Blog Posts

December 28, 2022

2022 in food

# Food Experiences 2021-2022

## 2021: KFG Brunch

- Ironically, this starts in 2021 with the KFG brunch during the fall.

I did not know I could like steak and I did not know the Caesar dressing from stores is a complete lie.

The meals we shared reinvigorated my enjoyment of food.

2022: Spain

- 2022 started with bad meals throughout Madrid and Barcelona. Seriously Spain, what is this?

It’s not a tortilla, and it’s not good. The first time I ever had potatoes that soft encased in bread, though, made it memorable.

Let the Americas have tortillas and call this what it is: peasant casserole.

Potatas Bravas and Tapas

- The potatas bravas throughout Spain were inconsistent. To my palate, the tapas were hit or miss as well.

The exception was at Azimuth in the [Almanac](https://www.almanachotels.com/barcelona/food-drinks).

From the [menu](https://document-tc.galaxy.tf/wdpdf-eoz10mzsy1uyq5ng3ng6o88gj/food-menu.pdf), I recommend:

- Hummus

- Iberico ham

- Smoked fish

- Tataki

- Empanadas

- The Madrid (MAD) airport is one of my favorites, aesthetically, next to IST.

After losing Bekk many times looking for the right gate, we found [Mas Q Menos](https://www.masqmenos.com/portfolio/bocadillos/).

The *lomo de cerdo with crystal bread* was the best meal in Spain for me.

Paris

- Paris was mostly average. On the first night, we had Urfa kabab with strangers at [Urfa Durm](https://goo.gl/maps/hhjxN8qb1wwhCpAS8).

They made us feel at home in the city.

- Dinner at [Bouillon Chartier](https://www.bouillon-chartier.com/montparnasse/galerie-montparnasse/) stood out for the staff and the duck.

Morocco

- Walking the Medina’s open markets led us to a hidden [garage](https://goo.gl/maps/Ht9Ekz9irzCzkCtb6).

The cooks served the best baked chicken I’ve ever had. They flattened the thigh and leg quarters for an even sear (I need a tagine!).

It was a rush of flavors that vindicated my earlier complaints about European food.

Amsterdam

- In Amsterdam, Bekk’s mac and cheese was the highlight.

I was grateful for the time inside our Airbnb, which helped me realize I must work on myself as a habit.

## Sanliurfa, Turkey

- Smoking [hookah](https://goo.gl/maps/QKyxgXpuBaciq32E6) near [Balıklıgöl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal%C4%B1kl%C4%B1g%C3%B6l) under canopies was memorable.

The meal from [Konak](https://goo.gl/maps/L6nG7X4mtFfg93k4A) after visiting Gobekli Tepe was phenomenal.

Istanbul

- [Tahin](https://goo.gl/maps/jvxwg5kpnySKT9CAA), a Lebanese spot, does veggies very well.

- [Handmade Burger Co.](https://goo.gl/maps/WdeYfUNRWrNRDMTQ6) changed my opinion about burger joints.

Thailand

- Thailand is high on the food tier list.

At [Factory Cafe](https://goo.gl/maps/uVF6qY5fKBtFYRx7A) in Ko Tao, I recommend the smoothies and veggies.

Nearby, a [Chinese spot](https://goo.gl/maps/K7rtRozFQoJCtXoe6) serves amazing dishes.

### 7-Elevens

- The 7-Elevens in Thailand amazed me.

A 13-year-old kid served me the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Big shout out to him!

Chicago

- *Gene and Judes and Jim’s Original* are must-visits in Chicago.

Damali and I spent a working vacation enjoying these iconic spots.

Road Trip

- A road trip from Macon, GA to Cannon Beach, OR provided unforgettable food experiences.

### Highlights:

- *Triplets Food Mart*, Baton Rouge: Possibly the best fried chicken.

- *Sabas*, New Orleans: Tapas with KFG, real hummus, and great conversations.

- *Voodoo Donuts*, Vancouver, WA: Donuts delivered by my aunt Jo.

- *Pizza A’ Fetta*, Cannon Beach, OR: Solid pizza while enjoying solitude.

- *Josephson’s Smokehouse*, Astoria, OR: Transcendent lox.

- *Urban Kitchen*, Bozeman, MT: A much-needed respite after a rough day.

---

Recipe: Simple Salad

- 2 cups of mixed greens

- Spritz of lemon

- Finishing oil

- Red onion

- Kosher salt

- Freshly ground pepper

- Feta crumbles

- Optional: diced beets, blueberries, almonds, tangerines

---

Closing Thoughts

- Big shout-out to Damali for enjoying meals I cooked.

- Peace.

May 1, 2023

A Brief and Impassioned Review of Hamilton the Musical and my Love/Mostly Hate Relationship with America

- Here me out. I love black washing US history. We all know [Beethoven] (https://www.qwelian.com/pub/q98710sp/release/8">Beethoven) was black. I am convinced Pushkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin#Death">Pushkin) only ever really fired on [D’anthes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_d%27Anth%C3%A8s">D’anthes) after D’anthes used the n word, alledgedly. I am not here to provide [proof,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Poet">proof,) I’m just saying.

- I can go all day with black washing history but Hamilton has reveled most of it is wishful thinking. Like of course Pushkin didn’t fye on D’anthes for the n world, allegedly. My spite for European treatment of… a lot, kinda ruins my love for black washing history. At least as much as any other order to restrict freedom kinda ruins the fun of history. My grandmother didn’t pick cotton as a child because of the Ottomans though.

- While listening to Hamilton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yspbNBIWsF0&pp=ygUIaGFtaWx0b24%3D">Hamilton) I cannot exist in a position where viewing the events unfolding are unconditionally positive for me. I mean at best Aaron Burr gives life to an abolitionist,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pierre_Burr">abolitionist,) alledgedly.

- Meanwhile Hamilton at the side of a man with slave teeth. How that work?

- I do not wanna hear you one more time king. Boooo!!!! Beat it!!! You got teeth to remove from your slaves. Go home roger.

- Now I say all that but my moral high ground is kinda ruined when Lin Manuel Miranda says his name is Alexander Hamilton. I mean this is worlds longest running democracy. They did not explicitly write race and class into the Bill of Rights technically, which is like kinda cool, maybe a low bar given the liberty a pretty important thing then, alledgedly. But the shit slap. The example Washington set by leaving office was revolutionary in an era of Bolivars](https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2016/06/504-the-prince-of-caracas.html">Bolivars) and Napoleons(one](https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2015/09/354-the-empire.html">one) and two).](https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2018/04/733-what-the-heck-just-happened.html">two).) This is the world’s longest lived democracy. By the time raisse your glasss to freeeedom comes on I’m in. For just a second I feel patriotic. And I am like “is this what white people feel all the time???? like they belong to a historical struggle for freedom rooted in the founding of the US????“

- source: visual](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-worlds-oldest-democracies/">visual) capitalist

- Then it’s back to massive anti](https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights?state=">anti) trans legislation and me celebrating when Hamilton ruins his career writing a public letter talking about why he cheated on his wife. Thanks Hamilton for not talking less. THEN the bozo tells his son to attend a duel and NOT shoot. My man you a goof. Big goof Burr smoking on the Hamilton pack.

- #PACKWATCH #RIPBOZO REST IN PISS YOU WON'T BE MISSED 💯💯🤣

- I suppose my favorite thing about the musical is that Hamilton is a goof and Burr is a dummy. I am moved to set the bar extremely low for large groups of people, which is cathartic.

December 16, 2022

A Rant on "The Genetic Lottery" by Kathryn Paige Harden

Personally, it is so weird being black. You tell people that being poor inhibits my chance at a life of liberty in the pursuit of happiness. And they say bet, let me test your genes tho. You tell people that the barrier of entry to higher education creates inequitable outcomes. But they ask, can I map your genetics to verify that? You tell people access to food, water, and shelter has an impact on the quality of their life and they say, mmm, I'm not convinced, let us do a longitudinal 14-year study. You tell people I need a support system as a parent to raise my child and it's "welfare queen says what". You tell people hey, the death penalty is a horrible thing that is rarely used and is applied to black people more so than others. They say lemme use your DNA to tell the jury why you inherited making bad choices. All that's standing in the way of good research is racism and wokism(how these too get conflated is probably racist btw) apparently. We may have created an entire state to address these concerns but now, more than ever genetic testing is what we need. Make no mistake, the future of genetics will be about ensuring inequitable access to revolutionary biological developments that may extend the life of the children and grandchildren of our global elite.However, genetic inheritability can disadvantage certain genetic clusters which can have a impact on racial gaps. I question whether the entire population of AA falls in line with the population she examines and why racial gaps arise due to genetic inheritance. It would be nice to hear that.

April 14, 2021

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

# Part1

Cracker history or redneck history stemming from lazy irish immigrants rubbed off on southern blacks so much so that when the great migration occured the blacks brought crime and wild southern ways. No coincidence that the KKK might have emerged out of that ruckus right.

# Part 2

Middleman minorities earn the eyre of the societies they integrate into because of their economic success.

# Part3

Slavery has some bad effects and some good effects but everyone was doing it. There is no need to compare the implementation because all slavery was the same.

# Part 4

Really tho, middleman minorities are so successful that Germans turned to persecute them out of spite clearly. Most didn't even care about Jews being Jews...

# Part 5

Blacks can learn at school and do but those dancing kappas obsessed with looking good ruined the colleges. WEB Dubois and Booker T would be ashamed.

Part 6

Seriously. Every culture commits mass genocide or commits some war atrocitiy. Just because some Australian lady feels bad about genocide doesn't mean that it's their fault. There aren't any indigenous people around to tell you how they feel anyway so be objective when you speak about history.

it was some of the wonky idiosyncrasies of the main tenants featured in each essay that causes me worry. Like bro what culture was in place such that the Holocaust could happen. For some of the largest social ills of the last 300 years to be committed exclusively in the Western hemisphere and against brown people and those of minority background is unique and deserve its own appreciation. I just have a feeling that slavery in Rome and slavery in China were two very different cultural phenomenons. I am asked not to consider the cultural significance of slavery but to consider the cultural significance of the population slaves adapted there culture from. Ok. I just have a strong feeling that legislation that intensified violence against blacks had something to do with this a priori. Or maybe blacks just needed to chill and wait for America to give them their rights. Like I could not understand the civil rights period If I read only Thomas Sowell. But I do think he provides the strongest counter argument against systematic oppression being the main foil to black progress. And he asked us to consider very real alternatives to the slave oppression narrative. Maybe instead of adopting Irish culture we should have adopted northern culture or perhaps Jewish culture or immigrant culture I'm not sure. Thomas Sowell asks us to be responsible with how we attribute race to our place in life while offering no insight into how race plays out in life. I am confused

March 25, 2023

A Modern Full Stack REST Application

A Modern Full Stack REST Application

Plaid is a popular API that exposes a user's banking information through REST endpoints. We will make use of their service to create a REST API to create authorization information. We will then create a React application that consumes the API to create auth tokens for a user. Remember, you can click on the View Raw button to copy any code you need. This tutorial assumes familiarity with React and full-stack development. The repo for this can be found here:

A quickstart for setting up Plaid server and React client - https://github.com/qweliant/BetterPlaidQuickstart

Getting Started with Plaid API Keys

To get started, we need to head over to Plaid for our API keys.

Landing page after login to Plaid

Navigate to the Settings tab and click Keys to view your API keys.

Creds from Plaid

We will use the sandbox environment, which uses a different key for testing than development. Notice on the left sidebar a tab that says API. Click on that and you will see the section about Plaid's redirect URI. Click on Add New URI and add http://localhost:80 and http://localhost:3000. This will control where the redirect after linking happens. If you click on the Test in Sandbox button seen on the landing page, you will be taken to a page showing the test user credentials.

Quickstart repos exist for multiple languages. You can use your language of choice for this project since the client is backend agnostic.

Backend Setup

We won't necessarily run the exact setup they have, but next, we will walk through setting up the backend via the Go Not So Quickstart Repo.

1. Create Project and Clone Repository

git clone https://github.com/plaid/quickstart.git

2. Clean Up Repository

Delete the Makefile, README, and every folder except the go one.

Docker Configuration

These come preconfigured with a Dockerfile to make deployment easy. We won't be covering deployment of Docker containers, but we will be spinning them up using Docker for Desktop.

