~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

Apple and a Hacker's Future - Stratechery - Baty.net

2026-10-05T10:39:18.000Z

what struck me about Gurman’s article is just how unenthused I am by an Apple smarthome product. Some of this is fatigue from a decade of Siri disappointment and skepticism about the company’s ability to deliver on a voice-centric product. More than that, however, I bristle at the idea of introducing Apple’s constraints to more parts of my life.

I've been surprised that I feel much the same way.

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Emacs: ‘doric-meadow’ and ‘doric-mountain’ coming to the ‘doric-themes’ - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-05T00:00:00.000Z

Version 1.4.0 of the doric-themes, which is currently in development, will include two new themes that draw inspiration from natural settings.

The Doric project is all about restraining the use of colour and being deliberate about the application of typographic styles. The result is a minimalist aesthetic that can make it easier to focus on the contents of the Emacs buffer.

Below are samples of the two themes. For accurate results, click to enlarge the image.

doric-meadow

doric-mountain

Sources

The Doric themes use few colours and will appear monochromatic in many contexts. They are my most minimalist themes. Styles involve the careful use of typographic features and subtleties in colour gradients to establish a consistent rhythm.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

My brain on a Sunday morning - Baty.net

2026-10-04T12:32:00.000Z

I was on my Mac this morning, just minding my own business, when suddenly I found myself using the Linux laptop, and I liked it.

On Sunday mornings, I do system maintenance. This means running updates on all my computers. Right now, that's five machines: one Linux desktop, two Linux laptops, one Mac desktop, and one Mac laptop. Yes, that's too many, but it is what it is.

Both Linux laptops run CachyOS, which is Arch-based, so there are always updates.

I started with the Framework. Once it was updated and rebooted, I pulled the latest tweaks to my Emacs config, to make sure it worked on Linux. I've been leaning toward using macOS exclusively, so I haven't been testing things on Linux as much. Everything worked, though.

While typing on the Framework, the first thing I thought about was how much I prefer typing on it to typing on the MacBook Air. Then I remembered how much I like the idea of Linux. Then I noticed that Emacs starts up more than twice as fast on the Framework for some reason. Then I remembered that the best (and only) way to have consistent Emacs key bindings on Linux is to, well, use Emacs.

All this to say that the conflict between running macOS, Linux, or both is still a thing. As troublesome and complex as it can be, I think the answer will always be "both". Surely I can manage it, right? Maybe if I only use the laptops for simple things like blogging, browsing, or journaling, things will be easy enough. I'll never be able to settle on one or the other. Just admit it.

I'm on the couch typing this in Emacs using the Framework, both things I told myself a week ago that I'd stop doing. My stupid brain is always mucking things up.

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About psychopaths, bullies, and integrity - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-04T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal. I comment on the psychosynthesis of the bully.

Reading the BBC’s article with the title How to spot a psychopath at work - from a man who worried he could be one made me think of my time at the European Parliament and of the human nature I have been so attentive to all this time. The world of politics does not have anywhere near as much money as bankers do, though it has formal power and enjoys great prestige. Those create in people certain expectations and thus amplify specific aspects of their personality that can be anti-social.

From the BBC:

“The city [meaning London’s finance sector] rewards this dark triad behaviour… being uber confident, being able to control and manipulate others, not getting emotionally involved in decisions and being decisive,” he said.

I think it actually comes down to a single core quality, which is the lack of integrity throughout. It has to be systematic. This is what makes a person manipulative. It also is where this “uber confidence” comes from, because it is the capacity to peddle lies knowingly. From the systematic lack of integrity also comes emotional detachment in terms of not caring about consequences. The manipulative person only serves their own interest. They exhibit no commitment to any statement or cause beyond their self: that is how they operate. As such, they necessarily have no commitment towards other people.

There are degrees, of course, though systematicity is necessary. At its extreme end the lack of integrity speaks of a character who will do anything to advance their agenda and take no accountability whatsoever for their actions. This is the person who will give you a warm hug, followed by a passionate kiss, and then a stab in the back. They will find what you need, give you enough of it or engender in you the hope that you will acquire it, and then instrumentalise that to control you. When you are of no service to them, they will betray you outright.

The lack of integrity is an anti-social trait even when the person is not as confident or decisive. Or, to put it differently, confidence and decisiveness do not make for an anti-social person. Those are actually the traits you want in a friend, for example, especially if they are combined with kindness. Granted, a master manipulator who shows confidence and is skilful is extra dangerous.

The insecurity of indeterminacy

In modelling the world, we abstract away the details to make sense of the underlying mechanics. In other words, we simplify. Consider a simple distribution of competences into three groups: low, medium, and high. Those at the lower and higher ends will typically be aware of their strengths or weaknesses and attendant placement in the distribution. The reason is that their cases are easier to notice. The person who is somewhere in the middle has a more challenging task to figure out where they are along the distribution. They could be a 4 but they could also be a 6 out of 10. There is more doubt there.

From awareness comes acceptance, which begets a sense of stability. Awareness for those in the middle, however, creates an immediate concern as it brings to the foreground this indeterminacy. They are effectively asked to resolve it, but they likely do not have the experience to do so. More so since this happens from an early age. As such, the person who finds themselves somewhere in the middle experiences, at least to an extent, insecurity. They can work to overcome it, but the point is that the insecurity is present.

Every person can find themselves in this situation. It is the intersection of awareness, inability to find answers with the given means, and concern about the implications. What does it mean to be somewhere in the middle? Indeterminacy is unsettling even in intellectual terms. We have a tendency to have an ending to our stories. Cliffhangers bother us. But why? I think it is due to said intersection.

From common insecurity to systematic belittlement

While feeling unsettled in the face of indeterminacy is common, there is an extra step before it forms the basis of a bully’s patterns of behaviour. The bully is the average person in the aforementioned distribution whose solution to indeterminacy is the belittlement of those who rank lower than they do.

A typical form of bullying that does not involve coercion is to make fun of someone who relative to the bully is less wealthy, less smart, less good looking, and so on. It always is directed towards those whom the person considers as inferior to their own and is systematic in its application.

The bully wants to invent or identify their inferiors, in whatever metric is expedient, and will shift the goalposts accordingly, in order to confirm in their conscience that they are not below average. They do so as a matter of first priority.

You can identify a bully in how they incorporate information about another person in the conversation they are having. They introduce this person and immediately say something about them which counts as a grave fault or irreparable frailty. For example, “I know Protesilaos: he is thoughtful, but he is poor”. Here the reference to one’s poverty is not relevant to the discussion and need not be stated at the outset. Yet it comes at the beginning to establish the baseline of expectations and thus to put the bully in a relatively superior position.

The bully is signalling a want for reassurance. They are asking to be told that what they have is worthwhile. It is not evil that drives them, but fear.

Watch out for this pattern and you will realise how common it is. Though it is not systematic in all those cases, otherwise everybody around us would qualify as a bully. Though pay close attention and you can spot the bully through the systematicity of this pattern.

Fear is not a weakness per se. It is response mechanism. It communicates a message. How we handle the fear is what speaks to our character.

The bully is effectively a coward. They are not only governed by fear but are also trying to externalise it and to weaponise it. They turn it into fuel for belittling others. They are cowards for not wanting to face their own insecurity and then to work towards resolving it.

Every person can reach a point of stability through acceptance. They have to be honest about their own condition and not seek to compare it to that of others in a positive or negative light. In other words, they need to be descriptive, without prescriptive undertones.

Cowards can appear confident. They will put up an act, where they are loud and boastful. By verbally or physically abusing others they will try to give the impression of toughness. More so if they can make a show out of it, to advertise to the world just how capable they are. They are, in effect, saying and doing it in the hope of tricking themselves into believing it. But they never do, otherwise the remedy for bullying would be bullying.

Punching down and kissing up

Their abuse will always be directed towards their perceived inferiors. To those whom they consider superior to them, even when they dare not admit as much, they will show a completely different face. They will be friendly, charming, and even exhibit a willingness for servitude. It will be exaggerated, as if something is not right about it. We thus use the expression “to punch down and to kiss up”.

Someone punching down is obviously a reason for caution. Though beware of the person who kisses up, for they always punch down.

Now an example from football to describe a bully in action. There was a guy in my neighbourhood who fancied himself as the strongest around. Me and friends of mine were athletes but we never made a big point about our fitness. One time we played a friendly match (i.e. off-season) where that guy was on the opposing team. We were outclassing them but were otherwise casual about it.

