Why Modern Art Is So Awful

This is a restored old article from my site years ago. Not exactly sure when I wrote it, but it was between 2010 and 2012.

Historically, although this past seems long forgotten, artists were beloved founts of creativity in the eyes of the people. Their works, albeit not to everyone’s liking, demonstrated human and natural beauty and were loadedwith accessible and intended symbolism with pride and talent. There was a fairly obvious point in time, perhaps at the turn of the twentieth century when this changed for worse. Art became perceived as elite and snobbish. Public taste for art seemed to sour nigh instantaneously, manifesting itself in declines in museum and gallery attendance along with art’s new prestigious place behind the cold shoulder of those who lacked the “special training” necessary to appreciate it. The problem was not that an industrious populace which was becoming more enraveled in material developments had relinquished their “useless” interest in art, but art itself, in a way, simply betrayed the modern man.

Modern art is indeed genuinely awful and it has only recently become that way. Still modern developments in technology and culture do indeed bear important geneses of this occurrence.

Although some would construe art as an entirely magical process of self-expression, art does indeed serve several important utilitarian purposes. For the artist, it highlights his creativity and insight and bolsters his social standing; for the consumers of art, it brings visual or aural pleasure, and it also represents reality in a visual medium. Art has been used through out the ages to adorn the simple tools of daily life, from silverware to weaponry and from baskets and buildings. Contemporary developments in technology have thrown several quite interesting changes into these purposes.

Years before, painters might painstakingly dedicate hours on end to producing a mural or simple portrait which could easily be appreciated for the skill of the craft. A sculptor might as well chisel away for an equivalent time on an idiosyncratic sculpture, or with much tedious concentration, build identical sets of beautiful clay- or glass-works.

Yet the mighty engines of industrial production and technology melted away quite a bit of this novelty. Consumers could then buy cheaper and more esthetically pleasing jars, plates, nick-nacks and decorations which were products of the newly mechanized assembly line. The simple yet decisive invention of the color photograph served as a functional coup de grâce for the niche that the more laborious method of hand painting depictions of scenery had formerly filled.

Thus modern artists, many of which with feelings of effective emasculation, had been outdone by their craft. Ingenious yet soulless machines suddenly seemed to have become superior founts of creativity even with humans’ advantage of actually having their hands of the levers and in all the creativeprogramming.

The consequent reaction in the modern schools of art was to rebel against the beauty and meaning which had and remain to be fundamental to artistic production. Instead of gratifying depictions of humankind or natural wonder, art took to depicting nonsensical scenes with objectively ugly and poorly drawn figures. So dawned the much maligned age of the that-painting-looks-like-the-asshole-just-threw-paint-randomly-on-the-canvas models.

Artists seem to be entirely ignorant of this systemic change. They oft recoil with surprise when common people mock art in public and refuse to dole out cash for the “starving artist.” There seems to be a general consensus amongart critics that the quality of art has not exacerbated at all, rather people have simply changed their minds without due cause.

At that artists have unfortunately come to embrace their lack of popularity. In their ideas, the public, who inexplicably demands that art be something artistic, simply lacks the capacity to evaluate the new outcomes of the purposefully deficient artistic production of the day. All manner of pretension is famously strewn about the floors of museums as “professional” art critics patter on about the symbolic meanings of deliberately nonsensical work. Beauty, utility, consistency, symmetry, meaning and enjoyment are often construed as undesirables in art as the elite of the art community think of anything shining, blight and beautiful as bourgeois, vulgar and passé. This sentiment has spread out of visual arts awell; in combat with increasingly precise and gorgeous electronically generated music, bands and individual music artists have taken to creating rhythm-less, tone-deaf, or low-fi music which ‘ironically’ form the basis of contemporary hipster culture.

With the origins of snob art having been noted, (these origins in the perceived “obsolescence” of true fine art due to technological advancement), one might erroneously jump to the conclusion that man-made art is either a thing of the past or the “modern” style of non-art is here to stay. It’s nonsense.

If anything, the competition of technology has forced the most talented to produce further outstanding works by jumping greater lengths of creativity and mystery. The area of abstract art, which although has to some degree been marred by the unfortunate revolution against beauty, still supports various artists constantly developing the standard of the field. It indeed may seem like photographs thoroughly excel in landscape shots, but that hasn’t prevented many from expanded into space-scapes and scenes which although may never appear in nature, can temper human love of landscape in tremendous ways. Indeed in the days of Bob Ross, the joy of painting is one of the artistic journey and expression, not even of the finished result, regardless of how appealing it may be.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-modern-art-is-so-awful/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-modern-art-is-so-awful/

Why People Do or Do Not Leave Religion

Richard Dawkins arguably gave religion a far better explanation and dissection in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene than he ever did in The God Delusion. The Selfish Gene may lack the polemical nature and the specifics of his recent religious commentary, but it nails on the head the key behind religious belief and apostasy. This of course the book where he coined the term "meme" and memetic evolution, and he employs religion as one of his most common examples of these both.

Naturally it's not only true that religion functions as a bit of cultural heritage, but as Dawkins explains, memes have a tendency to link themselves to together, sometimes prolonging their lifespans by association.

Building off that, if we say that the concept of a creator god is one meme, it should be obvious that religion is the framework that links that meme with others: a meme that expounds on what behaviors are permissible, a meme of a specific creation mythology, a meme for eschatology, a meme for proper family behavior and thousands of others. Thus in a way, religion is not so much a set belief that can easily be switch on and off, but abandoning the concept of god can easily undermine foundational moral and social beliefs as well. To change one's religion is to alter essential one's entire memeplex, with a desperate need to replace not only factual beliefs, but social understanding.

In a more personal way, if someone becomes an apostate, they would lose a lot of the religion-specific justification for their family life, their moral persuasions and likely even their politics. Religion is so powerful over people's lives because it connects with so much of the foundations of their everyday interactions, perhaps not practically, but ideologically, and it aids in putting human action into context given the wide worldview attached to religion.

Although it sounds practically Kuhnian, discussions on religions are not so much mediated by the facts, but by the immense ideological threat non-belief poses to one whose life relies heavily on religious ideology. Both the religious and non-religious know what side is "right" before they approach any issue, and this is mostly due to religion's memetic ubiquity.

