated by the 💜 emoji.

Thank you for reading! My inbox is open if you have any recommendations or ideas that follow from this weeknote.

The Joy of Living Collective Imagination The Story of Art I still believe small changes can make all the difference. how Artemis could better support multi-lingual reading My inbox is open there is still time to participate in this month’s Carnival SEPA disconnecting from feeling hopeless 51 Ideas for Your Next Zine Thomas Flyleaves, foldouts and frontispieces: Celebrating overlooked pages tanagers in paradise Zines > Screens are.na channel, Catch Me at the Ballpark ‘It’s magic’: scientists rediscover how to make ancient Roman colour-changing glass this recording of Bon Iver performing Skinny Love Calgary by Bon Iver This cover of Taylor Swift’s Cowboy Like Me True Colours Sleeper (We Like It Here) languages on the internet How to Look Up

Continuing at the beginning - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-10-24T12:00:00.000Z

After hiking up to the end of the ridge, it was now time to scout the initial part. The starting point is some 25km east of where I parked the car last time around, at the parking spot of the Italian ossuary in the lovely town of Kobarid.

The plan is to walk my way up till the beginning of the ridge, reaching Starijski Vrh at the foothills of Mount Stol, the highest point of the entire ridge, at 1673 meters. The reason why I’m doing this hike is that I read conflicting information about the trail, with some people claiming it’s a slippery mess. So I wanted to come check it out before hiking the whole ridge from one side to the other.

And I’m happy to report that the trail is nowhere near as bad as some people were claiming. It’s not super well maintained, especially the middle section that’s a bit overgrown, but it’s on par with many of the trails I walk here in my area. So that’s good. There are some steep parts that are just a bit slippery, but it’s honestly nothing crazy and slipping here wouldn’t be the end of the world anyway.

The overall scenery is not much different from what I have all around me here where I live, and that makes sense since we’re still in the same overall area. Kobarid is less than an hour away from where I live, and that’s only because there are a few valleys separating us. If this were flat ground, I could probably be there in 15 minutes. I’m looking at the map, and it’s about 12km north of here in a straight line.

It took me about two hours to gain the roughly 800 meters of elevation from down to the parking spot to up here at the beginning of the ridge, and that’s even including the 10 minutes I spent walking around the ossuary and my quick detour to explore some trenches on my way up here. This can probably be done in almost half as much time on a normal day, I’d say. We’ll see how long it will take me when I come back to walk the whole thing.

The view from up here didn’t disappoint though. This place is exactly how I imagined it when looking at it from afar. Saw some sheep roaming around, enjoying the sunny day, and there’s a lovely view of Mount Krn, with its very distinctive shape.

Another thing that seems to never be missing during these walks is paragliders up in the sky. There’s a takeoff location not too far from here and the guys in the sky today were flying so low that I managed to easily exchange greetings with a few of them.

The plan for the day was to walk as little as possible on top of the ridge. I only wanted to check the uphill part and then see the scenery from above and check the conditions of the trail. And everything is in perfect condition, so there’s nothing more left to do on my checklist. It’s only a matter of deciding when to come walk this whole thing.

I came back down through a trail that runs on the north side of the ridge. The first part comes down through a very steep section inside the forest and then it connects with a service road that gently descends back down to then reconnect with the beginning of the trail I walked on my way up.

These areas are primarily pasture lands, and in fact I had to go through more than a couple gates on my way back to the car. Animals here are usually pretty chill; they’re used to people, but one cow in particular was not happy to see me there and so I made sure to quickly move past her. Last thing I need is to be chased by a pissed-off cow.

And about an hour and a half later I was out of the trail, and back at the ossuary. This was a very relaxing hike, I have to say, and I should probably explore more of this part of the country. There’s another ridge that runs parallel to the one I want to walk that also looks quite interesting. And it’s a lot shorter, so who knows, maybe I’ll go walk that as well.

As usual, the data recorded by my watch is available if you’re interested in that kind of stuff. And if there’s anything you want to know about this or any other walk I did just send me an email or a message. I’m always down to talk hiking and walking around.

You love the outdoors and RSS. You're one of the special ones.

Share something with me

Morning coffee - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-24T00:00:00.000Z

For the last month I have had a bag of coffee in the cupboard with enough beans to make one or two cups. I usually drink tea on weekdays, and prefer to have coffee while I am out and about, but because there is a storm forecast, and we had a storm yesterday evening too, I thought I would stay cosy this morning and take a slower day. This coffee will come in handy.

When I went to make my coffee this morning, I had to prepare all my equipment that had been stowed away in my cupboards behind and next to the tea tins and other things I use daily. In my head I had the list of all I would need. Coffee beans, a conical coffee brewer that makes delicious coffee, my gooseneck kettle, filter papers. It felt like past James had done future James a favour by not drinking the coffee on any passing day, rather waiting for the right moment.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Outside the trees are still and the sky is pink, following a night of heavier winds and many hours of rain. I am admiring how the pink clouds complement the yellow leaves on the tall trees who hold onto their colour despite the winds of yesterday.

I cusp my warm cup of coffee between my two hands, feeling the warmth of a new day.

Healthier lifestyle with Amin Bandali - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-24T00:00:00.000Z

The other day I talked with Amin Bandali about the basics of living a more sustainable lifestyle. Amin has written a summary of our exchange, which you can find here: https://www.shemshak.org/~amin/living-healthier.html.

Prot mentioned that our health is directly dependent on the following four factors:

what we eat;

what we drink;

what we breathe; and

what we think.

Fundamentally, our discussion revolves around common sense. Do the basics right and be consistent throughout. The basics are all those activities that are unglamorous and otherwise easy to underestimate. Doing them correctly guarantees that you have a solid basis for everything else and are on the pathway to excellence.