Edit docker-compose.yml

version: "3.4"

services:
  go:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: ./go/Dockerfile
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    env_file:
      - .env

Build and Run

docker-compose up -d --build

Dockerfile Configuration

FROM golang:1.12 AS build
WORKDIR /opt/src
COPY . .
WORKDIR /opt/src/go
RUN go get -d -v ./...
RUN go build -o quickstart

FROM gcr.io/distroless/base-debian10
COPY --from=build /opt/src/go/quickstart /
EXPOSE 8000
ENTRYPOINT ["/quickstart"]

Environment Configuration

Create a .env file:

# Get your Plaid API keys from the dashboard: https://dashboard.plaid.com/account/keys
PLAID_CLIENT_ID=CLIENT_ID
PLAID_SECRET=SANDBOX_SECRET
PLAID_ENV=sandbox
PLAID_PRODUCTS=transactions
PLAID_COUNTRY_CODES=US,CA
PLAID_REDIRECT_URI=http://localhost:80

Server Configuration

Edit server.go:

var (
    PLAID_CLIENT_ID = os.Getenv("PLAID_CLIENT_ID")
    PLAID_SECRET = os.Getenv("PLAID_SECRET")
    PLAID_ENV = os.Getenv("PLAID_ENV")
    PLAID_PRODUCTS = os.Getenv("PLAID_PRODUCTS")
    PLAID_COUNTRY_CODES = os.Getenv("PLAID_COUNTRY_CODES")
    PLAID_REDIRECT_URI = os.Getenv("PLAID_REDIRECT_URI")
    APP_PORT = os.Getenv("APP_PORT")
)

var environments = map[string]plaid.Environment{
    "sandbox": plaid.Sandbox,
    "development": plaid.Development,
    "production": plaid.Production,
}

func init() {
    // Set defaults and create Plaid client
    // ... (rest of the initialization code)
}

React Frontend Setup

Create React App

npx create-react-app plaid

Update docker-compose.yml

version: "3.8"

services:
  go:
    env_file:
      - .env
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: ./go/Dockerfile
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    restart: on-failure

  client:
    stdin_open: true
    env_file:
      - .env
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: ./plaid/Dockerfile
    ports:
      - 80:80
    restart: on-failure

React Dockerfile

# STAGE 1 - build the react app
FROM node:alpine as build
WORKDIR /app
COPY ./package.json /app/
RUN yarn --silent
COPY . /app
RUN yarn build

# STAGE 2 - build the final image using a nginx web server
FROM nginx:alpine
COPY --from=build /app/build /usr/share/nginx/html
RUN rm /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
COPY nginx/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d
EXPOSE 80
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]

Nginx Configuration

Create nginx/nginx.conf:

server {
    listen 80;
    location / {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index index.html index.htm;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }
    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}

Install Dependencies

yarn add axios react-plaid-link

Create Link.js

import React, { useState, useCallback, useEffect } from "react";
import { usePlaidLink } from "react-plaid-link";
import axios from "axios";
import qs from "qs";

const tokenURL = "http://localhost:8000/api/create_link_token";
const sendTokenURL = "http://localhost:8000/api/set_access_token";

const Link = () => {
  const [data, setData] = useState("");

  const fetchToken = useCallback(async () => {
    const config = {
      method: "post",
      url: tokenURL,
    };
    const res = await axios(config);
    console.log(res);
    setData(res.data.link_token);
  }, []);

  useEffect(() => {
    fetchToken();
  }, [fetchToken]);

  const onSuccess = useCallback(async (token, metadata) => {
    const config = {
      method: "post",
      url: sendTokenURL,
      data: qs.stringify({ public_token: token }),
      headers: { "content-type": "application/json" },
    };
    try {
      const response = await axios(config);
      console.log(response);
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
  }, []);

  const config = {
    token: data,
    onSuccess,
  };

  const { open, ready, err } = usePlaidLink(config);

  if (err) return "Error!";

  return (
    <button onClick={() => open()} disabled={!ready}>
      Connect a bank account
    </button>
  );
};

export default Link;

Run the Application

docker-compose up

Your app should now be running at localhost:80.

Congrats! You are now on your way to implementing a fintech banking as a service application. Kinda like...BaaS...Ok ok. Thank you for viewing. Feel free to reach out to me on my social, or connect via LinkedIn. Have a wonderful day!

Unknown Date

Using GCP, FastAPI, Docker, and Huggingface to Deploy SOTA Language Models

  • I have found using more than 2 models for the API is too large for most deployment procedures. If you know a way around this let me know.

Initial Set Up

This stack will use FastAPI to serve an endpoint to our model. FastAPI requires uvicorn for serving, and pydantic to handle typing of the request messages. The Huggingface Transformers library specializes in bundling state of the art NLP models in a Python library that can be fine-tuned for many NLP tasks like Google's BERT model for named entity recognition or the OpenAI GPT2 model for text generation.

Using your preferred package manager, install:

As the packages install:

  1. Create a folder named app

  2. Add files nlp.py and main.py to it

  3. In the top-level directory, add Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml

After installing packages, create a requirements folder and add requirements.txt:


pipenv run pip freeze > requirements/requirements.txt

Required Installations

Project Structure


app/

    main.py

    nlp.py

requirements/

    requirements.txt

docker-compose.yml

Dockerfile

Pipfile

NLP Implementation

Huggingface makes it easy to implement and serve SOTA transformer models. We'll create an API capable of text generation and sentiment analysis.

Code Snippet


from transformers import (

    pipeline,

    GPT2LMHeadModel,

    GPT2Tokenizer

)

class NLP:

    def __init__(self):

        self.gen_model = GPT2LMHeadModel.from_pretrained('gpt2')

        self.gen_tokenizer = GPT2Tokenizer.from_pretrained('gpt2')

    def generate(self, prompt="The epistemelogical limit"):

        inputs = self.gen_tokenizer.encode(

            prompt,

            add_special_tokens=False,

            return_tensors="pt"

        )

        prompt_length = len(self.gen_tokenizer.decode(

            inputs[0],

            skip_special_tokens=True,

            clean_up_tokenization_spaces=True

        ))

        outputs = self.gen_model.generate(

            inputs,

            max_length=200,

            do_sample=True,

            top_p=0.95,

            top_k=60

        )

        generated = prompt + self.gen_tokenizer.decode(outputs[0])[prompt_length:]

        return generated

    def sentiments(self, text: str):

        nlp = pipeline("sentiment-analysis")

        result = nlp(text)[0]

        return f"label: {result['label']}, with score: {round(result['score'], 4)}"

Example usage:


nlp = NLP()

print(nlp.sentiments("A bee sting is not cool"))

# Output: 'label: NEGATIVE, with score: 0.9998'

API Implementation with FastAPI


from fastapi import FastAPI

from fastapi.middleware.cors import CORSMiddleware

from pydantic import BaseModel

from app.nlp import NLP

class Message(BaseModel):

    input: str

    output: str = None

app = FastAPI()

nlp = NLP()

origins = [

    "http://localhost",

    "http://localhost:3000",

    "http://127.0.0.1:3000"

]

app.add_middleware(

    CORSMiddleware,

    allow_origins=origins,

    allow_credentials=True,

    allow_methods=["POST"],

    allow_headers=["*"],

)

@app.post("/generative/")

async def generate(message: Message):

    message.output = nlp.generate(prompt=message.input)

    return {"output": message.output}

@app.post("/sentiment/")

async def sentiment_analysis(message: Message):

    message.output = str(nlp.sentiments(message.input))

    return {"output": message.output}

To test the API:


uvicorn app.main:app --reload

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8001/docs to try out the API.

Containerization

Dockerfile


FROM python:3.7

COPY ./requirements/requirements.txt ./requirements/requirements.txt

RUN pip3 install -r requirements/requirements.txt

COPY ./app /app

RUN useradd -m myuser

USER myuser

CMD ["uvicorn", "app.main:app", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "8080"]

Docker Compose

version: "3"

services:
  chatsume:
    build: .

    container_name: "chsme"

    ports:
      - "8000:8080"

    volumes:
      - ./app/:/app

Build and run:


docker-compose build

docker-compose up -d

Deployment to Google Cloud Platform

Tag the Docker image:


docker tag nlp_api gcr.io/fast_hug/nlp_api:latest

Push to Google Container Registry:


docker push gcr.io/fast_hug/nlp_api:latest

Cloud Run Deployment

  1. Navigate to Google Container Registry

  2. Find your latest image

  3. Click Deploy

  4. Select Deploy to Cloud Run

  5. Allow unauthenticated requests

  6. Set container port to 8080

  7. Set memory to 4GB

  8. Click Create

Conclusion

This post demonstrates how to use state-of-the-art NLP models from Huggingface to power a fast, scalable API. Containerization enables distributed deployment across various services.

Connect with Me

June 13, 2022

Don't Let the Medium Dictate a Purpose for the Message

Recently I had a conversation that went like this:

Zo: Qwelian, do you think we get AI?

Me: I think it’s a pretty long shot. Maybe we get legit humanlike virtual AI assistants at best.

Zo: Yeah, we just gotta prevent the AI revolt if they become self-aware. Engineering class hierarchies into AI could be a solution.

Me: Bruh why are we projecting class distinctions onto code?

Zo: Oh, so you mean to tell me AI cant be conscious? Qwelian, isn’t your conscious processes analogous to an algorithm?

Me: First, the Animatrix. Robo revolution is assured if we go that way. Plus, WTF are we talking about? Embodied agents with freedom or socially constructed agents. I find it hard to believe that we can outsmart machines anyway.

Zo: Yeah, so how about those hierarchies?

Make it Make Sense

Recently I have been thinking about four pieces of writing. The first is Marshal McCluhan’s _[The Medium is the Message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)._ McCluhan suggests the following: New technology can capture fully how we understand, incorporate, and act on information. To use a metaphor, without social media or the internet(the medium), how we talk about creating communities with access to information looks different(the message). This leads to my first question: *How are contemporary technologies wholly affecting the way we cognize the world?*

Simulacra and Simulacrum by Jean Baudrillard is the second_._ Initially, I read the first couple of pages, skipped through, and said to myself, “Hmmm, there isn’t much here, he's really just on a soapbox screaming the media ruined everything. Very much [Howard Beale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cSGvqQHpjs&ab_channel=MovieclipsClassicTrailers) peak messianic media personality. I should just read Borges. But Baudrillard uses a metaphor at the beginning of the book(taken from Borges), essentially saying the map of a nation can become more expansive than the nation itself.

If McCluhan ‘s notion of an idea means the superimposition of an idea’s original context with what can be derived from the idea, then what comes next is the perpetuation of the necessity of the idea, becoming future propaganda for itself through whatever reason deemed necessary. This [review](https://irfanajvazi.substack.com/p/baudrillards-simulacra-and-simulation?s=r) of Simulacra and Simulacrum has a nice summary.

*What drives the mapping of lived experience onto technology?*

**[SHE BON : Sensing the Sensual](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA3M7fjr60Y&ab_channel=ROBOHEMIAN%21)**

[Racist ‘Meta Slave’ NFT Project Rebrands After Being Called Racist](https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgw9a/racist-meta-slave-nft-project-rebrands-after-being-called-racist)

Why John, WHY?

The third is an essay called _[Semantic Engines](https://www.scribd.com/document/119239415/John-Haugeland-Semantic-Engines)_ by John Hagueland_ Hagueland’s piece questions whether cognition can arise from a semantic understanding of mental states. He applies computational theory to minds using Turing machines and games. In his view, mental awareness is little more than symbol manipulation. This approach melds the mentalist belief in the phenomenon of consciousness with the behaviouralist approach of empirically developed experiments to gauge cognition. I like the essay because why not abstract consciousness to processes akin to formal methods. It may totally be the case that human-level thought is just like really really complex symbol manipulation. I mean a really cool robot might convince me of that 🤷🏿‍♂️. What gives serious pause, to me, is to not_ treat simulations as a form of insight into cognition as opposed to the thing consciousness is. It’s like taking a turtle out and saying it’s a duck. Make it make sense. The movie Free Guy is fantastic but it would be hella sus if, in that world, we thought we discovered what cognition is for humans instead of a great simulation of cognitive capacity. I am all aboard(motherboard pun 😭) for cognitive beings. Yet, this is precisely what Hagueland and those of his [ilk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality) like [Daniel Dennet](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4206814457) do. They take a strong AI stance by saying thought is digital and the brain, pfft, who cares, it’s just wetware.

p.s. I mean the [latest AI](https://venturebeat.com/2022/06/04/is-deepminds-gato-the-worlds-first-agi/) sparking GAI [discussion](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Y0W9FVRIg3xRgp4fij1Zf?si=MYR_7O3tRtefOdO38sdqpg) is just so so at the task given to it. Oh now that it can take multiple input types its gEnERaL Ai???

