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Good video on setting boundaries

[2025-03-28 Fri 16:24]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Modus Vivendi

Here’s a good video from TikTok about setting boundaries in kinds of friendships: https://www.tiktok.com/@the3rdside/video/7479090078267231534. I find myself trying to explain this kind of boundaries people from time to time.

Selected Works of Selected Works of Chekhov

[2025-03-28 Fri 14:17]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Literature

Following are quick notes I toke while reading the first volume of Chekhov’s selected works. I might add notes for the rest of the book later.

After the Theater
“Onyegin was interesting because he was not in love at all, and Tatyana was fascinating because she was so much in love; but if they had been equally in love with each other and had been happy, they would perhaps have seemed dull”.
The Runaway
Reminded me of an old memory with my father at the dentist. I loved the vibes.
Volodya
Very strange story. I think I should read some analysis for it, but I have not got any time for that.
(no term)
The Boys
(no term)
Enemies
(no term)
Malingerers
(no term)
العازف الأجير
(no term)
Vanka
(no term)
A Naughty Boy
(no term)
The Trousseau
Agafya
Aesthetic story, I want to live in a world like the one Chekhov describes there.
A Misfortune
One of the saddest stories I’ve ever read. Really moved me.

Giuseppe Abbati Paintings

[2025-03-27 Thu 23:36]

Giuseppe Abbati paintings are very touching, I feel like I want to live inside them; specifically his Country Road with Cypresses, Marina in Castiglioncello and The Window.

In the Beginning… Was the Command Line

[2025-03-24 Mon 01:12]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Programming and Emacs for Everything

I use Emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a professional writer–i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed–emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.

— Neal Stephenson

The reason that makes Apple’s software better

[2025-03-17 Mon 00:07]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Programming

I believe that the software products that Apple builds are some of the most well-engineered, well-designed, and well-written software ever. And I think there are some reasons for that, most of them are not good ones:

  1. Apple products are massively overpriced, which creates a significant surplus that allows them to invest heavily in software development. Capitalism rewards monopolistic pricing, and Apple has mastered the art of leveraging brand power and exclusivity to justify insane markups. Unlike something like Linux, which I’ve used for a long time, open-source projects struggle to get consistent funding or sponsorship, making it much harder to compete at the same level.
  2. Apple does not care about backward compatibility, worldwide compatibility, or anything else outside its walled garden. Their software is built to work exclusively on Apple hardware, and they have zero interest in making it usable for non-Apple users. They also deprecate anything older than seven years, forcing people into costly upgrades. As someone who has worked extensively with system architecture and design, I can confirm that a significant amount of engineering effort typically goes into maintaining backward compatibility and ensuring interoperability with the rest of the tech ecosystem. By outright ignoring these two concerns, Apple engineers get to focus almost entirely on UX, making their software feel smoother and more polished than competitors.
  3. Since (1), Apple can afford to invest in developing much better SDKs, which ensures that software built on their platforms is high quality. This is why you often find software that exists on both Apple’s OSs and other operating systems but still runs better on Apple’s—because their development tools and ecosystem are simply better funded. This also attracts top-tier developers who prefer the stability and optimization of Apple’s environment, further reinforcing their advantage.
  4. Apple controls both the hardware and the software, which means they don’t have to deal with the same fragmentation issues that plague other ecosystems. Unlike Windows or Android, where developers have to account for a ridiculous range of hardware variations, Apple’s tight integration allows them to optimize performance and deliver a more cohesive experience. However, this comes at the cost of user freedom—if Apple decides they don’t want you running certain apps or repairing your own device, you’re out of luck.
  5. The cult-like marketing and closed ecosystem trap users into staying within Apple’s platform. iMessage lock-in, proprietary file formats, restrictive App Store policies—everything is designed to make switching inconvenient. This means Apple doesn’t just create good software; they create software that feels indispensable, even when there are equal or better alternatives elsewhere.

Apple’s software is good. Sometimes too good. But the reasons behind it are far less about pure engineering brilliance and far more about strategic corporate control, aggressive pricing, and an ecosystem that thrives on exclusivity.

سبحان خالق نفسي

[2025-03-12 Wed 02:30]

This section was labeled under, or is related to al-Mutanabbi and Modus Vivendi

قال أبو الطيب:

سُبحان خالق نفسي كيف لذتها
فيما النفوسُ تراه غاية الألمِ

قال الواحدي: يقول: سبحان من جعل نفسي صبورةً، متجلدةً أمام شدائد الدهر، تجد لذّتها فيما تتألم منه سائر النفوس، وتسكن إلى ما يكرهه غيرها. كتب المتنبي هذه الأبيات قبيل وفاته، وأحسب أنه في تلك الفترة كان يغوص في تأملات عميقة حول مسار حياته. يقول في البيت الذي يليه:

