Jahan's stuff

Snowfall

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote this a bit ago for a magazine, although that thing never got finished so I'm putting it up here.

Dark outside and blinds shut I went to bed, not to sleep but to lie. Recently I've enjoyed just laying about with my eyes closed, doing nothing for hours on end just to get a glimpse of some dot or blur coming across my vision. It's so much more interesting than the boring full-fleshed all of what I see with my eyes open. I've seen that so many times, but this I'm only seeing now, it's new, novel. So, returning to my recent rut of meditation, I'm laying down, eyes closed, carefully not moving, carefully ignoring all the pain in my sides and carefully trying not to feel too much pain so that I'd be disturbed. Just to lie, in nothingness, all black, forever. To willfully sleep, for the chance of a dream. And I stay, in this state of pseudo-sleep, until this dream I was waiting for arises. The moon journeys and slight color comes, that shade of purple in symbols that mean nothing to me and that I can not even get a good picture of, but which I lied so long in anticipation for anyways.

I was walking in the mountains, walking for so long as the world seemed to shift around me. To change in ways I was too tired to notice anyways. For my tiredness to make me unconcerned with what was truly in front of me. I walked, it was what I ought to do, what I was told to do, what I needed to do. And eventually, I walked into the world faded into nothingness, and felt myself fall. Oscillating between conscious oblivion and tired stupor I eventually rose. Back where I had started, I drank some water and had the world go back to normal. Fade from its faded black to its tinted purple and finally to normality.

I see this purple again, it's omen of oblivion, of what lies behind the veil, and I grasp it! and it's gone. I groggily open my eyes and rise myself, move my arms and legs back into comfort, and feel a sense of accomplishment. I can still see slight dots, maybe purple, I can't tell, and after a few seconds of interest feel the full force of my sleepiness resting on my shoulders and decide to lie back in bed to rest. I fall quickly and dream.

I look around me, at all the repeated buildings and twisting stairs and mundane circular table I never owned and see that I'm dreaming, that I'm somewhere behind that veil which always persecutes my wake and now it's not there and I'm free. I'm free, and I'm tired. I look around, cereal boxes, magazines, endless corridors and possibilities. I walk around for a moment, and concerned with my fatigue decide to return to sleep.

I wake up. I go to where I normally go and brew what I normally brew, and slowly sipping what I don't taste think about the persistence of last nights excursions upon my vision and the new twitching in my side. The noise I'd find interesting pressed on my eyes where I can't make it out but I know I see it, always evading my stare but staying to taunt. Is it moving? With the strange jolting moving to my arm to muscles I never new I had I feel as if my body is trying to tell me something, communicate in some language I don't understand and it knows it only; I sit there; I sip.

Is it rain, falling? I have always loved the rain. Something I could never have. Not since then, no. I would sit, and I would look over again and again at what provoked a droplet but, no, the drought remained. I would seek it out, strike metallic dance in its name against my veins, give my flowing for its but no, drought, for years drought. Could anything grow anymore? I swear something could, that I had seen something in the cracks, something a faded green which grew despite and how could I not how could I accept defeat that nothing could and I saw it, I know it must have grown, I recall it in my memories and can practically feel it.

I lifted that veil, I guess. I don't even know what that means. But now that it's gone, that what I was searching for is here, that the fantasy I searched for is now reality it's a bit underwhelming. I guess I have it now. A permanent reminder. A memento of my search. I'm sure I'll find a new fantasy.

On Luigi Mangione and morality

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Talk of the town recently has all been about the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. Far more discussed than the killing itself is its justification, whether it was good or bad. The other day my sister asked me my opinion on it, which I was unsure of at the time, but have since solidified.

My immediate reaction to the event was positive. The issue, however, is that the act of murder goes fairly clearly against really the only value I hold dear, life being better than death. Though if I were to disavow all murder, many other issues arise. Primarily the one confronted here, the issue of revolt: when confronted with a murderous system (this is a wide category of organisms: governments, corporations, people, etc.) in which the only immediate remedy is its death, is its death preferable to its life? In other words, is murder justifiable when it leads to less net death?

Before tackling that question we first must bring into question the context of life > death. On an individual level this statement applies only to, well, the individual, since the individual only knows for certain their own liveliness, and not if their perception sees verily other lives like theirs or just figments of the mind or simulations or etc. The life of the individual correlates however with the life of the system it lives in, a healthy system ("healthy" meaning a high life expectancy, since a high life expectancy means there is more life and less death, thus good under the value of life being better than death) containing more healthy individuals and thus greater good (life) for each individual. So as long as one lives in a certain system, the "health" of this system is interlinked with what is good and bad.

So back to the question of if murder is justifiable when it leads to less net death, the answer is yes (assuming the murderer and murdered and observer are all part of the same system) as it would lead to a healthier system. And so to return to that initial question of if Mangione was justified, we can now answer that question by determining if his actions have/will result in a healthier system.

Note that under this system of morality there is no direct consideration of past actions. While the murdered may have committed bad actions (actions resulting in positive net death) in the past, the death of the murdered would only increase net death, not bring any justice to those already affected. The death is only justified insofar as it will result in less future death, so in the future there will be less net death as result of the murder.

The past must still be recounted for the purposes of predicting the future, however. Let's take the classic example of someone stealing bread to feed their family: this has the immediate effects of feeding the hungry, lengthening the time they can live, thus increasing the health of the system. On the other hand, the person who had the bread now does not, so if they are not able to acquire more this may result in them becoming hungry themselves. If they were to starve, this would not be good for the health of the system. We are unable to determine precisely the future effects though, so we estimate by looking at his past (he does not need too much bread) and his present (he has plenty of bread) the chance of the shopkeeper starving. Let's estimate 10%. In that case, it seems that we can calculate the morality of an action by comparing the immediate effects with the future ones, in a fashion similar to M = ∑i + ∑(c∑f), where M is the morality of an action (positive thus being good and negative bad), ∑i the immediate net life from the action, and∑c∑f the sum of the predicted net lifes multiplied by the chance of those predictions. So for this example, we can say that M = 3 + -1 * 10% for a result of 2.9, indicating that the action was good (this is arbitrarily assuming the family was of three people).

There are a few issues with that calculation, however. First of all, we treat the one loaf of bread as being able to fully save the lives of three people, by putting in 3 as the net life of the family. This greatly overestimates the true value of the bread, because it does not forever save them, it merely postpones their starvation. In order to equate for this, we have to add in the future effects of them starving, resulting in M = 3 + (-1 * 10%) + (-3 * 90%) = 0.2 (once again arbitrarily assuming that the chance of them starving later is 90%.) Another issue with this calculation is that it fails to account for the effects each death may have. For instance, let's say that the shopkeeper had a wife and son of their own, and that the death of the shopkeeper could result in their starvation. Let's say their chance of dying in event of the shopkeeper's death was 50%. We need to equate for the chance of their death, so M = 3 + ((-1 + -2 * 50%) * 10%) + (-3 * 90%) = 0.1. But we can't forget the effects that their deaths cause, and the deaths caused by deaths caused by their deaths, and the deaths caused by deaths caused by deaths caused by their deaths, and…

Clearly our original equation is not going to cut it. Since we are examining morality through a collection of individuals, the result of the action has to be examined by the effect it has on each individual, and each effect on each individual examined by the effect that effect has, resulting in a circular calculation. We can represent this with a small series of recursive functions, still keeping M equal to immediate plus future, M = I(i) + F(f, c), where I(i) = ∑[i + F(i₂, c)], i is the immediate consequences, and i₂ is the potential consequences of i. F(f, c) is similarly defined as F(f, c) = ∑[c∑f + F(f₂, c₂)], where f and c are the same as before, f₂ is the consequences of f, and c₂ is the chances of f₂.

Despite the precision of this equation, we are still just guessing all its data, so its accuracy is quite dubious, but regardless let us try and now apply it to the question we first set out to answer. Immediate results is easy enough, -1, the death of Thompson, and his death will most likely not directly lead to any other results, but we can add in a small chance of suicide in his immediate family, so I(i) = -1.002. Future consequences is where it gets a bit more complicated. The main justification for the murder is the high rate of claim denials UnitedHealthcare makes, which is claimed to be 32%, but the question is whether or not the murder will lead to lower denial rates. I'll be quite optimistic and say they will be terrorized enough and say they will in the future only deny 30% of claims. If they have around 50 million users, each approved claim gives around a year more of life, and life expectancy is around 77.5 years, that means that terrorizing UnitedHealthcare will lead to 2% * 50000000 * (1 / 77.5) ≈ 12903 more life. That's pretty good. There are some more upsides, such as other insurance coverers also being terrorized, and also more downsides, such as rises in extremism, and then there are also a million other things from the individuals who would then get to live. But I think just going surface-deep can answer if M > 0, which I say it is, and so the murder is just!