![](https://assets.pubpub.org/ywgn2hzc/01655839176501.gif)

Fuck!

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6InZkbTRnamM3LzIxNjU1MDUyNTYxMjE5LnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODAwLCJmaXQiOiJpbnNpZGUiLCJ3aXRob3V0RW5sYXJnZW1lbnQiOnRydWV9fX0=)

In _[Can Computers Think](https://danielwharris.com/teaching/101online/weeks/13/Searle.pdf)_, John Searle defines the limits of viewing a syntactically structured system as containing meaning. As he puts it(pg 674 of linked PDF):

which leads to a few conclusions:

Searle then asks a simple question: “Why do people think computers have thought or feel emotion?” This brings us back to the conversation that started all of this. Why create an ML/AI caste system?

Should we fear the cognitive capacity of Turing machines? If we get a tidy reproduction of human mental capacity via cyborgs, clones, or automata, that’s cool; then what? Pick your flavor of dystopic near-metal cognitive driving: Serial Experiments Lain? The Matrix? Ex-Machina? Ghost in the Shell, Robot Carnival, and Do Androids Dream of Sheep might reveal how we confront the phenomenon of relegating complex thoughts and emotions to humanity. But rarely do we envision a future where technology does more than mirror our current capacities. Maybe machines will take over, but technology is merely a medium through which we express ideas. We don’t need to create [slaves](https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-tesla-bot-people-can-run-away-it-1621330)…

To reiterate some questions I asked that are too onerousundefined to find landing here, I ask:

and finally

#mediaandtechnology

*What flips the medium of technology to drive a hyperreal imitation of references to itself, such that the reference loses context to what technology itself abstracts?*

*How are contemporary technologies wholly affecting the way we cognize the world?*

*What drives the mapping of lived experience onto technology?*

computer programs cannot substitute the mind

our awareness and reason cannot be simple as running a program

anything that causes the mind would have causal powers equal to that of the brain.

any artifactundefined humans may create that has mental states similar to that of humans would not be a simple program.

December 11, 2022

Emperor, Hostage, Despot!

- Hierarchical leaders may or may not be corrupt but their power is being the foreign relations person for the group. It is valuable to have a monarch as a group pathologizes its place in the world.

- And it’s what keeps me up at night. There is no singular authority. Most often, whatever whims can be met by a state as transmitted through some society. I know, I learned a lesson Foucault reiterates over and over. Power and knowledge are capricious constants. I suppose the upside is we can construct institutions such that the wildest threat to them is absorbed. These threats should make the future of human organizations a bit more of an object to reason about. Fascinating it is for anyone to become emperor; more fascinating is to create a society in which emperors get wrecked. I now have a new belief:

- Hierarchical leaders may or may not be corrupt but their power is being the foreign relations person for the group. It is valuable to have a monarch as a group pathologizes its place in the world.

- In a lecture](https://youtu.be/uFm7RaNAc3w?t=461">lecture) on post-modernity Zizek describes monarchs as having the appearance of rule. These figures are unfortunately tasked with bearing the burden of the masses as well as their own greed. He says these figures are at their best in their himbo-bimbo era. Motivated monarchs should be feared. Is it possible cult-like leaders are the only egomaniacs who would take on the task of fronting civilization building? I doubt thatundefined, but we love them.

- *competently* was the main catalyst for the revolution. The rights of the three](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1960/the-three-estates-of-pre-revolutionary-france/">three) estates had all been radically altered to more generally suit the French population’s needs in the midst of an economic crisis. And as members of the council watched Napolean's rise with extreme scrupulousness, the people chose him. At least until the forces of a united Europe brought about a good chance for french liberals to dethrone Napolean. His heir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe,_Prince_Napol%C3%A9on">heir) nonetheless still has a claim to this day.

- Napoleon’s success could be seen as a triumph of the liberal policies France introduced to balance the estates. But, more puzzling about the restoration of the monarchy was that the French revolution was directly concerned with figures like Napoleon rising to power. Who held the authority to tax citizens and build armies

- but no. Kings are disposed often. Like in the Northman](https://www.youtube.com/embed/-0_yPnyxf-A?start=149&amp">Northman) movie.

- And I use to think, yeah, the state monopolizes power.

- During a recent road trip, I listened to the revolutions](https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/bibliography.html">revolutions) podcast. What stood out through this entire era of revolution was Napoleon Bonaparte, an accomplished Corsican general of the middle class who rose to become an emperor for a short while. Like a hundred days. I had always shit on France for having a revolution just to restore a king. And you know, wildly decapitating people and fostering the reign of terror.

- _vanityfair_](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">vanityfair_)

- In March, the journalist Jeff Sharlet (a Vanity Fair contributing editor who covers the American right) tweeted that the “intellectual New Right is a white supremacist project designed to cultivate non-white support,” and he linked it to resurgent nationalist and authoritarian politics around the world: “It’s part of a global fascist movement not limited to the anti-blackness of the U.S. & Europe.” — James Pogue,

- Very much today’s worst case in the US:

- wealthy conservative elite

- populist leaders

- the need for “an enemy”

- homogenous identities

- Fascism is a conservative brain phenomenon in societies that are stressed and can be identified by

- homogenous identities

- the need for “an enemy”

- populist leaders

- wealthy conservative elite

- pre-revolution and post-revolution France, Russia, and the US were concerned with centralized power.

- 16th-century ideology to today in Europe can be interpreted anthropologically. Think rise of material standards as opposed to some historical determinism set out by Fukuyama.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man">Fukuyama.)

- My introduction to comparative studies of major European ideological shifts was through Foucault, Discipline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish">Discipline) and Punish, Hannah Arendt, On](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Revolution">On) Revolution, and Robert Owen Paxton, The](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Fascism">The) Anatomy of Fascism. I think I hold some anthropological determinism stemming from McLuhan's interpretation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_Is_the_Massage">interpretation) of how perception is affected by expressive mediumsundefined.](https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-evolutions-of-traditional-to-new-media">mediumsundefined.) But all lead me to believe:

- 16th-century ideology to today in Europe can be interpreted anthropologically. Think rise of material standards as opposed to some historical determinism set out by Fukuyama.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man">Fukuyama.)

- pre-revolution and post-revolution France, Russia, and the US were concerned with centralized power.

- Fascism is a conservative brain phenomenon in societies that are stressed and can be identified by

- homogenous identities

- the need for “an enemy”

- populist leaders

- wealthy conservative elite

April 8, 2022

Making Blockbuster Movies that are Ideologically Meaningful Yet Unpolished in Order to Push Your View of the World Isn't Really Enjoyable

- Nolan has crafted an original story, with an incredibly relevant narrative, As we move through our climate crisis, one must ask will the future forgive us? Nolan explores this dichotomy expertly, thematically. But [Tenet](https://letterboxd.com/film/tenet/) has no character, unlike _[Twelve Monkeys](https://letterboxd.com/film/twelve-monkeys/)_. And It’s not _[Primer](https://letterboxd.com/film/primer/)_. The general story felt predictable because, uh, I don’t know, _[Back to the Future Part II](https://letterboxd.com/film/back-to-the-future-part-ii/)_. Like as soon they started fighting in the clear port I’m like oh, the bad guy is Biff and the protagonist is going back in time to stop him.

- Now I bought into the whole “it is time travel don’t worry about understanding it” thing. Turns out there is a lot of exposition about time travel though….. Why set up this air of fate, when THE WAY IT IS PRESENTED IS COMPLEX. This invalidates the scene with the woman who shows him inverted materials and makes the exposition on the time shit underwhelming. Nolan won’t expand but many fanboys will because he leaves room for his films to “explore” through his consistent themes. I’m sure I missed something. But who cares, the film is rated above average, not enduring, but not terrible.

- I am reminded of the twist in _[Memento](https://letterboxd.com/film/memento/)_. The main character, the man with no permanent sense of self seems delusional at the end because the film grows from a time-neutral perspective. You would think the protag comes into contact with this, but no. Nolan does not follow through on this neutrality towards the protag. The protag succeeds and he is now the leader of TENET? I do not know. I can appreciate the will to “believe“ in a better future, but who cares. Who are you bro? It’s a complete 180 from the characterization we see in Memento, leading me to ask if this is growth or regression. I am of the mind that Nolan does not want to make films, but I will explore that later.

- Normally Nolan sacrifices his cool themes and character growth for his [ideas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90m6Hb6_j20&ab_channel=LikeStoriesofOld). This was the same but different. I will probably never watch _[Intersteller](https://letterboxd.com/film/interstellar/)_ again, but the scene where Matthew Mc-caw-ne-hey is pleading for his daughter is emotional. None of the scenes in this movie are. Pattison has the most interesting character on film, but he is not our main, and Pattison just kind of comes out of nowhere.

- The main character’s development is in contention with the main theme of the movie, which makes it hard to analyze. On one hand, time is unexplainable, on the other “here’s” your protagonist crushing that setup with the power of friendship. Time can be changed yada yada. Not sure if Nolan is trolling or if this is to be taken seriously. We just don’t get the feeling of legit stakes being involved you get when watching _[The Saint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saint_(1997_film))_ and as a bad film, [Next](https://letterboxd.com/film/next/) has a better “future shit needs to be stopped” plot(both written by Jonathan Hensleigh). I think Tenet is enjoyable, but it does not have flying hats, men with metal jaws, women killed by being covered in gold, sharks with lasers, etc. No one in this film matters but the tone is so serious. Nolan sacrifices character development and exposition for the ideal of what he wants to portray. Also, when did society figure out time travel? Before during or after the fall. Who cares. Remember Interstellar. The movie where we could go to a black hole in spaceships with lego robots but not fix some esoteric catastrophe at home. I would just like Nolan films to flow. They don’t. He makes the prettiest most idealistic version of a B-list action film and it seems wasteful.

- Now, everything considered, I thought it was going well because I expect Nolan to be inconsistent in execution while carrying his themes in his movies.

- That is until I looked up the 2-hour mark and saw I had another 30 mins to go. It took a week to build a passing curiosity about what the ending may be.

- The last action scene is a raid on the time compound with magic metals with what is described as a tactical time pincer attack where one group goes back in time and the other remains on the main timeline to fight the bad guys. But what it looked like to me was a bunch of idiots walking into a kill zone. We only see about 6-9 bad guys in this scene though….A lot of shooting. A lot of explosions. But nothing was shot. [Worse than the Dark Knight Rises street fight scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WythosU_E&ab_channel=maazpatel). (Like bruh, when did charging a bunch of people with tanks and automatic weapons become a successful strategy. Mute the sound and watch it again. It is [silly](https://www.grunge.com/35357/dumb-things-dark-knight-rises-everyone-just-ignored/). )

- Now thematically, Neil going back in time to get the door open, dying in the process, and saving the Protagonist is awesome. It’s cool to think about what if he invented time travel, came back in time, ended his father, blah blah blah but who cares. Nolan certainly does not.

- This movie has allowed me to process my animosity for Nolan more cogently. All of his films deal with characters who question their role in the narratives taking shape around them. Let’s consider

- Memento - character rather live a lie than face his wife’s death. Memory loss is the mechanism behind this. The first and second watches are priceless. But this character sets the tone for his later protagonist. Only he has a bigger budget to fuck around with.

- Batman series - Rather be a villain than deal with the citys’ crime. And will blackmail his employees into not revealing the fact that Bruce Wayne spends company money on his escapades. I might even argue that Batman is not a hero in the last 2 films. The dude is never in Gotham just protecting people from crime. It is almost like Nolan has to force Batman into not being a hero so he can fulfill his plot wherein…IDK...Batman quits…who cares.