I think the core mistake people make when they fail at a task is that they do not pay attention to the basics. They think they can skip them and go straight to the more fun parts. Like wanting to play a competitive football match before you have learnt how to control the ball.

There will be a few fields of endeavour where ignoring the basics does not incur longer-term costs. Though the norm is that such shortcuts create frustration down the line. The understanding is incorrect, the method is flawed, and the execution is clumsy.

At scale, the default attitude of taking shortcuts results in an everyday experience that feels overwhelming. Everything is more difficult because the clumsiness in one area is compounded by clumsiness in all other areas.

Do not skip the basics then. Pay attention to the little things and make sure you commit to them with consistency. In Greek, we say “rush slowly” (σπεύδε βραδέως) which can more loosely be described as “I proceed slowly so that I arrive quickly”.

🔷 Consider making a donation.

introducing libzmx - erock's devlog

2026-10-24T00:00:00.000Z

I'm excited to announce zmx can now be used as a zig module to programmtically interact build session persistence in your zig project. Projects can use this instead of embedding the zmx binary and exec spawning commands through the zmx cli. This zig module is just a thin wrapper around a unix socket ipc wire protocol to interface with the running zmx daemon that controls the terminal session.
libzmx-commit

quick start

The library in `src/lib.zig` is importable as the `zmx` package from other Zig projects. All functions take `(alloc, io, ...)` from `std.process.Init`.
Read the source code to learn about what you can do with zmx

// build.zig.zon
.dependencies = .{
    .zmx = .{
        .url = "git+https://github.com/neurosnap/zmx#",
        .hash = "...",
    },
}

// build.zig
const zmx = b.dependency("zmx", .{ .target = target, .optimize = optimize });
exe_mod.addImport("zmx", zmx.module("zmx"));

// your source
const zmx = @import("zmx");

const exit_code = try zmx.run(gpa, io, "my-session", &.{"echo", "hi"}, .{});
const sessions = try zmx.list(gpa, io);
defer {
    for (sessions) |s| s.deinit(gpa);
    gpa.free(sessions);
}

notes

`zmx.run` creates the session (and daemon) if it doesn't exist, no need to call `zmx.create` first.
`zmx.create` is only available when the package is built with `-Ddaemon=true` (the default).
See examples

fin

That's it! I'll start compiling a list of projects that use libzmx so feel free to contact me with your project and I can add it!

Quxnet.net - Baty.net

2026-10-23T11:08:52.000Z

Remember when I said that I was done signing up for every new service that comes along? Yeah, me too. But...

Today I learned about quxnet via the always interesting Linkdump, from 82MHz. Of course I created an account immediately because how could I not? I mean, there's an SSH/TUI interface for it. Sold!

Quxnet has everything. Boards, mail, photo galleries, links, blogs, an RSS reader, and more. It looks super-retro cool, which adds to the vibe. I don't know what I want out of it yet, but if it can remain "A private network with old internet manners." then I can see it becoming a fun new place to hang out.

There are still fewer than 1,000 people there, so naturally things are cordial and sufficiently nerdy and polite. I hope it stays polite, but I worry that with popularity comes conflicting views from people who "We" don't agree with, and once the finger-pointing starts, things tend to go south. I hope it doesn't happen that way.

But for now it's clever, fun, nerdy, and new, so I'm in. https://quxnet.net/u/jbaty.

✍️ Reply by email

My desk - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-23T00:00:00.000Z

After "The (My) Desk" from March, 2024.

As I was leaving my desk for the day, getting ready to have a cup of tea in bed and wind down for the evening, I caught a glance of a half-folded zine on my desk. The zine has been there for a few days, quietly telling a story that only this evening I was able to hear: this desk is becoming. This desk is full of life.

Situated in a cold, white room, my desk has felt distant at times. When I sit there, in its comfortable chair, I see all the essentials a desk needs, and yet perhaps the most beautiful part of sitting at the desk is not the desk itself but the view – how the space encourages me to look outside. I don’t mind the white walls because the green hills more than make up for it. But maybe now is the time I should find a print and add colour to the space.

I looked at my desk that I have seen a thousand times before with new eyes. The space has changed a lot over the last year. An unfolded zine – a representation of the idea of a work-in-progress – takes up space. My creative writing textbook, too, takes up space, within which there are 600 pages of techniques and studies and stories with which I will spend countless hours this year. Today, I have a reference book – Katy Hessel’s How to Live an Artful Life – sitting on my desk, to which I looked for inspiration earlier. Another book rests on the desk that I referenced earlier this week.

My desk is becoming a space for works-in-progress: a space that occupies books and stories, a place that reflects my ever-more artistic outlook on the world. My desk feels more like my own. An origami butterfly rests on the elevated surface of my monitor stand. A chatterbox sits next to it, too. I love making things with paper. I love making things that people can hold.

Earlier today my desk was home to my typewriter where I wrote a story in a way I have never written a story before. I let words and sentences blend together. I let myself go to the edge of the paper. I let myself work with a new form. The document became infused with time, representing my thoughts in one afternoon where the physical world was in the foreground and the digital world was in my background. I made something physical today, at my desk. I love making things that people can hold.

This year my desk has been the home of conversations and of poetry, of learning and essays, of lectures and community. I may prefer to write in my armchair – and occasionally in bed, illuminated only by the glow of a night-lit screen and white-lit keyboard – but my desk is starting to feel now, after years, like it is more of a place, a place from where I can see the world around, where I can make something people can hold; a place for my works-in-progress.

The (My) Desk my desk has felt distant

On the importance of minimalism - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-23T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

Minimalism seeks to approximate frugality in the face of abundance. It works with the understanding that the human condition is optimised for conditions of scarcity and is geared for a life of incessant struggle. Where there is plenty, where there is no attendant incentive to be sharp and alert, the likelihood of moral degeneracy is high.

