===========
 Mechanics
===========

Looks like these posts turn into a periodical with columns, and with a
"cover story" referenced from the title, for the lack of a
cover. Maybe I will try to get back to per-topic posts, at least as an
experiment, but not this time, since once again I have collected minor
personal news, notes, and musings for multiple "columns". Actually I
am finding it useful to wait a little before writing them all down, so
that I filter out the ones that seem less significant.


Oppression
==========

Starting with a less fun subject, as before. Hopefully someday I will
look back at these and appreciate how nice it is that this persistent
source of both practical issues and worries about the future is not
around anymore.

RKN is about to start tracking personal censorship circumvention tool
usage by collecting more information from ISPs, and to cripple
Internet access more efficiently. One of the ISPs suddenly recalled
the secrecy of correspondence, but RKN said that it is fine to share
users' data with them, and Rostelecom chimed in, as usual declaring
that they are happy and eager to cooperate with RKN. Such news still
make me to briefly wonder how all the involved people are fine with
being this bad to others, but of course there are very different world
views, as well as a variety of justifications people use even for
explicit crimes, including violent ones. Then one may blame the system
for creating such conditions, and perhaps judge systems as being good
or bad depending on how well they fit most people. Though that is akin
to blaming a system for producing criminals, rather than blaming
individuals: the latter is needed for the system's self-correction,
the former -- for its improvement or replacement. But there is no
opportunity for any of that in sight now.

Additionally, it looks like Trump and Musk intend to defund--among
many others--Radio Liberty, which would be unfortunate: I planned to
listen to that (the shortwave radio version) if all the other
remaining channels will be blocked eventually. It is not the best news
agency, but better than the local state propaganda, which is not
simply untruthful at this point, but obscene, with standards lower
than those of almost all the personal blogs I see. But that is just
one of the smaller disturbances caused by Trump recently; quite a few
people and countries are affected more.

History books remind that these are not the worst years of the past
century to live here, since they can be compared favorably with the
years of famines and mass repressions. Besides, computers with
Internet connection simply did not exist at first, and later they were
not available, or were not widely available. And censorship was
enforced for most of the century. Though it does not make the current
situation better, and shows that there is a way for things to keep
worsening. The potential for worsening is also demonstrated by
contemporary places like North Korea. In the past it was common to
view China as such a place, but possibly we have already reached its
censorship, mass surveillance, and general oppression levels.


Work
====

Ended up hiring a junior developer unfamiliar with Haskell, to work on
Python projects. I am trying to be helpful, but not to distract him,
not to do the tasks myself (to let him learn) beyond clarifying the
requirements, since that must be particularly tricky to do for someone
unfamiliar with the system. Not to impose the tools or solutions I
would use, and generally things that are controversial or can be
viewed as preferences, but also to ensure that a mess is not
made. Tricky to balance between those, and to draw a line between good
practices and personal views or preferences.

Investigated Python packaging for Debian, since we are going to have
those Python programs installed. Expected it to be better than for
Haskell, or at least better documented, since the language is so
popular, but it is not: most of its native tooling aims virtual
environments, without proper integration with the host system. As was
suggested in <https://hachyderm.io/@defanor/114027071523127409>, I
have peeked into existing packages from system repositories, and
applied the same methods, which worked. While the pipx-based
installation method into a venv in /opt/, but with an executable in
/usr/local/bin/, and using as many system packages as possible, looks
like an okay backup option. Still, it is a shame that the package
management is in such a state, even in relatively good cases.


Computing assistance
====================

Speaking of the poor state of computing, I tried to teach some casual
users to transfer files between smartphones, and that is quite a pain:
Android's "quick share" does not work half the time, unclear why. File
transfers over the Internet are still difficult in general, without a
special setup and tools (public IP addresses, external servers,
etc). I knew that the support for USB flash drives is poor on Android,
but at least exfat-formatted single-partition ones are handled, yet
recently learned that Android's default file manager does not see them
without a restart, which is confusing for users who can barely manage
to copy files when things do work predictably.

Basically, I was reminded how bad computing experience is for casual
users, who are not particularly interested in computing. There are
warts even when using advanced tools and being quite experienced, and
one may imagine that the tools for casual users are more polished, but
it does not seem to be the case. They just give up on using those
sooner, or do not try it in the first place, and rely on practices
such as taking pictures of displays when pictures or texts need to be
transferred.


