25 june 2025
Yesterday while reading the Unix Programming Environment, I was considering the psychology of computing. In critical theory, psychoanalysis is considered, and one analysis is Lacanian. Lacan introduces “extimacy,” which Ciano Aydin describes in their essay [1] as the self not as something hidden within our material self but “discovered and developed through a pre-existing symbolic order” (such as our culture, law, traditions, etc.).
This led me to the idea of structures in system programming, specifically how C receives a bitstream. The stream itself has no order or obvious meaning until the structure has contextualized it to the receiving application. Furthermore, the bitstream of a file specifically is not arbitrarily or meaningless because of the inode structure itself. Files exist as themselves with the inode structure because if they did not, then the file would not be. It is the structured nature of the data that creates the file, much like Lacanian psychology projects on what makes me a person.
This perhaps seems obvious, but then it leads to question to what is a real datagram? Is it a partial structure? And if partial, how partial? How many layers must be explored until you are at the real computer? These questions might not seem so interesting to us because we know that data comes from signals of electrical signs, on or off, etc. And this logic emerges from the system of signals, system calls even have what are called signals that have significant impact on application processes in the kernel.
[1] “The Technological Uncanny as a Permanent Dimension of Selfhood” from the The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Technology
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20 june 2025
Today I wrote some CSS for the page, made a new index file, and spent sometime listening to podcasts.
I'm happy with the small improvements to the project, and I think I'd like to expand on the "literary & critical cybersecurity" line -- as it hints to perhaps unintentionally insidious. As a professional in cybersecurity, I've been curious about the aesthetics as a philosophical question. One thing that I find in security and critical security studies is the question of -- what is missing. We understand the point of security fine in that there is CIA and AAA, but I often wonder what is the role, purpose, and assumptions of the definition along with its paradoxes. These are things I wish to explore, and I'm looking for publication in.
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17 june 2025
It's difficult to find time for anything lately. I had thought deleting socials would open my schedule, but in the end, it appears that I didn't spend much time on my phone.
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15 june 2025
There is something aesthetically interesting about the hacker that I don't know if current art has captured -- in the sense of the large problem. I believe in CS you see the large problem and must adapt a mindset to overcome it. The most visually striking model of the big problem is the monitor full of text. I believe however typically, the model is fast. But more terrifying and sublime is the static frame, of no progress. The continuation of the narrative or how push past the static image to something functionally is to find the error within the big.
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20 may 2025
Reading Facebook.com comment sections feels like a natural metastasis of media that had been seen with paperback and television. Comments are less about individual insight (and therefore without latent value or purpose) and more-so about a re-posting of a ChatGPT explanation. Why bother reading if you can do this on your own?
Nearish the end of the paperback rise, sometime in the late 90s, books were cheap and accessible but gradually less novel and more about what can be considered written for television. I consider the Harry Potter series as a signal for the end in children lit and the rise of cable television, which I felt withered quicker than expected. I recall being told that a career in television would be boring but safe. Today? I think that would be inadvisable.
Video games. Mobile apps. Etc. All go the same way of bitrot.
A sign of the Internet's losing novelty is LinkedIn. On the r/linkedinlunatics forum, many posts show not of engaged conversations but simulated engagement posts with the pretension of interaction. This pretension can be described as a “vibe” that is either good or bad based on context. The vibe can be so “unhinged” and wrong that it leads to both a ridiculous publication and equally an outraged readership… which in some cases is the purpose and intent of the neo-decadent movement.
I must ask myself in this late period of Internet (decline), will there be yet another great work published on its medium? Should we expect anything more than Tiktok? And what is the future medium?
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15 may 2025
Studying Unix for the past month has gotten me in touch with a form of research aesthetic that studying Plato and poetics has not touched, the technical and theory of CS of operatings systems. I've picked up Knuth as well, and am writing C daily since November. This form of deep study has led me to unexpected creative heights. And while I prepare writing a pop feature piece for a UK publication, I balance between the affect of the technical pop science style of writing and literary fiction. This weirdness feels incredibly normal somehow, and it is where I like being. I cannot define however what category of vocation this lifestyle is... for some reason transcendental is on the lips, but why.
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13 may 2025
AI is like pushing data to a dynamic context layer that parses information and outputs without the reliance of static pages, like a crawler or original search tools. This way of searching the Internet then, is, more expensive -- but provides an immediate result, regardless of how good it is.
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29 april 2025
Voltaire argued, in spite of all the injustices in the world, life can be meaningful if we were to tend to our own gardens with short time we have here. Having read this, more or less, had a profound affect on me in college, as it diverted a my once political-manic ego into a career more interested in technical services and questions. Seeing how people are today. I can say I feel disappointed but cannot admit that I'm surprised. In Candide, Voltaire gives us the grittiest and most terrible histories of humankind in order to convert a devoted optimist towards more empirical reasoning -- of interpreting world events with the lens of someone who assumes it is the "best of all possible worlds." This quantum thinking of sorts, of "many worlds (and no death -- the 'death drive')" is by experience wrong (your experience on this world ends abruptly into a void) or at least dubious (eternal life is promised but what it looks likes may be different materially than a conscious one on earth). Thus it's better to live your life as if you know you will die permanently and prepare for it each day, working towards a goal, with daily purposeful labor, whatever that be -- a vocation, career, or love.
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21 april 2025
Yesterday I received Unix Internals: The New Frontiers by Uresh Vahalia. The book was written in 1996 -- so Linux is not mentioned.
Interesting trivia learned from this book is that C evolved from the earlier language called BCPL [Rich 82], later known as B, an interpretative language that C replaced as it was better.
[Rich 82] Richards, M. and Whitby-Strevens, C., BCPL: The Language and Its Compiler, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1982.
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