Morality pertains to the features of a person’s behavioural patterns. It couches them in terms of normative outcomes, else standards that are considered and are known to be benign for the individual and for people at-large. In its most basic conception, morality is the codification of the lifestyle that is frugal and rigorous.

That is so due to the formation of prescriptions on what to do, what to avoid, and what to maintain as an attitude. In their essence, those are rules for how to live well.

Morality is thus not exclusive to religiosity. Religion is an effective tool for instilling morality. It is central to social reproduction: to a society that perpetuates itself in both biological and cultural terms. But religiosity is not an irreducible part of being moral and, indeed, religion can be corrupted when it becomes a business, a means of tribalism that is detached from the moral imperatives that the society has in common, a mere instrument in the hands of imperialism, and so on.

What must always be there is the spirit of restraint, of not yielding to the plenty when they are available, and of remaining focused on the longer-term demands of living.

This we all know without reference to some holy book or school of philosophy. We experience it every day in the modern world. Some examples:

You can buy chocolate right now. Not just one, but as much as your budget can afford. There is more variety of sweet than you can eat on a single sitting. And the entirety of it is available on demand. Yield to it and you suffer. Not only will it bring disease, it will also make you sluggish. Sluggishness shall cloud your judgement. Your future choices will thus lack attentiveness to longer-term downsides. The ability to determine what is beneficial to you will be degraded. Which in turn will condition yourself to yet more mistakes that harm you. There is no friction, no difficulty in you getting the sugar, so no struggle, no sharpness, no alertness. It is a vicious cycle.
You join social media, including those you think are more ethical due to their permissive copyright license or terms of service. They are equally bad for your mental health because they expose you to the abundance of information. Your sense of space and time is skewed until it is completely messed up. Events that are distant feel proximate. Dangers that are remote appear imminent. Yielding to the abundance of this kind of information will once again cloud your judgement, with all the disastrous consequences that always—always!—follow. Same idea for emotions that are decoupled from the friction of human interaction: you get oodles of them and, again, there is no effort involved, until the point where you are not really interested or inspired by them.
You set up your computing environment to notify you about things that are happening. There are bells and whistles everywhere. Each part of the interface shouts for attention. In that environment there is an abundance of stimuli, without even accounting for the contents of what you are exposed to, which will further compound the problem. Yielding to this kind of plenty shall inevitably affect your attention span. You will lack focus, you will not be able to concentrate, you will feel disempowered and eventually jaded.

These are only a few of the many realities of modern life. The common in their multitude is the reduction in friction. They make it very easy to acquire that which is otherwise desirable. Food, friendship, knowledge are all important to us. Though they are benign only inasmuch as they are relatively difficult to get. They lead to decadence as soon as the challenge is removed.

This is true even for trivial things. Think of how easy it is to drink a fresh juice that consists of an apple, an orange, and a carrot. Try eating those instead and you will notice that the task is much more demanding. That extra difficulty is exactly what you need to not overdo the consumption. Chew on a raw carrot and tell me if you can have many of those. Then have a carrot juice and notice how many you just consumed. When it is trivially easy to get the juice, you can drink the equivalent of many fruits/vegetables, far more than what you would have eaten. Chewing, then, is the friction you want in your life so that it keeps you in check, notwithstanding other benefits it has. Generalise those insights for everything and you already know how dieting in a spirit of frictionlessness is deleterious.

It extends beyond goods that can be purchased or items that are anyhow at your disposal. It covers expectations as well, for they too engender behaviour that is akin to the aforementioned. The expectation of ample choice, the sense of entitlement, shall already make you sloppy or condition you to pursue ends that will lead to that eventuality.

Friction forces you to focus. Scarcity keeps you honest with yourself and true to the boundaries of your abilities. It continues to bring to the centre of your conscience the moment of crisis (“crisis” is the Greek word for “judgement”). You have to judge how to proceed, to reason about the available options and make an educated guess of what will be beneficial to you long-term.

It necessarily is about the longer-term because you are readily aware of the fact that you will be living with the consequences of your actions. Those who are decoupled from the results of their deeds are dealing with the same problems as those who do not have enough friction in their life. Indeed, consequences are “friction” in this regard: they force you to think, they remind you of the limits.

A moral life, the actual living and embodiment of it, not virtue signalling, is what maintains vitality. Think of what happens if you are lazy: you are not trying to make things happen to the best of your ability, so your brain is not firing on all cylinders, which means that your body is not sufficiently active, your attention is not channelled anywhere in particular, your energy dissipates, your mind becomes blurry… All result in an experience that is in rapid decline.

Same idea for every pattern of behaviour that is not consistent with the rigours of struggle: it kills you before your time, it kills you even if it keeps your body around by snuffing out that which is vital in you.

Minimalism is not relevant in a life where scarcity is its defining feature. People cannot overdo it willy-nilly even if they would otherwise be inclined thus. But in a world that offers you everything in spades, minimalism is how you begin to preserve your vitality.

🔷 Consider making a donation.

Thinking about privacy and webmentions - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-10-22T18:25:00.000Z

I was perusing the always lovely website of one mr. V.H. Belvadi and stumbled my way onto a post titled “Webmentions, copyright and privacy” and from there quickly landed on Kev’s post titled “Privacy and Webmentions”.

I find the topic very interesting because it sits at the intersection of two things I care much about: web based technology and human interactions. And so I’m gonna spend a moment thinking in public about this.