أتى الزمان بنوه في شبيبته
فسرّهم وأتيناه على الهرمِ

إن بلوى المتنبي في حياته أمر لا يدركه كثيرون، ولعل من وعى مسيرته، وتلمس آماله ومطامحه، وأحسّ بغربته بين قومه، فقط من يدرك مداها. وهو القائل:

أَذاقَني زَمَني بَلوى شَرِقتُ بِها
لَو ذاقَها لَبَكى ما عاشَ وَاِنتَحَبا

ولعل هذا البيت من أعمق ما قاله في رثاء نفسه، وكأنّي به يقف على أطلال تاريخه وهو ينشده، مستعيدًا مشاهد الاضطرار إلى مدح من يمقتهم، وفقدان زوجته وجدته، وحرمانه من طفولة سليمة، وخيانة الملوك والعبيد له على السواء، ومحاولات اغتياله، لكن أشدّ ما أنهكه: بعد مقدرته عن إدراك غايته. ومن المصادفة الطريفة أنه قال:

لَحا اللَهُ ذي الدُنيا مُناخاً لِراكِبٍ
فَكُلُّ بَعيدِ الهَمِّ فيها مُعَذَّبُ

قبل أن يبدأ مدح كافورٍٍ ببيت واحد. وفي ذلك البيت يقول ضمنيًا أنه مُجبر على ذلك المديح. نعود إلى البيت الأول؛ ففيه يتعجب المتنبي من غربته عن أبناء عصره – وقد هجاهم في البيت الذي يسبقه – إذ يجد في الألم والعذاب، اللذين يواجههما في سبيل غايته، لذّةً أسمى وأرفع من المتع التي ينعم بها أهل زمانه. وكنت قد كتبتُ فيما مضى: “For those who live loftily and dangerously, who need few comforts, the very things that others dread—solitude, pain, hardship, weirdness—actually become their pleasures.”

وقد حدث أن اشتدت الحمى على المتنبي، فقال:

ذَراني وَالفَلاةُ بِلا دَليلٍ
وَوَجهي وَالهَجيرَ بِلا لِثامِ

فَإِنّي أَستَريحُ بِذي وَهَذا
وَأَتعَبُ بِالإِناخَةِ وَالمُقامِ

أي: أن الراحة عنده ليست في السكون والاستقرار، بل في السعي الدؤوب نحو المجد. وقد قال أبو العباس: وملحمة الإنسان هي ملحمة الانتقال. ولا يكون الانتقال بمجرّد الارتحال؛ وإنّما هو عملية عنيفة. ولا يكون ارتحال بلا سيْف: ذهني أو واقِعي. والسيفُ أبو الارتحال، ولذات السبب، أبو التاريخ.

المؤمن يأكل في معي واحد

[2025-03-11 Tue 05:15]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Islam, al-Mutanabbi and Modus Vivendi

يُروى أن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم زاره رجل من الأعراب في المدينة وتعشى عنده، فملئ له النبي وعاء اللبن أولًا فشربه، فثانيًا فشربه، وثالثًا فشربه حتى بلغ سبعة أوعية من اللبن، فلما أسلم في اليوم التالي جاء عند النبي وملئ له وعاء اللبن فشربه، وقدم له النبي الوعاء الثاني، فقال شبعت. فقال النبي: إن المؤمن يأكل في مِعيٍ واحد، والكافر يأكل في سبعة أمعاء. وهذا لهم المؤمن في الدنيا، وقال تعالى: والذين كَفروا يأكلون ويتمتعون كما تأكل الأنعام، فالتشبيه هنا في محل عقلية الأنعام وليس نهمها. يقول أبو الطيب:

تَهوي بِمُنجَرِدٍ لَيسَت مَذاهِبُهُ
لِلُبسِ ثَوبٍ وَمَأكولٍ وَمَشروبِ

والمنجرد هو الرجل الماضي في الأمور، الجادّ فيها لا يردّه شيء، وكذا المؤمن وهَمه في الدنيا، وكيف بهمه في أهم حقبة في الإسلام وتعمير دولته. وقال أيضًا في ذلك:

شَرابُه النَّشح لا لِلرِيّ يَطلبه
وطَعمهُ لقوام الجِسم لا السمنِ

والنشح هو القليل، أي أن شرابه قليل جدًا. والشرب لا يُعاب عليه، ولكن أنظر لعلو الهمة وطلب المجد، فهو لا يجد وقتًا ولا يأخذ من هذا إلا ما يعينه على ما يريد من الدنيا، وليس العكس: أن يكدح في الدنيا لطلب ما يستهلكه من متاعها “لا للري يَطلبه” أي ليس بطالب شرابه لأن يرتوي ويشبع ويرضي بدنه: وطَعمه لقوام الجسم، كي يقضي حواجيه، لا للإكثار والسِمن. وقال ديوجانس الحكيم: آكل لأعيش، وغيري يعيش ليأكل.