This should also give us insight into what conditions make religious people more likely to abandon their faith. Convincing counter-apologetic arguments are nearly certainly a prerequisite, but seem obviously insufficient alone. Instead, people are more likely to leave their faith if religion's other memetic counterparts have been compromised. That is, if they lack a religious family or friends, if they don't participate in any religious services and if they don't invoke religion to justify moral or political actions, they'll probably be able to disbelieve in God with greater facility. A person in these situations frankly wouldn't be too troubled by the idea of a godless universe.

Religious people are variously dispersed between having religious beliefs that interlock with every other belief or meme of theirs and having religion as a tenuous and localized meme that could be switched on and off on demand. A lot of the difference between fundamentalist and liberal Christians or between moderate and extremist Muslims can be accounted for by how much of the rest of their beliefs are determined or influenced by the meme network of religion. Fundamentalists and extremists view religion as fundamental to understanding anything in the world, thus in their own minds would be ludicrous and immoral not to let religion guide them in all political and social affairs. On the other hands, believers who only have a tiny and insular memetic network for religion are likely the ones to want to keep religion separate from politics and their interactions with their friends.

Everybody's error has been to understand religion as one or a set of beliefs. It is incredibly rare or likely non-occurring for a person of fervorous religious disposition to hear one or two off-the-cuff arguments against God's existence and then on the spot relinquish their religion. It's an issue of intellectual economy and the ideological support of other associated memes. Perhaps an argument can cause some questioning about the existence or justice of God, but at the same time it would be unlikely for a believer to toss out the God meme and every meme associated with it, as to them, the testimony of their family, church life and moral convictions have not been rebutted and thus are supposed to constitute evidence confirming their ideology. Of course in a way, religion survives because the memes of religion have taken the memes of morality and social cohesion as hostages, and for the religious, losing the former means losing the latter.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-people-leave-religion/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-people-leave-religion/

"I Have Nothing to Hide" and Comments on Totalitarianism

This is an article recovered from my old site. The date must be around 2012 or shortly after.

About forty years have passed since an American president, in an as-of-then unprecedented act resigned from office. It might be too much of an exaggeration to say that the Watergate Scandal singularly fomented a newly sardonic and cynical attitude in the United States, but the public has certainly moved in that direction. The illegal break-in and wiretapping at the Watergate Hotel subjected only several people to constitutional violations, but it was met with public outrage that would come to destroy the otherwise highly popular and successful presidency of Richard Nixon (who really was only indirectly involved), whose very name to this day embodies corruption in the American psyche. Yet in our times, when it has been casually revealed that the American government has been systematically wiretapping and cataloging information on millions of Americans, most citizens respond with despondency, apathy and an impotent and uncreative cynicism.

More importantly the very issue reveals precisely how unimportant constitutional limitations are to the public in the first place. I wasn’t my intention to either induce controversy or promote conspiracy theories in using the word “totalitarianism” in the title of this essay, but in a literal sense, the United States, and most other modern democracies, have literally become totalitarian. A totalitarian state is simply one in which there is no theoretical or practical distinction made between areas that are legitimate grounds for government action and what are not.

In our society, we refuse to place any area of life, whether driving, eating, hiring, charity or privacy beyond the purview of government: this is literally totalitarian. The American government may be properly called happy, democratic, caring and genuinely concerned about the public’s interest, but its lack of practical constitutional restraints literally makes it a totalitarian state. We may not have laws that regulate how long we can spend on the internet or drive or how much we can eat (except in New York), but no one would dare suggest that the demos and the state don’t have their divine right to regulate just that. Everything good must be mandatory; everything bad must be illegal.

Of course the public’s reflex is to say that the problem is a certain set of politicians or policies or judges, but the fact is the largest and most significant change has been in the electorate itself. Decent judges still grapple with constitutionality quotidially and politicians have always tried to violate constitutional convention, but it was the public and cultural values that held them to their job and to general integrity. Nowadays appeals to “natural rights,” limitations on power and constitutionalism are met with queer stares and confusion. People who dare to restrict the government’s pen to its original constitutional limitations are lambasted as either “Far-Right” or “Far-Left;” it’s almost comical how members of our two main parties vacillate on which is a civil libertarian or authoritarian depending on which holds the seat of the presidency.

The thing is neither party has the legs to stand on. Republicans used to laugh it up when Ron Paul pontificated on the constitution in the debates and when Democrats insisted on civil liberties in wartime, while Democrats (save a brief and politically advantageous interlude from 2005 to 2008) have been deriding constitutional “obstructionism” since the Roosevelt Regime. If there’s one common denominator among all modern political streams of thought, it is that they all have big plans for themselves and everyone else, requiring a nation unburdened by individualism, privacy and governmental limitations. No one can live and let live anymore.

Additionally there is a status quo bias in the public apathy to the entire issue of government abuses. Only a land of madmen or masochistic fascists would voluntarily support legislation that allowed and ordered government agencies to collect data without court order or justification from cell phone providers and internet services. Nevertheless, because agencies in the government have skipped the oh-so-stringent bindings of popular consent, legislative approval and the constitution itself, we apathetically remark that “that’s what governments do” or “I have nothing to hide” or “I mean there’s no way of stopping them.”

I openly wonder how far government agencies can go before arousing public antipathy. There is literally nothing stopping the state from compiling everything from psychometrics to internet passcodes and history and to clandestine nude photographs; it would be entertaining to see how deep the chasm of cynicism goes. Keep in mind that it is not just true that the state is the largest and more organized stalker in the nation; it’s perusing its desires at the public expense. It would tangibly be better for us to save ourselves the money and openly send our personal information, browsing habits, call logs, locations, and weekly itineraries to the government directly. Surely anyone who would object to that must simply have nothing to hide. Put simply, it isn’t an issue of privacy: I’m not worried about the government knowing my data, but allowing it to compile that data without my own or constitutional or even legislative permission is a precedent that allows for unlimited breaches of personal liberties.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/i-have-nothing-to-hide-comments-on-totalitarianism/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/i-have-nothing-to-hide-comments-on-totalitarianism/

The Problems with Utilitarianism

I originally wrote this essay in 2014 or 2015 in a Chinese buffet in Athens, Georgia. I've changed some of it and am re-adding it here. I talk about the issues with Utilitarianism and a bad book by Sam Harris.