- Inception - This film is complete, but I have chosen to say fuck you Nolan. The end means the film’s events matter for their character or they do not. If I wanted a three-hour choose your adventure I would play Elder Scrolls. I start not to care about the plot as it drags on. And by the time the van starts flipping over, I just want to see the end. The better story is about the son transcending the father. Dreams are the mechanism, and we see Nolan at his most Meta. Dreams == Movies, Real Plot==Scarecrow face

- Interstellar - Love won’t stop a global crisis, but it will get you out of black holes and propel you through space. This may be him trying to tell a direct story, which I can not see him being interested in. Let’s just ignore plot holes on this one. Black holes are his mechanism for a commentary on love

- _Tenet - Back to the future, with a less coherent time travel angle. Not sure if he is saying [save the cheerleader, save the world](https://heroes.fandom.com/wiki/Save_the_cheerleadersavethe_world#:~:text=Meaning,the%20Cheerleader%2C%20save%20the%20World%22). Cause it seems the protag is someone who would stop that. I am not sure. It’s at least save the boy saves the day. But it too feels dreamy, kinda like Inception. I’m way more interested in Neil. But who cares. The story is not as well developed as Inception. Mechanisms are time and love and fate and a nameless black guy.

- I think Nolan cares more about the art than what he sells. I do not think that he is shallow. But it seems Nolan would rather craft billion-dollar movies on love, subjectivity, purpose, and science than million-dollar movies exploring these themes. Marvel is a top 5 grosser but it ain’t even on the plane of serious films. Money doesn’t mean shit. I think Inception and Memento are the only Nolan films that will stand the test of time. At the end of the day, Nolan's films are great, but he is still only Kubricesque. He can make a great film, but he can’t make 2001 A Space Odyssey(legitimizes the sci-fi genre), Full Metal Jacket(contemplative commentary on war and peace), or The Shining(arguably top 15 on any list). He is incapable of finding the range in his medium, only sticking to smart and sexy because he uses the screen to push his ideas instead of developing the characters in his movies to a satisfying end. Quentin Tarantino has mastered this by not making smart and sexy movies. He makes derivatives of the films he loves with all the fanfare of Nolan. We always want a Tarantino film because they are always good movies. It thus seems kind of wasteful if Nolan’s films are less enjoyable than the themes he presents. What impact will Nolan have on the field other than making good shit to look at in IMAX and a deep ponderance of our role in the narrative we tell ourselves?

- To give credit to Nolan however, there may be another way of writing this that critiques the subplots of the movies he develops. _[The Prestige](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-prestige/)_ also looks wonderful. I believe all his films have a wealth of meaning. He somehow manages to combine arthouse surrealism with blockbuster moviemaking. I might even go so far as saying Nolan has the most unique voice amongst big-budget moviemakers ever. But it all feels kinda pointless if the movie in itself is average.

- Get your money though king…

April 11, 2022

Notes on Being Black and 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro

- 100](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/338377.100_Amazing_Facts_about_the_Negro_with_Complete_Proof">100) Amazing Facts about the Negro with Complete Proof: A Short Cut to the World History of the Negro

- There are multiple states of experience in the communities of Americana. Most probably due to extractive, globally expansive policies of the colonial enterprise. Now, this isn’t to say that ethnic/cultural diversity isn’t a thing and always will be a thing, but I’m just saying, it’s not why I’m here in America. As I read through How Nations Fail the focus on institutional practices and the will of the state to exist, how the state validates its undertakings, promotes innovation, and how those institutions change culturally have become more prescient for me in a time where ‘antiracism‘ is meaningful in the practice of institution, uhh being and doing.

- The search for meaning in my specifically black identity is a question I grapple with. My identity is partially a tale of my temporal essence, or, to be less vague, how I am perceived socially in whatever context and how I experience my social caste maybe, status, maybe identity through the historical impact of ideas and institutions. Afropessimissm is a bit too uhh pessimistic in forwarding a theory of the end of racialized identities but I like the vibe. We should probably stop racializing each other.

- Every now and then I go through 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro to make sure I am not crazy for believing in the struggle for the black folk after rampant colonial racist ethnography became the norm. Post-modernity suggests identities are self-asserted, performative sociality, with the state as a vehicle for the people to innovate, grow wealth, and support themselves through tacitly inclusive or uninclusive institutions. I find this book to be the quintessence of that because history has a lot of black people in it. But there was and still is a need to remind people of that. What is that need?

- When racial tensions arise to become a distraction from or scapegoat for more intrinsic issues in Americana J.A. Rogers reminds us that black people have

- *always* been great, or at least treated as great threats.

- This leads me to my favorite facts currently:

- 8. Was Beethoven black? I am not convinced, but Rogers cites relevant sources on the topic. We also get this ML-generated rendition of Beethoven that provides African polyrhythms for his piano sonatas. I am here for it.

- 41. Poor white people in Maryland would be forced into slavery after marriage to enslaved Africans because of a law(1664) that stated marriage to a slave meant you served that slave’s master. Meant to de-incentivize early race-mixing, the law also removed the ambiguity of slave status for mixed-race children, as well as baptized slaves. A follow-up to this law is one preventing slave owners from forcing poor white *women* to marry male slaves(1681), exposing deep roots of gendered miscegenation.

- 50. The psalms of the bible may be in the lineage of those in writings from the Egyptian philosopher, Akhenaten, who promoted monotheism and what it meant to be moral. Nice to have this partially reinforced by a podcast I listen to on the history of philosophy. From the series on Africana Philosophy.

- Not all of his facts can be supported, or should be considered tasteful; boasting about black male fitness over white counterparts for war is questionable, and while I

- *love* black washing history, plenty of his examples are of dubious sources. Yet, 100 AFATN reminds me that the history of my people is a long history that has been influential far before Atlantic routes of bondage had been established. We should hold the history close.

- Peace

May 24, 2022

Reflections on Traveling pt. 1

- Heading Out

- Late in 2022, I got the opportunity to travel around the globe with my long-time friend Bekk. He’s a legit whiz kid who started coding because his mom did not want him to be/could not afford for him to be poor. Bekk even started a non-profit at fifteen, teaching his peers how to code on embedded projects using raspberry Pis’ and circuit boards. After that, he worked coding full time and decided to go to college for math because coming from a household of little means makes that document matter.

- Bekk in Sidi Bou Said

- Our friendship started in Clemson around bout 2017. We met through my now fiance Damali. At that time, I was a different person. I was undergoing a kind of culture shock. Now, readers, I am going to be very honest with you. That period was peak Donald Trump hype. I’m talking about people walking around with trump flags as clothing. KKK flyers scattered by trucks waving confederate and American flags were a norm](https://lasentinel.net/clemson-university-police-investigate-kkk-fliers-slurs.html">norm) at Clemson. By the time Bekk and I had met, a strong, umm, bias had developed because I was called, let us not censor, niggas left and right by white people who just thought it was fantastic. I love the word too, but damn, bruh, read the room. Whether going to parties or walking around campus, or having to assuage someone of their potential racism, for me being black at Clemson was daunting when outside of the black community. Race was not the sole issue I was dealing with, but the sense of alienation was palpable during my first years there. It had turned out that Bekk, too, felt estranged from the Clemson community. I do not know when I had turned, but once I realized he read often and had exciting thoughts, that I could learn from him, and that we have a similar backstory, we bonded.

- What does the whiz kid do after graduating in the middle of a global pandemic? He travels the world. I have always wanted to go places and see stuff, so we planned a two-month trip while getting together at Raf’s home when the chance came.

- *An aside*

- Neither Bekk nor I come from money. Walking into Raf’s house was weird because neither of us knew his family was wealthy. And I mean Raf and Bekk were roommates. Traveling around the world with someone who shares a similar perspective, one where elevators in houses are freaking crazy, allowed us to share an appreciation for even being able to walk in the places we walked.

- I lost a pair of shoes there the house was so big.

- A meet up that coincided with my birthday and life-changing plans

- Left to right: Raf, me, Bekk, Sylvia, Nick, Byron

- Planned is a strong word, to be fair. We just said we would meet in Barcelona on the 27th. After New Year’s, we’d see where else we could go.

- However, I had a few questions on my mind before leaving. One of them was:

- Is being black a global thing?

- It turns out yes. Yes, it is very much. It’s all love in most places. In Şanlıurfa, I experienced being a minor celebrity. But the West is the West

- Lovely cafe greeting in Barcelona. No blackberry punch though

- Spain

- Barcelona

- On landing, we met in the airport and proceeded to do what I call the covid and customs shuffle. Double c shuffle, if you will. Every airport has a different version of this. The Charles de Gaulle CC shuffle on entry involves a mandatory mask, a mandatory in-person check-in, a check even before airport entry of ticket, a PCR test taken within 48 hours, and customs and security checks. Exiting BCN required a covid vaccination check and an entry form. No customs, however, which was clutch. You can stroll in and out of Spain if your EU visa isn’t up.

- Flying over the Balearic into BCN

- View from the hostel balcony

- Non Apparent Truths

- If there is one thing you should do in any city, it’s see it come alive. The nightlife in Barcelona is active right up until sunrise. When morning arrives, teams of garbage people come out and clean, just a few hours after the latest groups find their way home. Hints of coffee and bread can be smelled coming from the cafés. I even saw someone drinking wine and having a croissant around 6:30 am or so. But I have depression.

- Being in Barcelona exposed me to some truths about myself and how I engage with others or my environment. I suppose initially; I felt apathy. Then insecurity. Originally, my apathy felt a defense from the sensory overload of being in a completely foreign place. Then I saw the Starbucks around the corner from La Sagrada Familia. The other side was occupied by a McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell, and anything else you might find on the average main road of a popular shopping area. I now see the apathy I felt was probably the early awareness that I should prepare myself for what is essentially a global industry dedicated to attracting tourism. Imagine going to Paris and seeing a Versace ad on the side of a national monument. And for a moment, I had wished for some Versace. I don’t want low-bar capital references. I want the good stuff. I totally wanted(and still do) to go shopping for designer boots. I had wanted to be more attractive, more affluent, enigmatic, etc. Why not if this was all it took to be here. That would be better than some La Sagrada Mc’ds. I seriously thought about how I could be more than who I was. Or different. So that the aesthetics of my capital consumption felt more authentic to my own style. But the only jacket I brought was given to me by my grandma and I was keen on wearing it.

- Sagrada Familia

- Not to Skip Over Madrid But…

- Bekk looking for a place to get a PCR test

- I noticed something in a Madrid hostel that would probably give me the push needed to ground my mind. It turns out that most people are dealing with some sense of identity, purpose, history, etc. Cities have this characteristic essence as well. Madrid and Barcelona’s character traits were essentially casual beauty. As an EU city living there is pretty reasonable. By reasonable I mean you do not need 250k, a Roth IRA, favorable mortgage APRs, credit cards, and generational wealth to exist. A casual beauty arises from the shared, conscious or unconscious, belief in a strong social welfare system. It really takes walking around for 24hrs+ to notice that. Like shit really doesn’t start until 10 or 11. Or 3 pm if a store owner decides to not open. This is something America fundamentally lacks in its cities or so-called lazy towns. There is a supposition here that business owners serve customers as opposed to themselves. Maybe small-time business owners dealing with the stress of an unfavorable loan and unfavorable revenue lead them to not engage in this behavior.

- In places that have been inhabited for thousands of years by various cultures, you feel just that. America is sterile due to genocide and disease spread to indigenous populations. Or to put it another way, the history of a building in Europe can extend for literally hundreds of years. Along with their artifacts(cultural, societal, global). Anything that old in America should be considered ancient, teleologically speaking.

- Madrid early in the morning

- About three days into our Madrid trip we got omicron. We smoked and ordered uber eats the entire time. It was the epitome of chill. Very much needed after the first week in Barcelona. Amazing actually. It was here I learned, yeah, I don’t like being around a bunch of people in loud settings, but I love meeting new people. Get Airbnbs more often. Sleeping is underrated. Madrid is gorgeous. Be grateful.

- me settling in and getting more acquainted with my RB67

- Street Photos of Madrid and Barcelona

- The street over from the hostel had a fantastic view of this church

August 22, 2022

Rules for Radicals

Chicago is a horribl corrupt place to live to this day

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polit...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_history_of_Chicago)

Revolution for as long as I can tell meant violent political uprising to upend some pretty specific positions. Consider Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Algeria, China, India, South Africa, America etc. Zizek spoke on the Kurdish city that was able to obtain something of a utopian order in his latest book “[Heaven in Disorder](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/58587163)“ but nah, they losing. Socotra, Columbia, Venezuela, Taiwan, Libya, Rwanda, France, etc…

I mean here’s the large pink striped elephant in the room. Power does not give itself up. Maybe the last ten years were better than the ten before that. But these battles are far from deterministic, with a huge asterisk coming.