وحب الجبان النفس أورده الحربا

[2025-03-01 Sat 05:15]

This section was labeled under, or is related to al-Mutanabbi and Modus Vivendi

قال أبو الطيب:

أرى كلنا يبغي الحياة لنفسه
حريصًا عليها مُستهامًا بها صبَّا

فحُب الجبان النفس أورده التقى
وحب الشجاع النفس أورده الحربا

ويختلف الرزقان، والفِعل واحدٌ
إلى أن يرى إحسان هذا لذا ذَنبا

وهذا خير ما قاله، رحمه الله، في التفريق بين الكريم والجبان. فحب الحياة والصراع من أجل البقاء فطرة عند كل الكائنات، يقول “مُستهامًا” والمُستهام هي مبالغة عربية جميلة في وصف العاشق، أي يشتد عليه العشق والصبابة حتى يهيم على وجهه لا يدري أين هو. وهذا هو حالنا. فثم: حب الجبان النفس، أورده التقى، أي أن يتقي ويحتمي من الدخول في المعركة، ويتجنبها، ويستكن للأمن ويطمئن له (وأليس هو القائل: وما الخوف إلا ما تخوفه الفتى ولا الأمن إلا ما رآه الفتى أمنا؟) وقال تعالى واصفًا الغافلين: ورضوا بالحياة الدنيا واطمأنوا بها. وقال أيضًا: ومن الذين أشركوا يود أحدهم لو يعمر ألف سنة. فالجبان يرى في ذلك مجازاته لحبه لنفسه، أما الكريم فحبه لنفسه ومنزلة نفسه ومكان نفسه، وعلو مجازاته لها أورده القتال والحرب وإن راحت به مهجته. فاختلف الرزقان، والفعل واحدٌ. وقد خَلص أبو الطيب نفسه في سنٍ مبكرة من اتقاء الموت والحرب، فقال في صباه:

رِدي حِياضَ الرَدى يا نَفسُ وَاِتَّرِكي
حِياضَ خَوفِ الرَدى لِلشاءِ وَالنِعَمِ

فهُنا هو آمر نفسه: ردي هي الأمر لصيغة المؤنث من فعل “ورد” (وهو نفس الفعل الذي ذكره في البيت أعلاه: أورده الحربا) والحياض هو جمع الحوض، ومنه كانت تشرب الناس وكذا الإبل والشاء. ثم أنظر إلى قولته “واتركي” وهي تعني اتركي، وتمعن هنا في استخدام صيغة الافتعال للمبالغة، فيا حبذا ترك كهذا الترك لا رجعة فيه. وفعل الورود هنا له دلاله، فالورود هو القُدوم على الشيء، وليس فقط تقبله، أي أنه لا يأمر نفسه بألا تهب الموت وحسب، بل أن ترده، ويعلل ذلك بعد بيتين بأن المجد والعلا لا يأتيان إلا بذي السُبل، فيقول:

أَيَملِكُ المُلكَ وَالأَسيافُ ظامِئَةٌ
وَالطَيرُ جائِعَةٌ لَحمٌ عَلى وَضَمِ

لا والله يا أبا الطيب لا يُملك الملك إلا بذلك.

Let no man seek to make it easy

[2025-02-27 Thu 00:21]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Philosophy and Modus Vivendi

Carl Jung, “The Love Problem of a Student,” in Civilization in Transition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, vol. 10 of the Collected Works), §§231-2, 111-112:

. . . Love requires depth and loyalty of feeling; without them it is not love but mere caprice. True love will always commit itself and engage in lasting ties; it needs freedom only to effect its choice, not for its accomplishment. Every true and deep love is a sacrifice. The lover sacrifices all other possibilities, or rather, the illusion that such possibilities exist. If this sacrifice is not made, his illusions prevent the growth of any deep and responsible feeling, so that the very possibility of experiencing real love is denied him.

Love has more than one thing in common with religious faith. It demands unconditional trust and expects absolute surrender. Just as nobody but the believer who surrenders himself wholly to God can partake of divine grace, so love reveals its highest mysteries and its wonder only to those who are capable of unqualified devotion and loyalty of feeling. And because this is so difficult, few mortals can boast of such an achievement. But, precisely because the truest and most devoted love is also the most beautiful, let no man seek to make it easy. He is a sorry knight who shrinks from the difficulty of loving his lady. Love is like God: both give themselves only to their bravest knights.