Utilitarianism

At a dumb intuitive level, the "ethical" idea of Utilitarianism in principle gets pretty close to what most modern people reflexively want from social-political affairs: the greatest good for the greatest number of people-who doesn't want that?

The problem is that that intuitive idea is incoherent. It sounds good, but there's not really such a thing as "the greatest good for the greatest number of people." If there were, it wouldn't even be actionable.

"Maximizing"

So the first problem is one any mathematician will realize right off the bat: it's rarely (really never) possible to maximize a function for two variables.

If we had the means, we could maximize (1) the amount of good in society or (2) the number of people who feel that good, but nearly certainly not both (if we can it's a bizarre coincidence).

It's sort of like saying you want to find a house with the highest available altitude and the lowest available price; the highest house might not have the lowest price and vice versa, the same way the way of running society which maximizes happiness is nearly certainly not be the way which maximizes all individuals' happiness.

There are some classic moral puzzles that bring this out: Let's say there's a city where basically everyone is in absolute ecstasy, but their ecstasy can only take place if one particular person in the city is in intense and indescribable pain. Or to put it another way, to maximize my happiness, we might need to make everyone in the world my slave and allow me to rule as I please. Although this might maximize my happiness, it might not maximize anyone else's (if it does however, we might want to consider it).

The Well-being of Conscious Creatures

So I recently read Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape which is either a failed attempt to bring Utilitarianism back to life or a misguided book simply ignorant of what the problems with it were. I don't actually recall Harris using the term "utilitarianism," although that is really just what he's arguing for.

Harris repeats one mantra basically every paragraph of the book: "the well-being of conscious creatures-the well-being of conscious creatures-the well-being of conscious creatures." In addition to being repetitive, the term is problematic for important reasons. So Harris wants our Utilitarian engineers to maximize "the well-being of conscious creatures," but the problem is we can't just add up enjoyment in the first place. There's no way of taking my enjoyment of candy, subtracting the pain of a broken nose and adding/subtracting an existential crisis or two.

Now his hope is eventually we'll understand the neurology of the brain enough to do just that. I don't take Harris for a fool, and he does have a Ph.D. in neuroscience (obviously I am being sarcastic), but I think he's ignoring all the important problems either to appeal to a public audience or just to convince himself. We can study the neurology of feelings and get readings of neural activity, but objective neural activity is certainly not subjective experience. Twice as much neural activity doesn't mean "twice" the subjective experience.

We can no better look at brain activation to understand subjective experience any better than we can look at the hot parts of a computer to see what it's doing.

You can't do math with feelings

Of course one of the problems of qualia/subjective experience is that they are necessarily unquantifiable: imagine how you felt the last time you got a present you really enjoyed-now imagine yourself feeling exactly twice as happy-now 1.5 times as happy-now 100 times as happy.

You can't do it, and even if you could, you couldn't compare that experience with other experiences-you can't really understand what it means to be as happy as you were sad a month ago, and that prevents us from actually adding up your experiences into one number to be maximized.

But again even if we could it would be impossible to add that number up with someone else's experience. Humans have different subjective experiences: caffeine affects me demonstrably different than other people, but I can't quantify that; some people are more affected by pain (to my understanding, women seem to have a neurology more pain-prone than men), but how can we precisely relate the precise ratios of every individual person?

And of course, although Harris wants to maximize "the well-being of conscious creatures," we have no clue what kinds of conscious experiences define animal life, or how many animals are "conscious" in any recognizable sense. As Thomas Nagel noted, we can't even begin to imagine what it's like to be a bat, but to quantify their experiences and compare them to our own? Forget about it!

Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy presented the idea of a genetically engineered cow which not only was made to be able to speak, but to enjoy the prospect of being eaten and encourage others to kill and eat him. Experience itself is not some kind of thing arbiter of morality. Pain, in fact, might be a negligible or incomplete guide to what is not good. Children have to put up with being drug around to do many things they don't enjoy. That doesn't mean some immorality in anything.

The philosophical problems here are so endless as to make any kind of objective application of Utilitarianism based on neuroscience far beyond even fancy. I will be so bold as to say that this will simply never be possible, regardless of what chips Elon Musk wants to put in your brain.

To repeat:

• We cannot quantify any particular feeling.
• On top of that, we cannot compare the values of different feelings.
• On top of that, we certainly not weigh the subjective feelings of all humans or beasts against other humans' feelings.
• On top of that, even if we could do that, we can't maximize for utility in such a way to maximize all individual happiness and collective happiness simultaneously.

Utilitarianism isn't just impossible, it's impossible every step of the way.

To be clear, these are not technological problems that a future totalitarian government might be able to "solve." There really is no coherent sense in which we can put a number to a certain feeling of happiness and subtract from that another person's feeling of unhappiness. Qualia are qualia. It's like subtracting the sound of an airplane from the color blue.

What Utilitarianism really is

Anyway, the tradition of Utilitarianism was always a failure, but it's an interesting sign of the times. The Enlightenment was a time of some (less than usually thought) scientific advancement and the idea was that as we began to understand the nature of the body and the stars and everything else, we could fully understand too human society.

Eventually we could engineer and control them all. But as fast as we learn things about the world, even faster do complications arise and we end up "[restoring nature's] ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain" in Hume's words.

The only really unfortunate thing is that the ruling class of the West either doesn't know or does care. There's a cynical sense in which they are attempting to re-engineer or "Build Back Better®️" the world on Utilitarian principles where every decision is determined to be acceptable by some centralized utilitarian calculus.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-problems-with-utilitarianism/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-problems-with-utilitarianism/

New RSS feed

I'm starting this RSS feed to aggregate all my updates on different sites. I figure this is one of the more robust ways of publising content, despite the fact that only oldfags might actually use this.

http://lukesmith.xyz/rss.xml

New RSS feed

I'm starting this RSS feed to aggregate all my updates on different sites. I figure this is one of the more robust ways of publising content, despite the fact that only oldfags might actually use this.

http://lukesmith.xyz/rss.xml first

5,000 subscribers mark and returning home

It looks like I've hit 5,000 subscribers several days ago. I haven't been able to add new videos recently, due to some summer travels and me taking a general break. I'll be returnung to Arizona within the week though, and will add some more videos then. Possibily a 5,000 subs celebration vid in the meantime...

https://youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz

5,000 subscribers mark and returning home

It looks like I've hit 5,000 subscribers several days ago. I haven't been able to add new videos recently, due to some summer travels and me taking a general break. I'll be returnung to Arizona within the week though, and will add some more videos then. Possibily a 5,000 subs celebration vid in the meantime...

https://youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz 5000subs

How to Go Pro on YouTube!