At some point a teammate of mine gets the ball off that guy with a clean challenge. He turns around, pushes my teammate, and then exclaims exactly this “you also are tough? I fuck you all in here” («είσαι και παλικάρι; εγώ σας γαμώ όλους εδώ μέσα»). My teammate responded calmly and we ignored him.

He then kept trying to hit us instead of playing the ball. At some point after tolerating his dirty game, I turn around, push him on the chest with force, and he falls to the ground. I get to his face while he is still confused and shout aggressively “what do you want, feeble-minded, what do you want?” («τι θέλεις, μαλακισμένε, τι θέλεις;»). After that he calmed down and nothing happened.

[ An aside about “feeble-minded”. In English this sounds intellectualist, but in Greek the word “malaka” (μαλάκα) and derivatives are very common. This is a variation of the word for soft and is used to describe someone or something that is soft in an undesirable way. Though malaka is used more casually to call a friend’s attention, so it is not negative in such a context. ]

Later he was prince charming to everybody and never again did he play against us. Maybe that event broke his propensity for bullying, so it served him well long-term. Or he found other ways to channel his resentment. But in the moment at least, he exhibited the behaviour of wanting to punch down to reassure himself that his self-image was correct, only to realise he should be kissing up instead, which he resorted to right after.

As for violence, it is neither good nor bad. Those who glorify, demonise, ignore, or underestimate it will be its victims. Same with everything in a world of admixture, as I have explained at length many times before. One must be prepared. It is a matter of how it is used: the application and the degree will make it abusive or not. Controlled use can be benign. It is how a safe space is established, after all.

Advantage at the personal level

Bullies will not be as obvious, however. They may wear nice clothes, look wonderful, and talk in polite ways with all the trappings of etiquette. You can still spot them by paying attention to their patterns of speech, where they keep alluding to specific people whom they in fact loath for their perceived inferiority, even though they are not relevant to the topic at hand.

Furthermore, these subtle bullies will default to devaluing what you do or represent. They operate by shifting the goalposts. One way to achieve that result is to state something vague, which can then be redefined willy-nilly. More so if this gives them an immediate advantage over you.

For example, “Protesilaos is a poet; poetry is lame”. By dismissing or trivialising what you do/are they are again setting the baseline in a manner that is advantageous to them. What does it even mean for poetry as such to be lame? And what even is the problem with that, anyway? As soon as you pause to work within their framework, you are playing their game.

If you ask for them to elaborate on what exactly they have in mind, they will refrain from doing so. They will instead claim to have made a mistake or tell you how this does not matter after all. Remember systematicity though. A genuine mistake is fine, but they will keep showing this behaviour over and over again. They seek that advantage at the personal level, to make you think that there is something to it after all, which is the key here.

Disapproval is not bullying per se. It can be done with rigour, in the form of an analysis, to explain how or why something is undesirable in general. But in the bully’s case, there is no rigour, no depth, no analysis that applies beyond their immediate want. It consists in name-calling like “this is lame”, which itself is malleable to always fit the rules of the game that the bully chooses to initiate.

For example, I am against clickbait tactics. It is one of the reasons I produce long-form content and why I avoid knee-jerk reactions. My rationale is that clickbait forces things to be superficial, which in turn reinforces the worst traits in people, which is turn destroys nuance, which in turn makes us less thoughtful, which begets anger, frustration, and conflict.

Mine is a case of judgement, of understanding the state of affairs, and of thinking through the implications of any given position. In so doing, I am not seeking an advantage against any specific person because I am not shifing the goalposts. I go to great lengths to explain what I mean exactly so that the goalposts cannot be shifted. Thus I stand by what I claim and am eager to comment on it further.

Pay attention to the goal, which is control at the personal level. Look for the tendency to divert attention, to say something flagrant only to take it back immediately. As always, this has to be done systematically. A one-off, for whatever reason that may be, is a false positive.

Common tricks of emotional manipulation

Which brings me to the experience of life in the world of day-to-day politics. As I noted above, politics does not have the money that goes around in financial circles. Though it has power and prestige ex officio. Those can and do encourage people to adopt anti-social patterns of behaviour.

Based on what I observed, politicians are less likely to be bullies. In the aforementioned simplified model, they are the achievers who do not feel the need to prove that they are achieving something. There may still be those among them who have great ambition coupled with deep-seated insecurity, though the average parliamentarian is fine in this regard.

Where we find lots of bullies are in the assistants to the politicians and in the wider world of civil society, else lobbying. Those are the functionaries who are close to power but are not powerful themselves. They need to remind everybody of their acumen, their academic credentials, the money they earn, the connections they have, and so on. This is where we begin to discern the propensity to single out the ostensibly inferior people at times where that is unwarranted.

In pointing towards their inferiors at the earliest opportunity, those bullies will use names and have some actual person in mind. For example, they will not talk about poverty in broad terms as a systemic phenomenon, but only as it is expressed through the vices of a given figure that they know. And then their talk about poverty is not for the sake of doing something about it, but only to then juxtapose it with their own state of being.

Bullies are the situational psychopaths. If they think they can get away with abuse, they will employ it, like the tough guy I covered above. Except in politics they will do it while also professing their undying devotion to some lofty standard of morality.

European politics is especially suspect in this regard, because in Europe many decision-makers live in a fantasy land where they believe to have a sophisticated civilisation while the rest of the world is backward-minded. No, I am not referring to some extremist ideology, but to the run-of-the-mill Europeanist and milquetoast centrist. Whereas, say, politicians in Cyprus know that Cyprus is a small country with little influence on international affairs.

This, too, by the way, is the figment of the bully’s mind: to depict other cultures as inherently inferior, in order to prop up what they have.

If outright abuse is not an option, bullies will operate with guile. Emotional manipulation thus unfolds. One such trick is through instilling in you a sense of guilt. It is most effectively when you cannot change what they are pointing towards or you have to do something extremely demanding to remedy the situation.

By telling you how something unchangeable you have is undesirable, they pressure you to accept your inferiority. Once you internalise that thought, they no longer appear to you as bullies but as normal people who have an apparent concern for your wellness; so normal that you may even think they are benevolent.

Racism is the most common form of induced guilt, even though we can think of it in different dimensions as well. Its goal is to make the person feel bad about their innate characteristics, like their skin colour, facial features, and cultural background. Racism is inducing guilt because if it succeeds in convincing its targets to internalise its message, then the oppressive superstructure it conceals is no longer seen as oppressive in the eyes of the oppressed, but as the ordinary form of social organisation.

Guilt from the outside exploits a person’s desire to fit in. It also feeds off a person’s want to excel at what they do. Such a person will thus internalise the message more easily and then use it as the basis for their own self-criticism. It is no coincidence that many people will be racist against their own people, for example, or immigrants will have strong anti-immigrant views. They have internalised racism as the objectivity of things.

Another common trick of emotional manipulation is mixed signalling. Its goal is to create uncertainty, much like the shifting of the goalposts, which eventually makes you rationalise your doubts as your own shortcomings. That makes you vulnerable and open to being controlled.

Mixed signalling happens in many interpersonal affairs. A common one is in what can appear as on and off romance. It consists in a needless gentle touch that is accompanied by suggestive language that seem to appear all of a sudden. It then turns into an expression of distance and apparent professionalism. The objective is to create a hope and an expectation through which the person becomes controllable. The giving and the taking away is a kind of entrapment.

There are other tricks, such as denying any wrongdoing or making you doubt your own recollection of events. Fishing for compliments, asking for validation, making tacit threats. Though those are easy to catch and thus not very effective in isolation.

Badmouthing someone is also very common. Though this one is not directed towards you. It is a form of conspiracy: to make others turn against you. But you yourself are not effectively caught in the trap of committing self-harm, so you can notice how you are being the victim in such a situation.

Integrity as a strength and a weakness

I entered the world of politics as an outsider. I got invited to work for a politician who was reading my blog and who thought I would be of use in their office. I did not have any connections, was not a member of some party or organisation, did not partake in activism, and was generally doing exactly what I do now: write with clarity.

I think I did well in all my office tasks, such as to write internal analyses about a political situation, to table amendments to legislation, and to contribute to relevant research. Those are not interpersonal skills. Quotidian politics is more like gossip than philosophising. You have to connect with people, to give them something in exchange for something else, and to always maintain that web of dependencies.