URL: https://thematamixta.blogspot.com/2024/12/let-no-man-seek-to-make-it-easy.html

Something Worth Living For

[2025-02-25 Tue 00:21]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Modus Vivendi

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1852 (emphasis mine):

Why the moaning of the storm gives me pleasure. Methinks it is be cause it puts to rout the trivialness of our fair-weather life and gives it at least a tragic interest. The sound has the effect of a pleasing challenge, to call forth our energy to resist the invaders of our life’s territory. It is musical and thrilling, as the sound of an enemy’s bugle. Our spirits revive like lichens in the storm. There is something worth living for when we are resisted, threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days our destiny appears grander. What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch,—of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife? How else could the light in the mind shine? How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks’ storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system. The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soaking rains reaching into April. Methinks I would share every creature’s suffering for the sake of its experience and joy. The song sparrow and the transient fox-colored sparrow,—have they brought me no message this year? Do they go to lead heroic lives in Rupert’s Land? They are so small, I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say, while it flits thus from tree to tree? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert’s Land before I have appreciated it? God did not make this world in jest; no, nor in indifference. These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life. I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in earnest. I see that the sparrow cheeps and flits and sings adequately to the great design of the universe; that man does not communicate with it, understand its language, because he is not at one with nature. I reproach myself because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds; I have thought them no better than I.

URL: https://thematamixta.blogspot.com/2025/01/something-worth-living.html

Nietzsche’s view of reflection.

This section was labeled under, or is related to So Many Unmarried Men

This comment was actually hilarious.

الشاعر

[2025-02-15 Sat 03:04]

This section was labeled under, or is related to al-Mutanabbi

كان المعري يذكر اسم من يقتبسه، فلو اقتبس من النابغة الذبياني شيئًا يقول: “قال الذبياني” أو “قال الفرزدق” وهلم جرا، ولكن إذا ما اقتبس من المتنبي كان يقول “قال الشاعر” وكأنه لا شاعرٌ سوى المتنبي. وللمتنبي كثير في المعنى، فما كان يرتضي لفظة “شاعر” غير لنفسه، فوصف من يعانده من الشعراء الآخرين قائلًا:

أَفي كُلِّ يَومٍ تَحتَ ضِبني شُوَيعِرٌ
ضَعيفٌ يُقاويني قَصيرٌ يُطاوِلُ

فيصغر باقي الشعراء على نفسه. وله أيضًا:

أَرى المُتَشاعِرينَ غَروا بِذَمّي
وَمَن ذا يَحمَدُ الداءَ العُضالا

وللمتنبي باع طويل في التصغير. فيقول:

أذم إلى هذا الزمان «أهيله»
 فأعلمهم فدم وأحزمهم وغد

وكتب عباس محمود العقاد في كتابه “مطالعات في الكتب والحياة” فصلًا عن التصغير عند المتنبي، ولأيمن العتوم الكثير من المقاطع على النت عن ولع المتنبي بالتصغير. المهم، أن المتنبي كان يُصغر باقي شعراء عصره، وكان المعري لا يرى شاعرًا سواه. وللمتنبي أيضًا كثير في هذا الوصف، فيقول:

خَليلَيَّ إِنّي لا أَرى غَيرَ شاعِرٍ
فَلِم مِنهُمُ الدَعوى وَمِنّي القَصائِدُ

أي: لا أرى شاعرٌ سواي. وفي نفس القصيدة في البيت التالي يقول ألا سيف سوى سيف الدولة:

فَلا تَعجَبا إِنَّ السُيوفَ كَثيرَةٌ
وَلَكِنَّ سَيفَ الدَولَةِ اليَومَ واحِدٌ

ويقول له أيضًا:

فَنَحنُ الأُلى لا نَأتَلي لَكَ نُصرَةً
وَأَنتَ الَّذي لَو أَنَّهُ وَحدَهُ أَغنى

طيب الله ثراه.

نبوغ المتنبي

[2025-02-14 Fri 20:30]

This section was labeled under, or is related to al-Mutanabbi

في الصورة التالية: محمود شاكر يتحدث عن نبوغ المتنبي: 01.

الغامض في حياة المتنبي

[2025-02-12 Wed 20:09]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Al-Mutanabbi

أختلف المؤرخون حول نسب وأصل المتنبي، وأورد أغلب المترجمون له ثلاثة أنساب مختلفة، والرواية الراجحة بين المؤرخين أنه كان ابن سقاء (والسقاء كان بائع المياه في ذلك العصر) وهذا كان عن راوية التنوخي وغيره. ومن الغامض أيضًا أنه قد سُجن بعض سنين في شبابه، وقيل إن سبب الدفن هو ادعاء المتنبي أنه نبي (ويذكر مع هذا غالبًا قوله: “أنا في أُمة تداركها الله - غريبٌ كصالحٍ في ثمودِ. أو روايته في طبرية أنه كان يعلم الناس بموعد هطول المطر)، وأضيف لذلك أن هذا سبب تسميته ”المتنبي" أي ادعاءه النبوة. وقد فند هذا القول الكثير من المحللين ومنهم ابن النحوي والذي قال إن المتنبي يعني العالي المرتفع عن الأرض. ومن الغامض كذلك عنه هو علاقته مع العلويين المنتسبين لعلي ابن أبي طالب، فمن الثابت تعلم المتنبي في مدارس العلويين (ومدارس العلويين لا يدخلها سواهم، وهذا غريب في حد ذاته، فكل الأنساب التي وردت للمتنبي لم تورد أنه علوي النسب) ولكن مع كِبر سنه، فإنه يتجنب العلويين ولا يمدح من قومهم سوى واحد تمرد عليهم، ويذكر أنهم تربصوا له وحاولوا اغتياله غير مره. وفي الصورة التالية يوضح محمود شاكر رؤيته لحياة المتنبي ويوضح اجتهاده لتقريب ما جرى من غموض: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07.