For the 5,000 subscribers mark. I also think I'll use this as a channel greeter for non-subscribed users. Next in terms of actual content, I'm thinking of a video detailing ffmpeg and possibly a partially satirical video on distros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g66Jhxi-gg0

How to Go Pro on YouTube!

For the 5,000 subscribers mark. I also think I'll use this as a channel greeter for non-subscribed users. Next in terms of actual content, I'm thinking of a video detailing ffmpeg and possibly a partially satirical video on distros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g66Jhxi-gg0 gopro5000

Corebooting/Librebooting Soon

I've settled back home after an abnormally long trek across country. Now that I have, I've started to accumulate the tools I'll need to begin Librebooting or Corebooting machines via Rasberry Pi.

Some materials are still shipping, and I'm not 100% sure how long it will take for preparation, but I'm hoping to have at least a video Corebooting my X220 up by the time our classes begin this time next month.

https://paypal.me/LukeMSmith

Corebooting/Librebooting Soon

I've settled back home after an abnormally long trek across country. Now that I have, I've started to accumulate the tools I'll need to begin Librebooting or Corebooting machines via Rasberry Pi.

Some materials are still shipping, and I'm not 100% sure how long it will take for preparation, but I'm hoping to have at least a video Corebooting my X220 up by the time our classes begin this time next month.

https://paypal.me/LukeMSmith corelibre

Wallpapers now public

After a lot of requests, I've decided to upload all of my wallpapers into a Github repository. Check out the link for the full deal.

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/wallpapers

Am I *done* configuring i3?

I've push some minor changes and cleaning up to my i3 configs. Several months ago, I was always making huge changes all the time, but now I daresay that I've nearly *perfected* what I'm aiming at...

Changes will still come, but only trickle in as they come to me. By in large, I feel like I've converge on what I've been looking for when I started ricing.

Expect a video on my i3 configs soon. There will be overlap with previous vids, but I feel like this one is much more refined now.

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/voidrice

Battlestation Video (Part 1)!

New video up on my computer setup in my current appartment. I go over all the basics, but no so much the books or my other computers. I'lll do that in Part 2, which I'll release next month when I move into my new place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np5rFh0FcfU

Battlestation Video (Part 1)!

New video up on my computer setup in my current appartment. I go over all the basics, but no so much the books or my other computers. I'lll do that in Part 2, which I'll release next month when I move into my new place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np5rFh0FcfU battle1

i3wm video is out!

Here it is, new i3 video, going over my revamping of my configs and other notes, especially for new subscribers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BOW61luzF4

Finally using Vid.Me, lol

I've had some backups of earlier videos on Vid.Me for a while, but with all the ZUCCing going on with Google and YouTube, I figure it's best to keep more recent back ups as well.

Thankfully, Vid.Me always for pretty easy migration of YouTube videos, without me having to reentrer metadata, so it should be pretty easy to upkeep everything.

https://vid.me/LukeSmith

Mastering my website

You can't see any changes on my actual website, but I've just implemented a totally new paradigm for editing and updating it.

I hate the internet. I like not being connected. But I pretty often have ideas for what to add to my website when I'm outside of the WWW.

Traditionally, I just had to remember what I wanted to change and do it when I came back into the realm of wifi, but now I'm just keeping an entire "repository" of my website on my computer here.

I can edit it offline, and when I get back to a reliable connection, I "push" the changes with rsync via ssh.

There are other huge advantages to this as well. I don't have to worry about maintaining another vimrc on the serverside, and I don't have to worry about the lag common over ssh. Plus, I have an extra little backup in case of disaster with Host Gator.

All in all, a good development.

http://lukesmith.xyz

Video on calcurse, also news to come

New video out on calcurse, expect actually more content soon. I'm hoping at least two videos per week.

Probably today or tomorrow I'm going to be putting out a video on recent events in my life. Long story short: I was fired. I'm going to be posting a Patreon link to make up for some of the lost money, but leaving the (((university))) is a long-overdue development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvc-pHjbhdE

Finally using Vid.Me, lol

I've had some backups of earlier videos on Vid.Me for a while, but with all the ZUCCing going on with Google and YouTube, I figure it's best to keep more recent back ups as well.

Thankfully, Vid.Me always for pretty easy migration of YouTube videos, without me having to reentrer metadata, so it should be pretty easy to upkeep everything.

https://vid.me/LukeSmith vidme

Mastering my website

You can't see any changes on my actual website, but I've just implemented a totally new paradigm for editing and updating it.

I hate the internet. I like not being connected. But I pretty often have ideas for what to add to my website when I'm outside of the WWW.

Traditionally, I just had to remember what I wanted to change and do it when I came back into the realm of wifi, but now I'm just keeping an entire "repository" of my website on my computer here.

I can edit it offline, and when I get back to a reliable connection, I "push" the changes with rsync via ssh.

There are other huge advantages to this as well. I don't have to worry about maintaining another vimrc on the serverside, and I don't have to worry about the lag common over ssh. Plus, I have an extra little backup in case of disaster with Host Gator.

All in all, a good development.

http://lukesmith.xyz masteringwebsite

Video out on how I manage my website

Check out the link for details. I talk about my new paradigm for editing my website. I do plan on writing up a guide for newbies about how to start their own websites. There'll be an accompanying video too, since that's what people watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azkWYxyqh3Y

Muh RSS

I've been neglecting my RSS feed recently, considering it's a pretty robust syndication platform, I plan on remedying that.

This might take the form of me starting a formal blog... I haven't yet, but I already have a WP server configured and might be employing it soon.

http://lukesmith.xyz

Why I Went 2 Years with No Internet at Home

A lot of people have asked about this on some of my videos... from 2015 to a month ago, I lived without internet at my home. This video is on why I recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiMcX3Fa2Us

Why I Went 2 Years with No Internet at Home

A lot of people have asked about this on some of my videos... from 2015 to a month ago, I lived without internet at my home. This video is on why I recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiMcX3Fa2Us 2yearwointernet

Reworking the website backend

I had some free time this afternoon, so I decided to optimize by website backend. I've started to compile my website offline with a bash script that preemptively loads the required php commands. That's a marginal economy on the server-side, but mostly just an excuse to get something done.

http://lukesmith.xyz

My mpd/ncmpcpp Setup

A brief overview of mpd and ncmpcpp and my setup with them.