Socialist ideology could be found in southern mill culture. And it was cool. Mill families could extend credit, borrow money, and rely on the mill community to keep it going. What happened to that? Well, in the face of terminal lung illness, competing against black education, and the real dead end of the mill, people began organizing and asking for rights. This was happening right beside prohibition because women and children were getting their faces knocked off by sad drunk men with nothing else to do. And it worked. Then the companies left, with exception of giants such as Millikan, who my grandmother worked for and got respiratory issues from. Many ideologies compete, contrast, or enhance each other but power has been pretty damn dominant.

Also, remember: the south is dying and the only lifeblood for these cities are capitalist and high-income earners. The rest of the people are a dead class. Useful for atomization and deployment of rhetoric by liberal and conservative media outlets.

If Nial(Neil) Ferguson(idc) and David Grueber can agree that socialist ideology is far more sanguine to a natural human order, ideology seems a less prevalent impetus to organizing than its pragmatic nature.

I think it’s fair to say the revolution will not be televised, but there are no rules. The most palpable revolutionary force in America is an anti-capitalist, racist, right wing fascism. And they have a point.

To jump the question of rules for radicals, who are the loud minority, how does the silent majority live through ecological collapse? This is that asterisk. It seems we’re losing. We being people.

So what is activism? What can it do? Ride around your city at 3-4am.

I’m not discounting activism. But I’d like to forward a more pragmatic mentality inspired by a monologue from The Turin Horse. If everything has been upended and the only real change never happened then where do we go? When can we say we lost? Where should we go after?

June 18, 2020

The Undiscovered Self pt 1

- As social beings, humans can find themselves lost in a state of subjective annihilation resulting in what Jung terms the mass man.

- This “mass man” is more a function of society or the political collective rather than of the individual self.

- Another type of subjective annihilation can be found in the collective believer. Jung does not take this to be one who truly believes in God’s (psyche) power over judgment and the extramundane one intimately finds themselves a part of or indirect access to. The collective believer in Jung’s view is indifferent to religion as a personal relationship with self and the extramundane, and forms creeds rooted in the religious institutions they happen to participate in. They are, as the mass man, subjects of institutional authority.

- Jung expresses this in a powerful statement on the role of state and religious institutions, writing:

- both lack the very thing that expresses and grips the whole man, namely, an idea which puts the individual human being in the center as the measure of all things

- This becomes dangerous to Jung, as Western civ prioritizes the collective self, positing the individual as non-important to the functioning of the systems running the lives of millions.

- the individual becomes morally and spiritually inferior to the mass, and for this reason, they do not burden themselves…with the real task of helping the individual to achieve metanoia, or rebirth of the spirit

- For Jung, western civilizations’ only goal is the use of; tyranny(specifically socialism/fanaticism) in Russia, scientific weltanschauung in the Americas(Foucault much), or brazen egotism and skepticism in Europe to further its materialistic and collectivist goals. We should consider these phenomena as the methods by which dominant power structures seek to minimize the individual so that the individual becomes the mass man.

- The Church takes this on with its creeds and thus becomes the motto “God Bless America”. The state and the church become complicit in the creed creations and impetus towards the “mass man” resulting in the deprivation of individual self-realization/individuation. Jordan Peterson has a very interesting take on this facet of Jungian belief. In the face of the dominance hierarchies humans have emboldened for centuries, it is imperative that we find a relationship with a higher power so that we may come to know and unveil our lesser nature hidden by meaning archetypal to our experience as human beings. But we remained warned:

- veneration of the word has a perilous shadow side…the moment the word…attains universal validity, it severs its original link with the divine. There is then a personified Church, a personified State; the word becomes credulity…the word itself an infernal slogan capable of any deception.

- For Jung, a religious belief system is an appropriate counterbalance to mass mindedness in either form, but Jung argues Christian symbolism falls short in producing the synthesis required of the ego to experience metanoia.](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Metanoia_\(psychology\)">metanoia.)

- In the state, the individual plays no role in the collectivist aim to produce more, ad infinitum, so religion should be the stopgap as Jung believes:

- the individual in his dissociated state needss [a] directing and ordering principle

- Ego consciousness would like to let its own will play this role, but overlooks the existence of powerful unconscious factors which thwart its intentions

- And later says

- the believer is measuring his conscience by the traditional ethical standard and that by a collective value

- It is in this vulnerable state of searching for meaning in life that Jung locates the power of psychology for subconscious confrontation. Christianity’s inability to update its symbology for the “Christian white man” is proof of the religious creeds that iterate over state and institutional collectivism rather than providing an environment for individuation. State fanaticism has even a steeper slope to fall from for the individual. Western scientific weltanschauung is occurring in the face of imperialism, racism, and sexism. The individual, in their disassociation, should thus become the subject of psychological analysis. For Jung, an examination of the relationship between a self and the machinations employing that self, so that ego synthesis can be formed, is the goal of psychology.

- My fear is that, even in the zeitgeist of mental health, it should be fair to ask if psychology is merely another tool for producing an individual that conforms to society, rather than assisting one through subconscious confrontation.

- We shall end it here. In the later sections, Jung focuses on understanding and self-knowledge in a world of rapid technological development. I think it best to preview the next post with how he starts chapter five and his focus on the drastic real event in one’s life:

- Only when conditions have…altered so drastically that…an unendurable rift between the outer…and our ideas now become antiquated…[that]….the question of how primordial images that maintain the flow of instinctive energy are to be reoriented

- Part 2 : (https://qwelian.com/posts/The_Undiscovered_Self_pt_2) Power of Self

June 25, 2020

The Undiscovered Self pt. 2

Carl Jung has warned us of the psychic driving performed by the state and church; manifesting the warped conflict between ideals brought about by scientific progress and imperial power. The creation of the mass man, resulting in a lack of unconscious exploration and psychic freedom is for Jung the crisis of western civilization.

Jung's moral prophetization is found in his conception of the individual. For Jung, “consciousness is a precondition to being_”, and “_the individual is the manifestation of the psyche”. A complete “_exception to the statistical rule_”. So much so that Jung, believed in the individual’s destruction by state or church had not their psyche been of such great benefit. How then can the individual occasion psychic investigation rooted in their soul? Worse still, how is humankind to become aware of their unconscious self while “s_cience completely devalues individuality_”, the church “_deems it as egoistic obstinacy_”, and the state “_seeks to atomize it_”.

evil, without man’s ever having chosen it, is lodged in human nature itself

An a priori placing of consciousness and thus the individual. We should begin to understand the compulsion Jung felt to reveal the unconscious. The undiscovered self is the only reprieve for the shadow. Under which reprieve our ignorance of the shadow can persist and the mass man is compelled to entire systems of violence for the people, in gods name, due to science, etc.

For Jung, it was with the acknowledgment of humankind’s ability to act evil that one could gain perspective of the shadow and its projections. This was of such great consequence to Jung that he felt a generational responsibility.

There is no sense formulating the task that our age has forced upon us as a moral demand. We can, at best, make the psychological world situation so clear that it can be seen even by the myopic

Jung could not see a moral solution to this issue but found hope in the rapid technologization of travel and communication.

today we live in a unitary world…Exotic races…ceased to be peepshows in ethnological museums. They have become our neighbors, and what was yesterday the prerogative of the ethnologist is today a political and social problem

He felt as immigration and integration continued, the need for individuals to recognize the gulf of experience between each other and engage in closer relationships will allow a further bridging of the subconscious.

As the book ends, it takes the form of an early anti-racist stance. We see Jung transition from the condemnation of racism to the call for us to lift relationships based on a deepened understanding of the other from self-knowledge:

The European has also to answer for all crimes he has committed against the dark skinned people during the process of colonialization …the white man carries a heavy burden. The evil that comes to light in man undoubtedly dwells within him [and] is of gigantic proportions…He does not deny that terrible things have happened and still go on happening...when such deeds belong to the recent or remote past, they…sink into the sea of forgetfulness, and that state of chronic wooly mindedness returns which we describe as “normality”. In shocking contrast to the fact that nothing has finally disappeared and nothing has been made good. The evil, the guilt, the profound unease of conscience, the obscure misgiving are there before our eyes , if only we would see. Man has done these things; I am man, who has his share of human nature; therefore I am guilty with the rest and bear unaltered and indelibly within me the capacity and the inclination to do them again at any time.

From here, Jung reaffirms his principle of understanding.

A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for those only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite; it is based rather on imperfection, what is weak, helpless, in need of support.

He justifies by saying positive human relationships are key to the fight against the dictator state because it keeps us from being depotentiated social units the state dictator aims for #FuckDonald.

The last chapter is only a few pages long, but here we get more great bars like;

What our age thinks of as “the shadow” and inferior part of the psyche contains more than something merely negative. The very fact that by self knowledge, i.e. by exploring our own souls, we come upon the instincts and their world of imagery should throw light on the powers slumbering in the psyche, of which we are seldom aware long as all go well

And another that made my toes warm;

Happiness and contentment, equability of soul…meaningfulness of life…can be experienced only by the individual and not by a State

And ends in typical “I'm spiritual but not religious fashion”

I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being — that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the Christian message aright, even god seeks [its] goal

This book is the result of someone living through a period marked by legitimate fascism, war, and the excess of imperialism. I imagine some of what Jung saw is still ahead, but I remain hopeful humans can come to understand each other.

Issues

I find the lack of location of this force that organizes people to collective action representative of an error in perceiving the individual as an atomic unit.

The “shadow” is important metaphorically, or for the vibes, but what does it mean right? For instance, Viktor Frankl identifies a personal aspect of his patient’s human experience and reinforces their ability to reorient the way they perceive a challenge through meaning and purpose. I’m not quite sure if shadow therapy is just talking about myself or taking DMT. This may not be the place for Jung’s analytical methods, but without them, it feels like Jung is telling me to try ecstasy or meditate, I don’t know.

Both culminate in a lack of specificity. There just seems to be an idealistic romanticism of the inner spiritual experience of humans or an essentially amoral character of his beliefs that seeks personal psychic investigation over collective behavior. Neither account for motivation for self-understanding. I vibe with that though.

September 3, 2022

Today I learned

- Thursday, August 21st, we had our first lunch and learn at PubPub. It was held on JS runtimes. Before this meeting, I was pretty ignorant of the difference between node and the V8 engine, let alone did I have a basic understanding of a runtime.

- JS Runtime

-

- JavaScript runtime environments are a group of data structures and packages to run JS. What I find interesting about this design is that runtime environments _include_s useful packages out of the box! These are mostly WebApi standards that are implemented to be used in the JS runtime. Node.js even includes a package manager to use third party libraries in it’s runtime environment. Never did I consider all the things that are just there by default.

- There are 4 parts to a runtime. The engine, event loop, web API, and callback queue.

-

- JavaScript runtime environments are a group of data structures and packages to run JS. What I find interesting about this design is that runtime environments _include_s useful packages out of the box! These are mostly WebApi standards that are implemented to be used in the JS runtime. Node.js even includes a package manager to use third party libraries in it’s runtime environment. Never did I consider all the things that are just there by default.

- There are 4 parts to a runtime. The engine, event loop, web API, and callback queue.

- Javascript engines

- In JS the engine is responsible for calling functions from the stack and storing execution context.

-

- please excuse my horrible writing form

- taken from Geeks](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-to-javascript-engines/">Geeks) for Geeks

- I’m not quite sure why each browser needs its own JS runtime, but there are quite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript_engines">quite) a few implementations of web standards so it makes sense because of the complexity of browsers.

-

- In JS the engine is responsible for calling functions from the stack and storing execution context.

-

- please excuse my horrible writing form

- taken from Geeks](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-to-javascript-engines/">Geeks) for Geeks

- I’m not quite sure why each browser needs its own JS runtime, but there are quite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript_engines">quite) a few implementations of web standards so it makes sense because of the complexity of browsers.