Jean Baudrillard theory on Pornography

[2024-12-18 Wed 05:06]

I wrote about the Industry and Consumption of Pornography a while ago. Today I learnt that Baudrillard has a related theoryFrederic Lenoir, Philosophy of desire (Dar Al Saqi, 2023), 45. that reminded me of the Social Learning theory in the sociobiological theories of rape:

Jean Baudrillard wrote the following maxim: “Sexuality does not hide in tolerance, repression, or morality, it is certainly hidden in what is more sexual than sex itself: pornography.” In Baudrillard’s view, the global success of pornography is not a result of sexual liberation but rather the triumph of capitalism, which turns everything into a commodity, including bodies that lose their ability to enjoy and experience desire.

Hans Blüher continued where Baudrillard’s works left off and tried to show that the transition from sexual desire to pornography marks the boundary of the “unforgivable violation” with absolute permission—driven immediately by the urge to fulfill expectations and fantasies. This, he claims, signals the end of otherness in sexual and romantic relationships. The body of the other is consumed and discarded as if it were a consumable and disposable object. The desire for the other becomes a desire for oneself alone.

We now strive for comfort, safety, and ease in the field of unity and isolation. Today’s love is free of all excess and all sin (…). Eros aims for the other in an emotional sense, yet does not allow itself to recover in the system of the self. In this identical, increasingly homogeneous society, contradictions no longer exist, and hence no erotic experience. This assumes a state of both internal and external dissonance.

The Slavery of Our Time

[2024-12-01 Sun 10:54]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Modus Vivendi

I found an interesting piece by Leo Tolstoy: https://www.marxists.org/archive/tolstoy/1900/slavery-of-our-times.html on wage labor:

Slavery exists in full vigor, but we do not perceive it, just as in Europe at the end of the Eighteenth Century the slavery of serfdom was not perceived. People of that day thought that the position of men obliged to till the land for their lords, and to obey them, was a natural, inevitable, economic condition of life, and they did not call it slavery. It is the same among us: people of our day consider the position of the laborer to be a natural, inevitable economic condition, and they do not call it slavery. And as, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, the people of Europe began little by little to understand that what formerly seemed a natural and inevitable form of economic life-namely, the position of peasants who were completely in the power of their lords-was wrong, unjust and immoral, and demanded alteration, so now people today are beginning to understand that the position of hired workmen, and of the working classes in general, which formerly seemed quite right and quite normal, is not what it should be, and demands alteration.

لا خيل ولا مال

[2024-11-28 Thu 18:01]

This section was labeled under, or is related to al-Mutanabbi

القصيدة دي لها مكان خاص عندي، من أول مرة قرأتها وحسيت بخصوصية لها وبؤلفه شديدة: المتنبي متثبت بخيط أمل رفيع للغاية (علاقته بأبي شجاع فاتك، ومُنياه في انقلابه على كافور الإخشيدي)، بيبدأها بإنه يبث فَقره: لا خيل عندك. ومعه هدفه من الغنى: “تُهديها”، أي الجود وليس المال لأجل الرفاه. حُزنه المستمر على بقاء نيته محل النية: “وَإِن تَكُن مُحكَماتُ الشُكلِ تَمنَعُني” وقدرته فقط على البوح بها دون إنفاذها: “فَلي فيهِنَّ تَصهالُ” تذكيره لنفسه بأمل مشقته ومعاناته في الحياة: لَولا المَشَقَّةُ سادَ الناسُ كُلُّهُمُ ... الجودُ يُفقِرُ وَالإِقدامُ قَتّالُ، وأخيرًا تسليمه بأنه وُلد في غير زمانه Some are born posthumously : ذِكرُ الفَتى عُمرُهُ الثاني وَحاجَتُهُ ما قاتَهُ وَفُضولُ العَيشِ أَشغالُ. عَرفت فيما بعد أن المتنبي كتب هذه القصيدة عندما كان يقطن نفس المدينة التي أقطنها حاليًا، ويا لها من صدفة. مات أمل أبو الطيب المتنبي (أبو شجاع فاتك) بعد شهور قليلة من القصيدة، وماتت بعده أمال المتنبي الكثيرة، ومات معها فارسًا مقبلًا. طيب الله ثراه.