As always, dotfiles are on Github.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZIEdI9TS2U

Reworking the website backend

I had some free time this afternoon, so I decided to optimize by website backend. I've started to compile my website offline with a bash script that preemptively loads the required php commands. That's a marginal economy on the server-side, but mostly just an excuse to get something done.

http://lukesmith.xyz websitebackend

My mpd/ncmpcpp Setup

A brief overview of mpd and ncmpcpp and my setup with them.

As always, dotfiles are on Github.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZIEdI9TS2U mpdncmpcpp

Automatic Ricing Script Part 2. (COMING SOON)

I've decided to remake install scripts for Arch/Parabola since they were pretty popular last time, and I've made some pretty big changes since then.

Expect them sometime this week. It actually saves me a lot of time doing this, and is a lot of fun making the documentation [autism intensifies].

http://lukesmith.xyz

Some busy work and imminent plans

I have some real-world work to do this week, I have to finish writing a website and have to do some data analysis for a study, probably in R. If that ends up being interesting, I might actually just post a stream of it.

Otherwise, this week I'll probably put up a Battlestation video, and possibly the first of a linguistics-themed podcast.

https://youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz

Automatic Ricing Script Part 2. (COMING SOON)

I've decided to remake install scripts for Arch/Parabola since they were pretty popular last time, and I've made some pretty big changes since then.

Expect them sometime this week. It actually saves me a lot of time doing this, and is a lot of fun making the documentation [autism intensifies].

http://lukesmith.xyz newlarbssoon

No Relation! EP1: Noam Chomsky Joins Us in Hell (Arizona)

Starting a new podcast with my colleague Ryan Smith (no relation).

To christen our first episode, we discuss Noam Chosmky joining us at the University of Arizona and our general disenchantment with the generative program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SPD35ETwuk

Out of Town: LARBS coming soon

I'll be out of town for the weekend on personal reason, away from my microphone, etc. So don't expect videos until Tuesday! Around then, I will probably be finishing up the LARBS (see link) which I plan on releasing then. That will make a lot of things easier for a lot of people (including me).

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/LARBS

The Podcast is Really Happening

Last month, my colleague Ryan and I put out a brief introductory podcast episode, planning a series on academic affairs. We never planned out how frequent these would come out, and due to a series of life effects, it might look like it was a one time thing.

The feedback we got though was overwhelming and encouraging, especially given how little most of my subscribers probably cared about the issues before hand. I also had a lot of grad students in the field email glowingly. Even better was the "negative" attention we got, mostly from the Old Guard and the typical pearl-clutchers in our department. The very gall of us to serve as faces to the universal discontentment.

Ryan was witness to a particularly embarrassing encounter with a certaie professor absolutely apoplectic about the podcast, and recounted it to me with much gusto, variegated with uncontrollable laughter.

Needless to say, the more episodes are in the tubes. We're enjoying where this is going already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SPD35ETwuk

Housecleaning...

YouTube does a bad job of making older content on your channel accesible to new viewers. To partially counteract that, I've decided to put a gallery of all my YouTube videos (with thumbnails) on my website for browsing, indexed by topic.

http://lukesmith.xyz/videos.html

10,000 subscribers!

A big day! I've hit 10,000 subscribers. I had no idea that anyone outside of a couple weebs on 4chan would ever actually see my channel...

I've come a long way. My two most popular videos (distrohopping and Apple/Mac) were both made before I had 100 subscribers, now I have a hundred times that, and both those videos are individually at over 130,000 views.

Looking back at my system of a year ago I can't help shaking my head either; I've improved so much and have brought a lot of people with me on this year-long (but ongoing) journey!

https://youtube.com/c/lukesmithxyz

Luke on Golden Age

I've made an appearance on Social Matter's podcast "The Golden Age".

Host Michael Perilloux and I talk about software freedom, decentralization and privacy in the context of the Restoration and Neoreactionary politics.

Check the podcast out here, and then SocialMatter.net for even more.

http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/10/23/golden-age-episode-4-software-freedom/

Block Ads, Tracking, Porn and whatever else with /etc/hosts

New video up on creating your own firewall with /etc/hosts. An extremely easy way to limit the potentially malicious IPs your machine can connect to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPfpCVW7ZvM

My book library: the autistic thing I've done this weekend...

I created a catalogue of all of my books for online viewing, for those who want to see them for reviews. This is also sort of a personal thing, so I can have records before my collection becomes too large.

http://lukesmith.xyz/library.html

On Purism Laptops

I give my 2 cents on Purism laptops. My subscribers give their 2 cents on my now shaved head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwcOpf30SfY

Limitations cause greatness!

Alright, it's that time of year where I have to start finalizing my research projects, which means I'll be really hard-pressed for time. If that means anything, it's that I'll probably be producing more content than usual.

I'm the kind of person who when in a pinch goes the extra mile, which is good now just because I've been putting out a whole lot less content than I had wanted this semester. Good news is (a) I now have the will to do more hardcore video editing and (b) I found a way to cheat!

That said, I do have a lot of personal work to finish, two qualifying papers, a paper on the evolution of rationality, a corpus of Latin and probably some other stuff I've forgotten. For me that just means more limitations, and thus more motivation for output I'll probably also put out videos on my academic projects, but only as a little bonus.

First things first, I have a series on de-Googling coming soon, with a couple videos coming out next week.

http://lukesmith.xyz

Markdown and Pandoc for Easy Presentations...

I've started to use Markdown and Pandoc to get my briefer presentations done. I strongly recommend it.

You can avoid the main of LibreOffice and the encumbering syntax of LaTeX/Beamer all in one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dum7q6UXiCE

On EOMA68 comuters

Since people have expressed interest, I did a little video on the EOMA68 to advertise the thing. You can get one that ships out next summer.

It's one of the few computers with actual innovation behind it, and really propose a decntralized alternative.