-

- Web API’s

- We didn’t too much discuss Web API’s. Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/">Node.js) is the most popular JavaScript runtime and includes](https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v16.x/docs/api/">includes) a lot of packages out of the box. In the box? Whatever, what Node.js includes are a bunch of libraries that make using web](https://www.javascripttutorial.net/web-apis/">web) standards easy. For instance, node includes an implementation of the sockets](https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v16.x/docs/api/net.html#class-netsocket">sockets) API.

- We didn’t too much discuss Web API’s. Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/">Node.js) is the most popular JavaScript runtime and includes](https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v16.x/docs/api/">includes) a lot of packages out of the box. In the box? Whatever, what Node.js includes are a bunch of libraries that make using web](https://www.javascripttutorial.net/web-apis/">web) standards easy. For instance, node includes an implementation of the sockets](https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v16.x/docs/api/net.html#class-netsocket">sockets) API.

- Callback Queue

-

- basic event loop from mdn](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/EventLoop#event_loop">mdn)

- The callback queue contains messages about when to call functions. In the sketch above I drew the basic handling of JS runtimes. The call stack keeps track of the execution context or frame to be called. At some point, a message is sent to the callback queue, and will run until the stack is empty. I’m still confused about this part because it seems the queue also reads from memory and uses the messages to execute functions in a single-threaded way. Mozilla included some links that I will leave here for future me(who reads this right).

- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2734025/is-javascript-guaranteed-to-be-single-threaded/2734311#2734311

- https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/event-loop-timers-and-nexttick/#what-is-the-event-loop

-

- basic event loop from mdn](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/EventLoop#event_loop">mdn)

- The callback queue contains messages about when to call functions. In the sketch above I drew the basic handling of JS runtimes. The call stack keeps track of the execution context or frame to be called. At some point, a message is sent to the callback queue, and will run until the stack is empty. I’m still confused about this part because it seems the queue also reads from memory and uses the messages to execute functions in a single-threaded way. Mozilla included some links that I will leave here for future me(who reads this right).

- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2734025/is-javascript-guaranteed-to-be-single-threaded/2734311#2734311

- https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/event-loop-timers-and-nexttick/#what-is-the-event-loop

- Event Loops

-

- The event loop is what keeps track of calls to the stack, message queue, and memory. It’s interesting because heaps,](https://github.com/qweliant/GO-Practice/blob/master/algorithms/24_binary_heap_sort.go">heaps,) queues,](https://github.com/qweliant/GO-Practice/blob/master/algorithms/18_queue.go">queues,) and stacks,](https://github.com/qweliant/GO-Practice/blob/master/algorithms/19_stack.go">stacks,) are the fundamentals of this architecture.

- event loop calling the queue

- That’s about all I’m aware of at current when it comes to runtimes. It’s my nature to compare things, so I will take a look in the future at different runtime environments to see if Frankensteining the best parts of each is something. Or at least to see the influences.

-

- The event loop is what keeps track of calls to the stack, message queue, and memory. It’s interesting because heaps,](https://github.com/qweliant/GO-Practice/blob/master/algorithms/24_binary_heap_sort.go">heaps,) queues,](https://github.com/qweliant/GO-Practice/blob/master/algorithms/18_queue.go">queues,) and stacks,](https://github.com/qweliant/GO-Practice/blob/master/algorithms/19_stack.go">stacks,) are the fundamentals of this architecture.

- event loop calling the queue

- That’s about all I’m aware of at current when it comes to runtimes. It’s my nature to compare things, so I will take a look in the future at different runtime environments to see if Frankensteining the best parts of each is something. Or at least to see the influences.

- Runtime Flavors

- There are also flavors of JS runtimes. We discussed three of them: node, dino, and buns.

- node](https://nodejs.org/en/">node)

- Node.js is the default runtime powering thousands of apps. A few here. Node.js has an early mover advantage, being the first runtime presented to use the google invented v8 engine. The creator, Ryan Dahl, went on to create the next runtime we will discuss.

- deno

- deno is an early-stage runtime environment based on googles V8. Its goal is to provide a more conservative experience for using package modules while including TS support natively. Along with TS it includes, bundling, testing, and linting. deno also allows packages to be hosted anywhere.](https://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/what-is-deno/">anywhere.)

- buns

- Life begins and ends with buns. So does this post. buns is a spooky fast drop-in runtime replacement for node users. It’s based on Safari’s JS Core WebKit. They rewrote the runtime from scratch in zig.](https://ziglang.org/learn/overview/#small-simple-language">zig.) According to them;

- bun also includes much out-of-the-box for developers including Web API and node package implementations.

- So, this is what I learned from our latest dev meet. It was really nice and I am looking forward to the next one.

-

- There are also flavors of JS runtimes. We discussed three of them: node, dino, and buns.

- node](https://nodejs.org/en/">node)

- Node.js is the default runtime powering thousands of apps. A few here. Node.js has an early mover advantage, being the first runtime presented to use the google invented v8 engine. The creator, Ryan Dahl, went on to create the next runtime we will discuss.

- deno

- deno is an early-stage runtime environment based on googles V8. Its goal is to provide a more conservative experience for using package modules while including TS support natively. Along with TS it includes, bundling, testing, and linting. deno also allows packages to be hosted anywhere.](https://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/what-is-deno/">anywhere.)

- buns

- Life begins and ends with buns. So does this post. buns is a spooky fast drop-in runtime replacement for node users. It’s based on Safari’s JS Core WebKit. They rewrote the runtime from scratch in zig.](https://ziglang.org/learn/overview/#small-simple-language">zig.) According to them;

- bun also includes much out-of-the-box for developers including Web API and node package implementations.

- So, this is what I learned from our latest dev meet. It was really nice and I am looking forward to the next one.

October 8, 2022

What I learned at KFG so far

So I have been working for a year or so for [Knowledge Futures Group](https://www.knowledgefutures.org/). Over the year or so, I have learned. Grew even. Here are some of my takeaways:

Company Culture Determines a Significant Portion of Your Life

Everyone should go camping. I mean hike a few miles up a hill. Set up a tent. Bring shrooms and weed. Food. Start a fire. Sit there. You will get bored quickly. We are the smartest things we know on earth. Maybe not as impressive as [dicty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlANF-v9lb0&ab_channel=zefrank1) but humans are [impressive objectively](https://goo.gl/maps/yn4e84aqhuqWqXjDA). That means working is more of a pastime as we build shelter, negotiate society, party, and get about. It’s probably the case this arrangement can be rewarding, at least personally. I don’t mean through work, however. I mean through creating a life that’s reasonable and desired. Whether or not work is enjoyable is really a luck of the draw. But creating a life of your choosing is the [primary value proposition](https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01geay2bx747yk2k2k6119cztw) of democratic societies. That means work-life needs balance with the superset of all life. But type theory is later.

### KFG’s Work-Life Model

Aside from being remote, and offering a competitive wage, and benefits undefined, KFG did two things to make this a feasible task. First, we have a [four-day workweek](https://www.newsweek.com/every-us-company-4-day-workweek-full-list-1697943). I have so much time to organize my life and thoughts. The second is KFG adopted some pretty novel stances toward compensation policy.

“Whenever someone is given a salary adjustment, including when a new hire is made, everyone else in their role and level who received a satisfactory performance review in the last cycle must be brought up to the highest salary level in the company at that role and level. In this way, we help bargain for employees automatically, reduce bias, reduce the cost of staying at the company vs. seeking a new job, and allow employees who receive less than satisfactory evaluations but later improve to catch up quickly.” — from a soon-to-be-released draft of our open compensation policy

Learn the Ecosystem You Are a Part Of

For years I have had an issue with implementing a system that can facilitate reading, note-taking, and writing. College is horrible when you stay in the library but can’t get the results you want. Honestly, I’m offended physical flashcards exist. I won’t go into “productivity hacks“ here, but recently I was accepted into the alpha testing of [Reader](https://blog.readwise.io/readwise-reading-app/). My entire thought capture flow changed after committing to using reader, to, well, read. Now I can read and sync annotations to note-taking apps, make connections about things I’m reading, and write about the things I’m thinking about in one web of interconnected applications. The problem is I do this all outside of PubPub.

That’s why I think any open-source product should probably ship with a handful of useful integrations into other services. Granted, I think PubPub has a different value prop than say [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/), but not being able to port my connected thinking and long-form writing makes PubPub a serious chokepoint for putting out thoughts. Like I should be writing this in Obsidian and using some publish to PubPub library to import the markdown as well as any linked docs as citations. Not being able to do this makes writing about things in an open space a chore.

### If You Want Your Product to be Usable Elsewhere, Use SOA

I mean I [won't beat a dead horse](https://boxd.it/2Qsk). Our head of operations has already written about [this](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/kkcevu38/release/3).

Also, read [this](https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611#annotations:02-lZD7LEe2rws-8ZA5WjA).

I'm not really sure how Bezos came to this realization -- the insight that he can't build one product and have it be right for everyone. But it doesn't matter, because he gets it. There's actually a formal name for this phenomenon. It's called Accessibility, and it's the most important thing in the computing world.

Typescript

For quite some time I have wanted to know what a [type](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/a7i7w1ny/release/10?from=6223&to=6244) is. Currently, I’m going through a collection of articles, including the [TS handbook](https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01gefz4h67sprfngy431dgqthr), research on [dependent types](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/5557124), and [metaprogramming](https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01gepwqhqe8c7rdb82mdg6xjwe). So far, what I’m getting is that [self-compilation](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/5601875) is not mutually exclusive from type theory. That’s about it. JavaScript is one of the [world’s foremost](https://www.stackscale.com/blog/most-popular-programming-languages/#Top_10_programming_languages_in_2022) languages. When Microsoft engineers wanted to do more web stuff they began to port C++/C#:

Various early solutions worked on by Microsoft and other web-scale companies were mostly efforts to compile traditional languages such as C++ into JavaScript, though this left developers at “an arm’s length from the platform,”

- _[The New Stack](https://thenewstack.io/typescript-and-the-power-of-a-statically-typed-language/)_

But that’s a bad solution so they made TypeScript.

If there is a secret to the success of TypeScript, it is in the type checking, ensuring that the data flowing through the program is of the correct kind of data. Type checking cuts down on errors, sets the stage for better tooling, and allows developers to map their programs at a higher level. And TypeScript itself, a statically-typed superset of JavaScript, ensures that an army of JavaScript programmers can easily enjoy these advanced programming benefits with a minimal learning curve.

What this means for the future is a highly flexible expression of [declarative](https://dev.to/adnanbabakan/declarative-programming-with-javascript-2h97) routines. These routines can be typed in such a way that they generate code. This is bleeding-edge stuff according to Wikipedia.

Usage of [dependent types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_type) allows proving that generated code is never invalid. However, this approach is bleeding-edge and is rarely found outside of research programming languages.

But very reminiscent of something I was introduced to at PubPub.

Ian Introduced Facets

Ian introduced a new way to consider modeling something I best conceive of as [state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(computer_science)). State is transient. It can change. But the data structures that compose them should not. At the end of the day, an application is a data structure for memory I/O.

Thinking this way has some important consequences I am not yet fully able to contend with. Is there a universal data structure? What is a type? A statically typed application is not a supertype, is it? I think it dates back to compilers, see [self-composition](https://www.qwelian.com/pub/gweeh1e5/draft/11296?from=1880&to=1897). I do not know.

I do know an application written in JavaScript uses objects to define objects. We can add steps to get these objects called functions. We make a function and get an object, but really we are mutating a global object. With what Ian calls Facets we can mutate

*and* generate state for our parts of the [global object](https://hyp.is/sz4jikc0Ee2mmccqJzm90g/developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global\_Objects). We would be doing some pretty bleeding-edge stuff undefined.

All this has made my brain hurt undefined.

In the context of PubPub this could give us something like a DSL language dynamic type system thing. I can no longer think of modeling objects and deriving their properties in TS without this now undefined. Consider an object we want to load differently when a different set of properties exist for different instances of the object:

 scopeA -> propertyBinding -> {propertyA, propertyB}

 scopeA1 -> propertyBinding -> {propertyA, propertyC}

It should follow that we can create a complete object for each scope, and mutate its values based on the presence of a different set of properties.

We can generate strongly typed functional objects from schemas. And model them as separate mutating graphs of cascading scope properties.