Extract https://www.kotobee.com/

[2024-11-24 Sun 18:48]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Programming

Nermeen’s university sent her today a PDF file that was bundled inside an MS windows executable (exe), she needed to run it outside of the Windows machine. Upon extracting it, I found it was bundled as a Kotobee ebook, which turned to be a DRM service to create “interactive books”. After doing a quick binary analysis to ensure that we are indeed dealing with a DRM’d exe file (and not embarrassingly fdoc file renamed to be .exe), I managed to build a document out of it. Here’s the steps:

First of all, simply, extract the exe content:

unzip file.exe -d extracted_directory

The extracted directory should have a similar tree to this:

larrasket [~/tmp/rq/e]$ ls -l
total 152
-rw-r--r-- 1 l l   2227 Aug 21 14:42 config.js
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l     44 Aug 21 14:42 css
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l     52 Aug 21 14:42 epub
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l     90 Aug 21 14:42 fonts
-rw-r--r-- 1 l l  10709 Aug 21 14:42 icon.png
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l      4 Aug 21 14:42 img
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l      0 Aug 21 14:42 imgUser
-rw-r--r-- 1 l l  14844 Aug 21 14:42 index.html
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l     98 Aug 21 14:42 js
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l     74 Aug 21 14:42 lib
drwxr-xr-x 1 l l    232 Aug 21 14:42 locales
-rw-r--r-- 1 l l 116350 Aug 21 14:42 npmModules.min.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 l l    294 Aug 21 14:42 package.json

From here it’s very obvious that we can run this node app in a web server. You can run a simple http server here:

python3 -m http.server 9000

And the app will be available at port 9000. Alternatively you can build an epub from the provided epub directory:

Inside the epub directory append the mimetype

zip -0X "../book.epub" mimetype
zip -rDX9 "../book.epub" * -x "*.DS_Store" -x mimetype

This will get you the epub. Right after, you can convert it to pdf with epub-tools:

ebook-convert ../book.epub ../book.pdf

As a single command:

(zip -0X "../book.epub" mimetype && \\
│   │zip -rDX9 "../book.epub" * -x "*.DS_Store" -x mimetype) \\
│   │   && ebook-convert ../book.epub ../book.pdf

Buying Votes

[2024-11-12 Tue 04:49]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Politics

It’s been said we are in the age of pricing. The Age of Commodity. I had a lot of thoughts about that when I was reading this paragraph from Harper’s review (“Were all going to be dead soon.”):

In the United States, it was reported that the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world’s twelfth-richest person, secretly gave $50 million to an organization supporting the campaign of the Democratic presidential candidate; and that the Tesla and SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, had been warned by federal prosecutors of the potential illegality of his practice of giving $1 million each day to a randomly selected swing-state voter who signed a petition for his super PAC that backs the Republican presidential candidate. ^{1} ^{2} ^{3} ^{4} In Moldova, where last month it was reported that the Russian government had paid at least 130,000 people more than $15 million to vote against joining the European Union, authorities announced that they had identified an additional $24 million also directed toward purchasing the votes of 20 percent of the entire electorate; violence erupted at polling stations across the country of Georgia, where international observers warned of Russian “vote-buying” in its parliamentary elections and whose president said that the elections’ results “cannot be accepted” and should be opposed with protests in the streets; and police in Mozambique shot and killed at least ten of the thousands of demonstrators marching against the ruling party’s claim that it had just won more than 70 percent of votes nationally. ^{5} ^{6} ^{7} ^{8} ^{9} Days before Uzbekistan’s parliamentary elections, a would-be assassin fired five bullets at the car of the country’s former head of communications, who was lobbying for reforms to protect press freedoms; and in Bulgaria, hackers published a list of more than 200 businessmen and government officials who are alleged to have bought votes under the direction of the former owner of 6 of the country’s 12 largest-circulating newspapers. ^{10} ^{11} ^{12} It was reported that an internal battle in the Iranian government over the 85-year-old ayatollah’s successor would likely be won by his second son, a former de facto commanding officer in the Basij who was accused of rigging the 2009 election in favor of the incumbent, who later accused him of embezzling money from the treasury; the Vietnamese parliament elected a military general to replace its president, who, while being investigated for bribery, resigned from the presidential office he’d taken over from his predecessor, who himself had resigned after 539 of his subordinates were implicated in multiple corruption rackets; and Tunisia’s incumbent president, who last month arrested dozens of members of the nation’s largest opposition party, was inaugurated for a second term. ^{13} ^{14} ^{15} ^{16} ^{17} ^{18} “Vipers,” he said at his swearing in, are “circulating.” ^{19}

Abdel Wahab al-Messiri, Paul Fussell and Kagi

[2024-10-17 Thu 18:27]