Actually doing calculations like I did above is thoroughly pointless, since most of the numbers we come up with are arbitrary, but having a rough model is nice. The calculations done would also have to vary depending on the person doing them: for I, someone not directly affected by the event, it makes sense to calculate it as the overall effect on my society, but for someone more directly affected, for instance the murderer, murdered, or someone who uses UnitedHealthcare, it would have to be done differently, prioritizing their life in the processing.

Enjoying what you do

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Much of our lives is spent serving others. The comforts of a society which we gain from others' service to us requires our (or at least the majorities') own servitude for its continuation. We start as iron enriched by years of education and then are pounded into capital to begin creating and providing all the goods and services which we graciously accept. However it is rarely perceived as a public service to those who toil; the hierarchies established rather put the masses in servitude to individuals, individuals of which they cannot see different from themselves, and thus resent them and their demands as unfair, inegalitarian. They hate to obey and therefore justify their doing so as not something voluntary but as something they must do, something they are forced to do, whether this be forced by money or expectations or herd or whatever other imaginary demons they see. Whether this hierarchy is unfair or if society could be structured in a better way is a question which can be pondered by politicians and revolutionaries, I rather focus on what I can control, this hatred of what I do.

To start off, there is one simple solution to all this, one which relinquishes oneself from their servitude. It's to quit! Participation in society is not mandatory. If one does not participate they cannot expect society's gifts, easy food and shelter and the like, not to even begin on non-essentials, but it is still not forced. One can just run off into the forest and live there, most likely dying at 25 but that is just the price of freedom. One could just never leave the bed, lay there forever, unconcerned with the affairs of the world. A great example of this refusal is the common K in The Trial—even though his actions have no effect upon his circumstance, he still remains in resistance even in his final moments and thus dies not as an indentured citizen but as one who has reunited with freedom, "like a dog." Unfortunately though, many, I included, would prefer not to give up all of society's pomp which we have become accustomed to.

So then, if we ought to continue doing what we "must," should we enjoy it? Should one enjoy toiling away day after day? There is a case against it, a case already made, the case of injustice which stemmed this distaste in the first place. If there were no case against it people would be happy to toil, or at least not be opposed to it. This opposition would be fine if there was change to be made, if the opposer was to quit or to resist, to ignite a revolution or enact policy, but very few among us will ever do such things. Selfish as it is, if we are unable to help us all, we ought to at least help ourselves and thus ought to evaluate if this opposition is of any benefit to us, if we ought not to just throw it off. While there are no "unalienable truths," all arguments presuppose some values, and so I will give mine: one should live. There are many ways one may die: some completely uncontrollable, like a car crash or a terrorist attack or etc; some somewhat controllable, like health and the situations we are in; but only one cause is fully controllable: suicide. Thus in our avoidance of death it is important that we give adequate concern to that cause, and avoid its causes respectively. A large one of these causes being disliking life and thus seeking its antonym. Disliking life often stems from disliking what one does in life, so to enjoy what one does can therefore be considered a sensible goal, at least to my fellow lovers of life.

But if our situation is already that we hate what we do, how are we to change this? Our solution is the same as that of the revolutionaries: to remedy the cause. Rather than working for the man, to work for ourselves. To us who have not the ability to redistribute the means of production, this instead means to change how we perceive our actions. To recognize that we are not "forced" to do anything but instead that we do it because it benefits us. Because we want to do it. Because we see this as our best option, and that the situation we live in is the best situation we have available. To be glad this gives us food. To be glad this gives us comfort. To recognize that even in its fruits being plundered our labor benefits us all. To free ourselves from thinking that we do this because of... at all and to just find joy in the act of doing. To be proud of a task well done. To rejoice in the fact that we are doing and that to not do would be so much worse. That we have the ability to do. This solution is, of course, distasteful. We do not change anything in the "real world." But to all of us will never enact "real" change, this is the most we can do. One by one, we can ease the collective suffering.

Ought beliefs to be justified?

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There are democrats, and there are republicans; there are theists, and there are atheists; there is x, and there is y; there are a lot of beliefs out there. Beliefs which many people believe, believe with conviction, beliefs that contradict one another, beliefs that only as an exception can replace other beliefs. Nearly all discourse between differing believers ends in no net change, both still believing the same thing, despite both people knowing that they're right and providing reasons for why that is so. Should people even try to justify their beliefs then? The ought to, but it only makes sense to do so for themselves.

To come back to the argument between those two believers, which one is right? Both can justify their beliefs and both can refute the justifications of the other's, rarely can one win such an argument. Even if one does win, most likely the other will not change their beliefs: they have just become tired of arguing. The reason neither can show the other the truth of their belief is due to their perspectives. Both have the true argument to themselves and see the falsity of the other's, but that is only due to the inclinations and other beliefs of that specific individual.

No arguments be made without some prerequisite beliefs. Calls to "human nature" or "common sense" or etc. all require belief in the verity of such things. And even if both people accept those beliefs they will have differing interpretations of those beliefs due to having varying levels of belief in the sub-beliefs within that belief. Arguments can only succeed when presented to people with similar beliefs, in which cases it is less of a conversion and more of a discussion.

People only accept beliefs when such a belief does not contradict their other beliefs, at least not to an extent that they notice nor care about¹. In such a case, rarely do people care for the justification, they see the idea and unconsciously channel it through their own justifications and contradictions, and if it sticks it sticks. A justification only makes a belief easier to swallow, to consciously accept as a new belief. Justifying your beliefs to others (yes I realize I'm doing that right now) is pointless since the justification that matters is the one they come up with themselves. They need the belief to be true specifically to them, with all their other beliefs and such, and your attempts at proving will do little.

Despite this, there is still merit in justifying beliefs. There is merit in that expounding them will benefit yourself. It will help you make sure that your beliefs are not just true to your unconscious but also true to yourself, your conscious self, what you are right now and what you ought to value more of than the rest of your brain. By bringing the unconscious justifications to the conscious and examining them one can verify that the justifications are true under their conscious beliefs and values, not under the stowaway beliefs which we consciously reject but yet still manage to stay due to an influential environment. By justifying your beliefs you make them in close accordance to your identity rather than to your unconscious.

[1] Thought and belief

External identities

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In my last article I argued against identifying with labels which label parts of your identity, but another important type of identifying is with things outside of your self. Communities, jobs, hobbies: all can be considered personality traits. While there are differences between identifying with being a communist and identifying with being a taxi driver, both have similar follies. The self is still instantaneously immutable, and attempting to be anything other than you are will just lead to dysphoria.

A common question is whether actions or thoughts are more important. Oftentimes people say actions, but they say this in regards to outsiders who know not what thoughts the subject has. The question though is misleading, because the two are not done separately. Any action has to be enacted first with a thought, and even if there were a million other thoughts going against that action, those thoughts were never put into action by a thought. I bring this up to illustrate that you decide to act, the action does not decide you.

Actions, like all things external, do affect identity, affect who you are, but at the same time they are not in any way who you are. We are all rocks being smoothen down by the water of life, but we are still rocks. Your identity, the part of you that is really you, the part wondering about itself, is a recluse. Whether it is a soul or the little bit of film sitting atop your frontal cortex, matters little. No matter where your self really is, it is heavily separated from reality. The self can be fed false data by its next door neighbors, hallucinating in delirium, dreaming in oblivion, because it is not connected with the "real" world. It experiences whatever it's given, yet despite this it still remains the self. If this was a simulation, would you be any less yourself? You might be fed some experiences, learn from them and change, but you still remain your infinitesimal self.

An action, on the other hand, your external reality, what you choose to do and what to see (ask ten people to describe what they see, and you'll get ten different responses,) are all extensions of your self. They are not your self, but they are done because of your self, and thus stand testament to it. The carpenter's chair contains its maker's identity in each little mark, every cut and saw. It is in this way that actions are more accurate representations of the self than labels, since actions are directly from the self while labels are ideas of many other selves.

Even if actions can represent the self fine though, identifying with things outside of your self is just another form of identifying with labels. If you considered being a carpenter as part of your identity, "being a carpenter" would not in any way represent your identity, but would just attempt to label it. It would be an attempt to label all the many parts of your identity which culminate in you deciding to do carpentry. But these parts are not carpentry, they do not make you a carpenter. There are many other carpenters all with unique identities. Attempting to fit yourself in such a box leads to the same follies of any other labels.

These parts, it is important to note, do not rely upon you doing carpentry. Your identity may have been affected by you doing carpentry, but in another life this identity could have just as well done 3D modeling, mud sculpting, pottery. The way your identity is does predispose you to carpentry specifically, most likely, if it is what you enjoy doing, but carpentry is not required of yourself. You would just as much be you if you stoped doing carpentry, even if you had never done carpentry.