The first issue I personally see in this overall discussion is the way Webmentions are framed. Quoting from Kev’s post:

To my mind, a public post on an open platform like Mastodon is precisely that: public. The Fediverse is decentralised by design. When you reply to someone, your message doesn't remain isolated on your home instance; it federates across countless independent servers

That to me doesn’t really square well with what Webmentions were designed for. If you open the W3C Recommendation for Webmention, you’ll see that right at the top the Abstract reads:

Webmention is a simple way to notify any URL when you mention it on your site. From the receiver's perspective, it's a way to request notifications when other sites mention it.

So the focus is on sending and receiving notifications. It says nothing about federating content. Down below in the document, the example they provide for a potential flow is even more explicit. The focus here is on getting notified that someone mentioned your content, so that links can be automatically included to provide ways for people to bounce around different locations that are somewhat interconnected.

This is the web after all, and the web is all about linking pages. So unless I’m completely misunderstanding this document, the whole discussion about federating content has not much to do with webmentions. But I might be completely wrong; I’m far from an expert here.

Scrolling through the replies to Kev’s post, I also saw a few perplexing—at least to me—ideas. For example, Ralf wrote:

As you wrote, your blog is just another Fediverse instance. If people don't want to appear somewhere in a worldwide federated network with their public posts, they shouldn't post publicly into a worldwide federated network.

Why are we restricting this reasoning to only federated networks? Doesn’t this also apply to, quite literally, all the web? If I post something publicly on my blog I should not then expect to have some agency over how my content is treated? Can people simply host copies of it at will? That doesn’t sound right to me. You can quote it, sure. You can even link to it. But I don't think we're cool with the idea of people simply grabbing copies and hosting them elsewhere.

Then we have this exchange, also screenshotted below. Funnily enough, this exchange has an extra reply if you follow that link above, compared to what’s included inside Kev’s post, which makes this whole discussion about embedding vs linking even more confusing.

So, I get what Kev’s saying when he writes «If someone was to post to Mastodon and expect that post not to show up on other parts of the Fedi, they're naive.», but at the same time we all know that the Fediverse is confusing even for tech people. So brushing that complexity aside by simply labelling people as naive is convenient, but doesn’t change the point Even was making: if I’m a normal user and I’m signing up for a service, I post something, and I then delete it, I’m expecting that content to be actually deleted. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

Then there’s a whole long discussion about the GDPR implications, which I’m not gonna get into because GDPR is a mess, it’s a constantly shifting law, and I’m not a lawyer. But it’s certainly interesting to think about that as well. One interesting part, though, was Kev’s description of the situation:

Mastodon.social isn't harvesting data from Fosstodon.org, nor vice versa, nor this site. They're all connecting over protocols as they were designed for the open web.

By this reasoning, I could set up my server to connect to any other server, submit GET requests over HTTP, which is a protocol designed for the open web, and get all that content? I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption, and I’d also get into trouble for stealing all that content since I’m not a massive AI lab, and instead I’m just a random guy.

The main problem I see here is that some technologies carry with them implicit expectations. And that’s obviously problematic because different people can have very different sets of values and norms they live by. So I might set up webmentions to automate me sending you a ping to let you know that, hey, I wrote a blog post about something you wrote, with the expectations that you’ll display that on your site as a link.

But you, on the other side, might see the ping and be like “hey, this person has replied to me, so this is a comment that can live on my website, under my content”.

Who’s in the wrong here? Me? You? Both? Neither? I personally don’t know. What I do know is that I’m gonna publish this post, and then send an email to both Kev and V.H. to let them know I linked to their posts.

Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.

Connect via email :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month

Discord, or the Death of Lore - Baty.net

2026-10-22T15:04:57.000Z

Discord, or the Death of Lore « ASCII by Jason Scott

I have no disputes as the popularity of [Discord], the things that happen there, and the unquestioned vivaciousness of being the party that never seems to end and everyone wants to join.

I just happen to be the sort of person who notices there’s no decent fire exits and most of the structure is wood and there’s an… awful lot of pyrotechnics being set off.

✍️ Reply by email

Walking - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z

I stopped in awe.

Looking up, I saw a tall tree whose base was yellow and top was red, with all of its leaves glistening in the golden sun that made its way through the clouds we have seen in recent days. An adjacent tree had a combination of green leaves and barren branches, prompting me to wonder why. These are two different types of trees. I know not their names, but all trees are beautiful.

The path was full of colour. I took a deep breath of the cold air. Was I also trying to breathe in the colour of the day, and the energy that brought the trees to life today? Filling my lungs and propelling my walk, the air blew away difficult thoughts and opened my mind to new ones: falling leaves danced through the sky, contributing to the bed of colour that I like to imagine keeps the grasses warm as they adjust to the cooler weather.

An idle thought occupies my mind for a moment. The present is a theme and a focus of my work. I like looking to the world each day and writing what I see; what I feel with the passing moments.

What if leaves were stars, flickering in the light of day? From where I stand – from where I walk – the trees are high in the sky, their leaves twinkling as they move with the wind and catch the light of the day. I think about how the way I look at trees is similar to how I look at architecture. I look up, in awe. With time I have come to realise that everything I see in the world has many dimensions to appreciate.

If the leaves were stars, we would be walking perpetually among stars. Who would we be? The sun, radiating warm energy? The moon, casting a cool calm glow? Jupiter? I like to think I’d be myself.

Every season has its own sounds, and its own textures. I trawl through crispy leaves to hear the crunch, a sound that is made possible by Autumn. My attention turned to the ground, to all the colours. Then I looked up again and saw a hill that, yesterday I saw – and today, and every day, I see – in a new way.

Game: Breath of Fire IV - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z

Breath of Fire IV is an entry in the Japanese Role-Playing Game genre (spoilers below). The game was released about an aeon ago, which is also approximately how long it took me to finish it. It has lots of interesting ideas, but it ultimately has a pacing problem that disrupts the experience and, depending on one’s temperance, makes for an annoying exercise in rage-quitting.