Ian Helped Me Think Through This

Ian helped me think through [this](https://www.qwelian.com/pub/gweeh1e5/draft/12952?from=4623&to=5010) and it turns out Eric was working on an entity component system undefined

So imagine there are components:

type Position = { x: number; y: number };
type Health = { health: number };
type Damage = { radius: number; deltaHealth };

Then you have archetypes:

type Player = Position & Health;
type Enemy = Position & Health;
type Bullet = Position & Damage;
type Grenade = Position & Damage;

Which is a kind of contrived example

But the point is that because {Player, Enemy} and {Bullet, Grenade} have the same total set of properties (derived from the union of all their components) and even though they may have very different behavior implementations, you can *store them together* in an array of homogenous data structure that holds all of their properties.

And the shape of which is pre-computed at compile time, and in game dev there are CPU and memory-related incentives to do this.

I’m probably getting this wrong and Eric will yell at me.

You Want Good Dev Tooling

Not for like 5 people, but 10 makes it a stretch. Coding is a lot. Recently I described it to a colleague as if you had to find a new way to express yourself through a culture every 6 months. If you do not, you will stagnate. Or I mean, go work for the government. Entire languages are adopted or created based on language tooling. As an application begins to resemble a system, you now need rules and procedures to interface with the human part of that.

Adding a field to a database, for example, is a trivial task when it’s like four or five people making additions. I will manually add a table to a DB every day because it’s more convenient. I would prefer DB migrations to run as a result of a model updated in code. Without me thinking about it. But a simple DB CLI is a basic must.

We are in the middle of a golden age of server orchestration. Putting files on servers and accessing them is a hard thing. But I don’t think making a web app and exposing them will be an issue in the future. Providing a consistent development environment, continuous integration to the cloud, continuous deployment strategy, and maybe some testing is. All are necessary to make setting up an open-source project a reproducible-enough event.

We do collaborative work. Every day. Someone is working on something that someone else will look at. We have a host of methods to do this. OpenAPI, PubPub, Github, Heroku, Slack, Code, etc. I have found that a strategy for making a knowledge base around development may be better. I think that requires note-taking during development. We create [specs](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/fc6cs6bp) for our projects sometimes. Tools like Notion get this by offering configurable collaboration tools. Allowing entire dev flows to be maintained there. A collection of any serious thoughts on development through time could be very useful.

June 14, 2022

What Shines

- A review of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

- spoilers ahead

- Picture of the temple today

- TLDR: Can acts of destruction be virtuous?

- The point of this post is to consider how an act of destruction becomes moral. Whether violence is moral is outside the scope. Terrorism as an extension of moral philosophy is outside the scope.

- Intro

- 1950 saw the infamous Kinkaku-Ji destroyed. This had been the second time since some nearly 400 years before, when a civil war broke out, ushering in the warring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cnin_War">warring) states period for Japan. Zen monk in training Hayashi Yoken had little documentation regarding his motivation but was said to be a fanatic and a schizophrenic with a persecution complex. The temple, known in English as the Golden Pavilion was reconstructed, packing more gold leaf than before, and remains a popular destination for many to this day. In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Yukio Mishima re-imagines this boy’s act as that of a troubled adolescent.

- Painted image of Kinkaku - ji before it burned down in 1950

- Consider the Virtue of Action

- The introduction to the book by Nancy Wilson Ross roots psychological trauma as the impetus for Mizoguchi’s troubled relationship with beauty and action. I necessarily agree that an intervention of some kind is preferred when one finds themselves in a sense of “sick consciousness“, but what I reject from Ross is the minimization of Mizoguchi’s reasoning. If Zen is the killing of a cat and the nature of Zen can be the placement of shoes on the head, then Zen seems to be found in the action? Not the reasoning. Mishima thus asks us to consider the effective action Mizoguchi takes when fully disillusioned by the iconography of the temple.

- I do not take it that Yukio Mishima imagines Mizoguchi as a psychotic boy lashing out at misplaced impotence or the perceived vanity of the monks. Not to take away from Mizoguchi’s mental troubles, however, I am totally down to say his fixation on the temple is a stand-in for a sense of impotence or a classic psychotic break.

- But is Mizoguchi psychotic? Well, potentially. After a fateful encounter with his childhood crush left him speechless and somewhat bumbling, Mizoguhi’s ideology can be clarified by the following:

- Day and night I wished for Uiko's death. I wished that the witness of my disgrace would disappear. If only no witnesses remained, my disgrace would be eradicated from the face of the earth. Other people are all witnesses. If no other people exist shame could never be born in the world.

- In this formative moment for Mizoguchi his preconception of beauty as imparting a sort of indelible innocence is torn from him, replaced by a deep shame and suspicion. If we are to take the events at face, it would seem his self-consciousness arises from the revelation of his own inaction rather than the imminent rejection of Uiko, who simply happens to be a “witness“ of this shame. I believe the line below is actually unsubtle at intimating the extant of Mizoguchi’s psychological state:

- As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only things that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was always absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words

- One can ask, under a less pressing situation, in which Mizoguchi does not deal with the suicide of a peer, the death of his father, an inattentive mother, the frivolousness of temple monks, an inner dialogue on the mundanity of beauty, and a speech disability, “would the outcome still happen?“

- It may seem unlikely, but I propose morality is not easily gained. Much of this book seems to be a mediation on action and the virtues beauty inhabit as opposed the sick manifestation of a boy

- Consider Morality and Beauty

- While reading, I was primed with the notion of this ending with the murder of a sex worker. For what it’s worth, I also took most of the book to initially be a boy dealing with a traumatic kind of impotence and depression. The story of Elliot Rodger was at the top of my mind, I was like “for sure this guy murders a prostitute right?“ However Mizoguchi found the company of women often, and when the time for sex occurred he found himself more fixated with the temple, never once seeing women as the source of his impotence. Let us take a look at pages 203 to 205.

- “Thus it was that she unfastened her sash-bustle before my eyes and untied the various cords. Then with a silky shriek, the sash itself came undone, and, released from this constriction, the neck of her kimono opened up. I could vaguely make out the woman's white breasts. Putting her hand into her kimono she scooped out her left breast and held it out to me.

- It would be untrue to say that I did not feel dizzy. I looked at her breast. I looked at it with minute care. Yet I remained in the role of witness. That mysterious white point which I had seen in the distance from above the temple gate had not been a material globe of flesh like this. The impression had been fermenting so long within me that the breast which I now saw seemed to be nothing but flesh, nothing but a material object. This flesh did not in itself have the power to appeal or to tempt. Exposed there in front of me, and completely cut off from life, it merely served as a proof of the dreariness of existence.

- Still, I do not want to say anything untrue, and there is no doubt that at the sight of her white breast I was overcome by dizziness. The trouble was that I looked too carefully and too completely, so that what I saw went beyond the “stage of being a woman's breast and was gradually transformed into a meaningless fragment.

- It was then that the wonder occurred. After undergoing this painful process, the woman's breast finally struck me as beautiful. It became endowed with the sterile and frigid characteristics of beauty and, while the breast remained before me, it slowly shut itself up within the principle of its own self. Just as a rose closes itself up within the essential principle of a rose. Beauty arrives late for me. Other people perceive beauty quickly, and discover beauty and sensual desire at the same moment; for me it always comes far later. Now in an instant the woman's breast regained its connection with the whole, it surmounted the state of being mere flesh and became an unfeeling, immortal substance related to eternity.

- I hope that I am making myself understood.

- The Golden Temple once more appeared before me. Or rather, I should say that the breast was transformed into the Golden Temple.

- I was certainly not intoxicated by my understanding. My understanding was trampled underfoot and scorned; naturally enough, life and sensual desire underwent the same process. But my deep feeling of ecstasy stayed with me and for a long time I sat as though paralyzed opposite the woman's naked breast.

- I was sitting there when I met the woman's cold, scornful look. She put her breast back into the kimono. I told her that I must leave. She came to the entrance and closed the door after me noisily.

- Until I returned to the temple, I remained in the midst of ecstasy. In my mind's eye I could sec the Golden Temple and the woman's breast coming and going one after the other. I was overcome with an impotent sense of joy.

- Yet when the outline of the temple began to emerge through the dark pine forest, which was soughing in the wind, my spirits gradually cooled down, my feeling of impotence become predominant and my intoxication changed into hatred-a hatred for I knew not what.

- “So once again I have been estranged from life!”

- I do not see this as a metaphor of misplaced rage at the woman. There is morally bound impotence arising from his relationship with the pavilion. Mizoguchi is not driven by despotism or the lack of mental health care. Neither should we consider him to be fanatical in regards to theology. Mizoguchi is driven to act by a moral duty to his ideas. To not acknowledge the effective morality of his destructive intent requires us to ignore the allegoric dialogue between Kashiwagi & Mizoguchi at the core of this book and the Zen of action.

- Nansen Kills the Cat

- In a Koen compiled by Zen master Wumen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wumen_Huikai">Wumen) Huikai, the tale of Nansen and Joshu is told. Nansen kills a cat because his students couldn’t answer a question on the nature of Zen. Joshu, having been away, arrives, and is told the news of the cat. He places his sandal on his head and walks out. Nansen responds, noting that if Joshu was there, he would have saved the cat. I do not aspire to attain any notion of a Zen practitioner, but the notion of an individual irrationality in action attributed to Zen has intrigued me since hearing this story.

- In describing the Zen of Nansen Kills the Cat, Zen master Roshi Philip Kapleau observes

- In Zen, it is said that the highest truth is beyond knowing….True Nature is free from all-knowing and not-knowing. It surpasses all concepts of right and wrong, of this and that — “cat has the Buddha nature,” “the cat doesn’t have the Buddha nature”… “dog has the Buddha nature,” “dog doesn’t have the Buddha nature”… “is the enlightened person subject to the law of cause and effect, or is he not?” In every one of these ideas, we are obscuring the wholeness of our True Nature…. Nansen with one stroke cuts out all of these delusions of the monks. Like a surgeon with a scalpel, he cuts out the cancer of this contentious mind.

- There is no such thing as individual knowledge….knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence

- What Mizoguchi does as an act of Zen, is possibly motivated by his liaise with beauty. Let us consider some dialogue between Kishiwagi and Mizoguchi.

- Kashiwagi: human beings possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life bearable. For animals such things are not necessary, as animals don’t need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intolerableness of life a weapon. Though know at the same time, that intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest that’s all there is to it

- Mizoguchi : don’t you think there is some other way to bear life

- Kashiwagi : no I don’t, apart from that, there’s only madness for death

- Mizoguchi : knowledge can never transform the world…what transforms the world is action, there’s nothing else

- Kashiwagi : there you go…don’t you see that the beauty of this world which means so much to you craves sleep, and that in order to sleep it must be protected by knowledge. you remember that story of Nansen kills a kitten…the cat in that story was incomparably beautiful. the reason that the priest from the two halls of the temple quarreled about the cat, was that they both wanted to protect the kitten. to look after it, to let it sleep snugly within their own particular cloaks of knowledge. Now father Nansen was a man of action so he went and killed a kitten with his sickle, and had done with it, but when Joshu came along later he removed his shoes and put them on his own head. What Joshu wanted to say was this, that he was fully aware that beauty is a thing which must sleep and which, in sleeping must be protected by knowledge, but there is no such thing as individual knowledge. a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity the general condition of human existence. I think that is what he wanted to say. Now you want to play the world of Joshu don’t you? Well beauty, beauty that you love so much is an illusion of the remaining part, the excessive part which has been consigned to knowledge. It is an illusion of the other way to bear life, which you mentioned. One could say that, in fact, there is no such thing as beauty. what makes the illusion so strong….is precisely knowledge…….beauty is never a consolation. It may be a woman, it may be one’s wife, but its never a consolation. Yet from marriage between this beautiful thing, which is never a consolation on the one hand, and knowledge on the other, something is born. It is as evanescent as a bubble and utterly hopeless, yet something is born that something is what people call art.

- Mizoguchi : Beautiful things…those are now my most deadly enemies

- Mizoguchi Destroys the Temple

- Mizoguchi is exposed to murder, famine, the death of his father, an absentee mother, and an early childhood mired in ridicule and a self perceived shame. As his mental state deteriorates, it is not any of these realities that spark the idea to burn down the temple. It is hearing of how the citizens in a tavern view the temple monks. Tax burdens who do little more than chase sex workers. At this moment, Mizoguchi has his mind set on destroying asceticism. Mizoguchi loses any illusion of beauty in the practice of the monks and must destroy that beautiful temple.