I was reading Messiri’s “Rehlati al-fikriah”, and he mentioned something very interesting there about Paul Fussell, the renowned literary historian, apparently he was one of his PhD external examiners. But that’s not the interesting thing, it is what he mentions about him: being a homosexual pervert. I was shocked from the information that Messiri mentioned about him, that I quickly jumped to Wikipedia searching for anything with the keyword “gay”, “homosexual”, etc.. Nothing (surprisingly) was there, I started to think that Messiri might have linked to some other Paul Fussel. I then tried to search Google with keywords like “homosexual” “Paul Fussel”, still, nothing there. I was finally certain that either Messiri is talking about someone else, or this information were discrete. Then I read a post on HN that was talking about Kagi, a less screwed (suckless) search engine, it quickly linked me to the information Messiri mentioned about Fussel (his wife article about their relationship and how he would like to enter a room full of guests naked)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnacdOIoTBQ

I don’t frequently post here, or anywhere, unlike past times. Lately I explored one of my friend’s music library, he told me how it’s extremely diverse, he was correct about it. I later wondered if that has anything to do with a disorder that he suffers from, which relates to his ear. I wonder if how his music changes has anything to do with how that acoustic disorder affect his music taste. I also wondered if there’s anything about me that affects my frequency of writing here. Sometimes it’s fascinating —even if you believe in free will— how unfree we might be. How we might have the wrong ideas because the search engine chooses not to be helpful enough, or have different views due to a biological state. Related.

Fix: (org-ql-view.el) Adjust priority for agenda elements by anpandey

[2024-08-22 Thu 12:50]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Programming

FOOS restrictions are really harmful to the progress of software development. I advocate for the freedom of software, but I really dislike the way that other adherents use that freedom which usually conclude making the progress/development much slower. An average GNU fanatic user would require people to use some free git hosting, would refuse to make support for non-free systems, might discourage usage of non “fully free” licensed software packages. All of this result in making the progress really slow (and I’m not here talking even about the FSF signture stuff in the PR I linked above). Take for example the usage of a fully-free Git hosting, like codeforage and the whatnot, this is totally fine as in concept, but practically many people are just used to Microsoft’s github, many people (in fact the majority of people) don’t know how to use emails for patchs and issues (in the case of other forges like sourcehut), and many people just won’t be encouraged enough to do any of this (or even register at a new forge other than github).

Nostalgic Bibliography

[2024-08-04 Sun 03:32]

I’m reorganizing my bibliography, found out that there are many titles that I felt nostalgic towards. Many titles are related to people I used to discuss with or phases in my life. Some of them are:

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (Russell, B.)
one of the very first books I’ve ever read.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Campbell, J.)
I really miss that era of exploring Campbell and psychoanalysis… used to be in a very fun communities.
The Human Web (McNeill et al.)
It was a very hard job for me to get a paper version of this book, I remember reading it in public transportation, in winter.
Being Mortal (Gawande, A.)
Same as previous one, I read it in the same era.
The Naked Ape (Morris, D.)
I’ve some of the dearest memories with this book. I remember recommending it to somebody, they were too shy to discuss the sex chapter and I found that funny, we never talked or met again.
Your Inner Fish (Shubin, N.)
one of the first books ever that I read about evolution, recommended to me by my neighbor after he saw the documentary.
Totem and taboo (Freud, S.)
My first book to read by Freud, first book to get me very invested into the psychoanalysis theory as well. I even made infographics for this book. It also introduced me to many other European orientalists.
Group Psychology (Freud, S.)
Second book to read for Freud, was recommended to me by the same friend who recommended “Your Inner Fish”.
Differential Equations for Dummies (Holzner, S.)
very bad memories with this one.
Algorithms (Sedgewick, R.)
This was my alternative for the common algorithms reference, I don’t even remember the name of that reference anymore.
Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis (Shaffer, C.)
My first algorithms book, one of the books that I completed 100% of it. I truly loved it, I had a TODO note to thank the author, but I never did.

So many other memories with the rest of the list! خُلِقتُ أَلوفاً لَو رَحَلتُ إِلى الصِبا لَفارَقتُ شَيبي موجَعَ القَلبِ باكِيا.

SEP Friendship

[2024-08-03 Sat 03:14]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Philosophy

I really like Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s PDFs (preview here), however, they do not allow you to download it without a subscription. It’s actually good enough for a subscription if you compare it to the HTML. For someone like me, my HTML appetite can not hold more than few long articles, SEP average entry is about ~50 pages or so, that’s not a long article even. Here’s how I get their entries as nice PDFs without subscription, simply save the article part of the HTML page into a file, and using pandoc run:

pandoc concept_of_religion.html --pdf-engine=xelatex -o concept_of_religion.pdf --variable=documentclass:book -V geometry:b5paper -V margin=3cm -V mainfont="Times New Roman"

I can’t find a Lisp

[2024-07-22 Mon 02:01]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Programming

Basically almost every Lisp out there have a major downside that turns me down from using it to the extent I consider using Haskell’s s-expression tolerance (like (map odd [1,2,3]) (((.) fst snd) (1,(2,3))))