It's certainly important to do what you like and like what you do, to do things in accordance with your identity, but you shouldn't identify with them. Your actions existence depends on you, but if you were not to do the action it would have no effect on yourself. By thinking that being a carpenter is who you are, you stereotype yourself (thus furthering your idea of yourself from your identity) and you make yourself dependent on the activity. If you were suddenly told by your doctor that you had to stop doing carpentry, it would be more than just loosing an activity you enjoy, it would be the loss of your self. Except it wouldn't be. You would be unchanged, only your surroundings changed. But the idea of your self in your head has now changed; the persona you assembled around carpentry, while it was slightly false in itself just for attempting to use labels associated with others, is now drastically changed. You though, your identity, is unchanged, but the idea of yourself vastly changed, so suddenly your stuck in a big whole looking for something that was never lost. Dysphoric for something that never happened. You are you no matter the external circumstance, and forging ideas otherwise just estranges you from yourself.

I'm reminded of a time my English teacher, after finishing The Razor's Edge, asked the class what a modern day soul-searching Larry would look like. In a time where monks are mocked all the homeless are deranged and work has lost all quality of individuality, what garb of man finds meaning? Any, really. The enlightened wanderer, the value-forming Übermensch, the absurd rebel, they can be any office or fast-food worker, any homeless hermit or homebound hikikomori. Because the external doesn't matter. The external only matters because the self allows it to matter. Identity is only changed as so far it chooses to. Meaning, which at least to I who can only assume it's subjective, is directly connected to the self in its subjectivity. And so the choice, to find meaning, to feel fulfilled, is one made by the self. Even if you are you, the ability to get yourself to do what you want is difficult, but it is what decides all. The meaning of life then, is yourself, its meaning is another idol in your image. Je pense, donc je suis, and I am, therefore I already exist in all, as all, as perfection.

Identity

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Who am I? can be a difficult question to answer, but many a new taxonomy have sprouted over the years. There is an abundance of ideologies, sexualities, genders, medias, brands, subcultures, countercultures, -cores and aesthetics, millions of different things to identify with. At the tip of our fingers is not just the few individuals in our village but billions of personalities all summed up in their About me and Twitter bios. And while from this I have carefully prepared my entire life into three keywords; is this really me? No.

Well to start off, let's define identity. Many definitions may minmogrify it into a set of characteristics or unique features which make up a person, which it is in part, but it is the whole person and this incomplete. My identity is I, in entirety. So while I can be of the class of x, y, and z, I cannot be i.e. my identity cannot be x, y, and z, since it is much more. This nuance matters because the degree to which people can pick and choose their labels has gone inverse to expressing their actual identity.

The reason atomized labels are worse than macro ones is because of their lack of grey space. If I am a democrat then I could be a lot of things: I've seen democrats who are rich, poor, progressive, conservative, noble, banal. On the other hand, I have never met an anarcho-primitist, so if I am one then I must be it, that idea in its black and white. I am not it though, I am I, and I most likely do not well fit in its clean cut borders. This has two issues: first, less grey means more stereotyped, maybe a more accurate stereotype, but with less room for uncovering the truth; second, it becomes what one thinks they ought to be. I searched for this tag in the first place in order to find identity, but because I think the tag is my identity—while it's really not—my attempts to be myself become attempts to be something else, keeping my search unfulfilled.

Most of us already have terms put upon us from before we even knew what they were. And if we are searching for new ones, clearly the old ones weren't cutting it, so is the solution really just giving up? No! These labels we carry, any and all labels, all suffer from never being able to truly fit quite right. Even if we get a trillion more names of styles each person will have their own which deviates ever so slightly.

The solution, to all these ill-fitting so-called "identities," is to cast them all off! The only true you is you, which you can only happily be once you stop trying to be something else.

Labels only have one use: to condense and compartmentalize for others. To this end they ought to be as general and unrestricted as practical, and not something taken very seriously nor truly identified with. However, this is just a vestigial ritual which will probably remain for an evermore; the best label is none at all, because it is also the most accurate, least misleading, and allows others to do their compartmentalizing and condensing in the most unbiased way, fueled only by their own biases.

So the second solution, to the hopeful disposition of labels, is to ignore them. To focus not just on what people call themselves or are called themselves but their entirety. Change in collective ideas, as slow and tedious as it is, starts at the individual. Each time someone notices how ironically the stereotype fits on the person it looses a little of its power, becomes a little more grey, the home of all.

Thought and belief

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Thought is a conscious idea, while belief is a subconsciously chosen, chosen from thought, idea. If there is no belief to contradict a thought that thought becomes a belief. If a belief contradicts that thought, then either the thought can replace the belief or not. There is more than a binary in how the thought can relate to the existing idea, however. A thought can coexist a contradictory belief, and vice versa.

If a thought occurs which in some way invalidates the belief, and the thought is valid in relation to one's other beliefs, then the thought can replace that belief. If the thought replaces that belief, depends on the subject's beliefs on belief. That is, how trustworthy one believes a new belief to be, if they believe the source (themselves, others) to be fallible. A thought can be valid (non-contradictory) without being true (trusted).

A child will believe what their parents tell them, as they believe them credible, but as one grows older and more jaded their trust (which is just a belief of trustworthiness) typically diminishes, solidifying their beliefs. This is what leads to conviction being associated with adulthood and experimentation as something childish.

Conviction implies the beliefs are not just unchanging but un-negating, but what is conviction is often thought disguised as belief. If a thought negates a belief, but no thought takes that beliefs place, then the belief may still be recalled as a thought. A thought which is not believed yet still utilized is faith. The disbelief is what gives faith merit.

A child can readily believe in God, presented with nothing contrary, or just as readily believe there is nothing or any other belief they are fed. This belief is easy, since there is no thought nor belief to sew doubt. As one finds new ideas though, they either lose their belief, replace it, or keep it, possibly now with faith in contradictory thoughts.

If their belief is lost then they may, as said above, continue to call upon the belief as a thought. A thought is harder to use as guidance than a belief since it cannot unconsciously negate another thought, it requires choice to call up. The difficulty of disbelief gives its attempted belief (faith) merit. It is easy to forget one's faith and take in a new thought as belief, if only for a short while, until the thought is called back again and negates the newly taken belief. The acceptance of beliefs in contradiction to faith is sin.

Faith is difficult because it requires being reestablished with each new thought, and as long as faith exists so does sin, which continues from sin's first appearance up until faith is brought back again. Sin, then, since it only requires being brought up once (as it is belief), is easy.

Instead of faith being created from an old belief, it can also be created from a new thought, if the new thought is not true according to the persons uncontradictory beliefs. If the thought has no contradiction, then it could still be not believed due to lack of trust, and so only brought up consciously as faith. This is frequent with high-level ideas, which one might accept as valid but not internalize as truth. If the thought does have contradiction, and it cannot negate the belief it contradicts, then one may still be faithful to it even if the belief remains, often also having faith in that the belief is false.

death by webring

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is a simplistic webring for all the existentialists out there. Whether your site talks about it, shows it, or you just are it, feel free to join us as its representative.

The only rule here is that you must question the ring's purpose. Oh, and to have the webring navigator thing somewhere on your site. Doesn't need be on the front page, but not too hidden neither.

To join, send me an email at hiimjahan@gmail.com with your site's URL and a justification if you want (I will look at all the sites beforehand, so if you think your acceptance is self-evident, there is no need to justify yourself).

The navigator looks just like this: < death by webring >
And I will send you the code once your application is approved. No JS required!

Be weary of storage

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It sounds like simple enough advice, which it is, but unfortunately I heeded not. My 1TB hard drive of 8 years died a few weeks ago. I knew it was dying, and always thought that I would replace it soon, but it was too late. It doesn't matter too much, since most of my important things are backed up somewhere, but it's still a shame. I probably had some txt file written by a little me, which I would have never read; now gone.

A fresh start is nice though. I had multiple times tried to organize my HDD, but there were always too many things to chance, and so thus all attempts were either thwarted or only half-done. With my new drive I've decided to partition it into multiple sections, that way I don't end up just placing everything in D:/. It felt rather boring to just name the partitions things like "D:/ coding, E:/ media" etc., so I decided rather to name them after literature I like, the drive letter corresponding to the first character of the title.

I keep meaning to write down which partition stores what, so I don't forget (one of the follies of my approach), but keep doing naught. So since I'm already rambling about it, I'll just put them here:
C: Crime and Punishment — System files
D: Demons — Programming projects
E: Exodus — Games
F: The Fall — Media
G: The Gambler — Applications
H: A Happy Death — Temporary files

I've only partitioned for what I needed, with still more than half of the drive uninitialized, so I'll be adding more when I find I need it.