Whereas I am a one-man army who will not try to depend on anybody and who will do my own thing at all times. I quickly realised this made me unfit for the world of politics. Fundamentally, I am too honest and too loyal, and probably too capable for my own good.

This is a blessing and a course. On the positive side, it makes me speak my mind in earnest using tools I have developed carefully and which I continue to sharpen (e.g. this article). I am not trying to mislead anybody. I will take the time to expound on my thoughts because (i) this is how I can understand them better and (ii) I may filter out the kind of person who is not willing to engage with my work in depth.

By filtering out those people I effectively guarantee that I myself will not fall into the trap of appealing to an audience for the sake of gaining some material advantage. I am not here to make friends. If that happens, it is a happy coincidence. I am here to express what I am working on. I enjoy the process.

It is also why I do not keep track of any analytics on my website and why I do not share my publications on social media or Reddit. I do not want to be influenced by external factors. Same for doing videos only when I feel like it, without tricks and gimmicks. These are my genuine thoughts, which I have considered carefully, and which I pronounce responsibly to the best of my abilities. It is why I do it in public with my real name as well.

I want to communicate in earnest because this is what motivates me. It is how I became a philosopher, after all, given no formal background in the field. I am interested in depth of understanding and will entertain every idea seriously without rejecting it at the outset. Whatever I do, I do it carefully, giving to it my undivided attention, out of a sense of wanting to identify in it the qualities it has beyond what it renders apparent.

This, however, means that I am prone to emotional manipulation. Or, at least, I used to be before figuring it out and paying closer attention to it. You would show me a friendly face and I would be willing to run through a brick wall to defend our friendship. So if you were fooling me, you were already making me do something that I would not have done under different circumstances.

It is not the same as a people-pleaser. Such is the person who will adapt to their social milieu like a chameleon. They are not doing it maliciously: they just want to fit in. Whereas I am fine in being a misfit if it means that I remain honest, hence the one-man army attitude I have. My case is about being loyal and expecting reciprocity. It is the expectation that would fail me. As such, my loyalty would be expressed as a kind of naivety, else foolishness.

You are a fool if you are expecting friendship in the world of politics (and the same for any environment where people can advance their career by throwing you under the bus). You might make friends, because there still are kind people working there, though if your disposition is towards loyalty then you will quickly be taken advantage of.

The weakness I had is also not the same as being a pushover. I am effectively the opposite of that because I do not budge from my position for the sake of sociability or amiability. I only change my mind in the face of compelling arguments brought forth by another or discovered through further personal inquiry. Granted, if it is something I do not care about, I will not argue for it.

You know them from when they are young

These are identifiable in people from an early age. You will find them in personal dynamics at school, for instance. I never was the super popular kid, for example, because I am not handsome and charming. But I was always well received within each niche I occupied: such as sport and motorcycles.

I was the defiant boy you find cool exactly because your parents and teachers are not allowing to be as wild as he is. But you still do not see at especially appealing. Being at the periphery was fine as I was doing my own thing with such dedication that you could not make fun of it: others would call you out for being silly. Whereas being at the periphery while trying to do what the popular kid does will make you look desperate.

Change the details and you realise that the same is happening today. I frequently get feedback along the lines of how inspiring I am to someone. I understand it at the rational level, though I cannot feel it because to me this is my normal state of affairs. I keep being myself then and hope for the best.

Some people, well men to be precise because only men are curious about this specific topic, even want to live my lifestyle and ask me for tips. That is the part that your upbringing forbid you from approaching: the untamed expression to do what you want because you have concluded that it is right for you to proceed thus.

What I do is not especially challenging in technical terms. Though it requires steel at the emotional level. You have to set your expectations accordingly and be patient throughout.

To my mind, I am average in terms of strength and skill. Where I excel is in the robustness of my character combined with the capacity to dive deep into something.

To live the way I do, you have to accept that you are not involved in whatever the centre of attention is. Put differently, you embrace irrelevance. You liberate yourself from the want for relevance and in so doing you free up your energy, which you may then direct towards whatever little thing you are interested in, such as to write.

This naturally means that you will probably be alone as well, but that you would be experiencing already if you were doing it. Last year I earned close to 13k EUR, while the minimum wage is 1k EUR. You do not actually want to live like me. If you like what I do, it is that same sense of admiration you have for tribes in the rainforest while you live in some apartment downtown.

You cannot relate and are underestimating how you need to build up the capacity for frugality if you have been raised in an environment of abundance. In effect, you have to rewild yourself, which takes time and effort. Though, yes, anybody can do it, male or female: it is how people used to live for millenia until very recently.

My life is not harsh in material terms. It is austere, yes, but I am not suffering. In effect, I have turned “less is more” into a lifestyle.

The failure of schooling

Which brings me to the point of education. At school, students learn plenty of tangentially useful technical details through memorisation. Those are designed to make them “book smart”, else to create in them a misplaced confidence in textbook versions of the given field of inquiry. They are not interested in cultivating a sense of “street smart” because that is how you begin to think critically about matters beyond the narrow confines of your specialisation.

If anything, knowing about emotional manipulation would help with friendship, dating, marriage, and parenting, which is potentially beneficial to practically everyone. You will be better prepared to spot the early signs of a bully and choose to avoid them while you can. In so doing, you will be giving negative reinforcement to the bully, to not resort to their usual tricks, which can be a benign corrective for them long-term.

Actual psychopaths are a different kettle of fish, however. Schooling will not change them. Though it will prepare others for what they are capable of. In most cases, what we consider a psycho actually is a bully in a certain situation, as I have described herein.

littleFedi - Baty.net

2026-10-03T17:07:03.000Z

littleFedi is "A small ActivityPub server written in Go"

It was officially released (I think) yesterday, and is another project from Stefano Marinelli of BSSG fame.

A few years ago I'd decided I wanted to "own my content" 🙄 so I ran an instance of Mastodon. Mastodon is overkill and I didn't enjoy it. Then, later, I installed an instance of Go2Social, which worked well. Trouble was, I was all-in with social media at the time and being on a single-user instance felt lonely...nothing useful in "local" or "trending". Discovery was difficult. It was just me and I didn't like it.

Fast forward to today, and things have changed. I've deleted all of my Meta-related accounts and LinkedIn. I thought about quitting Mastodon as well, but FOMO always gets the better of me.

Since I would rather not quit Mastodon completely, I figured I would try running a single-user instance again. Maybe the quiet would be good for me.

I'd seen @Stefano's posts about a new ActivityPub server he was working on and the timing of the first release couldn't be better, so I installed it today at Jack Baty Social.

It's running on my Hetzner VPS behind Caddy as a proxy. I love Caddy. Here's the entire Caddy config for the domain:

social.baty.net {
	encode gzip
	reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8081
}

I've just started poking around, but littleFedi seems like it's got a lot going for it. At first I wanted to use my root domain for my handle (@jack@baty.net) but since I'd previously used that via Ghost, I ran into caching issues and didn't want to bother, so now I'm @jack@social.baty.net.

The big question is whether to migrate followers there, or start fresh and maybe just announce the move from my main @jbaty@social.lol account. I think I'll give it a minute before deciding.

littleFedi is a compelling new entry in the FediverseSpaceArena.

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Saturday, October 3, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-03T09:28:59.000Z

Hermes 3000 (2010)

STATUS: Installing and uninstalling software on my Mac
WATCHING: "Furious"
LISTENING: Lots of Led Zeppelin on Vinyl
READING: "Theo of Golden" by Allen Levi

The best part about being on a Mac is that there are a lot of great apps available that can't be found anywhere else. That might also be the worst part of using a Mac. I can't stop playing with software.

Somebody said, "If you can't hold it, you don't own it." They were right.

Read this somewhere recently: "I'm not aloud to sing in the house" 😄

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Beginning at the end - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-10-03T06:45:00.000Z

For the past decade, every time I went up to the mountains here in my area, I got the chance to look at one particular mountain ridge standing there silently in the background.

It spans roughly 30km, east to west. On one side, the Slovenian one, there’s the town of Kobarid. On the other, just more mountains. I’ve considered walking this ridge for years, every time making a different plan for how to tackle it. Some people do it in multiple days, sleeping either outside or in one of the various huts that are scattered all around. Other people split it in chunks, walking one section at a time. None of those options is either appealing or available to me at this moment in time. The only option I have is to park my car on one end, walk the whole thing in one go and have someone pick me up on the other side.