  • Common Lisp: Classical OOP everywhere, very bad build automation and packaging (asdf), available implementations have low support, bugs are everywhere due to the limited teams who are working on those.
  • Scheme: Same as CL, in addition to the scare language support in most editor (not sure even if it has a Lisp), also it’s hard to find libraries/packages to build something on.
  • EuLisp, ZetaLisp, MacLisp, InterLisp, ISLisp, T, Arc, PicoLisp: I still find it hard to believe those are not in the museum of computing yet.
  • Guile, Racket: both look so promising but the lack of interest from community which inevitability results in an effect on the number of available packages to build on make it much harder to start a new project in any of them without reinventing the wheel.
  • Clojure: aside from the JVM dependency and the build system hassle, the language is just too big, still the most plausible option in this whole list though.

Another killer feature for Go

[2024-02-16 Fri 14:07]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Programming

I’d always prefer a Lisp. But ideally, Go wins (more at The Prefect Programming Language) by its unauthoritarian package manager and not using exception handling. As aforementioned @ A thought about Clojure, I think Clojure is the modern day Lisp that works very good for interactive programming and rapid development. But here’s another killer feature of Go that roughly does not exist elsewhere: the great STD. With Go, I can feel very comfortable writing a Go application without the need of checking the internet for questions or 3rd-party libraries, eventually I might need to, but if compared to any other tool I’ve ever used, it’s amazing (back in the day when I used C# I’d need a web browser always running alongside to my IDE). I do not have internet connection those days and while playing tracks I thought of building a simple CLI to handle my audio tracks synchronization, I know how to do it without reinventing the wheel in Go, with only using the STD, with Clojure, it’s going to be unrapid developement.

Consolation

[2024-02-15 Thu 19:50]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Modus Vivendi

الخبث خبثان: خُبث الداهية وخَبث الأحمق. الأخير هو، إلى حدِّ الآن، الأسوأ.

— عباس ابراهام.

Here’s my consolation for a very big part of my life of which I remind myself very frequently especially if I’m suspecting the existence of stupidity around. A solace that often comes to the forefront. Let me establish something that is misconstrued usually, people think that smart people tend to be evil much more than stupid people. Which is correct, intelligent people would be indeed much more capable of doing harm (i.e. evil). However, here’s the thing about stupidity; evilness is highly subjective that a stupid person does not have to be aware that he/she is seeking something achieved, that he/she is harming or even doing anything at all to be ’evil’ to an intelligent individual. I want to give you some example but لولا النفوس الضعيفة سريعة المرض، سيئة الغرض I’d skip on that. Anyway, let’s get back to my point about where I find my consolation about this kind of nefarious and base evilness: it bounces back. Stupids, imbeciles and retards 99% of the times hurt themselves back, making shitty life decisions or just of being irritating to others. Their decisions, marred by imprudence, or merely their presence, vexatious to others, invariably rebound upon them. “Errare humanum est, sed in errare perseverare diabolicum”.

Clojure has Go-like channels

[2024-02-08 Thu 06:45]

This section was labeled under, or is related to Programming

Found out that Clojure has Go-like channels. https://clojure.org/guides/async_walkthrough, very promising to use it (as mentioned at a thought about Clojure)

Archive

How does this page work

[2022-09-23 Fri 20:15]: If you are an old reader (if such a thing exists) of this blog, you should know about my old attempts of creating a stack-like posting that works within my editing environment (Emacs) which has always failed. I’m very good at Elisp, suck at writing Elisp packages \*Sigh\* life doesn’t give everything. Anyway I thought that everything I need to implement such a workflow, is only a program that appends an entity top of a string, and I started to implement it as a separated program. However, while doing it I recognized that (org-caputre) already does it, just needed a simple custom configuration:

(setq +org-capture-journal-file "~/blog/content/stack.org")
(setq org-capture-templates
      '(("j" "Journal" entry
           (file+headline +org-capture-journal-file "Posts")
           "* %<%A, %d %B %Y>\n%?"  :prepend t)))

I also found a predefined way of doing it that build a full hierarchy date for the entity, but I decided to go simple this time.

Cons;

  • I’ve to archive it myself, no pagination.
  • [2022-10-05 Wed 20:18]: I figured out a workaround to archive, and I don’t think I really need tags. Everything works great.
  • [2024-02-15 Thu 20:19]: I do not find this workflow very good as of now, I do not think that archiving is necessary either. I wil try to think of something else soon.

Footnotes:

1

Frederic Lenoir, Philosophy of desire (Dar Al Saqi, 2023), 45.

2

Some are born posthumously


I seek refuge in God, from Satan the rejected. Generated by: Emacs 30.0.93 (Org mode 9.7.22). Written by: Salih Muhammed, by the date of: . Last build date: 2025-03-29 Sat 13:36.