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

Some channel announcements!

Bitchute, Patreon, my to-do list and much more! Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu-Bwr814wc

Make the Internet Decentralized Again!

I'm reuploading some portions of my interview with Michael Perilloux. They'll be popping up over the rest of the week. In this segment, we talk about efforts to decentralize the internet again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtkicw97zSo

Some channel announcements!

Bitchute, Patreon, my to-do list and much more! Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu-Bwr814wc bitchutepattodo

Battlestation and Apartment Tour Part II

My current apartment, bigger and more liveable, still no anime!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btYBY7jKzv4

Shortcut sync for bash, ranger and qutebrowser

See the link; I had come up with the idea for a script a while ago, but I figured it was worth redoing and making a little more robust. The idea is to keep the same aliases across qutebrowser, ranger and bash for cding to or moving/downloading files to certain directories. Check out the video or the Github repository for more info.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxlJAGiRY0o

"Which ThinkPad Should I Get?"

New video up on ThinkPads: the different kinds, what's popular, what's free and what's a meme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La3sb5y7e-k

ThinkPad week is on!

I teased doing a series on ThinkPads a couple weeks ago, but other work bogged me down. Now that classes and end of the semester administrivia are over, I'm going to have a big lump of videos coming out in the next couple days-Expect them! And it's not just ThinkPads!

https://youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz

Shortcut sync for bash, ranger and qutebrowser

See the link; I had come up with the idea for a script a while ago, but I figured it was worth redoing and making a little more robust. The idea is to keep the same aliases across qutebrowser, ranger and bash for cding to or moving/downloading files to certain directories. Check out the video or the Github repository for more info.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxlJAGiRY0o shortcut2

"Which ThinkPad Should I Get?"

New video up on ThinkPads: the different kinds, what's popular, what's free and what's a meme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La3sb5y7e-k whichthinkpad

ThinkPad T420 Overview

A brief overview of the ThinkPad T420, one of the best ThinkPads for new ThinkPad users. Sturdy, modern yet still with the classic design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPOLYXi2tGg

sc-im: A Vim-inspired Excel replacement!

Thanks to a viewer, Michael Novella for showing me this! It's a pretty sweet terminal spreadsheet editor with vim-like bindings. Lots of fun and a good potential replacement for LibreOffice calc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8_gazN7h0

Video on Net Neutrality

Well, my check from Comcast cleared a little late, but now I've finally taken to defending Pajeet Pai's "corporate takeover of the internet". Reddit-friends on suicide watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgbeB79Dss0

Linguistics Videos! (Coming Whether I like it or not!)

I've been rehired by the linguistics department (so I'm now working for both them and Information Sciences) and part of my assignment next semester will be making video lectures for an introductory lingusitics course.

One of the reasons I got this assignment is my history on YouTube, and given that, I'm going to actually end up making the linguistics videos I've been promising here and there.

The initial content will probably be very introductory, but if I get momentum in making the videos, I'll probably expand the range past what my assignment is.

http://lukesmith.xyz

URXVT, Basics and Configuration (VIDEO)

A video on urxvt, including the basics, transparency with i3 and perl scripts that do all of the magic for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaBf_yFHps8

Yup! Vim has a spell-checker. (VIDEO)

A video on vim's built-in spellchecker, along with all the default bindings and possibilities, and how to use dictionaries from other languages, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1XBUqbS68 vimspell

Returning to Arizona

I'll be returning to Arizona and all my equipment tomorrow and hopefully will be fully cured of the flu I've had the past week. After that, I'll have more videos coming out, probably in the typical 'spree' release schedule.

http://lukesmith.xyz

An Intro to R Markdown (video)

A brief intro R markdown. I talk about what it does and how to compile it in vim, with a lot of its features like inline code and different output formats..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5a0JWIF-0

The Virgin LaTeX vs. the CHAD R Markdown (Video)

I've been using R markdown as a general document formatting paradigm. It has all the perks of LaTeX but is much more manageable and with much more transparent syntax.

I'll be putting up another video on it soon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWScm5WI3fo

An Intro to R Markdown (video)

A brief intro R markdown. I talk about what it does and how to compile it in vim, with a lot of its features like inline code and different output formats..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5a0JWIF-0 rmarkdownintro

st: suckless's Simple Terminal (video)

I actually got a worthwhile suckless terminal configuration going. Check out the video, and also my git repo with my particular build.

It has transparency and scrollback, and a lot of helpful bindings, but also all the typical perks of st: excellent unicode compatibility and general non-bugginess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJmm7wl4JUI

Hard Reset on the Voidrice Repository

After several months and 70-something commits, I decided to hard reset and recommit my voidrice repository. Nothing's gone of course, there are a lot of forks and mirrors out there and I'm recommiting the files as they are today.

This might sound like a strange thing to do, but the repo files were getting huge (around 20MB for a repo for less than 2MB of files). I tried all the typical options, garbage collecting, even tree filtering, but couldn't reduce the size, and a small size is what I need for LARBS.

The main reason it got so big was when I naïvely included an enormous font system with the repo a while back to make it more accessible to Parabola users. I didn't realize how much of a pain it would be to deal with for its ease.

I'm planning a bigger, fuller release of LARBS, so I want to have everything clean and accessible. I may upload the old bloated repository as well on Github, maybe a "voidrice classic" and keep it as it is now, but there's a lot I've learned about system management so I like the clean feeling.

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/voidrice

st: suckless's Simple Terminal (video)

I actually got a worthwhile suckless terminal configuration going. Check out the video, and also my git repo with my particular build.

It has transparency and scrollback, and a lot of helpful bindings, but also all the typical perks of st: excellent unicode compatibility and general non-bugginess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJmm7wl4JUI st

Hard Reset on the Voidrice Repository

After several months and 70-something commits, I decided to hard reset and recommit my voidrice repository. Nothing's gone of course, there are a lot of forks and mirrors out there and I'm recommiting the files as they are today.

This might sound like a strange thing to do, but the repo files were getting huge (around 20MB for a repo for less than 2MB of files). I tried all the typical options, garbage collecting, even tree filtering, but couldn't reduce the size, and a small size is what I need for LARBS.

The main reason it got so big was when I naïvely included an enormous font system with the repo a while back to make it more accessible to Parabola users. I didn't realize how much of a pain it would be to deal with for its ease.