As I said, it’s roughly 30km and some 2200 meters of ascent. It’s nothing crazy, but at the same time it’s not a walk I can go do completely at random. It does require at least some preparation, and part of that includes walking the two sections at the beginning and at the end, while the middle part is just one long crest so I’m not worried about that.

To make my life easier, I could walk this west to east because that means doing only ~1800 meters of ascent, but what’s the fun in doing that? 2200 is way more appealing than 1800. So the plan is to end the walk on the Italian side, touching the summit of Mount Mali Varh for last and then descending to the little village of Micottis some 1000 or so meters below.

The various maps do show a trail that goes up to that summit, but I learned not to blindly trust maps because more than once I reached places where trails were supposed to be there only to then find myself standing in front of either an impenetrable wall of vegetation or absolutely nothing. Speaking of maps, I recently learned about the existence of hiking.waymarkedtrails.org, which is a fantastic resource if you hike around Europe.

The plan was to go up to Monte Testa Grande through the CAI trail 710, walk the final km or so of the ridge, and then come back down through that trail I spotted on the map. But during my preliminary search, I learned that the trail I want to walk on my way down for sure exists because they run a race on it! It’s the Ultra Vertickal Contesa and much respect to the people—and their knees—who go up this trail at that pace because it’s an enjoyable 37% of average slope and it looks something like this:

And yes, as soon as I saw 37% I knew I had to go check how bad it looks and yup, it is bad. And nope, the trail doesn’t zig-zag its way up to the top. It’s basically a straight line. The people running the race do turn to the right near the top because the finish line is at the summit of Mount Contesa, which is the second to last peak of the ridge.

The top of Mount Contesa at 1518 meters

Being up here, walking the final bit of this ridge made me even more convinced of my plan. We’ll walk this whole thing in one go, and it’s gonna be awesome. The view is amazing; you can see the sea in the far distance on one side and the Julian Alps on the other.

Descending down through the CAI 710 was also quite the experience. The trail is incredibly vertical in certain sections; according to Alltrails it’s anything between 50% to 60% (the uphill section peaks at 64%) and not very well maintained. I think I spent almost as much time coming down as it took me to go up, which is unusual. But the scenery was lovely.

The trail ends—or begins, depending on the way you want to look at it—in the village of Monteaperta, so the only thing left to do was to walk my way back to the parking spot where I left my car.

Very happy with this first preparatory walk. The ridge is nice, going up this stupidly steep trail was an experience, my cardio is shit, but we’re working on that, and I’m now even more convinced I’m gonna walk this whole crest one of these days. And I have a potentially quirky idea for how to share that walk, but more on that later.

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Noticing - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-03T00:00:00.000Z

Walking through the Royal Mile, I noticed the faint – then increasing – scent of coffee in the air coming from a popular bakery. It is morning. I continued walking for a little while, en route to one of my preferred coffee shops. There, the baristas were laughing, one exchanging stories from Scottish history with a hint of humour, the other listening joyfully. Whereas in past weeks the sound of the espresso machine first piques my interest, today it was the sound of laughter, and the joy of seeing smiles so early in the morning.

The cafe was quieter than usual. Tourist season is ending. The weather is cooling. The morning is young. Perhaps it would get busy later. Revelling in the peace, I looked out the window to the world, watching people walk by for longer than usual. I was in no rush to do anything today. At one point, I saw three people – who I expect were friends – walk in exact lockstep. I have seen two people walk in lockstep before – even today – but never three to the best of my recollection. The feeling of friendship echoed through the air. I started thinking about my friends.

Back on my walk, I noticed something that, now I think about it, I must have walked past many times before: an electricity box painted by an artist. This stood out because I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday about a public arts programme in Washington, DC. where electricity boxes in the streets are painted. Here I was standing in front of one, but here in Scotland. How many other pieces of art have I walked past and not noticed? Or, alternatively, How many pieces of art are there waiting to be noticed?

The box had a painted blue and silver background with many flowers in the foreground. The flowers had red, yellow, white, and blue-green petals. The stalks were red, green, purple, and blue. A bird soared in the sky of the artwork. In the bottom right corner there were white outlines of people on skateboards, a football pitch, and more. I wonder how long this work took to make. I took a picture so that I could appreciate the box later. I’m glad I did, for the picture helped me write this description.

Atop the box was another box, a green cage. A posted placed on top of the artwork below contained a QR code to see air quality levels. The station above must have been an air quality monitor. I love how the art not only caught my attention as art itself, but also drew my attention to the science above. Friends help us notice the world around us, I thought. With art in my heart, I went charity shopping, and then continued my walk.

Later on, I walked through a park, and sang along to one of my favourite songs. There were not many people around, and so my quiet, impassioned voice did not seem out of place. Indeed, the sound of my voice was no match for that of the birds singing in the background, and, later, the sound of a group of kids loudly playing tennis. I noticed that the adults playing were mostly quiet, save for the sound of the ball hitting the rackets.

Further on, people huddled by the yellow neon sign at the wooden hut from which coffees are served. I am sure many of them were looking for a beacon of liquid warmth to accompany their mornings, just as I had been an hour earlier. Here, surrounded by Nature, I could feel the cold in my notes and my eyes. I love how autumn makes me feel. I feel every part of myself. Whether it was from my walk or the cooler air or both, I felt I needed to take deeper breath – appreciating the autumn air.

A theme of the day was how places transform with the seasons: trees yellow, we wear more layers, outdoor seating moves indoors, we come closer for warmth. To end my walk, I saw two people laugh uncontrollably, in the way where even when there is a brief pause in the laughter you know that more will come. My morning started and ended with the resonance of laughter: of seeing joy in the air, just as I, too, felt joy sipping on my warm coffee, and then going out to appreciate art and Nature and the world.

On liberartianism and securitarianism - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-03T00:00:00.000Z

In times of instability, one seeks safety. In times of stability, one yearns for adventure. In times of plenty, one tolerates a lot as they think of all the opportunities available to them. In times of scarcity, one becomes suspicious of what they cannot control.

It is how humanity oscillates between extremes, committing mistakes of past generations while also learning something in the process, which it incorporates in philosophical inquiry, religious doctrine, artistic expression, and jurisprudence.

Material conditions and expectations derived therefrom help explain how political movements develop their libertarian and securitarian propensities. Cultural trends exhibit the same tendencies, from an explosion of experimentation and defiance to a want for purity and the concomitant distillation of the essentials.

“Libertarian” here refers to an outlook rather than a specific school of thought which may identify by the same name. It is the view of the world where the individual is above the collective. From there follows the notion of inalienable rights, i.e. those which no group, no body, no authority, can take away from the person.

This is the principle, at least, because in practice there is no such thing as an inalienable right: it is an instituted reality that can always be interpreted anew, given the appropriate triggers or prevailing conditions.

“Securitarian” is the attitude of prioritising the collective over the individual. It consists in the desire for restraint in order to control the factors that contribute to the individual as well as the social experience. At one level this is expressed as a check on the individual’s own patterns of behaviour: to conform to guidelines that are pro-social. At the collective level, it acknowledges the importance of hierarchy, which is how individuals learn to expend their vitality without destroying themselves and their society in the process.

[ Also read: About structure, the little things, and critical thinking (2026-10-01)]

The drift towards self-contradiction

Both libertarianism and securitarianism have manifestations of self-contradiction that results in tyranny.

Extreme libertarianism will be pushing against its own notion of inalienable rights, because it would be asking for freedom at increasingly fractional scales to the point where no authority can ever be conceived as superior to the individual and thus no right may be instituted as such. Institution presupposes at least some degree of collectivist ethos: to agree, at the very least, on the shared values and on the convention that some rights—and which ones—are inalienable and by whom may they be safeguarded and enforced.
Extreme securitarianism exhibits the same phenomenon of self-contradiction. Too much control turns into insecurity already at the individual level, where the person is afraid to experience something different out of fear of losing the world they think they have. Collectively, too much security grows so suspicious of the indeterminate that it begins to prosecute people over increasingly trivial things. The analogous of an auto-immune disease.

A common mistake politically minded people make is to think that the “bad ones” coalesce in one specific ideology or spectrum of views. For example, leftists think that only the far-right is the bane of society. Those on the far-right, in turn, will demonise leftists. And so on. The truth is that every view can be taken to its extreme, at which point it degenerates into the opposite of its stated ambition.

