================================= Mill, Hume, handstand, blackout ================================= The life proceeds as usual: more of reading and physical exercises, of the locally unfolding disaster, and various other events. Philosophy ========== I finished reading OpenStax's "Introduction to Philosophy", which looks like a fine textbook. Many ideas are crammed, only briefly mentioned there, but it is an introductory book, and goes for breadth rather than depth. Spotted quite a few typos and some inaccuracies, but submitted those to the online errata, and apparently those are going to be corrected. Then I read John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". It advocates for the freedoms of thought, speech, and related ones, diversity, individualism. While the arguments look good to me, it is harder to judge them when you mostly agree with the conclusions already, and possibly I do agree with the conclusions because those are embedded into the culture I grew up in. Apparently his views are more radical than the currently prevailing ones though, extending those freedoms to potentially harmful speech (such as encouragement of violence, medical disinformation, some kinds of political propaganda), but observing how an increasing number of topics is outlawed around here under that guise, and simply based on the arguments for it, I am inclined to agree with him. There are some arguable bits and examples, and a certain religious standpoint is assumed, but overall it is a nice essay. Afterwards, David Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding": on epistemology, focusing on empiricism, considering skepticism, promoting compatibilism. Seems impressive for the 18th century, without the modern neuroscience to lean on. Following the recent spotting of more famous quotes in works that precede them, I noticed the "Of miracles" chapter to be quite similar to "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (Carl Sagan), while "Of a particular providence and of a future state" reminded me of "the purpose of a system is what it does" (Stafford Beer), although it is more about not taking an arbitrary hypothesis for the reality. There are many references to this book around, so it was somewhat familiar already; as with Mill and quite a few others, the ideas seem to hang around, making them hard to miss even without reading it. Those reminded me of my old musings about making a game, some kind of a quest, with different bits of evidence equally plausibly leading to a few different conclusions. Supposedly a player would attempt to form some picture (relying on coherentism), and likely would cling to the evidence spotted earlier in the process, at which point the evidence supporting different options may be added. Now I also wonder whether there are some studies like that, attempting to measure how much people would cling to the versions they form initially. Physical exercises ================== Between those philosophy books, I skimmed "Convict Conditioning" by Paul Wade. It describes a calisthenics program consisting of six exercises with their progressions and variations, and with minimal equipment: a place to hang from (such as a horizontal bar), a bench or something of a similar height, such as a bed, and a couple of objects sized like basketball and baseball balls. It does not go into as much detail or present as many exercise options as "Overcoming Gravity" does, and only mentions stretching briefly, but includes the common suggestions on exercises. The program is similar to what I do now, though it does not include planks, and includes bridges instead. Overall, it looks (to a beginner such as myself) like a simple and practical program to follow. Now I practice wall handstands: the kind where you kick yourself up, rather than walk up, so the back is against the wall. Wanted to try those for a while, but it seemed dangerous, so kept delaying it: only attempted it twice before, and on the third attempt it worked, with months separating the attempts. Holding those daily, for about 20 seconds, but probably will incorporate them into the workouts soon. Incorporated bridges from "Convict Conditioning". Probably I try to do too many exercises within a workout, but unsure if I should exclude some, and/or do different ones on different days, in addition to splitting them this summer into three workout days with strength training, and four cardio routine or walking days. Speaking of walks, I do not walk much these days: it is not muddy yet, but chilly, and not as nice even in parks, which are about as gray as everything else. Possibly it will be a little better with the snow, though it will be muddy then. Progressing a little with L-sit hold (up to 30 seconds on parallettes, 15 seconds on the floor), L-sit pull-ups (3 sets of 8). The "Convict Conditioning" program replaces all those with hanging leg raises, which I also do, but unsure whether I should abandon these other exercises in that case. I rather enjoy those combined and slightly more complex movements, like L-sit pull-ups, or L-sit hold on parallettes transitioning into a tuck planche and back. Blackout and work ================= I have experienced an Internet blackout: for a day TCP connections to large foreign subnets lasted for the first 16 or so KB, following which the packets were dropped by TSPU. Learned that this was going on for days by the time I was affected, that it happens in regions since the summer, similar to the Internet blackouts affecting mobile network operators alone. I have only found mentions of that on a blocked forum dedicated to Internet censorship, while regular news websites, even blocked ones, were silent, as if nobody noticed. Much seems to happen like that: quite silently, even though it does seem significant to some. That also was a reminder that such things are hard to plan for: I expected that some censorship circumvention tools and resources will work for a time after blocking of more prominent ones, and vaguely planned for such a scenario, but this simply cut most things at once, without targeting. Unclear whether it was intentional or not, and at the time it was unknown whether it is temporary. Apart from that, RKN reported 1.2 million resources blocked in the first 10 months of 2025, and 258 VPN services, with the growing block rate. The background news are matching: first prosecutions for certain online searches, continued ones for "discrediting the army", suppression of Halloween events ("offending religious feelings", as well as Satanism and LGBTQ "extremist movements"); along with existing taxes rising, a new one is introduced, on imported devices. And everything else keeps going on. At work, the security theater develops; proprietary VPN equipment is going to be used to turn the system into a mostly-closed-circuit one, while servers and workstations are required to have proprietary and certified antivirus software. Unsure how I will connect to the main server myself, apart from visiting the office each time when I need to. Setting odd black boxes between components of the critical infrastructure looks unwise, similarly to the TSPU black boxes, but so does the rest of it. Then there is a proprietary graphical front end to OpenSCAP, which is supposedly used for system attestation; I took the OVAL database from it, and scanned a system with OpenSCAP itself, but noticed that it only included vulnerable package versions with CVEs from about 10 months ago or older. And there is the related bureaucratic business (reading and editing a bunch of security compliance documents; written in a weird language, full of repetition, and describing silly "security" practices that look rather like rituals), adding to the busy work. Although the usual work also occasionally leads to unused or abandoned projects, or consists of working around accidental complexity created by others, so it is not that different. I checked on my indeed.com account, even though the job openings I saw so far were not encouraging. As with LinkedIn, found myself locked out of the account, with a request for "verification" by providing and confirming a phone number, but not a local one. Apparently I will have to try direct applications, if I will attempt to look for a new job more seriously and actively. Though the more I look at vacancies, read others' stories on job search, and unsuccessfully attempt to use the employment websites these days, the harder it seems to find a decent job in IT (either programming or administration) abroad. The in-demand technologies also keep looking awkward: the hyped ones of uncertain utility (as LLMs currently, which are not even available for trying out in the suggested--supposedly "actually good"--ways without geoblock circumvention and payments, and with the international payments not available without high markups and shady services; similar issues arise with other online services, common "cloud" ones, though those are also blocked locally), or simply the ones I do not find quite useful and would not use by choice, especially for personal and hobby projects. On a less sad work-related subject, I had to adjust a legacy Python project developed by others to run on a newer system. It turned out to consist of seven services, using files, MongoDB, and RabbitMQ for communication between them, as well as a bunch of other unnecessary dependencies, while it is mostly a wrapper around a third-party program, to access it via an HTTP-based API; pretty sure that MongoDB is unnecessary, RabbitMQ and separate processes could be replaced with a single process and function calls, persistent files can be replaced with temporary ones. Simultaneously, advised a new Python programmer against use of Kafka, ClickHouse, splitting of a program into multiple processes to run on multiple servers, and a few more practices like that for his project, which also appears rather small, and not to require any of that. One may lament the tendency to overcomplicate software, but the interest to try new technologies and approaches is understandable and potentially useful; inefficiencies are present, but compared to all the hurriedly implemented and unused or abandoned projects, however simple and efficient, or to the security theater and similar useless or harmful activities, mere inefficiency is not that bad, especially if one learns something from it. Other news ========== - Tried nachos: store-bought tortilla chips, chili con carne (olive oil, onions, leek, ramiro peppers, eggplants, garlic, minced beef, kidney beans in chili sauce, tomatoes, toasted cumin and black pepper, salt, paprika, cayenne pepper, dried dill, cocoa powder, brown sugar), topped with grated cheddar cheese and finely diced ripe avocado. Chili is good on its own, but complete nachos are even better: messier, but more like a feast. - Had a lit cigarette butt landing centimeters away from me, thrown out of an apartment building's window, overshadowing many daily instances of people being inconsiderate, including noisy (unmuffled) motorcycles, loud music from cars and cafes, many light electric vehicles on sidewalks, people rushing into train cars before letting others out. It is hard to believe that they do not see how it inconveniences or endangers others, although people can be quite oblivious. Those are insignificant, compared to crime or the inconveniences and dangers imposed by some governments, and maybe comparable to those coming from some corporations, yet it adds to the feeling that those are coming from too many directions. All the while virtually everyone contributes at least a little towards messing up the common environment, but it is hard to care about that as well. - I went trick-or-treating in the Discworld MUD this Halloween, collected a few treats. Somehow many people in an online game are too busy with running game jobs or hunting, reluctant to engage in light roleplaying and fun activities like that, but it is nice when some do play along. - Noticed that a hosting company unexpectedly increased the price for an active VPS almost thrice, as well as the minimal transfer sums. Continued using it though, since it is still quite cheap, the choice is rather limited at this time and place, and I already know that they do provide a service. If they did not, I certainly would not count on local customer protections to help, and transfers themselves may endanger the sender with prosecution these days, depending on where they end up. - Noticed that I have collected too many household chores that have to be sorted out. Among those, in addition to the usual kinds of maintenance, there are unexpected annoyances such as small birds frequenting and damaging a mosquito net now. - Proper sleep is challenging lately: spending quite a bit of time trying to fall asleep, then not sleeping enough, and having naps. ---- :Date: 2025-11-11