The big picture view of the story is that people, in their recklessness and greed, have summoned otherworldly beings into their world, thinking they can control them. One such being, named Fou-Lu, became emperor and helped the empire expand its holdings. Though the summoning was flawed causing Fou-Lu to eventually fall into a centuries-long slumber. He can only be awakened and restored to his full powers by merging with his other half, Ryu, who is one of the main characters.

Ryu’s becoming revitalises Fou-Lu and the rest follows from there. The story has a promising start. You are presented with two of the other main characters, Nina and Cray, who are on a mission to find Nina’s sister, Elina. They get stranded in the middle of the desert as their vehicle breaks down. Ryu then appears out of nowhere, with no recollection of who he is and of what has transpired. He joins Nina in her quest to find spare parts for their vehicle and they eventually stick together until the very end.

At some point, the story switches to the awakening of Fou-Lu who is immediately confronted by an army bent on killing him. When you play as Ryu and Nina, you become aware of how weak they are in the opening stages of the game. Whereas Fou-Lu already is a force of nature who is, nevertheless, supposed to be in a greatly weakened condition. You do not yet understand the story, as it is revealed to you little by little, though you can sense that something grand is bound to happen.

The change from Ryu to Fou-Lu is an effective story-telling device. It takes place a few times throughout the game. It makes you ask questions about who those characters are and what their connection may be. It also gives you a sense of scale. Where Ryu is feeble, Fou-Lu is potent. While Fou-Lu is ancient, Ryu is young. There is a thread through space and time that binds the two.

Whatever momentum those scenes build up is undone by tricks and gimmicks. The game does a poor job of keeping you focused. Ryu, Nina, and Cray, are caught up in what essentially is a recursive fetch quest. They need this trivial thing, which requires the completion of that mundane task, which involves this other person in that different place, which means that such and such troubles have to be addressed, and so on. There is the stated goal of finding Elina, though it goes through so many forgettable stages that you can easily lose track of what is happening in this world.

Compounding the problem are the random and frequent enemy encounters, which are typical of JRPGs. Those force you into battle where you have to engage in turn-based combat. You go through menus to input your commands and decide on your strategy. Attacks involve animations that cannot be skipped completely. You end up seeing the same motion and magic spell over and over again. Additionally, the game adds a unique mini game to each part of the story. You have to complete it in order to advance. They are not difficult to figure out, though they add to the impression that you are being pulled in different directions.

About half way through the story you have a good sense of what is going on and what your final objective is, assuming you did not get distracted or lost your patience in the meantime. You travel to the capital to find Fou-Lu and set things right. The journey there follows the same pattern of completing one fetch quest after the other and of testing your commitment with yet more mini games.

Fou-Lu is on a killing spree to eliminate humanity even though he has been the beneficiary of benevolence at each stage of the story. He is of the view that people are a lost cause. Indeed, if we think of all the terrible things humans have a capacity for, we can imagine why an exalted being would think lowly of us. Though I am sceptical of this premise, as a being that is clearly superior to our kind would have a more profound understanding of our state. It would not seek to kill us for our frailties of character, in the same way a human loves and respects a dog even though dogs cannot do all the things human are capable of.

At any rate, the battle comes down to a matter of perspectives through gameplay that ramps up in difficulty. Do we cleanse the land of people or do we let them do what their condition renders inescapable with the hope that they will eventually sort things out? Note that both of these involve elements of good and evil: to give people a pass means that they will keep committing terrible deeds, though to annihilate them is a terrible deed unto itself. Fundamentally, this is a matter of assessing the degree of admixture between the analytical extremes of good and evil, but not of circumventing it altogether.

This story is at least as old as the myth of Prometheus. There the titan whose very name means “forethought” trusted humanity with knowhow, symbolised as the art of wielding fire. The gods, much like Fou-Lu, thought this was dangerously naive because humans do not have the maturity to handle fire responsibly—and, indeed, we frequently destroy each other with fire, literally and figuratively. Though we also wield fire to keep babies warm, build houses, and make culture happen. Punishing those positive traits because of the negative ones is fundamentally flawed judgement, for it assumes that there can exist a world without admixture. Both Prometheus and the gods agree with this premise. Their disagreement consists in how exactly to manage said admixture.

What we are now experiencing is the vision of Prometheus in vivo, else Ryu’s superordinate end in the story: to let people continue despite their flaws. This is also depicted through Nina’s positivity and even Cray’s self-restraint in the face of anger-inducing challenges. Nina shows peerless resolve through compassion, while Cray exhibits mental fortitude which is especially important for a man of his raw strength since a strong man with a weak character is likely to contribute to the detriment of himself and of others. We are capable of breaking and of making things. To break is to make, to make is to break, for all that is present is transfigured as such in arrangements that remained to be transfigured anew.

What I like about Breath of Fire IV is the setting of dragons in a plane of reality that is not native to them. They too contribute to this admixture by having both a benign and deleterious influence on the world. The dynamic between the two halves of Ryu and Fou-Lu is a powerful narration tool. The empire’s more sinister ambitions are presented effectively and are made to stand in juxtaposition to the main characters’ virtues.

The game, nonetheless, suffers from severe flaws in execution. The story does not advance at a steady pace. Fetch quests make the adventure last much longer than it needs to, without being especially engaging in their own right. The narrative is disrupted frequently and several gameplay elements feel unpolished. All these amount to a potentially frustrating experience or, at least, an intense test of patience. I give it a passing grade, though I am relieved that it is over and that the dragons have finally left us alone in our struggles.

🔷 Consider making a donation.