This is not a matter of politics alone. It is a fact of life in general, which the Greeks understood as the world of admixture, of there being no pure good or evil but latent expressions of both on a spectrum of degree. Water is the source of life. Drink moderate amounts and you are healthy, ceteris paribus. Drink ridiculous quantities and you will die of poisoning. It is not water that is deleterious though, but the degree of consumption. The same is true for everything we do: too much or too little will be harmful.

Degeneracy, then, and by extension the drift towards tyranny is a matter of degree else application, not category. Too much freedom results in non-freedom the same way too little freedom does. Too much security engenders insecurity exactly how the absense of security does.

A demanding work-in-progress

The other common mistake is to believe that insitutions are inherently robust. A well-defined insittutional arrangement, the thinking goes, will keep the society going along those lines. Having a strong constitutional order which safeguards representative democracy, for example, will supposedly guarantee democratic norms even while people are apolitical and largely ignorant of affairs beyond their particular milieu.

Erosion will thus be ignored or underestimated. It will happen slowly until it accelerates all of a sudden.

No matter the setup, institutions are upheld on a continuous basis by people. They exist and they perform their tutelary function for as long as there is a critical mass of agents of action working in their favour. Put differently, they are true if we believe them to be true and if we behave in accordance with that belief. Else they are nothing but empty promises, waiting to be instrumentalised by ruthless aparatchiks and aspiring overlords.

This is, after all, how the aforementioned degeneracy develops. It is expressed as a zeal for ideological correctness, which becomes a pattern of decision-making that errs on the side of over-correction instead of caution.

Though even with prudent guidance, the fact of the matter remains that the order is a work-in-progress. There will be trials and there will be errors. There will be cases of too little and others of too much. What matters is that the people prioritise common sense over ideological purity.

Once ideology becomes its own goal, it leads to the destruction of what it purports to serve. Ideologies are frameworks to focus minds on a given project, which works towards the preservation or instantiation and subsequent protection of one or more values. It thus is a tool in the hands of a political movement. Absent the values or measurable progress towards that end, which we can understand as the lived experience of people, the tool itself is not worthwhile.

The degeneracy of the opportunist

Among those who commit to overcorrection are the purists of the ideology as well as the neophytes who join ranks on some opportunist premise. Both can push towards extremism. The latter group is especially prone to exaggerate because it does not have the requisite acculturation to appreciate nuances in the views it has espoused. A zealous and capable student will learn all the rules and how they apply, though it is only the master who has an intuition of when to suspend the application of those rules.

To be concrete in the interest of explaining this concept. For roughly the last ten years, the Western world experienced an overcorrection towards libertarianism, of the sort here considered, which was largely carried out by opportunists and liars. It now moves in the opposite extreme of securitarianism.

One can attest to the times when they met, for example, some heterosexual person cosplaying as LGBT+ under the guise of a bisexual identity. That alone is fine: it can make people feel accepted and thus be comfortable in their reality. Though it would not stop there. Those same pretenders would be vociferous about how strongly they protect their LGBT+ friends and would become intolerant of even the most innocuous hesitation and call for careful deliberation. Same for all-white, upper class liberals pretending to defend minorites in abject poverty, while they themselves were enjoying another lavish meal.

Pretenders and wannabees also exist in conservative groups, where some new convert to a religion, for example, is eager for a holy war and has an unchecked propensity for fundamentalism.

The importance of leadership

In all cases, the guardrails come in the form of strong leadership. This is a matter of attitude among those who occupy positions of authority within the given group. One must be able to say “no” and to push back forcefully against the drift towards extremism, in the same way a parent has to be decisive in order to keep their child’s desire for endless sweets in check.

Leadership consists in courage and competence. Competence absent courage is the psychosynthesis of the arivist: the person who will not stand for any principle and who will only tend to their own interest. Courage absent competence devolves into trigger-happiness.

Leaders start from the family and extend outward. If, as a parent, you cannot call out your child’s bullshit, if you give them everything they want and always yield to their capricious tricks, then at the social level we have a situation where an entire generation of entitled people has not developed an intuition of where the boundaries are. It lacks emotional maturity and is incapable of reasonableness. Same if you are not correcting the tendency for bullying in your child. And so on.

[ Also read: About comments that only communicate feelings (2026-10-02) ]

Same goes for teachers, football coaches, priests, and all tutelary figures. If you yourself are not embodying the values you represent or, at the very least, are making real effort towards that end, then you are setting a negative example. You are part of the problem.

You cannot be a health professional who is a smoker and a drunkard, for example. Your deeds contradict your claims. All you communicate is corruption and its attendant unreliability. You cannot be a spiritual leader who advocates frugality yet succumbs to the greed of the moneyman. And so on.

Society will degenerate once its tutelary figures become feeble in their character and ineffectual in their practices. It is a matter of personal responsibility to be excellent and to have a sense of duty towards the commons. Commitment to the highest standard at the level of the singular person is how society as a whole protects against its own degenerative tendencies.

A crisis, then, of institutions falling part and the civilisation declining, necessarily is a crisis of values. The society loses sense of what the common good is and how it may be safeguarded. It is then when ideology takes on a life of its own, to serve its own telos, to create a class of pretenders or professional ideologues, who exploit their respective movement as a vehicle for their own aggrandisement.

“Crisis” comes from the Greek word for “judgement”. It is a moment of discerning what is worthwhile and where one has made mistakes. Such is the time to set aside petty sentimentalities to sternly assess one’s prevailing conditions. Always with the understanding that whatever course of action they commit to, they will have to remain vigilant to course-correct when the prevailing material conditions change without overdoing it. This is the mark of prudence, of common sense in practice.

Friday, October 2, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-02T15:25:23.000Z

Gull (2025) / Leica MP. Summilux 35mm.

Sal's follow-up to my post about ending my Linux experiment includes a note about Apple Messages. I can't believe I didn't mention that. One of the biggest drawbacks for me on Linux was not having easy access to Messages. (Nearly) everyone I correspond with uses Messages. I hate typing anything on my iPhone, so having to switch to my phone to text someone was no fun at all. And forget about sharing a funny meme or whatever. I could never get KDE Connect, LocalSend, and friends to work fast enough or consistently enough to make it worth it. It was one hurdle I was never able to clear when using Linux.

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Sunrise - James' Coffee Blog

2026-10-02T00:00:00.000Z

At this time of year, the sun begins to rise around the time I wake up. This means I can see the colours of the sunrise; how the sunlight changes the sky. While autumn and winter can be cold, the colours bring the seasons to life. Lately, I have been motivated not only to start my day, but to start writing by the later-rising sun. I can always write about the colours.

Standing by the window, I started writing.

When the sun first shines through the clouds and illuminates the tops of trees with a soft glow; small planes of light shine on the field nearby. The clouds in the other distance are glowing orange with a faint lavender; you can see the blue sky behind the light clouds. It is as if the world is saying hello.

The soft yellow light cast on the fields and trees was short-lived, only present at precisely the moment when there must have been a gap between the light grey clouds, one allowing the intense light to shine in the glowing way that it does. I haven’t seen enough cloudy sunrises to know whether when the clouds are glowing it means the sun is rising over the horizon, or whether the sun has already risen. I have a feeling it may be the former; I will have to study more sunsets to know for sure. Writing this brought to mind the feeling of being up early on a trip three years ago; so magnetic in memory is bright energy.

I am looking forward to the day ahead.

About Emacs, AI contributions, and the politics of copyright - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-02T00:00:00.000Z

This is a summary of comments I made at the ‘Root Access’ podcast. They are on the topic of AI-generated contributions to Emacs and the wider discussion on free software politics.

I personally prefer the complete episode because clips can distort the vide of the event, such as by making me look angry when in fact we are laughing throughout: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-09-27-emacs-live-root-access-show/.

About ‘Root Access’

Root Access is a live conversation with Linkarzu, CEO members, and invited guests about tech, tools, workflows, and what they’re building. Guests can share their projects before we dive into the discussion. Everyone is welcome to watch live and join the chat; the full replay stays public.

Support @linkarzu

Thursday, October 1, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-10-01T10:16:10.000Z

Cornfield and "porta-jon" (2026)

I want to drop social media (aka Mastodon) completely one day, and the next day I think about installing littleFedi | A small ActivityPub server written in Go and moving my identity there.