Food
====

Tried dal tadka for the first time, as planned to for a while. It is
an Indian lentil dish, a fairly simple one, with the recipe resembling
pasta dishes: lentils are boiled with turmeric, separately onions and
spices are fried in oil (ghee), then they are combined. It is fine and
relatively protein-rich, though probably comparable in protein content
to pasta with a bit of egg or meat.

Also tried microwaved scrambled eggs for the first time. It works, and
seems quite practical, taking very little time, and producing just a
single bowl to clean. Eggs managed to stick to the ceramic bowl more
than I expected, but not as badly as they do to a stainless steel
frying pan.


Sleep
=====

Cannot say that my sleep is particularly good, but at least I am
managing to fall asleep relatively quickly once again. I guess the
important (and sometimes hard) part is to will to fall asleep instead
of thinking, and to focus on not thinking. Basically meditating myself
to sleep again, which does work.


Pull-ups
========

Failed to do one of the two sets of 16 pull-ups one day, decided to
make up for it by an additional set. Then failed both daily sets,
decided to make up for that with two additional sets (of 14-15
pull-ups). Ended up failing those regular sets and doing additional
ones for a few days, but wondered whether I am just not managing to
recover because of the added ones. Then one day only did the usual two
sets, and on the following days it was easy to do the regular two
16-repetition sets.

Later, I hurried to do the pull-ups before breakfast (less than half
an hour after getting up), noticed that I am losing the grip on the
16th, and once again failed those. But previously noticed that waiting
for the times when it is easier to do more repetitions alters the
schedule notably. Did two more sets on that day, of 16; the next day
waited more before the first set, did 16, but then just 15 in the
second set, and did the third set of 16. Then went back to two daily
sets of 16.

Now I am considering adding another daily set, but aiming fewer
repetitions in the first morning set. Or could try getting up earlier,
and then being more capable to do that one in the morning routine,
without delaying it. Or could simply rearrange the exercising
schedule, but I wanted to have a set of pull-ups in the morning.


Reading
=======

I have read Terry Pratchett's "The Truth", another nice book in the
series, the industrial revolution subseries. Once again technologies
are nicely incorporated there. It made me to note that there are the
usual sad or scary news, while the events described in history books
are less scary, being more distant, and those in good fictional works
also seem to describe the same kinds of events, but abstracted out
(moved into a fictional setting), and lighthearted in this case, but
still preserving and exposing the tendencies.

In contrast, I decided to read Ayn Rand's "Anthem", to finally check
out her writings. Perhaps the only good thing about it is that it is
short. It is one of the close rewrites of Zamyatin's "We", but unlike
the more famous Orwell's "1984", which takes the plot, adds references
to the actual criticism and events that happened after "We" was
published, and generally is decently written, "Anthem" turns it into a
naive pulp fiction. All that is added is badly unrealistic, including
technology-related bits, resembling a kid's fantasy. Well, the other
adjustments are made in a similar way. Possibly her other books are
not this bad, but there are plenty of things to read that I expect to
be better.

Also going through the beej's new git guide,
<https://beej.us/guide/bggit/>. As with his other guides, the subject
itself is nothing exotic, and generally familiar to many people, but
often there are still little things to learn by going through such a
guide. And beej's guides are nicely written.


Mechanics
=========

I have finally finished the part on classical mechanics from the
"University Physics with Modern Physics" (15th edition) textbook. It
took about a year, the solutions to odd-numbered problems took about
18.5 thousand lines, 565 thousand characters, 39 SVG sketches. A
little LaTeX and a little Python, but mostly plain text, in
per-chapter org-mode files.

The rest of the book would take 2 or 3 more years at this rate, and I
plan to take a break to spend spare time on other things, but aiming
to eventually work through the remaining parts as well. The
book--including its minor characters occasionally featured in the
problems--is nice, physics studies are enjoyable. understanding a
little better how the physical world around us works is satisfying.

I sent the composed errata file to the author, and archived my
solutions into <../files/university-physics-solutions.tgz>: possibly
that will be useful for others to peek into the solutions themselves,
or to consider such a format for their written solutions.

If you have a surplus of spare time, or have some time filled with
activities you would rather cut down on (which may include reading the
news, playing games, watching TV shows, using social media; although
all those can also be enjoyable, and not inherently worse), I can
suggest physics studies as one of the nicer options to fill that time
with. Well, pretty much any subject's studies can be interesting and
rewarding, as well as useful, and any one of multiple areas can easily
take a lifetime to study beyond the basics, but this is a major one,
and the one I have on my mind currently.


----

:Date: 2025-03-03