Brainstorming multi-lingual use of Artemis - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z

I now follow three websites or feeds whose authors write in French; in at least two cases, the authors write in both French and English. When I see posts in different languages, I use Firefox’s Translate feature to read them. Firefox Translate is not perfect, but as long as I can get the gist of something I am happy (although suggestions for better translation practices, ideally locally, and without complex, internet-connected, or paid technology, would be sincerely appreciated!).

Now that I am seeing more French in my Artemis feed, I have been thinking about what features may be useful to help me make the most of what I see. Here is a snippet of some posts in my web reader right now:

ALT

Five posts in Artemis by four authors. The first three posts are in French. The last two are in English.

One of the features I am experimenting ¹ with (seen in the screenshot above) is adding the language code associated with an article before the title of the article, like so:

[FR] [post title]

I only add this if the title isn't in a language I know (English).

To determine the language that corresponds with a post, I am using the “langdetect” Python package ². There are likely ways to infer language deterministically (ActivityStreams has a “contentMap” value that contains as keys language codes that map to post content, e.g. “fr” would map to a post written in French).

This feature is most useful when a title is also written in a language I don’t know. The tag gives me a clear visual indication that a post is in a different language before I start reading the title. This helps me while scanning my feed.

One edge case where this tag adds confusion, however, is when all the words in the title happen to be in English. This was the case with one title in my feed, “Writober 2026 – Lounge ”, whose contents are in French but the title is readable in English. In this case, an “[FR]” preface to the title is technically correct, but is jarring given the title co-incidentally is in words that I can read as English.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Earlier today at HWC Asia/Pacific, I raised the idea of multi-lingual feeds and we had a good discussion. Part of me wants to offer a translated version of a post title, but I am not sure whether I want to be running a full translation model on the server. Argos Translate looks like a promising model should I want to go down this path, though I would sincerely appreciate recommendations on this front. The red line is that I want all translation to either happen within Artemis or, if absolutely necessary, the user’s browser. I don’t want to use an external API.

There is an experimental Translator API in the browser which could, in theory, allow the use of JavaScript to translate specific parts of the page on load. With that said, this API does not have Firefox or Safari support, and it would mean titles would be translated on every page load.

I am also unsure whether using a translation will deprive me of some part of the experience of seeing multilingual text. I read one Mastodon post in Artemis today that was written in French. I was able to translate the post myself approximately enough to get the joke, even though I know very few words of French. I felt really good after this!

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Reflecting on what multi-lingual features a readers should have has taken me down a long rabbit hole of considerations. If an article has a translated version, could a web reader show an icon to indicate that there is a translated version? Could said reader automatically retrieve the translated version? What could/should Artemis do when the titles of feeds are in a different language? Yesterday I was subscribing to a French blog that uses WordPress. The titles of the feeds were in French and at first I accidentally selected the comments feed as the one to which I wanted to subscribe.

Language use on the web is complicated, and I am only scratching the surface. Stephanie Booth’s talk “While We Wait for BabelFish: Languages on theInternet [sic]”, although given in 2007, has given me a lot to think about. As I only speak one language (although I do understand the specific Scots dialect/words from where I grew up), I have a limited view of what is best to do. Someone who only speaks one language may prefer a different UI to someone who speaks multiple. That is to say: there is a lot to explore, and I would love help! If you have thoughts, I would be delighted to hear from you.

This experiment is currently enabled only on my account. I do this sometimes so I can get a feel for a feature before releasing it either in the Artemis Labs section of the software as an experiment or as a fully-fledged feature.

[↩]

Technical note: I check if the post content is more than two words to prevent false positives, something I ran into with short Mastodon posts. This logic will likely need to be made more robust, though.

[↩]

Writober 2026 – Lounge Translator API Argos Translate I would be delighted to hear from you 1 2 [↩] [↩] langdetect While We Wait for BabelFish: Languages on theInternet

About public writing - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

I am an introvert. This means that I expend energy when I am in the presence of other people and store energy when I am alone. Introverts are often mistaken for being shy. While there is overlap, the two are not the same. Specifically in my case, I am not shy: I mean exactly what I say. I also am not touchy or sensitive and will appear emotionally detached even when I am actively engaged in the given activity.

Being sociable and having personal time is the right balance. I mostly get sociability through my coaching work, the text correspondence I maintain with various people I know or even strangers who ask me various questions, video calls with friends and family, and the occasional in-person event I attend. I wish the in-person events were more frequent, but I cannot change that unilaterally. I am working on it though and am open about making that a bigger part of my life.

My ambition is to help build a local community that consists of family and friends. What is the point of being a one-man-army, like I am now, if I cannot spontaneously tell my jokes to anyone?

Interpersonal relations, especially beyond tiny groups, are how we get to participate in culture and how we may contribute to its making. To cook, to dance, to do sports, and, yes, to argue and to fight. They all have the effect of showing us something that is beyond our own selfhood. We benefit exactly because we keep our horizons open; open to the possibility of that which we are not; the possibility as embodied in the other person; the “you”, which is immanent to each and every “you”.

The community is not about maintaining an echo chamber. Variety and indeed some pushback is benign and desirable, provided your individuality has enough space to be expressed in. For me, this practically means that I can still get some time alone.

Private time is restful even though I keep myself busy with tasks. For example, I am now writing this article after having spent time on a long video call with a friend. I do not feel burdened by the task. It does not drain my energy nor does it deplete my willpower. By writing, I draw immense fortitude from the heavens. My mind is razor sharp. My emotions are stable. My poise is perfect.

This is all because of what I write about and the manner in which I do it. Whether I expound on hotly contested political issues, general philosophical themes, technicalities of programming, or artistic considerations, I am always doing what I enjoy. I am not a “content creator”. I have not picked a niche on the basis of some business calculation and then figured out what its audience wants to consume. No. I speak my mind in earnest. I go as far as I need to and have no interest if anyone is joining me.