You will forget this moment

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

So many days. Of course, today is the important one, just as every day past has and every day since will be. Those old, "most important" days must be forgotten for the new, better days that bloom with each moon.

Can you recall what you did this day last year? Last month? Even last week is an inconsequential blur. It makes sense to focus on now as there's not else we can control, but it's a shame all this emotion we exert seems to merely fade into the void. Actions yield results but so's the same for an emotionless seraph, looking back makes any feeling appear meaningless. I don't know if this means it is meaningless or if we should feel nothing, but avoiding both those questions I believe some (more?) meaning can be given to them.

Recording. Why does one build an empire, sprawl a family, shoot up a school — to be remembered. Something meaningful can be rehashed, reused, remembered in the future; just by remembering some thing we give it some purpose (the purpose to remembering something being it's waste without). Scribbling down a few notes of a day gives it the same meaning as a historian elaborating an even farther scene. You may never look at your tree scratches again, or, maybe, you will: you'll remember what would've been permanently forgotten and thus give it meaning.

Plus, journaling looks aesthetic as well.

Poems

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've put anything up here (bit more than a month I think), so I'm just going to put some random poems I've scribbled down in my notebook over the past month or so.

Your name

So many words,
in so many languages -
Yet not a single one can adequately describe
the one care that I have succumbed;
the word that I want on my lips;
the mantra that incessantly pounds in my mind:
you.

Moment's pause

A laugh, a warm smile, and silence
Staring into one another's eyes
Words wanting escape,
but to us the world is quiet

Can barely blink, eyes besewn to you
but would I want to look away?

I can feel that string get tighter as I inch to the needle
Slow, warm spirits bless my face
Haven's touch just a moment away, but-

The curse of worry.

Footsteps

A pitch-dark night
A dim streetlight
You're all that I can see

Cold air stings my face
Your heavy breath falls
I can feel your warmth

The white snow records as
two sets of boots huddle closer
Why I ever stood so far apart
Against you is where I want to be

Head resting on my shoulder
Hair draped upon my chest
Eyes parallel into nothing

A small stir, locked again
Suddenly it's not so cold
You're all I want to see

Longing

Every time I see you, I can't help but freeze
A state of shock, your beauty gives me
As my head overflows
As my graze remains affixed
A pause - and I return from heaven.

Do only I halt?
Or have we both fell to fault
Through all sin and virtue, I want you
you to experience it with me

I sit there, sipping my cocktail of emotions
But I loose my eyes on your porcelain skin
Am to was - all I feel now is desire

Love and hate, pain and pleasure, ecstatic and erratic
Beg you lay it upon me

I in all, ma très chéri, I long for you

Let me feel your breath
Hand against my chest

I fear I lost my head completely
Small loss, I was tired of thinking
Only stuffed with thoughts of you

My rock, my stone, my shrine
Dare I face another direction?
Let me pray through defilement
And kiss you so

The clock goes on
My hour gradually creeps upon me
Every second precious, every moment a sonnet
But why over an uncertain future should I panic
When you, my present, will pave it with me

Enjoying Samsara

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

There was a period of time where I put myself to being Buddhist. This was after reading a number of Buddhist (and other religious) texts and being thoroughly interested in the philosophy behind it. That feeling never left me, but I stopped practicing once I realized something about myself that went strongly against the philosophy - I don't want to leave. I love the unrelenting up and down of life. As my beloved Nietzsche said, "'Was that—life?' will I say unto death. 'Well! Once more!'" Death can wait, I don't know how I could ever get sick of this.

There's so much to do. Too much to do, we have "occupations" in order to decide and limit what we do as otherwise how could we ever decide what to limit ourselves to. But still, there are literally an infinite amount of things you could do right now if you so chose. There are a lot of solid options available to most people (explore a building, take a photo, kiss someone, pretend to work at Walmart), but even just laying around immobile you can still hallucinate (trust me, you can do it if you try), there are infinite things to think about, and there are millions of sensations running across your body to focus on an experience at this very second as well.

An existence of infinite experience right on the cusp of absolute oblivion, merely by living you are doing more than every single late person behind you. "Death is what makes life worth living" seems like a blatantly untrue to me (don't children, blissfully unaware of death, enjoy life the most?) but the sheer contrast between the two does give life a bit more of a thrill. I could drop dead tomorrow. I could drop dead typing this sentence. But yet, I have not died, so let's enjoy the moment. There was a time, where I wished for oblivion - I was stupid. How could I prefer nothing to something. Even the most painful moment contains the most poignant life inside of it. While it's pointless to say, to enjoy the moment is really just to enjoy the moment. Seize every moment in the day - hop upon every opportunity - live as fully as life allows you.

Nothing stops you from doing anything. This doesn't mean you should do anything, but hey, who'll stop you? The police could arrest you, they could shoot you, but they can't really stop you from doing something. Even God doesn't interfere when someone decides to do something heinous (or maybe he does, and we just don't know of what true evil is due to that but I'm not going to argue that pulling a Stavrogin on a child isn't evil). Even eternal damnation can't stop you, only you can. Your boundaries are your own, and your captors imaginary. Go do what you want.

Some things feel good, some bad, but as long as I'm conscious, why not enjoy it? Laugh at your circumstances. No amount of free-will will free us from the whims of fate and ruthlessness of nature, so stop fighting and just go with the flow. Observe the winds. Whatever you do, things will still be out of your control - so why worry? Laugh. God may work in his mysterious ways and ruin your life, but hey, what's it got to do with you? Just relax, sip some water, and enjoy the moment. Don't let anything stop you, because nothing can. There isn't a single thing that can stop you from enjoying the moment right now. That probably doesn't mean you will enjoy the moment, but if you choose to, nothing will stop you.

I bet hell would be just a filled with smiles as heaven. If given an eternity, wouldn't anyone become happy eventually? Day-in and day-out torture must get pretty monotonous anyways, would it even be noticeable after a thousand years? A million years? A billion? How could anyone stay unhappy for so long. Even the most nihilistic man must become gleeful after so long. After all, what else is there to do?

I'm not in hell though, so I don't need to wait for eventually. I'll just be happy now.

Whimsical whiles

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Time should be simple. It's continuously increasing at a constant rate, so to represent it we should just have some number continuously increasing at a constant rate as well, shouldn't we? We do have this (not sure why we use so many bases in our time representation, but eh), but there are so many irregularities in our time representation as well. When I say irregularities, I specifically mean daylight savings and time zones.

Time zones were originally created in order for there to be fewer times, as before they were made almost every town had their own 6 o'clock. Despite this, there are still too many times out there. People don't need for the sunrise to be in the A.M. If people got into work at 11 P.M. and got out at 6 A.M. they'd still be just as aware when there lunch hour was as before. Coordinating things between countries and writing software that needs to keep track of time would all be much easier without this one pesky little thing. Just abolishing time zones like that would take some getting used to, and for that reason will probably never happen (remember when we tried to switch to the metric system), but one can dream.

Daylight savings on the other hand, can be abolished. Most countries that have used daylight savings time no longer do. It's so confusing having all the hours suddenly change. While I can't deny I like being able to wake up an hour later in the winter, the feeling from waking an hour earlier in the summer cancels it out. To add to this annoyance, people are lazy and don't change their clocks to the correct time until months after the hour has switched, so you end up being in a state of constant limbo trying to figure out what the correct hour is. I suppose we all have phones that can tell us the time nowadays, but aren't clocks just so much nicer to look at?

If we simply choose to not do daylight savings one year, people will probably not even notice. Everyone's sleep schedules would remain uninterrupted, and the world would become just a little bit simpler.

Anyways, here's a petition I found on getting rid of daylight savings and for abolishing time zones, so consider signing them if you agree.

AI articles

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I've started seeing articles which about half way through I realize were written by AI. The worst part is a lot of them tend to be guides, and present completely false information. Now, I may not write good articles myself, but using AI to write articles just seems despicable.

When I click on an article saying "How to do x", I expect the author to have at least a tiny idea of what x is. Despite great advancements in machine learning recently, machines still don't learn. To quote Sara Brown, "Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence, which is broadly defined as the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior." There's nothing intelligent about it. In ML the computer sees all the data abstractly, finding the best general one-fits-all solution to everything it's presented, and while this is good for "[imitating] human behavior", it means the machine has no idea of what x is.

There are infinite reasons why someone might write (or I suppose a more fitting word now, publish) an article: for fun, passion, insanity, but the most common one is definitely money. I think this claim can be supported by the hundreds of ads that appear when you click on any of the top 100 sites listed after googling a single thing. Anyways, this means when you (typically) click on an article, you agree to offer up some of your time (ad revenue) in exchange for information. While AI can provide correct information, there's no guaranty that any of it is remotely correct, especially when it comes to specific information. By creating the article with AI, the "author" here is shorting you on the deal.