- Works Cited:

- Mishina, Y., 1977. The Temple of the golden pavilion. New York: Knopf.

March 1, 2023

Where to go from here

- Things are complicated

- My interest lately is in how knowledge is structured and acted upon. I want to explore how and why technology becomes a lens and a vehicle for cognition, reasoning, and understanding.

- For instance, due to the advent of computers we recently became able to view cognition algorithmically.](https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657135">algorithmically.)

- A more interesting example may be considering it

- *necessary* to create "social hierarchies" in multi](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04246-7">multi) agent AI systems so that they don’t spend their time plotting on us.

- In what way are they a social order? Why would we create existential threats to ourselves? Are we liberally applying our conceptual framing of social phenomena to algorithms?

- Stranger still, we

- *could* model this behavior using RL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning">RL) agents, and it is useful for training agents to complete task. Maybe deployed AGI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence">AGI) should use some optimal agreement with its implementers to guide its action to the most appropriate course given some contract.

- Fuck all that though. My original issue is not with any of this. Its that we can derive behavior from our ideas in anyway that bothers me.

- I wish to be a fish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOfIRNJE5qo&ab_channel=UnProCreations">fish)

- Others Have Thoughts on This

- finna pull out this armchair real quick, lemme get comfortable

- Week 9 Lecture: Kant Transcendental Aesthetic Part 1

- Week9 Lecture: Kant Transcendental Aesthetic Part 2

- These two videos are exciting because Kant makes reasonable pushback against knowledge as purely relative to brain composition. It cannot be that a giant set of pulleys and levers used the right way creates conscious perception, that is, image laden abstract thought that contain beliefs. But there is a considerable separation between causality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq88eHg_iJ0&ab_channel=SEMF">causality) and perception. We do not know if math is made up or “transcendental“. And more strangely, we can’t really be aware of ourselves.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cq45AuedYnzekp3LX/you-may-already-be-a-sinner">ourselves.)

- The subjects seem to have believed on some level that keeping their hand in the water longer could give them a different kind of heart. Dr. Tversky declared that people have a cognitive blind spot to "hidden variable" causation, and this explains the Calvinists who made such an effort to live virtuously

- We cannot identify self in any meaningful way without the umvelt.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt">umvelt.)

- Thats good news for me. Our perception is contingent! It’s not random! Objectivity, while not observed is arguably achievable with a decent model.

- Its unlikely that interplanetary qualia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia">qualia) are consistent, but I would guess intelligence is consistent in modeling the world for some objective. We could get Arrival aliens or we could get X-Files, but I highly doubt what we consider intelligence does not in fact exist on a spectrum directly related to its physiology.

- So, where to go from here?

- Over the years I have been eased into bits and pieces of Hegel through fan girling over Zizek or watching youtube. To define a freedom as an abstract thing with spirit and a history we move toward never really became sensible until a short youtube clip. Hegel: Philosophy of world history and spirit

- This idea of spirit is the virtual realm of Serial](https://www.looper.com/485715/the-ending-of-serial-experiments-lain-explained/">Serial) Experiments Lain. The constant unfolding of history is our reality. An all powerful god whom we compel to exist through its eventual demise within us.

- More grounded is Sciences du Design editor, Stéphane Vial’s take on technology and perception. In

- Being and Screen, Vial use ontophony to explain a theory of how our

- *perception is virtual*.

- It is based on ontophany theory, according to which the process of appearance of being is constantly technologically conditioned. Thus, technologies are not only tools; they are structures of perception….This theory proposes that we think about design not as producing beings but, rather, events; not things that are but things that happen;

- okay, clearly reader/readwise needs built in citations for text paste

- Our countries then are virtual af, guided by this virtual spirit.

- Peter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker">Peter) Drucker, management guru, also believes in a mythic quality to states. From The Drucker Lectures:

- the very fact that we have a myth of the state—

- that is, that we can rationalize our experience—also shows that man is not all political animal, and that his existence is not described or circumscribed by his belonging to the group. Ants and bees are as much social animals as man. An ant or a bee can even overthrow the ruler of the swarm and establish his own rulership. But only man can change the basic order of the group itself, only man has the myth of the state

- By highlighting knowledge management systems as endemic to large scale civilization, it made more reasonable this notion “spirit of freedom” searching to express itself historically.

- The irrigation city first had knowledge, organized it, and in-stitutionalized it. Both because it required considerable knowledge to construct and maintain the complex engineering works that regulated the vital water supply and because it had to manage complex economic transactions stretching over many years and over hundreds of miles, the irrigation city needed records, and this, of course, meant writing. It needed astronomical data, as it depended on a calendar. It needed means of navigating across sea or desert. It, therefore, had to organize both the supply of the needed information and its processing into learnable and teachable knowledge. As a result, the irrigation city developed the first schools and the first teachers.

- Interesting as well is what this means for spirit’s drive toward freedom versus managing a society for some purpose. Are both part of the spirts drive?

- Getting Back to That

- Three questions I asked before](https://www.qwelian.com/pub/4y026dwu#nndaisvdlsc">before) are:

- How are contemporary technologies wholly affecting the way we cognize the world?

- What drives the mapping of lived experience onto technology?

- What flips the medium of technology to drive a hyperreal imitation of references to itself, such that the reference loses context to what technology itself abstracts?

- I am skeptical of these questions being so dense, but I now have better understanding of some fundamentals that bridge our willingness to make myth real and our willingness to create despots.](https://www.qwelian.com/pub/h2hpw4c2#nsq3rtnzoqx">despots.)

- To answer my first question from the article, I believe it best to think of the way we perceive as virtual. Not detached from material circumstances, yet all in all separate. Therefore, technology manifest as the material and symbolic structuring of experience.

- To answer my second I would say technology is the artifact created by mapping lived experience over a medium, ie: lived experience -> media -> technology.

- To answer my third is more difficult. Potentially the spectacle brought about in a capitalist society trading use-value for a Walmart in every city. Maybe we live in a hyperreal world. Im not sure, but I feel Debord, Borges, symbology, Neil Postman could be of assistance here.

- As such, I would like this article to be an intention for my interest this year.

- I will read Ken Binmore’s work on game theory and society. I am excited to see how and why he uses Hume as opposed to Kant for his philosophical interest. I suppose it has something to do with this quote by Binmore from Natural Justice:

- As Hume explains: “I learn to do service to another, without bearing him any real kindness, because I foresee, that he will return my service in expectation of another of the same kind, and in order to maintain the same correspondence of good offices with me and others.

- I will read Kant’s Critique of Reason and Hegel’s Science of Logic as well. But I’ll give myself a year.

- I also want to finish Being and Screen and the Drucker Lectures.

- I will revisit Postman, Debord, Foucalt and Postman.

- I will read far more than i write about.

- I recently watched Mullholland Drive and I think this clip is a good idea of how societies work. Mulholland Drive 2001 - Opera singer scene HD

- LLTNF

April 11, 2022

a gift

*all images are taken from Attack on Titan chapter 131, written and illustrated by Hajime Iseyama. none of the media is owned by me*

Start

Attack on Titan is one of the best manga to come out in recent memory but it is bogged down by a convoluted plot, contradictory exposition of its themes, questionable character development, and a random twist that does nothing to diminish or enhance the plot. It just kinda happens. AoT at its core, however effectively examines dread, uncertainty, war, and freedom through its primary character Eren Jaeger. I hope that readers question how capable we are of creating a positive world for future generations.

Written [here](https://anilist.co/review/11025) is a review by Anilist user LN03. The ad hominem thrown at Hajime Isayama is unpleasing, but I found myself agreeing with their criticism of Historia’s role in the plot, Eren’s contradictory behavior, Mikasa’s lack of growth, what Ymir’s love for King Fritz meant, why war criminals are just left to chill, how Zeke died like a bitch, why Reiner kept getting beat like a bitch, and why Eren felt his path appropriate. What I find most interesting is the positive symbology some pick up from the series. For many, this story is flawed because there is no way that the protagonist can succeed in creating this happy ending Isayama has been building.

Story

For me, AoT is a story of dread, perhaps freedom, but that is discussed [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6GmVCD7cxk&ab_channel=invaderzz) to far greater effect. Attack on Titan’s end hinges on its uncertainty. Can people who have committed genocide lead Earth’s last people? I say they get tossed in jail and executed. But that would be disrespectful to the world of possibility Eren provided in ridding the world of Titan powers, allegedly. But this is why I do not like the ending. Personally, seeing a kid too stupid to be safe get powers and destroy the world for vengeance is heartbreaking. However, the rumbling would always happen at some point. Because an island of GIGANTIC TRANSFORMING HUMANS THAT MAY GO MINDLESS AND START EATING HUMANS ARE DANGEROUS ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY HAVE A BUILT-IN MECHANISM THAT SAYS THE BIGGEST VERSIONS OF THOSE MONSTERS WILL LITERALLY STOMP THE REST OF THE WORLD TO DEATH IF THEY ARE INVADED.

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6ImQ3cnppOXlzLzAxNjQ5Njg0MzYwNzcwLnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODAwLCJmaXQiOiJpbnNpZGUiLCJ3aXRob3V0RW5sYXJnZW1lbnQiOnRydWV9fX0=)

If we know Eren then we know he would destroy the world to appease his sense of justice. Eren was always obsessed with joining the military, committed murder as a child, and would chide Hannes for relaxing on the job. This description of Eren after killing Mikasa’s captors captures a personality flaw Eren has until his death:

> “While Eren was genuinely sorry for upsetting his father, he expressed no remorse whatsoever for killing the robbers.. “ - *Attack on Titan manga: Chapter 6 (p. 30 & 31)*

As a child, Eren thought himself bold enough to save Mikasa and did not hesitate to ruse the captors so he could strike but he was not built like an Ackerman so he got fucked up. This marks the beginning of the pattern of Mikasa saving Eren because he is a fucking idiot and will die trying to save her or anyone he cares for. From the beginning, I never understood why this nationalist asshole who is too weak to fight for himself was centered as the main protagonist. For me, there was no way this story could have a peaceful ending. Eren is so cowardly that he’d rather die than believe in himself (plea to Historia Underground), and would rather destroy the world than talk to others. Shit, if Eren didn’t get humbled during the training corps arc any attempt at character growth would be questionable. Before everything, Eren was filled with rage at the hapless despair Paradis island faced. Eren is the violent impetuous child he always was. Willing to risk his life without a concept of the value of life. Eran’s sense of dread leading to the underground diamond cavern superficially stems from jealousy and a sense of powerlessness. I could never love nor unconditionally champion Eren. What I regret is not empathizing with Eren’s despair. His sense of being powerless in the face of atrocity.

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6IjlsbWMwY25qLzExNjQ5Njg4MDgzODg0LnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODAwLCJmaXQiOiJpbnNpZGUiLCJ3aXRob3V0RW5sYXJnZW1lbnQiOnRydWV9fX0=)

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6IjJreWk3b2xyLzQxNjQ5Njg0MzgyMzE5LnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODAwLCJmaXQiOiJpbnNpZGUiLCJ3aXRob3V0RW5sYXJnZW1lbnQiOnRydWV9fX0=)

While going through outrage at AoT’s ending, I begin to understand something about why the story resonates. It is only when one believes a better outcome can be achieved that one might find the strength to feel pity for themselves and others. I thought there were many ways AoT could have ended better. But Eren never saw a world where peace was meant for him. Paradis was never liberated by civil war. There was no non-violent protest that challenged genocide or prejudice in Marley. Eren thought Paradis to be the only refuge in the world. The outrage of knowing the world outside stood by and actively participated in the creation of his grief entrenched the despair he had felt. Genocide by Paradis Titans or genocide by Marley, there are no happy endings. This was the tragic form of Iseyama’s narrative.

Life is complicated. We make decisions every day that could impact the lives of every living creature on this planet. We are in the middle of a climate crisis that we have not yet collectively accepted, but is happening slowly. We can destroy our planet at any time with nuclear weapons. We can create our rumbling. We will eventually. How then, can we know what good needs to be done? How do we preserve the future? Who are we? What can be preserved? What is the right way to live in the face of extinction? Why can’t a unifying, unselfish love be present in these times? What do we want for the future?

The gift Isayama provides for us is the deep-seated hope in all characters for a safer world. A hope that persists through deep flaws and despair.