Today, I had hoped to spend more time away from the computer, but I didn't. I can't. Still working on the addiction.

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About structure, the little things, and critical thinking - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-10-01T00:00:00.000Z

Think of yourself as a bundle of energy without a body. Your energy is dispersed in all directions, like heat in the environment. It is not directed towards a specific goal. This is mostly how you are as a child. You are curious about everything around you. You touch it and you want to taste it as well. Curiosity may eventually develop into a more sophisticated form of expression. Areas of endeavour will capture your imagination. You will want to explore the world in breadth and, at least for a few things, also in depth.

This energy of yours will always be wasted or remain ineffective if it is not channelled towards something in a laser-like fashion. Every person does this to some extent. We impose our being on our immediate environment. Our room is, at least in some way, an expression of who we are and how we see the world. We change it to be more like us. We impose ourselves on everything we do.

To occupy the safe space of a house, someone has necessarily displaced other life forms from its midst. There is no human settlement that is inclusive to all life, for that then is the wilderness. This I know firsthand: I had to clear the wild vegetation and force rodents, venomous snakes, spiders of all kinds further away from here. Otherwise my room would be infested by forms of life that can kill me either directly (e.g. a viper’s bite) or indirectly (e.g. bats with rabies).

Areas of interest are the same. We direct our energy towards them and thus infuse them with our vitality. This topic I am expounding on, for example, can be covered in many ways by different authors, but the exact line of thinking herein has an unmistakable pattern that you will discern in my other writings; a pattern of a common author; a signature, as it were, that reads “Protesilaos”.

The bundle of energy becomes capable at imposing itself when it is given a structure, else a body. Though the body alone is not enough. It needs to be complemented by patterns of behaviour that themselves reinforce focus. It further has to be buttressed by relationships that demand attention. Such is the extended structure beyond the body.

Absent the extended structure, the person becomes wasteful and self-destructive. They will grow addicted to video games, for example, thus leaving other parts of their life to atrophy. They will hop from one project to the other, never accomplishing anything in the process out of fear that such an eventuality creates commitments, and thus they will refrain from not creating relationships that would demand attention.

This extended structure involves other people. A person who is solitary may seek a substitute for friendship or support in imaginary bonds, such as intimacy with an AI bot, falling in love to a camgirl, gambling, and the like. In so doing, they are a victim of a life without supportive structures.

The extended structure is not limited to other people, however. Someone who is committed to their garden, for instance, is necessarily channelling their vitality accordingly. They have to keep doing it indefinitely, for the garden will not sustain itself qua garden: it will become the wilderness if left alone. Similarly, these can be commitments to hobbies or to goods of some sort such as maintaining a free software project.

Structure, then, consists of all the magnitudes that prevent, dissuade, inhibit, influence, direct, frame, or otherwise condition one’s innate energy.

Every person needs structure in their life. Else they will fall into wasteful and eventually self-destructive patterns of behaviour. For some people this will come from their interpersonal relationships. Their family and friends will be there to hold them accountable and to nudge them towards benign activities. For others, this structure largely comes from within as the austerity of discipline.

A highly sociable person will still benefit from some discipline, just how a highly disciplined person benefits from sociability. No matter where one is on this spectrum, they cannot avoid the mechanics of energy dispersal and of energy direction.

The unsustainable pace of instant gratification

A contemporary euphemism that people often admit to is “I am a dopamine addict”. What they really mean is that they are governed by the desire for instant gratification. This is the common in the multitude among all self-destructive activities. Think of drugs, gambling, gluttony, and pornography, among others. This “pornification”, as I will be describing it henceforth, is edifying in the moment at the cost of longer-term vitality.

Though instant gratification also extends to other media which have effectively been pornified in the process: short videos that elicit an intense emotional response, saturated flavours that bring everything to the maximum (e.g. the common combination of grease, salt, and sugar), constant loud noise which you get by default in cities, perfumes and intense smells, over-the-top colouration, and even exaggerated body parts such as muscles that require doping and boobs that come from plastic surgery.

They all have the effect of dulling a person’s response to stimuli. The conscience of such a person is that of the artificially amplified reality that can only be maintained by increasingly more intense inputs. Everything is intensified and intensifying. It is louder and faster to the point where it cannot be realistic anymore. It effectively is the opposite of what one gets in a natural setting.

Such “dopamine addiction” is uninteresting and not gratifying long-term owning to its shallowness and to the fact that one cannot intensify towards infinity without suffering the consequences of poor health, lack of concentration, and so on.

Interest that is sustained involves depth of understanding, which presupposes focus, else structure. Such is gratifying long-term. It is the gift that keeps giving, because there is always something to it. It is sustainable, for its rhythm is consistent with the natural pace of the human condition; the pace that we experience in the great outdoors.

Building up discipline from the little things

The disciplined person necessarily is the austere and stern person. They have to be able to hold back and to say “no” to temptations. By extension, they are neither a pushover nor a people-pleaser. They cannot yield to the pressure of a group to, for example, do some drugs together. That is not discipline anymore, but the beginning of a descent into the slippery slope of self-harm.

Discipline starts with the admission that “no” is not bad per se even when it runs counter to one’s feelings. “No” often is the imposition of structure, understood as restraint, against the want for energy dispersal; a want that if left unchecked will unravel the structure altogether.

“No” starts out as a private affair. You have to reach a point where you are able to stop doing what you know is bad for you, bad for your loved ones, bad for society at-large; “bad” because it wastes energy and becomes self-destructive by extension (the ongoing decline of Western civilisation is a direct consequences of its pornification, for example—if you are not seeing this, either you are not paying attention or are so deep into pornification that you cannot even imagine a world outside of it).

This, however, cannot be done right away. One must build up the capacity for it through tiny steps, which cumulatively create the critical mass that produces what we describe as discipline: the conscience of strict austerity.

In a world of persistent distractions, one begins to impose themselves on their immediate environment through abstinence. Create short breaks from the constant noise, such that you get used to what will initially seem like silence and boredom but which actually is the baseline of sustainability.

Spend 30 minutes in the morning drinking your coffee/tea/whatever or having breakfast without engaging in any other activity. Do not use the phone, do not play music, do not have the TV on. Make it as simple as it gets: you and your immediate activity. This can be a social event, though it is important to not have other intense stimuli involved.

Extend this practice to your other meals. Spend however much it takes to eat food without any distractions. Do not eat in front of your computer, for example. Switch off the radio. Be in a quiet place. You get the idea.

In the beginning, those dishes will be relatively intense in their flavours. Though you want to eventually move away from that towards simplicity. You do not need everything to be maximally sugary, milky, greasy, salty. If you can have a dish without extra sauce, for example, then skip the sauce and work to uproot it from your psyche.

You can have “cheat days” in the beginning, if you think you cannot live without them, such as a once-a-week indulgence. Though your goal is to taper off, to gradually reduce the cheating until there is none of it. If you can do it “cold turkey”, as they say, then that is even better.

Introduce in your daily routine more such breaks from the noise. One example is a brisk walk through a park or in the great outdoors. Walk, do not run. Take the time to pay attention to the little things, to the slow things, to everything that effectively represents through its very mode of living a rejection of pornification.

Such is your new normal for a lifetime, hence austerity.

Care and critical thinking

Structure consists in judgement. One must have a concept of the end goal in order to pursue intermediate objectives. As such, they have the capacity to determine what is a deviation from the goal. If the goal is the lodestar, then we know when we are moving away from it, given means for orientation.

Critical thinking is judgemental. This is already evident from the word “critical”, which is derived from “crisis”, the Greek word for judgement. We use “crisis” also in the case of an economic downturn or an emergency because those too have a reflection on our moral character. Maybe we were being greedy or careless, for example.

Crisis is a call for orientation. It is the need to find the fixed point in the sky and proceed accordingly. By extension, critical thinking is the skill of identifying patterns in thought that are benign and separating them from those that are degenerative in the consequences of their application.

The judge who upholds correctness, else the rule of law, over cancel culture, for example, is effectively standing against the degeneracy of indictments based on vibes. The judge has a longer-term understanding of their thoughts because they factor in the consequences of their conduct. Whereas the angry mob is governed by their immediate impulses and unchecked passions, not recognising how those engender tyranny.