It's honestly more annoying if the information is a bit correct (or at least appears a bit correct) as it leads you on. A few days ago I was reading an article on installing Windows 95 and didn't realize till I was half way down the page that it was AI generated. It's astonishing how many niche (and/or insane) topics can fall under the eye of these things. They must be generating the prompts for these articles with AI as well.

What happened to creating something of quality, something that someone could be somewhat proud of? These sites, they're practically scams. They profit off providing nothing. Even some of the nullist things on the internet, TikTok meme pages for instance, have some effort put into them. Along with that, they still do provide a service that some people want. But who, who wants to read AI generated articles (actually, there is some entertainment value in it, but not when I'm searching for something else). The lining on this storm however is that, hopefully, this effortless content will dig itself in a big enough hole that they'll die out. Soon enough, the AI bubble will pop.

Adding webpage depth

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of my favorite things to do on this digital garden is to add some text that pops up when you hover over the text. It's not much, but I love doing it to add a bit of extra spice to otherwise bland (or even to flavorable) pieces.

How do I do this?

Well I'm glad you asked, non-existent person. Placing a title attribute on any HTML element will (in at least every browser I know of) cause the text set to the title attribute when said element is hovered over by the mouse. To section off specific parts of text, I wrap them in a element. For example,

Once I rise to power, rain dances shall be manditory

Would render as

Once I rise to power, rain dances shall be manditory

Pretty nice, huh?

Why should I do this?

Adds depth
It's a fun easter egg for visitors
Can provide context to things. This is especially relevant to links, as it's nice to know what something is before you go to it.
~~Spites mobile users (may be a downside, but c'est la vie)~~ Can also be shown on mobile, with the help of the content attribute.

Making it visible on mobile/printing

Title attributes aren't viewable when on mobile nor when printing a page, but they can be displayed as normal text using the content attribute with pure CSS. Here's an example of that:


[title]:after {

 content: ' [' attr(title) ']';

}

And this can be put inside of a media query to make it show when printing or when on mobile. To explain the snippet a bit more, [title] selects all elements with a title attribute, :after means it adds it after the content of the attribute, and content: sets the content (so in conjunction with :after, appends content). ' [' attr(title) ']' will create a string of [titleattribute].

Indicating existence

To make it more clear that certain parts of text are hoverable, I apply special styles to them. To do this, you just need to use the CSS attribute selector, []. For example,

[title] {

 cursor: help;

}

Will cause all elements with a title attribute to change the mouse cursor to the help cursor (little question mark next to it) when the mouse goes above it. This is useful for indication as with many browsers it takes a second or two for the text to pop up after hovering over text.

Creation

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Originally there were only two beings - Man and Twin. They were siblings, in a far sense of the word, and lived together in an endless sea of nothingness.

One day, Man decided he wanted more, and sacrificed Twin to create the world. He spread his skin to create the land, split his blood to form the waters, and used his bones to form many grand mountains and hills. His hair became the grass, his breath the wind, his brain the clouds. Man lastly thought there needed be something changing, some circulus vitiosus deus - and thus he turned his brothers eyes into the sun, and his soul into the moon. Content, Man rested.

But, as time passed, Man's desires rose once again. He could not be content with his still world he had created, and wanted to once again have there be others than himself.

Man took a rib of Twin's, and plunged it into his chest. His blood split upon the world, and from his ichor grew mortal beings. Some blood fell upon the clouds, and from that came the birds; some sank into the oceans and seas, and from that came the fish; some was caught in the wind, and from that came the bugs; and some fell upon the land, and from that rose animals. Lastly, his soul spilt amongst the land, and from that rose man once again - split and mortal.

Bucket lists

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Life is meaningless. Therefore it seems fitting to create your own, similarly meaningless goals to spend your time with whilst you remain alive.

Everyone has goals; often to become rich, famous, beautiful, (insert adjective), etc. These aren't as much goals, but directions however. There's no point at which someone can with certainty be called famous, have enough money to be rich - at least to themselves. The grass will always appear greener, and with these kinds of abstract goals one can spend their whole life unsatisfied, searching for unattainable perfection. While this has the same amount of point as anything else, and can lead to entrancing results, they are pointless on a bucket list. How can you keep track of something so abstract? Even if you say you've accomplished one of these goals, they will always leave you in question of their true fulfillment. Therefore they should be exiled from the fertile land of the napkin you scribbled your bucket list on.

Your bucket list should only contain quantifiable, easy to understand (to you at least) goals. They don't have to be achievable, but I recommend keeping improbable things like "become dictator of Turkey" off the list.

I still haven't said why you should consider having a bucket list however, so here it goes. Counting. I just love watching numbers go up. That little hit of dopamine when another box ticks up, another goal completed, another moment recorded. As Camus said, "what counts is not the best living but the most living". What could be more enjoyable but quantifying how much you've lived? While this shouldn't tunnel-vision you into ignoring the rest of your experiences, having a bucket list is a nice way to keep track of them.

If you've decided you also would like your own little list of meaningless meaning, join the cult and start throwing together all your mismatch desires as well. If you can't think of anything to write, then don't feel pressured to add things you don't really care about doing (and please don't just copy one of those crappy pre-made bucket lists you can find online they can be good sources of inspiration though), just wait, and anytime you think "I wish", "I want", "I should" just jot it to the list. Your bucket list shouldn't be a fixed thing, it should be a growing organism, constantly expanding and becoming harder to keep track of. In just a bit of time, you'll have more goals than you'll know what to do with.

Now when you find yourself in a lull in life, just take a glance at your list and boom - weekend plans acquired.

To finish off my word vomit, feel free to examine and judge my current bucket list. Some people have pointed out the overall lack of pointed-ness of it, but as Melon says: "unnecessary things are the spice of existence". Enjoy :)

Visit Saipan
Own a vending machine
Get on the news
Climb any mountain
Sleep in a cave
Drink a glass of rain water
Each a cockroach
Wear a maid outfit
See a David Lynch film in a theater
Have a kid
Donate blood
Read no longer human in Japanese
Sleep in the snow
Milk a goat
Graduate college
Visit Yosemite
Kiss someone in the rain
Grow potatoes
Do 100 pushups in a row
Verify Lain bot
Plant a tree
Protest
Eat my passport
Stay up for 72 hours
Split myself in two in a dream
Gamble in a casino
My lawyer advised me against including this one
Make cheese
Make a house of cards
Use a hair straightener
Write a poem
Go fishing
Visit the RR diner
See a live octopus
Start a fire with sticks
Shoot a gun
Grab a bird
Pet a fox
Kiss someone's hand
Make major arcana
Get bills from 10 different currencies
En passant
Read entire Bible
Grow a long beard
Beat S—— in wordhunt
Pass an AP test
Believe
Death posture
Bake bread
Remake creation of Adam
Beat egg inc
Get a Wikipedia page
Join Lain webring
Try to summon something
Go spelunking
Learn toki pona
Do 11 point turn
Explore utility tunnels
Make a compiler
Have a yearlong Duolingo streak
Scale a wire fence
Coffee and cigarettes
Be stabbed
Play the Campaign for North Africa
Hold a million dollars
Get emailed by 100 colleges
Get a fake glowing window
Have someone pee on my grave
Drink holy coffee
Watch radioactive decay
Drift
Burn a flag
Drink D2O
Make a sapphire (ideally red)
Construct a language for birds
Meet my doppelgänger
Publish a book
Befriend a crow
Switch to Windows 95
Visit the bass pro shop pyramid
Enter a tabernacle

Oh, you thought that was the end, did you? Well it was, at one point, but I now would like to clarify on something that's been tossing in my mind for a while now: editing goals.

Does it make sense to change (or remove) goals you've set for yourself in the past? Each goal was something that at one point I sought for and hoped to reach one day; even if I no longer value it - should I betray my past self's decision? Yes. That me is dead, and it's not up for the current me to waste precious grains of falling sand doing what the late I once thought worthy of doing. The past is irrelevant, you live now - do as thou wilt.

An ode to coffee

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

O coffee, how you torment me.
You taste as morose poison
Burning my mouth like pitch-black lava,
It should be a warning -
But yet I yearn for more

A midnight sky on a starless night
A feather on the breast of a raven
Fresh charcoal from a misguided fire
How much is shown in those shades of null,
But yet none can compare to you

You are ascetic in your taste
And silent in your look
But never less, you say so much

The tilt of the mug
The heat on my hands
And a flowing river of mourning
Ahh...

Writing nice code

Sat, 02 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most important things when writing code is its readability. If it's easy to understand, it'll be easy to maintain and improve. Here are some tips for writing nice code.

Descriptive names
This is an obvious one, but a lot of people prioritize keeping the names of their variables and functions short. Sure, stoi may be fast to write, but it is infinity easier to guess what stringToInt will do instead. Unless extremely well known, abbreviations should be avoided; and also comment in the full name if you do choose to use them.

