09 may 2026
I’m reading Tsur’s ‘Kubla Khan’: Poetic Structure, Hypnotic Quality and Cognitive Style. I received my copy from the library, and found in it some splendid psychoanalysis.
The challenge of reading Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, is that it is a short piece with much ambiguity that becomes nearly impossible to parse. Victorian readers insisted that its value was melodic; therefore, there is much meta-literature on the quality of reading the work. This allows the author Tsur to focus on the aesthetic quality of the piece’s “absorption”: as Tsur tries to clarify as an investigation into the “personality variable ‘absorption’: devised to predict hypnotic susceptibility…”
The complex-aesthetic piece of Kubla Khan can be surmised with Tsur’s interpretation: “The present book propounds one possible interpretation: ‘Kubla Khan’ as a romantic nature poem that assumes a hypnotic-ecstatic quality.” He explains his terse interpretation as he shares analytical philosophical approach that “criticism cannot offer a ‘true’ interpretation, only what is ‘merely possible.’ And that he adopts Kenneth Burke’s notion that “the use of language as a symoblic means of inducing co-operation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.” And some critics have said about Kubla Khan as “meaningless farrago of sonorous phases beneath the notice of serious criticism . . . while other readers find a charm.”
Relying on Snyder’s notion of the “hypnotic” or “trance-inductive” poetry, the “charm” of the poem can be better understand as poetry that draws attention away from the contents to the sound of the poetry as “verablized-music.” Thus Tsur finds “low-absorption readers” tend to effect poetic closure whenever possible, while high-absorption readers tend to leave shapes open. Tsur speculates that such different inclinations to organize poetic texts into stronger or weaker shapes may crucially affect the perception of the rich pre-categorical auditory information that conveys the speech sounds: the weaker the shapes, the more active and the more diffuse is the pre-categorial auditory information. Thus low-absorption readers are bored by such poems while high-absorption aren’t.
Tsur also believes that the Zeitgeist impacts interest and interpretation.
He also thinks “cognitive style”: “style” in this phrase suggest that decisions made by a reader or a critic are not mere whims of taste but display some significant consistency, governed by certain principals if not “rules.” He cites how psychological studies suggest that “one’s personality and emotional needs determine, to a large extent, what one perceives.” This causes Tsur to pause on how some people arrive at certain interpretations, finding that some students are hostile towards any ambiguity, leading him to discover the concept of a phenomenon called “intolerance of ambiguity.” His solution is to try to find “negative capability” as defined by Keats in his poetic journal – “the ability to be in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason . . . and to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
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30 november 2025
Concerns for the sciences: while updating my Ubuntu workstation, I glanced at my desktop of the local college campus, where the applied computer sciences building was. I took classes there and learned much of my formal education in math and programming in this building. It hurts me to think how AI has radically changed how information will be taught and developed. I still think an education is worthwhile, but somehow, it has been tarnished in so many ways already explored in other blogs and news articles. Now when I see the image, I think of how things evolve -- like my vision as I read this, no longer clear but warped and spotted, making me enjoy the vision I still retain. I no longer fear losing my sight, but I don't have any hope of regaining or retaining much of it for long.
When writing an earlier novel, I made some scenes about a character losing his eyesight while fixing networking cables in rural Wisconsin. That is a weighted metaphor, but now I wonder if it interests me the same.
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28 november 2025
I'm discerning public ministry.
This isn't a new thing; however, events in my life have changed to cause me to reconsider public ministry. I will enumerate them:
Money isn't a huge obstacle.
My field and industry isn't interested in me.
I haven't lost an interest in theology, philosophy, and moral living.
I think what is difficult are the obvious things: do I have a calling, am I someone who can do the vocation humbly with dedication, and will taking the vocation hurt me and others? These questions are all very difficult to answer. I often think about my family when considering things, so I am thinking how would my choice to be a public servant would also impact them and also put me in the cross hairs of people who may have not noticed me before. This is my worst fear, people seeing me as a thing to attack. There is great privilege in privacy and being no one. But each time I consider this, I think... is it a sin to live a life in privacy and privilege without helping my neighbor?
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20 august 2025
It has taken me until my 30's to realize I don't have to fix everything, especially myself.
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28 july 2025
I admit I'm a bit lost.
In the past week I created a social media presence, the first non-Git related presence
since I left my job. And it has been humbling, I suppose. I have zero social
capital. And it has alienated me from people in the field I'm familiar with -- and
have once talked to, but they of course cannot remember me or my contributions. It's impossible.
So now I'm in this liminal space of not being anyone. It's frustrating as being in traffic.
After being rejected and frustrated by gatekeepers who obviously sense me a threat
because why else do I know so much and am just around when they don't remember me? I've admittedly been absent for so long, and I know I haven't done anything
to cause shame. So after being sad about it, I've decided to read more fiction and write.
The experience is like therapy, and I wonder if my future career is one that is more humble, and I like the idea. But I worry -- did I do everything for nothing?
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12 july 2025
Finished Unix Programming Environment and realized that I didn't know the following sequence runs both programs in parallel:
$ cat me.txt & cat you.txt
To run them one after the other, the syntax is so:
$ cat me.txt; cat you.txt
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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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