Critical thinking is an indication of self-care. This is the case since one must be able to evaluate their choices in accordance with longer-term sustainability. The person who succumbs to the pressure of instant gratification does not have the mindset to pause and to consider things carefully, i.e. to judge them.

A child may exhibit some critical thinking, but is not there yet because much of its life is being taken care of by its guardians. Guardians in a society are the parents but also the various tutelary figures. An adolescent who becomes an adult may still be a child well into their 30s, for example, if most of their life is being taken care of by some form of stewardship, such as school and college.

Such a person, now the adultchild, has not developed sufficient capacity for critical thought, since they never had a need for it. They never had to appraise the consequences of the dominant factors in their life and, as such, they did not develop a keen eye for judgement.

The adultchild can only become more critical in their everyday thinking by taking more control over their life. This starts with the sort of small practices of self-imposition, else discipline, that I covered above.

The adultchild is forever hampered in the rigour of their critical thought for as long as they are operating like a child. Perhaps they cannot have strong discipline, in which case they need robust interpersonal relations to hold them in check and to push them towards the essence of adulthood: duty.

The two leashes of humanity

Pornification is an alias for recklessness. All that is pornified is in disrespect of longer-term wellness. Exaggerated food destroys your health. Exaggerated online content destroys your concentration. Exaggerated consumption destroys your environment. And so on.

Historical societies had understood the pitfalls of recklessness. They codified those as instances of hubris or sin and they organised their social experience in a manner that kept people’s self-destructive propensities in check.

We can think of structure as a leash in the interest of simplicity. Your dog is a good canine citizen when it is trained to not pull on the leash. By extension, it knows not to rush towards excitement. From there follow other markers of good training.

A person benefits from a leash in the same way. Historical societies did so through the expectation of gendered duties. Males were on a leash to control their innate aggression; an aggression that quickly degenerates into violent abuse and self-harm if left unchecked. They were pressured to pursue activities with a pro-social function, such as guards, priests, and coaches of various kinds. Similarly, women were expected to concentrate on motherhood and neighbouring activities (e.g. teachers, nurses) and to thus assume the pro-social function of social reproduction, starting from the extended family and extending to the community at-large.

Absent those two leashes, else the structure, society begins to disintegrate. Its energy is dispersed because that is exactly what is happening at the micro level of the individual. The man falls into some sort of pornified addiction, as does the woman, as does the child, as does the politician, as does the church at-large. From there, they can only salvage the situation if they revert to strict discipline. Else they are bound to be replaced by social groups that retain their vitality, that do not disperse their energy, and that are necessarily more austere in their lifestyle.

There are no shortcuts. Do not ignore the little things. Do not underestimate how those activities that harm you one bit at a time are enfeebling you and the world around you. Seek the slow-paced experience. Learn to say “no” and be strict with yourself in order to become a paragon of duty. Lead by example so that you may be strict towards your peers as well. Be the change you want to see, else you are a fraud. There you will find the personal and collective empowerment of austerity.

The AI Pascal’s Wager - Ploum.net

2026-10-01T00:00:00.000Z

The AI Pascal’s Wager

Should you accept contributions generated by LLMs in your Open Source project?

Let’s put aside for a moment all the ethical/ecological/societal considerations about the use of generated code (also known as "slop" if you don’t like it and "vibecode" if you do) in open source projects and consider it from a simple, practical, pragmatic point of view.

There are basically three potential positions:

1. Mostly accepting LLMs as neutral tools that contributors could use (with safeguards or not, with policy of human reviewing or not).
2. Finding a compromise or choosing not to do anything, issuing some "not yes, not no" guidelines. This is now known as the "Debian AI policy".
3. Strongly rejecting LLMs (with potential exceptions that have major safeguards).

The middle ground (position 2) may seem like the most rational position to take. It is also the default. Let’s wait and not decide too quickly!

But what we can learn from Debian is that nobody is really happy with it. If we think about it from a longer-term perspective, we can infer that the middle-ground position is unsustainable. LLM generated contributions will eventually slip in despite some guardrails such as "human review is mandatory". The longer a project stays in the "middle ground", the more ineluctable the slop infection becomes.

Which is to say: not choosing or trying to choose a middle ground is basically full support of generated code, but slower. It is effectively choosing position 1 (pro-AI) without being explicit about it. It is either naive or hypocritical.

Instead of letting the world choose for you, I believe that each open source project is now facing a strong choice that has to be made urgently. Accept AI-generated contributions or not.

This is not easy.

Both choices will alienate some part of the community and some key contributors. That’s sad, but a project cannot please everyone.

Now, contributors may argue whether pro-vibecode or anti-slop is better from a philosophical, ethical or pragmatic point of view. Nobody can decide what is best for a project but its key community members.

Let’s try to think from a generic strategical point of view. What will be the effects of both positions on the project?

Adopting AI

PROS:

More contributions and less time spent developing annoying stuff. While every study on the subject tends to conclude that using LLMs is actually slower than writing code yourself, let’s admit that advantage.

CONS:

Alienate a part of the community that rejects vibecoded software. In some FLOSS circles, that may include very influential users.
Developing your project become increasingly dependent of on expensive and completely proprietary software over which you have no control.

So, in the short term, adopting AI mostly alienates some community members and abandons your independence in order to improve some (perceived) productivity.

Rejecting AI

PROS:

Strong support from the “ethical” part of the community (see the growing number of anti-AI software lists)
Nothing changes.

CONS:

Alienate some contributors who really want to use AI.

When you think about it, contributors who are completely turned away by the fact that they can’t use LLMs are probably contributors you don’t want in your project, even if you have a Debian-like “moderate use of AI” position. People who don’t want to contribute without LLMs are probably not able to review and understand the code by themselves (or they will lose that ability soon enough). To illustrate this, see the number of Pull Requests on Github were the author admits "not having the knowledge to test their own code".

So refusing contributions from those people is probably more of an advantage than a disadvantage.

More importantly, rejecting AI will not alienate any users. Nobody in the world is saying "I’m refusing to use this software because it was made by humans".

The longer-term perspective

One of the main problems with using generated code is that we still don’t know what impact it could have in the long term. What will the codebase look like when each contribution is less and less understood by humans? What if AI assistants become suddenly too expensive to use and nobody understand the architecture anymore? What if huge portions of your code are, in fact, copy-pasted from another project using a different incompatible license?

Cory Doctorow compares slop to asbestos: it looks nice, shiny and it is easy to put it everywhere. But if you ever need to regain control or remove the slop, it will take years of work, at best.

Your own version of Pascal’s wager

While mass marketing is trying to instil a Fear of Missing Out hysteria, the most rational and pragmatic approach is to strongly reject all AI-generated contributions to your projects. For now.

Someday, we might realise that LLMs are doing good in the world, that they are evolving toward ethical, reliable, sustainable solutions, and that people who use them are happier (try to read that sentence again without rolling your eyes). If that really happens, you could always change your AI policy. It will cost you nothing.

But if you let the slop in now, you may regret it forever… You may be forced to abandon your project.

On the other hand, if you refuse AI-generated contributions to your project right now, the worst very hypothetical regret you could ever have is "I should probably have done it sooner".

The conclusion is simple: If you are AI-agnostic, the pragmatic course of action is to strongly refuse any AI-generated contribution to your project.

Picture of a Pascaline by Rama

About the author

I’m Ploum, a writer and an engineer. I like to explore how technology impacts society. You can subscribe by email or by rss. I value privacy and never share your adress.

I write science-fiction novels in French. For Bikepunk, my new post-apocalyptic-cyclist book, my publisher is looking for contacts in other countries to distribute it in languages other than French. If you can help, contact me!

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-09-30T09:22:14.000Z

I love old tractors

What's your favorite Navidrome client for macOS? Navibeat looks pretty good.

I don't intend to self-host my email, but if I did, this might work: Stalwart Mail & Collaboration Server

It's a close call between my frustration with tangled cables and my hatred of Bluetooth.

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About the Toucan2 and other split mechanical keyboard considerations - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-09-30T00:00:00.000Z

[ I am not affiliated with anybody, so I am not including links just to be sure. ]

I was asked in a private context about my opinion on the Toucan2 keyboard. It is a split mechanical keyboard that has 42 keys. Its switches are the Choc type, specifically version 1. It relies on a wireless connection between the two halves, meaning that it depends on batteries. And it has a module for a trackpad on the right hand split. In short, it looks good to me if that is what you want. But is that what you want?