Comments
Something that tends to get drilled in during programming classes (at least the ones I've taken) is to extensively comment your code. This is wrong. You should write your code so that its meaning speaks for itself. Of course, commenting wont hurt, but make sure to not use it as a crutch.

Comments do still have their place for whenever the action a piece of code does is hard to guess. Commenting in the names of algorithms you use is always a good idea, and I like to place links describing them in comments as well. You should also link to any code you've copied from somewhere else; first off to credit them, but also as it will allow people to see the bigger context around a piece of code if it was taken from somewhere, which can be of use.

Documenting code is something you should be doing as well, especially for things that will be accessed from other namespaces or classes. Most code editors will automatically display comments written before definitions when their names are hovered. Document what the function does, what it'll return, and how it should be used.

Nesting
Try to avoid having your code nest to deeply, as it makes it a lot harder to read. One way I like to do this is to utilize break statements in if... else's like this:

void doingStuff()

{

 if(something){

  ...

  return;

 }

 ..else code..

}

Granted, this is a somewhat uncommon circumstance, but I always try to look out for opportunities like this.

Another way is to split large chunks of code into multiple functions. This is turn also makes it easier to understand since names will be assigned to the different parts. For example,

void petAnimals(Animals animals){

 if(animals.dog != undefined){

  for(int i = 0; i < floor(random() * 100); i++){

   animals.dog.pet();

  }

 }



 if(animals.cat != undefined){...

could be better written as

void petAnimals(Animals animals){

 petRandomTimes(animals.dog);

 petRandomTimes(animals.cat);

}


private static const int MAX_PETS = 100;

void petRandomTimes(Animal animal){

 if(animal == undefined) break;


 for(int i = 0; i < floor(random() * MAX_PETS); i++){

  animal.pet();

 }

}

This isn't the best example, but it demonstrates the idea.

Stick to the standard
Most programming languages have standards for styling code, like what case to use, if open brackets should be on a new line, etc. It's best to stick to these standards as it allows others versed in the language to read it better. It shouldn't be too much of an issue if you deviate it, but at least stick to something - eg. if you start writing your variables in camel case, stick to camel case.

Keep it concise
Don't try to code golf your programs, but do avoid writing unnecessary code. If the result of something is only going to be used once, avoid assigning it to a variable. Especially important, don't write the near-same line of code over and over. Always utilize a loop over copy and paste.

If you find yourself copy and pasting entire functions, split it into multiple functions. That way the parts that are the same between them can be shared between them.

Line breaks are your friend
In most programming languages, line breaks are ignored by the language. A good idea is to split long statements over multiple lines as to make it easier to read. A general rule of thumb is that no line of code should pass 70 characters (this limit is usually increased when coding in LISP, due to the heavy nesting).

Also, if two pieces of code do something separate, add a line break between them like you would a paragraph. They call it a programming language for a reason.

Don't do extra
If a function says it will add two numbers, don't have it assassinate the president as well. Functions should stick true to their names and not do anything unexpected by someone who doesn't know the code. If it does do something extra, add it to the name. int addAndAssassinate(int a, int b) may take a bit longer to write, but it will avoid any unexpected things to happen.

Link directories are so nice

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

If I know what I want, I can just use a search engine and find it in an instance. But what if I don't know what I want? What if I just want to explore the internet? Well in that case, a search engine is about as good as just typing in random URLs and seeing what comes up. The way site rankings are if you google anything the first dozen results will often be practically indifferentiable. I'm not saying you can't find interesting sites through search results, but it's like trying to shoot fish in an ocean.

This is when link directories come into play. When I go onto a site I like and I see a bunch of other sites linked to it, I love to just go down the rabbit-hole and check out all the other sites that person seemed to like. Webrings are also similar to this, but I prefer seeing what sites the webgardener personally thought were worth linking.

I have a page full of links on my site (https://jahanrashidi.com/explore) and I encourage you to add one to your site as well. Happy surfing!

My favorite names

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Names are such an interesting concept. Using words to address people. When we say a name, we really only think of the person that we're referring to, but the name itself has so much meaning. The intent between those who chose it, the massive backlog of those who had carried that name before, the etymology and actual meaning of the name, there's just so much behind it.

Anyways, with that said; these names are nice.

Abigail - Not in this name, but in most names ending with il or el, that part means god.
Ada - The name was honored by the first programmer.
Ariadne - Thee, thee, O sister, wherever amidst the starry heavens thou shinest, I call to aid for a cause like to thine own
Andrei - Andrew is nice as well.
Arwin - All this name seems to be known for is LOTR, but it's a great name on its own. Arwyn is another nice spelling of it.
Eric - It looks a bit ugly in my opinion, but I love the way it sounds.
Evelyn
Erza - I originally meant to write Ezra, but I think I prefer Erza.
Gwendolyn
Heva - It's a variant spelling of Eve.
Kyle - One of my role models is Kyle MacLachlan.
Leah
Marlowe
Millicent - It sounds so tiny. I suppose that makes sense (pardon the pun) considering it sounds like it'd mean a thousandth of a cent (it doesn't, it comes from Melisende).
Mikhail - Russian form of Michael. Isn't the /x/ sound nice?
Reinn - I prefer this name as an alternate spelling of Rain
Ronnette - One of the few names that doesn't sound pretentious with -ette.
Stella - Its meaning of star is pretty obvious, but farther back it comes from the proto-indo-european word for ember (according to this book).
Slyvia
Tahira - It's the feminine version of Tahir, but I don't think that name has the same ring.
Wyatt
Yishmael - It's a slightly different form of Ishmael.

Trees

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Trees are so nice. They're like buildings, tall, sturdy - but yet they still live. Since life has lived on land so have trees, and once we rot they will still remain.

We chop them down and trust their corpses to shield us from nature, and from them utters not a single complain. Their children surrounding them that witness this act harbor no ill will, they simply sit tall in indifference.

Would we even had been able to come about without their existence? Well, probably - something else would take its place, but we would in no way be the same. Our form is fitted for trees. The hands we used to use for grabbing branches we now use for grabbing tools. Our feet are mostly pointless now, at least our toes, considering the quite large normal-shoe to toe-shoe ratio. Speaking of that, check out this article from Kev Quirk about toe socks.

I wonder why there aren't any (mainstream) religions that worship trees. I mean sure, trees are somewhat holy in certain religions, and many different belief systems have specific holy trees, but I've never heard of one that goes all the way. Why don't tree-huggers embrace the name and come out with huggism? I suppose trees are too important to our lives, so the belief that all trees are holy must be too much to bear with their constant fall. That does imply that followers would consider the death of a tree as sacrilege, but if that weren't the case it would make it an easier religion to follow. Instead of avoiding wooden products like the plague, one could fully embrace the wood-nymph aesthetic (is that a real thing? update: not what I had in mind, but it exists) and live a nice life.

Anyways, I'm going to go stare at some trees.

A few side effects of lucid dreaming

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Note: Quite a few people disagree with what I've written in this, so keep in mind that I have no special knowledge. Everything here is simply my own opinions and experiences. Question everything (including questioning!)

Once you learn to lucid dream, you inadvertently learn a few extra skills as well. Or at least I did, so these are my experiences with them.

Sleep Paralysis
Around the same time I started trying to lucid dream I also started having sleep paralysis. I know some people have very annoying sleep paralysis, but it's never been to bad for me.

Sleep paralysis occurs when your body falls asleep before your brain does. When you try to open your eyes but they're asleep, you'll instead hallucinate what you think should be there. That's why people usually think they've woken up when drifting into sleep paralysis, and they don't notice anything wrong until they try to move. It's hard not to respond with fear when you find out you can't move, and that fear is what causes people to hallucinate scary things during sleep paralysis. If you manage to stay calm however, you won't experience anything scary like paralysis demons or anything.

If you do want to wake up from sleep paralysis, close your eyes and try lifting your hand. If your body realizes that you're not asleep yet then it'll wake up.

Sleep paralysis can be used as a way to get into a lucid dream, as after a few minutes in sleep paralysis you'll drift of into a dream while still remaining lucid.

While I don't want to offend anyone who has bad sleep paralysis, I personally enjoy it. In sleep paralysis, since you're hallucinating, it's much more realistic than a dream. Plus, it's easy to remember episodes of sleep paralysis as you don't get amnesia from it like you do with dreams.

Derealization
Derealization is when you suddenly get the feeling that your surroundings aren't real. It's a bit hard to explain, but I've always thought it made everything look very sharp. I started experiencing derealization before trying to lucid dream due (I think) to my visual snow, but I know it's a common side effect of lucid dreaming as well so I'm including it here.