I'm planning a bigger, fuller release of LARBS, so I want to have everything clean and accessible. I may upload the old bloated repository as well on Github, maybe a "voidrice classic" and keep it as it is now, but there's a lot I've learned about system management so I like the clean feeling.

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/voidrice hardreset

Selecting terminal URLs with URLview (video)

A brief video on URLview, which makes urls on the terminal easy to follow!

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

Selecting terminal URLs with URLview (video)

A brief video on URLview, which makes urls on the terminal easy to follow!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgzpAjFgbCw urlview

Stats in R: Basics of a Beefy Calculatory (video)

Here's the first in a series on R, the mathematical/statistical programming language!

Here I talk about the basics: the arithmetic, variables and the logic of vectors in R, and how R differs from typical programming languages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlCWQrKQQI4

Stats in R: Basics of a Beefy Calculatory (video)

Here's the first in a series on R, the mathematical/statistical programming language!

Here I talk about the basics: the arithmetic, variables and the logic of vectors in R, and how R differs from typical programming languages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlCWQrKQQI4 rintro

Playing Around with Functions in R

A video on some of the basic functions in R, summaries, means, simple plots and more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgRvPNo6HaY

Playing Around with Functions in R (video)

A video on some of the basic functions in R, summaries, means, simple plots and more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgRvPNo6HaY rfunctions

Dataframes in R: Columns subsets and more! (video)

A video on how to create modify and extract data from columns and rows in R. We talk about some of the more extensible functions that are like advanced loops in one command!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDzVtu24dbk

Dataframes in R: Columns subsets and more! (video)

A video on how to create modify and extract data from columns and rows in R. We talk about some of the more extensible functions that are like advanced loops in one command!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDzVtu24dbk rdataframes

What programs do I use?

I get a lot of questions about what particular programs I use for this or that. For people who don't want to troll every video of mine to find the answers, I put up a little page on my website (in link) that lists all the main stuff I use.

https://lukesmith.xyz/programs.html programsiuse

RSS readers: You can now use HTTPS!

Just as a note, you can feel free to use https://lukesmith.xyz/rss.xml as the feed URL in your feed reader as I've finally gotten SSL/HTTPS for my website.

https://lukesmith.xyz/rss.xml https

LARBS preparing for release

If you track my Github, you may've noticed I've been making some bigger changes to my LARBS and voidrice repositories, preparing for a re-release of LARBS with more fanfare, and more tutorial videos to go along with it (I've also updated https://larbs.xyz to HTTPS since that's a more legit concern).

There have been a lot of little improvements, and I'm hoping to have a lot of the small kinks worked out before then.

There is one thing I'd really like and don't know if it exists, and that is a kind of mutt config generator or wizard, that will automatically detect your email provider's servers and set the more annoying settings by itself. I've put some documentation up about how to configure mutt so far, but I really wish there were a way to make it easier for users.

https://larbs.xyz larbssoon

Forum is now open to public (but only YOU know!)

I mentioned making a forum for subscribers and I've been working on it a little for the past few days. The link is at https://forum.lukesmith.xyz/. I haven't posted this on YouTube or Twitter yet, but I'll go ahead and tell all of you who follow my RSS feed now.

Registration should be free and open and you should be able to post on the boards I've made so far, so feel free to, if fact, please do and go ahead and find any bugs, start dialogue etc. If everything works out, I'll probably announce it on the channel next week.

https://forum.lukesmith.xyz/ forumrss

Mac Users: Don't Say T*rx on My Channel (T*rxroaches BTFO!) (video)

I banned the word "torx" on my comment section to clean up some mess. Why? Watch to find out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUCuMqBlSqE torx

Dropdown Terminals and Scratchpads in i3wm! (video)

I talk about how to configure and customize i3wm/i3-gaps scratchpads and dropdown terminals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-l7DnDbiiU i3dropdown

i3: Managing Windows and Webcams for screencasting

A little vid on window management in i3wm, where I show how I manage my webcam and keep it with the properties I want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkqxYZ7-sQM i3webcams

How to Actually Get Good at GNU/Linux (video)

A daily reminder on the importance of RTFMing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNuz-Trx0a4 man

We Have a Forum! (and on the Future!)

I hope you enjoyed the brief week of no newfriends on the forum. In this video I announce the forum to the wider channel and talk about some of my plans in the near future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MC3wR63FHs forumvid

Working on a mutt wizard

I think I'll put a video up on this tomorrow, but I'm starting to put together an ncurses script that will automatically configure mutt, offlineIMAP, notmuch, and everything else you need for a fully featured offline terminal email service, all with basically no user effort beyond putting in their email and password.

If you're a mutt user, you can help me by sending me your email server settings if they're not already in the autoconf/domains.csv file.

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard muttwiznot

Working on a email wizard for mutt and offlineIMAP configs

A brief video showing what I have so far on the mutt auto-config.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h-Qr_Ricik muttwizprep

Now You Can Auto-Configure Mutt and OfflineIMAP! (video)

Video out on the now completed mutt/offlineIMAP wizard. Try it yourself! It will give a fully featured terminal email setup with offline backups for offline browsering and safe password storage.

I also put out a brief video on how to generate a public/private key pair in GnuPG here, which is needed for the auto-confige script.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsEJz9f9VMQ muttwiz

You're not "Autistic." You're normal. (video)

I wanted to talk about a mindset I get a lot from some of my subscribers. Sure, a lot of it is just making fun, but some people get hard on themselves for having hobbies or not socializing how they think they should be. I address this in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAsxztU189k autistic

Easy, No BS Slide Presentations with SENT! (suckless) (video)

I've been playing around with sent recently, which is a good way to immediately make slide presentations. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCLCl96eNaI sucklesssent

BRAINLET Luke Destroys his ThinkPad X220!!! (Press F) (video)

Check the video out! When fixing my X220 I made some bad electrical contact and fried the screen connector. What does this mean for the channel? Let's find out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X1LUlnhIAI destx220

NEWS: Arch Linux Install and Config; and X220 Repair (video)

tripcode!Q/7, who also makes YouTube videos, volunteered to try to fix my X220, so I'll be sending it to him next week. Also, two major Patreon incentives were met last month: the Arch Linux install and the Arch Linux graphical environment setup! Expect those within a week or so!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ke9ZNC9a5k tripcode

From Arch Linux to Parabola: How-To and System Management! (video)

In this video I go through how to migrate an Arch Linux install to Parabola GNU/Linux-libre, which is a 100% free software distribution! Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jx-5Zp28VQ arch2para

Quantifier Scope Is All Just Fun and Games! (video)

A presentation I gave a couple weeks back to prospective graduate students on a recent linguistics project. I argued that quantifier scope is extra-linguistic, not determined by the narrow syntax and am building, with some colleagues a general account of quantifier scope in Game Theoretic terms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w_PMpQiGL0 funandgames

Clean out your RSS feed cache!