Below I elaborate on thoughts that are consistent with what I have written before about where to start with mechanical keyboards (2025-10-18). They are general in nature and should apply to every split mechanical keyboard.

Be sure about the number of keys

Split mechanical keyboards will typically be in the 30-50% size range in terms of the keys they have. This means that they will not have a numpad, navigation keys, a function row, and maybe not even a number row. This is not a problem per se, as they are programmable: all keycodes are available through combinations of inputs, such as layers (think of it like a Shift key that changes 1 to ! on a US Qwerty layout).

The fewer the keys, the steeper the learning curve, and the more challenging the task of defining layers or input combinations that are efficient. For example, without a number row you have to figure out where to move the number 1 and also where to place !. Should 1 be where q is (assuming US Qwerty) and ! be in the same physical spot under a different layer? Should you design a numpad instead which decouples 1 from ! and move the latter to a symbols layer? These and many others are all valid and potentially super effective. Though you have to design them carefully and, more importantly, learn them well.

In so doing, you have to question how much of a benefit did you really get from switching to a tiny keyboard.

For me, small keyboards in the 50%-60% range are the best compromise. They keep the number row, which makes the decisions about the layers considerably easier. In my keyboard, the Iris by Keebio (thanks to “Andreas” for the donation!), I only really have a single layer which brings navigation keys around the home row and provides quick access to a few symbols that I mostly need for programming.

Having a ~50% keyboard still lets you experiment with fewer keys. You can simply stop using the number row, for example, either by programming it to do nothing or by removing the keycaps and switches altogether. Sure, that may not look as cool but (i) it gets the job done and (ii) nobody actually cares about your keyboard and how cool you think you are. And if you really like the experiment with the fewer keys, then you can sell that keyboard and buy a smaller one.

Whereas if you go straight to the ~30% size you cannot expand the number of keys from there. If that does not work for you, then the keyboard is a waste of resources.

Switches are very important for keycaps

The Toucan2 has the Choc v1 switches from what I saw. Other such keyboards will have the Choc v2 version. The mainstream platform is called “MX”. Choc switches have a low profile, closer in spirit to what you get on a laptop, whereas MX are taller. Do you prefer typing on a laptop or a regular keyboard? If it is the former, then Choc is the way to go. Otherwise you want to look into MX.

The switch type determines what keycaps you can use. Choc v1 and v2 are mutually incompatible, due to the distinct shape of their stem. You will typically pick low profile keycaps to go with these switches, since this is how you get closer to the laptop feel. There are some keycaps that are somewhat taller and are designed for Choc switches, though I would personally just opt for MX at that point as it was engineered for that very purpose.

Choc v2 has a stem that is like MX but this is a false friend: their short height means that the bottom of a keycap may still hit on the plate as you type. You would need keycaps that are specifically designed for a low profile switch. Otherwise, the keycap will break where it connects to the switch.

Owning to the popularity of the MX platform, you have plenty of options in terms of shape, height, colours, and materials. There are keycaps that have a flat top, others with a cylindrical top, and others still with a spherical top. Some have a larger surface area. Keys will have different height to make typing more ergonomic, so that, for example, the number row will be taller than the home row to effectively shorten the distance between the two in actual use.

With small keyboards, the distance is shortened by removing keys, so fingers do not travel too far away from the home row. It thus makes sense to use low profile keycaps. Otherwise, it is better to try keycap profiles that are meant for the MX platform.

Switches and keycaps define your typing experience

Switches determine the keycaps you will be using. This already influences how the keyboard feels to use. These two together control how a key press is experienced.

A Choc switch (either v1 or v2) will have a short travel distance, which means that it will bottom out earlier. This is exactly what you want is you plan to minimise finger travel: you effectively minimise finger movement altogether. Such a combination pairs nicely with a switch that is light to the touch. The goal is to maximise comfort by reducing the total effort it takes to type.

With MX switches there is more variety. They have a longer travel distance, though this can be shortened with the appropriate springs (you could do that manually, but you would typically buy such a switch). You can still get something that is closer in spirit to what Choc does, though you have a higher profile. Even if you use low profile keycaps, the total height is still taller than what Choc would give you.

I thus think that MX is not the best choice if you wish to minimise finger travel. You opt for Choc instead and work to bring down the total number of keys on the keyboard that you rely on.

Otherwise, MX offers the widest number of options. There are so many switch types that innovate in different ways. There are switches that are light to the touch and others that are heavy. Some have an earlier bottom out event to make the tactile feedback sharper. Others bottom out later and combine with a heavier spring to give you a strong rebound that effectively creates a cushioned typing experience where you never really bottom out. And there is plenty of variety therein (Choc also provides options, but not to the same extent).

All these have implications for the sound profile, but I will not even elaborate on that. The focus is this right now: if you are okay with moving your fingers around a little bit, the way you would on a ~50% keyboard, then MX switches will give you more flexibility to tweak everything to your liking. Otherwise opt for Choc switches and a small form factor.

[ There technically are differences in spacing between the switch platforms, but you do not need to know such details. ]

Is the Toucan2 a good keyboard?

All split mechanical keyboards I have seen are fine products in their own right. Whether they are “good” depends on how suitable they are for your purposes. There is no one-size-fits-all and it is impossible for me to know what will work for you.

If you are not sure what your preferences are, then it means you need to experiment. Which, in turn, implies that MX switches on a ~50% keyboard is a safer choice. The Toucan2 is a more opinionated take in this regard: great for those who want what it offers.

I personally am not keen on devices that rely on batteries and do not use wireless connectivity anywhere. Wires look more busy, I know, but I prefer their reliability.

I cannot comment on the trackpad module that the Toucan2 has. Maybe it is something I would enjoy using. Though I would never decide on a keyboard based on that. So for me, this is a potentially useful extra if everything else is met.

Finally, keep in mind what I wrote recently about the hyperoptimiser’s mechanical keyboard trap (2026-08-20). What I described here will help you decide how to configure a decent setup. It will not be “perfect” but it will get things done in a manner that is reliable and sustainable. What stands between that and perfection is your attitude: be content with what you have achieved and it will reward you long-term.

here, something - James' Coffee Blog

2026-09-30T00:00:00.000Z

In Distance there is the sight of everything; here there is the presence of something.

ever-changing - James' Coffee Blog

2026-09-30T00:00:00.000Z

My website is ever changing. I am

I am comfortable living in Linux, but... - Baty.net

2026-09-29T18:58:05.000Z

After many failed attempts, I am finally comfortable doing all of my computing using Linux. In case you haven't heard, Linux is good now! And yet, I'm back on my Mac...for now.

The short version? It's the software. Linux is loaded with pretty good apps, many of them free. Thing is, nearly all of them also run on macOS. This means that on a Mac, I can use all the great macOS software, and most of the great apps I use on Linux..

I've spent the past year recreating the dozens of little workflows on Linux that I'd built for myself on the Mac. Some of them were easily portable, but many weren't. Some had no real replacements, so I had to give them up.

The things I like about Linux are abstract. The "I'm in complete control of my computing environment" kind of things. I miss that feeling on the Mac, especially when I can't launch an app that I downloaded or when I've had to dismiss the two thousandth permissions dialog that day. Also, I love the "This twelve-year-old ThinkPad still works great running Linux!"

What I don't miss are all the Linux distros. I mean, what an embarrassment of riches, right? Except my brain never stops thinking "What if I switched to...?" every other day. Half the time I actually have switched, with disastrous effects on my time. I don't enjoy the community bickering either. "Systemd sucks!" and so on. And there's still too much "Um, actually..." and "Why don't you just...?"

Overall, my year-long adventure with Linux was fun and successful. But I don't want to give up some of the Mac software I've used for years...sometimes many years.

I don't want to lose Tinderbox or DEVONthink or Curio or Capture One or SilverFast or OmniFocus or any number of nifty little utilities.

What might be the biggest draw of macOS for me is that I automatically get Emacs key bindings everywhere. I hadn't realized how much I relied on them until they were gone.

I'm sure I'll revisit this again at some point. I still have a couple of nice laptops running Linux, and I'll certainly pop them open occasionally, but for now, I'm going to live on my Mac.

I know some of you have been rooting for me to fully adopt Linux. Please don't be too disappointed. Everything with me is temporary :). At least I know I can switch completely to Linux if I want to. I'm just not ready.

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