I cover what I like. I do it as a means of personal fulfilment. My ultimate goal is wellness. This is about my individual well-being, which can then emanate outwards. For as long as I am in a good condition, which is both physical and mental, others who interact with me can also benefit. Either directly, since I will support them through thick and thin, or indirectly by extracting the transferable parts of what I do and then applying them to their life.

Writing is an outlet for my creativity. It gives me the boundless mental space I need to put ideas to the test by thinking them through. Whatever I write about is the distillation of intense thought that has transpired over many sessions of meditation (“meditation” as in “intense, focused thought”). By the time I write it, it is already clear in my head and ready to be typed out.

Since the principal goal of my writing endeavours is to fulfil me, I am not distracted by other considerations. For example, I do not keep track of visitor data for my website. I do not care if anybody is interested in my musings, let alone what exactly they are doing with them. Similarly, I do not write for an audience. This is not some grand people-pleasing project. I expound on controversial topics and stand my ground with conviction. Not out of stubbornness, but as a function of having thought things through, as demonstrated by my nuanced statements.

Writing for my own sake means that I have found my lodestar. There is a fixed position in the sky that empowers me to orient myself at all times. This practically also means that I do not recognise any obligation towards anyone. I cover whatever topic I am interested in, say exactly what I think, and do it whenever I feel like. The entire process is self-contained. As a result, I do not experience mental fatigue, let alone burnout. The feedback I get from writing is enough to keep me going from strength to strength.

The writer’s life is the lonely life. There is no group event. You experience it alone and, at some level, cannot share it with others. It is very unlikely that you will meet a person who understands what it feels like to be a writer and then even more unlikely to find someone who also shares similar interests to yours. Put differently, writing is the wrong tool if your goal is to make lots of friends.

I do not just write though. I also do it in public. Anyone who has attempted this before knows the physical experience of stress that it induces. Your heart rate is more pronounced, you have difficulty breathing, and you feel pressure in your stomach. I often find that a comment I responded to on YouTube is deleted shortly after I have posted my reply. People yield to the pressure and eventually regret voicing their opinion, even if they have not received any negative response.

Imagine doing that over literally thousands of publications. Fundamentally, this shows that I am not only happy in the fulfilment I get from this activity, but also confident in my capacity to cope with evolving states of affairs. My ideas are well considered, so I am not afraid of being exposed. I put them out there exactly to increase the difficulty, because otherwise I find it too easy.

For me, that which is too easy eventually begets complacency which in turn results in enfeeblement. If it is a project for life, I prefer to remain alert, potent, and dangerous. By putting my thoughts out there, I am creating an accountability structure. I have set a standard and I am making it harder for myself to find excuses not to live up to it. Yes, this is my competitiveness in action. I thrive in the challenge.

Writing is difficult in itself. You have to keep a clear head to collect your thoughts on the topics you are about to expound on. You also need to be in a relatively good physical condition. If you are too tired, for example, your attention will shift away from the text. If you are suffering from a cold, you will not be in a position to concentrate. And so on. The environment is equally important. If there are too many things going on, all of which demand your attention, you will simply not have the energy to commit to the task of writing. Same idea for the computer setup: it has to empower you to focus on the task. Consistent writing is a reflection of consistency in general, which in turn speaks of attentiveness and decisiveness.

The feeling of being scrutinised is especially intense if you are not clear that you are writing for yourself. If there is hope in the back of your head that you will win accolades, friends, etc. then the fear of being judged and of failing will quickly take over. If you do not receive any comments, for example, you will interpret that as a sign that you did something wrong, or that you are stupid, or whatnot. The want for validation will grow stronger and will eventually compel you to some seek some cheap win where you trawl for positive responses. Those are a drug. It is where creativity goes when it wants to die.

There is no problem with public scrutiny if your attitude is right. If you are writing for your fulfilment and if you are, in this spirit of honesty, thinking things through, then there is nothing to be afraid or ashamed of: you already have far greater mental fortitude than the average critic. Indeed, to criticise demands knowledge of the subject matter.

What we usually describe as “criticism” are poorly informed opinions, half-examined thoughts, and momentary vibes. Only those who have gone through the rigours have criticism. If you get such feedback, then you should be dancing and singing because it will remake you for the better. The actual critic can upgrade you by dissecting your project and by telling you something about yourself that you are not aware of. The rest are not telling you something about yourself, but only about themselves with your publications as a pretext.

Public writing is a form of exposing who you are. Given enough words, you cannot hide the flaws in your thinking and the errors in your judgement. You cannot pretend to be somebody else. Even if you are writing with an alias and not explaining anything about your private life, a keen reader knows far more about you than you realise. I already hinted at this with how consistency in writing points to consistency in general and to other qualities by extension. The flow of thought, the expansiveness of ideas, the coherence therein, the interconnectedness of concepts… Those you reveal right away. Even your character in terms of self-control, emotional regulation, and how logical you are can be inferred. These are all reflected through the text.

There is also scrutiny on what exactly you write about. You might make a comment that someone finds insensitive. Or someone may think you could say something else. Or they may not like your style. In short, you might receive negative comments. If you keep getting those, it ultimately means that you have to work on how you express your thoughts and formulate your arguments. You can describe something useful, for example, but do it by using a metaphor that is racist or otherwise inappropriate. Nobody will think about how right you are, but will instead point out your sloppy and ultimately ineffective expository writing.