Episodes of derealization have never lasted over two hours for me, it's sort of like a hiccup where when you forget you have it it disappears. It's a bit annoying, but it shouldn't really affect you except for feeling off. I do like to think about things when going through derealization as dissociating from an issue gives a better perspective of it. Wait to make any decisions though.

Lighter sleep
Being conscious whilst asleep doesn't let you rest as well. Also a lot of lucid dreaming methods out there include things that can also disrupt your sleep. Once you start being able to lucid dream I'd ditch any of those types of methods. What's the point of a fun dream life if you're dead tired in your real one? (I do think there are some points for it, but I'm not going to include them here.)

Luckily however if you are tired there's a much smaller chance of you having a lucid dream since you won't be quite aware. This will stop you from having to many lucid dreams in a row if they end up being mentally draining for you. Keep in mind that even if you think you aren't having many lucid dreams, there's a good chance you may be forgetting some of them when you wake up.

Hypnagogia
I'm including this last as I'm not really sure if experiencing this counts as a side effect of lucid dreaming, but regardless I'm going to include it here.

Hypnagogia is what you experience as you fall into sleep. If you wait it out, you'll go straight into a dream, and if you open your eyes during it, you'll either wake up or go into sleep paralysis. I only ever experience this when I'm really tired but thinking hard about something. You'll start drifting off to sleep but if you're still aware of your thoughts you'll notice them become more and more vivid in your head. At first they'll be dim, but after a little bit your thoughts will become as vivid as sleep paralysis is. I say thoughts, but I've never been able to control the things I see in hypnagogia the way you can a dream or (to an extent) sleep paralysis. While looking more realistic the things that happen in hypnagogia are much less realistic than the things that happen in a dream, which always makes it fun to experience.

There aren't any other side effects lucid dreaming has given me. There are many more out there, but I wanted to stick with the things I've experienced personally. None of these things are really that bad, so don't start worrying about whether or not you should keep trying to lucid dream. They're all experiences in their own right.

Ruined buildings

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I just love the way buildings that had been destroyed to ruins look. Whether from a catastrophic event or just the course of time, seeing one fills me with awe at the beauty of nature re-absorbing what had once been theirs.

Great grey concrete monoliths utilizing the whole of what we have developed over thousands of years. Inexpensive buildings built fast and with massive scale. Hundreds of people had walked in and out of their doors, going about their lives, and yet now they're empty. What else was left in these buildings, determined to be worthless as well?

Buildings expected to be sturdy crushed to rubble, solid walls that fell from water, ceilings that stretch far into the sky, and yet fall to quakes - nature conquering all.

Lambda my beloved

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I love lambda calculus. These itty bitty λ can do so much with so little.

Lambda calculus was created by Alonzo Church in the 1930s as a way of writing out any computation in simple terms. All lambda functions are written as just λarg.body and functions are applied by writing the argument after the function like so: λx.x 10, which would be 10. If this sounds at all similar to LISP to you, that's because lambda calculus heavily influenced LISP (and computer science in general). If it doesn't remind you LISP, it'll start to sound more familiar once some abstraction is added.

When I wrote λx.x 10, it's important to note that 10 is just a symbol here. Lambda calculus by default lacks some of the things we take for granted, like numbers. Anything can be represented however if we chose a way to encode them. A common way of writing numbers is with the function λf.λx.x representing 0, λf.λx.f x being 1, λf.λx.f (f x) being 2, and so on. But we'll come back to that in a little bit.

λx.x is the simplest function you can write, and it's normally called the identity function, since it returns whatever is passed to it. Instead of writing out the function each time, it's common to give functions names in the notation name := function, so we could write identity := λx.x and then identity hello would return hello. A function can also be passed as a parameter, so identity identity would return identity. (identity identity) identity would first do (identity identity) returning identity and then the rightmost identity would be applied to the returned identity giving the final result of identity. This is all pretty pointless, but it's just to show how it works.

Logic
To start actually doing something, let's try doing some basic logic using lambdas. The function λa.λb.a will return a function which will return the argument originally passed to the function. This really just means a function with two arguments, a and b, so from now on I'll write functions like this in the notation λargs.body, so this would be λab.a. To try it out, λab.a 10 3 will return 10, the first argument. Alternatively to that, λab.b will return the second argument, so λab.b 10 3 will return 3. What does this have to do with logic you're wondering? Well, if we say true := λab.a and false := λab.b, writing something similar to a predicate in many programming languages (bool ? if_true : if_false), true 10 3 returns 10 and false 10 3 returns 3. To make this a bit more readable lets also say that if := λctf.ctf, the argument c being short for condition, t for if true, and f for if false.

Now we can write if true 42 24, which becomes
λctf.ctf true 42 24, which becomes
true 42 24, which becomes
λab.a 42 24, which becomes
42. Cool huh?

Before we move on let's add a few more basic logic functions, and, or, and not. and should accept two arguments and return true if both arguments are true. We can write this and := λab.if a b false, saying that if a is true, return b since it now determines the result of and, otherwise just return false. However since if a b false is equivalent to a b false, let's just write that. or should accept two arguments and return if either are true. This can be written or := λab.if a true b, and simplified to or := λab.a true b. What we're saying here is that if a is true, we just return true since one of the arguments is true. Otherwise, we just return the result of b since now that determines whether one of the arguments is true or not. Lastly, not should return true if given a false argument, and false if given a true argument. We can write this not := λa.if a false true, simplified to not := λa.a false true.

Now that we have all these functions we can write something like λab.if (or a b) (not a) true, which will return true as long as a is not. Still, it doesn't seem like much if we can only compare true and false, so let's add a bit more.

Numbers and arithmetic
I previously mentioned that numbers were represented (in Church encoding at least) as λfx.x, λfx.fx, λfx.f(fx), λfx.f(f(fx)), and so on. As you might have noticed, the number of f's in the body of the function is what determines the value of the number (check out base 1). This means to add one to a number, we just need to add an f to it. We can write a function like this as inc := λnfx.f(nfx), where inc stands for increase, n stands for number, and f and x correlate to how we write numbers (λfx.x). This might make no sense, but to demonstrate, let's say that 0 := λfx.x, and 1 := λfx.fx.

If we write inc 0 this becomes
λnfx.f(nfx) 0 which becomes (since 0 is passed to n)
λfx.f(0fx) which becomes
λfx.f(λfx.x fx) which becomes
λfx.fx which is equal to 1.

If we say 2 := λfx.f(fx) and write inc 1 this becomes
λnfx.f(nfx) 1 which becomes
λfx.f(1fx) which becomes
λfx.f(λfx.fx fx) which becomes
λfx.f(fx) which is equal to 2.

Addition is simply increasing a by one b times (or vice versa) where a + b. You might not have noticed, but our numbers aren't just numbers, they are useful functions as well. If we try applying identity to f and some symbol like xylophone to x in the function 2, this will result in the expression 2 identity xylophone, which expands to
λfx.f(fx) identity xylophone which becomes
identity(identity xylophone) which means identity will be applied to xylophone twice.

This means that a number n used as a function in our encoding will result in the second parameter being applied to the first parameter n times. That means to write an addition function, we just need to write + := λab.a inc b. Now if we write
+ 2 3 where 3 := λfx.f(f(fx)), the expression will expand to
λab.a inc b 2 3 which becomes
2 inc 3 which becomes
λfx.f(fx) inc 3 which becomes
inc(inc 3), and if you want you can work out inc increasing 3 by adding f's, but since we know that's what'll happen I'll skip past the evaluation and just say that inc(inc 3) will increase 3 twice resulting in 5, where 5 := λfx.f(f(f(f(fx)))).

Multiplication is simply repeating a number a b times, where a * b. This can also be thought as adding a to 0 b times. We can write this as * := λab.a (+ b) 0. In this function (+ b) is one argument and 0 is the other, and we can think of (+ b) as its own function that increments an argument by whatever b was. There are some simpler ways to write multiplication functions in lambda calculus, but they're less intuitive in my option so we'll stick with this. To try it out, let's write
* 2 3 (I'm going to leave out "which becomes" from now on)
λab.a (+ b) 0 2 3
2 (+ 3) 0
λfx.f(fx) (+ 3) 0
(+ 3) (+ 3 0)
+ 3 3
6, where 6 := λfx.f(f(f(f(f(fx))))) (tell me if I missed a parenthesis).

Subtraction is decrementing a by one b times where a - b. That will be very similar to our + function, but first we need a function to decrease a number by one. A decrease function will have to remove one f from a number. On top of that, since we have no way to represent negative numbers (there are ways, we just currently aren't using one), what should we do if someone tries to decrement 0? We'll just say that if they try to do that, we'll return 0. Before diving into the horrors of subtraction, let's quickly make a function to check if a number is 0. Since number n applies x to f n times, 0 will never run f and simply return x. So if we apply two arguments to a number, a function that accepts a parameter and returns true to f, and false to x, we will receive false if the number is 0 and true otherwise. We can now turn this into a function: zero? := λn.n (λx.true) false.

Now, let's make a function to remove one f from a number. The only issue is, we don't really have any way to do that, so instead of trying to remove an f, let's try adding an f to 0 n - 1 times. We can do that by writing the function dec := λnfx.n (λgh.h(gf)) (λu.x) identity. dec stands for decrement, and n f and x correspond to their values in the inc function. The part (λgh.h(gf)) is for incrementing the number we're creating by 1. We apply it to n along with (λu.x), and (λu.x) when applied to (λgh.h(gf)) will end up wasting one iteration. At the end identity will be applied to what's left, turning it into a number. Note that 0 (0 := λfx.x == λf.identity). We'll end up with a number that was incremented n - 1 times.
dec 3
λnfx.n (λgh.h(gf)) (λu.x) identity 3
λfx.3 (λgh.h(gf)) (λu.x) identity
λfx.λab.a(a(ab)) (λgh.h(gf)) (λu.x) identity (since there were now two functions with an arguments named f and x, I renamed the ones in the number to a and b)
λfx.(λgh.h(g)) ((λgh.h(gf)) ((λgh.h(gf)) (λu.x))) identity
λfx.(λgh.h(g)) ((λgh.h(gf)) (λh.h((λu.x)f))) identity
λfx.(λgh.h(g)) (λh.h((λi.i((λu.x)f))f)) identity (I changed the h to i as double again)
λfx.(λk.k((λh.h((λi.i((λu.x)f))f))f)) identity
λfx.identity((λh.h((λi.i((λu.x)f))f))f)
λfx.((λh.h((λi.i((λu.x)f))f))f)
λfx.((λh.h((λi.i(x))f))f)
λfx.(f((λi.i(x))f))
λfx.(f(f(x)))
λfx.f(fx)

Phew. That was a lot of work, but the result is 2, which we expected. To make subtraction we just have to do - := λab.b dec a.

Lastly for arithmetic is division, but division is a bit more complicated, so we'll come back to it after checking out our next topic:

Comparisons
Currently we have no way of knowing if 3 > 2, or if 12 - 3 < 1, or even if 2 = 2.

Let's first make a less-than-or-equal-to function. This might seem like a strange first step to take, but it's easy using our zero? function we made earlier. Given two parameters, we should subtract the second parameter from the first. If the result is zero (since our numbers never go under zero) that means the first parameter is either less than or equal to the first. We write that as <= := λab.zero? (- a b). The opposite of <= would be >, so we can say > := λab.not (<= a b)

We can also make a greater-than-or-equal-to function similarly, by simply switching around a and b when subtracting: >= := λab.zero? (- b a). And since the opposite of >= is < we can say < := λab.not (>= a b).

Now that we have functions for comparing if something is bigger or smaller, we can check if two numbers are equal if they fulfil both >= and <=. So we can say = := λab.and (>= a b) (<= a b). Let's now finish up arithmetic.

Division and Recursion
To divide two numbers we have to count how many times we can subtract one number from the other. In order to do this, we'll have to write a recursive function. Recursion deserves a whole other article, but it basically just means that we're going to be calling our function from inside our function. What'd we like to do is write something like / := λab.if (< a b) 0 (inc (/ (- a b) b)), where we would subtract b from a until a < b and return the amount of times that happened. Unfortunately however this wouldn't work, as we would end up expanding / infinitely as (- a b) is evaluated after /.

The fix for this is writing a second function with the bulk of the function in one and giving it a parameter for which another function will pass that function to itself. This will stop it from being endlessly evaluated. For division, let's make one function, divhelper := λrab.if (< a b) 0 (inc (r (- a b) b r)) where r stands for reference and will be itself. Now we can make our division function / := λab.divhelper divhelper a b. My understanding of creating recursive functions in lambda calculus is quite thin, so I can't explain it well. I recommend doing more research on it yourself if you are interested.

Pairs
I mentioned at the start how LISP took a great deal of influence from lambda calculus. This is probably most noticeable from the fact that functions in LISP are created using the lambda keyword. Another thing LISP shares with lambda calculus however is pairs.

A pair is two connected values. We should be able to retrieve either value in the pair. We should also want to chain together pairs in order to make lists. Also, since we were just talking about LISP, and its staple is lists (ListProcessing) we'll use some LISP terminology for our functions.

To create a pair, we will make a cons function, short for construct. All that's needed for this is cons := λhtf.fht, where h stands for head, t stands for tail, and f stands for function. If we do cons 3 5 we will be returned the function λf.f 3 5. Remember how our true and false functions return the first and second argument applied to them respectively? We can use these for our pairs as well. For example
λf.f 3 5 true
true 3 5
3

To make this more intuitive, let's say car := λp.p true and cdr := λp.p false. If you don't know any LISP, then this is probably even less intuitive than before, but car stands for "contents of the address register" and cdr stands for "contents of the decrement register". I doubt that helps much, but just know car will get the first element, and cdr will get the second.

To make a list, we simply have to chain together pairs, like so: pair 1 (pair 2 (pair 3 4)). This will create something looking like this (1 (2 (3 4))). To get the third element in a list like this, we would first apply cdr to it twice and then car. We can write a function to do that for us: nth: λpi.car (i cdr p). Lets assign the list we made earlier to a variable: list := pair 1 (pair 2 (pair 3 4)) and try out our nth function on it:
nth list 2
λpi.car (i cdr p) list 2
car (2 cdr list)
car λfx.f(fx) cdr list
car cdr(cdr list)
3

To finish this off, here are a few more lambda-focused things I've stumbled upon. Enjoy

untitled lambda calculus writing system Make your functions look like spells
Lambda Calculus Calculator Can evaluate lambda calculus expressions for you. Only supports pure syntax.
Lambda calculus - Wikipedia Just the Wikipedia page on it, but contains quite a bit of good info.
A short introduction to the Lambda Calculus

How to lucid dream

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A lot of people ask how to lucid dream, and a lot of people give radically different answers. While I doubt it really matters which method you do, here's my opinion thrown into the bunch.

Awareness
The best way to become more aware in your dreams and realize you're dreaming, is to become more aware in your waking life as well. While I'm not Buddhist I do heavily recommend Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's book The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep if you want to get better at that. A quick google search of the book leads to the top result being a pdf of it. Still do buy it if you find it helpful however.

If you're able to still go asleep afterwards, try drinking a cup of tea or coffee - or any other caffeinated beverage - as it will make you more awake in your dreams. Plus, coffee tastes delicious.

When walking around, try noticing your surroundings. Is the air a bit chillier today? How does the ground feel pressed against the soles of your shoes? Paying attention to everything would of course be best, but as unfortunately that's impossible. Try to lend most of your attention to the appearance of writing, the look of your hands, shape of buildings, and the identities of people around you. A big tip off that you might be dreaming is seeing someone you haven't in a while. Being aware also overlaps with another useful tool:

Reality checks
Reality checks are quick ways of telling if you're dreaming. There are tons of methods out there, and whether a method will work or not depends purely on the performer, so try doing a lot of methods and stick with what works for you. My personal favorite is counting the number of fingers on my hand, as for some reason that seems to be very difficult for my brain to keep track of.

Try doing reality checks every once in a while and whenever you notice anything unusual going on. If you suddenly think you may be dreaming, a reality check wont be necessary to be lucid; but do still do it as you could just be experiencing derealization. That did just give me the idea that I think I'll write an article on some side effects that come up from lucid dreaming. I'll link it here once I write it.

Keep in mind that reality checks that used to work for you could stop working at any moment, so they're not infallible. I used to be fond of the sticking-thumb-through-palm method until it stopped working whilst my surroundings were flashing colors, so if one reality check fails, try a few more.

Screwing up your sleep
While you'll pay for it in the morning, something that always works for me is changing my sleep up as much as I can.

Try sleeping in a different place, in a different position, facing a different angle, at a different time, with a different level of sound and light, in an uncomfortable temperature. The thing that works best for me is waking up multiple times in the middle of the night. This ties into awareness, as if you wake up and fall back to sleep fast enough, your sleep cycle will jump off where it left off, but you'll be more aware since you had just been awake. Waking up and going back to sleep when you were just dreaming is best, and while it's different for everyone I think it normally peaks about three hours before you wake up. While all this is useful, the thing that will help the most is:

Repetition
The first time lucid dreaming is the hardest, and with each successive time it gets easier. Having your first lucid dream is like finally breaking a small hole in a massive dam. Before you know it you wont have to try for a sip and the water will drown you.

I don't really have anything else to say, but just keep trying and you'll get one eventually. Don't get your hopes up too much however, as while it is fun, they are still the same dreams you've had your entire life, just a bit more interesting.