Inexperienced people tend to pay too much attention to negative comments. Sometimes negativity points at something valid, but it may also be a reflection of the person’s own shortcomings. Learn to be honest with yourself, magnanimous in your understanding, and fair in your judgement. Does the other person actually make a valid point? Do they say something that may be correct in another context but does not apply specifically to you? Could it work for you as well? Can you imagine changing your ways accordingly? Alternatively, you may find that the comment you got shows a lack of understanding of what you wrote: they did not engage with the argument, for example. Be fair in that too and dismiss it without hesitation.

If you are not clear on your goals, negative comments will discourage you from publishing. Are you doing it for the feedback? Why would you pick this lonely and thankless task as your vehicle for receiving validation? Negativity cannot touch you if you are not there for the feedback. The same is true for positive comments though. Those can also lead you astray because they may condition you to please the audience in order to elicit another pleasant response. This is yet another drug that will quickly throw you off balance.

Remember the ultimate “why” you are writing. Be faithful to that and blot out all the noise. Then you will be untouchable.

🔷 Consider making a donation.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-20T09:16:56.000Z

My old darkroom (2013)

STATUS: Picking at a few projects around the house
TODO: Clean garage
LISTENING: Zeal and Ardor, GREIF
WATCHING: "The Diplomat" season 4

I miss out on a lot by constantly going online to see what I've missed out on.

✍️ Reply by email

Wonders of Web Weaving, Episode 24 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-20T00:00:00.000Z

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

In Episode 24, I chat with Alex, the author of alexsirac.com about, among other things, collective intelligence in public commons, what the IndieWeb can learn from Wikipedia, community in comments, 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.

Alex alexsirac.com The twenty-fourth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed

Comment on violent protests - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-20T00:00:00.000Z

I was asked about my opinion on the violent protests in France. I do not cover day-to-day events because the details seldom are necessary for my theoretical insights. What follows is a general view on political violence, governance, and reform.

Political violence as a tool

Violence is a tool. It can be used by the forces seeking political reform. It may also be employed by the establishment. In both cases, what matters is the application: how the tool is used and in pursuit of which ends. To dismiss it as such is to pretend that it can never be useful.

When the 18th century French revolutionaries were beheading members of the Ancien Régime, for example, they were effectively issuing a corrective against profligacy. They were delivering justice. That this was carried out by gruesome means is important insofar as it made the message unambiguous.

The same tool of political violence can, of course, be used to uphold an otherwise abusive status quo. Violence thus performs a function of unleashing certain forces while containing others. What the goal is, is notionally distinct and can be reasoned about as such.

Violent protests will amount to something more than sheer destruction if they are supported by programmatic action. If there is a concrete follow-up programme that can be implemented to usher in some kind of thoroughgoing change, then violence shall contribute constructively to the refashioning of the state.

If, however, such programmatic action is absent or present yet tokenistic, then violent protests will eventually degenerate into collective mindlessness; into anger that fuels unrest and facilitates looting with no higher end in sight.

Popular does not always mean good

Protests always have concrete demands, at least initially. They are mindful in this regard. Though demands themselves do not yield a specific programme. It is not enough to know what one wants. One must also have a clear idea of how to get it and, above all, be prepared to make sacrifices in their own life where necessary. Otherwise, it is wishful thinking at best and reckless governance at worst.

This may not matter to the teenagers who protest, for example, though it still is significant for politics at-large. The state, or anyhow the agent of collective action, must be in a position to realise the given reforms, which themselves need to be defined in clear terms.

There can be no progress without a well-designed agenda that connects desires to results.

That granted, governments do not always do what their people want. One reason is corruption. Another is legitimate longer-term planning. For example, people may ask for cheap credit to finance their everyday spending. Doing so is not free of longer-term consequences, even if it costs virtually nothing for the central bank to print oodles of money. A responsible leader has to factor in the implications and decide for the general good not just in present time, but also for the future.

One area where this is desirable is ecology. A typical policy along those lines involves some present day inconvenience, however minor, in exchange for greater longer-term benefits for people and the other species of this planet. There are cases where there are no inconveniences to be had, though the principle is that certain policies can be rationally understood as broadly beneficial for the long-term even if they are unpopular at the outset.

Put differently, the popularity of any given idea does not, ipso facto, make it benign.

Shrewd and unscrupulous governments will try to put a positive spin on their stratagems, such that those qualify as elements of responsible statecraft. Though this does not change the fact that a policy can be popular and still harmful.

Understanding the contradictions

Politics is complex because it is replete with trade-offs and bundles of mutually exclusive choices. One has to factor in the prerequisites as well as the foreseeable consequences.

Which brings me to common contradictions that we see everyday. For example, people in Europe will complain about how expensive life is right now. But they will also be against Russia, which supplied them with cheap energy. And they will not be willing to make deals with Iran, which can also give them cheap energy. And they do not like the Chinese, so they make Chinese exports extra expensive. And so on.

Politicians want to be popular. Same with influencers and other prominent figures. So nobody ever says the unpleasant truth out loud, which leaves the philosopher in the awkward position of being the cynic: there are inescapable trade-offs in life and you cannot have it all. If you want the opulent life in which you live beyond your means care-free, you have to accept alliances with people you do not like and/or you have to support your own country’s imperialistic propensities. Those riches you dream of will not just come out of positive vibes.

It is very easy to condemn imperialism. It is much more difficult to lead a lifestyle that, once generalised, renders imperialism surplus to requirements.

Withholding judgement

I choose to let events unfold and judge the results. People have demands I agree with. I think governments in Europe have grown complacent and are increasingly unaccountable. It is time to make them realise that things cannot continue this way.

Though I will not celebrate before the match is over. The protesters must prove that they know what they want and are able to enact it as the new order. They have to couch their ambitions in terms of a wider programme that can deliver sustainable results. Perhaps they can do so, though what I have seen thus far makes me cautious.

🔷 Consider making a donation.