I've cleaned up and added all the frills to my RSS feed to maximize the compatibility with different readings. The temporary downside is that long-time users will probably have to clean out their RSS cache for my feed, otherwise you'll see lots of duplicate entries!

Don't be afraid, everything will still be here, but you can fee free to clean out your RSS cache and reload to clean everything up!

https://lukesmith.xyz rssfeedclean

mutt-wizard Now Has an Autosync and Notification Option!

I've added a new options to the mutt-wizard which will automatically add a cronjob that runs a script that smartly syncs offlineimap at the interval you want if there's an internet connection.

It also checks to see if new mail has been downloaded, and if it has, will provide a brief little notification ding! Enjoy!

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard muttwizsync

Arch Linux: Is it a meme? (video)

Here I talk about some misunderstandings about Arch Linux and some reasons it's worth using. It's not the best distro (there is none), but I keep coming back to Arch for a couple reasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO9R_WFs9Zc archisameme

Suckless sent of video creation?

A little bit ago I talked about how I've been using suckless sent, which is a minimalist presentation format. It lacks features aside from the basics: text on slides (which is automatically sized for each one) and the ability to have images (only one per slide, again, autosized).

I've always looked for a more effective way to make meme videos, by which I mean the videos like my distro-hopping or Mac videos, where I more or less narrate a stream of memes and some text. Traditionally I did this in Blender, but that could be very time consuming, taking several days of constant work to put out a 10 minute video.

It actually hit me that sent would be a very good replacement for Blender (strangely enough), in that I can just write a presentation, put in images, etc., load it in sent, and record my screen while narrating. I.e., no video editing/tweaking/compiling or work time other than assembling my "script" for the video, in the different memes and text I'll be talking about.

I think I'll try this out pretty soon. Hopefully I can get in a place where I can put videos like that out relatively commonly.

https://tools.suckless.org/sent/ sentvideos

I've been unironically playing the best game ever again: Deus Ex

I installed Deus Ex (yes, of course the original) on my Arch Desktop, just for laughs and because I wanted to quickly replay and get tired of it. Installation on Linux wasn't too difficult since there's an OpenGL renderer from the Mac port, and aside from that all I needed to install was some lib32 pulseaudio/alsa things. It runs really smooth and clean on a Linux machine if it means anything.

Don't expect me to end up becoming a game streamer, especially with (>proprietary software), but it was fairly refreshing to play a game with genuinely good storyline and development again. Obviously it lacks the features of a modern game, but back then video games were far enough away from real life so that you could rely on your imagination to fill in the gaps, which arguably makes for a better experience.

deusexinstall

New LARBS format; 2.0 coming soon.

I've developed a more robust framework for implementing LARBS that will make it considerably easier and more elegant to manage packages. Now all packages are read in one single csv file and are processed based on whether the user chose their package group and whether the package is in the main repos or only in the AUR (this detection is now done automatically).

There's also now a (mostly) ncurses based interface during installation and, if it means anything, I've considerably reduced the size of the script seeing that the deployment method is now less ad hoc.

I'm hoping to "officially" re-release the scripts very soon, in fact, after this they may not actually change much at all until I do, all is needed is a little testing. You're welcome to try it yourself now and see the results.

https://github.com/lukesmithxyz/larbs larbscoming

Linguistics Isn't 60 Years Old!:Pāṇinian Approaches to Language

A guest lecture I gave in Simin Karimi's "Major Works in Syntax" class, a very brief talk about the Indian/Paninian tradition in linguistics. She expressed interest in having me again, so there might be a Part 2 to this focusing on mostly Medieval European thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yZ91YUdRfY paninisimin

Luke Smith and Noam Chomsky (and my position in the field)

Noam Chomsky and I finally formally met this evening at Simin Karimi's Noruz Party. We've run into each other in the halls from time to time, but this was the first time we officially spoke. This sounds like a somewhat bloggish thing to mention, and knowing me, I felt no overwhelming need to speak with him, but Tom Bever insisted on introducing us.

Tom introduced me in too glowing terms, a nice, yet not so meaningful gesture considering Noam is more than half deaf nowadays, especially in the bustle of the party. People had actually be lining up to see him; it looked sort of like people paying respect to a mafia don, but Tom unceremoniously pushed aside everyone else and invited me to talk to Noam directly.

We spoke a bit about my projects on prosodically driven syntax and the quantifier scope project, and he entreated me to talk to him later to get more in depth. He didn't divulge if he knew about me, granted, he's definitely heard of me from Tom and others in the department and we've spoken on email chains, but I'm not sure what or if he could've been expected to remember considering that he's less involved than the other faculty.

I still don't plan on going into the field, but there was an aura of momentousness to the event. A couple people were taking pictures of us and I got a couple comments afterward that remarked on the potential significance of our first meeting.

Either way it is sort of funny. Someone mentioned to me a bit ago that a lot of the grad students in the field know Arizona as "the place where Luke Smith is", which is hilarious for many reasons, and would probably be upsetting for a lot of the syntacticians here, but most strange now that Noam is here (a lot of people assume he's still at MIT since it's only been a year or so). I've never been plugged into academic politics, I don't actually plan on publishing before I leave the field and I've never even been to the LSA, but between the YouTube channel and targeted pressure from several people, I have a level of notoriety unexpected by me.

So the disaster scenario for "some people out there" is that something comes of this: that I become in the popular eye "the Linguist" that at least some normal people know about, or even worse, some kind of next logical step from Chomsky, catapulted to prominence in a way similar to how Noam's political rabble-rousing popularized him. And of course the elephant in the room is the political differences: there's a huge irony in some kind of mantle being passed from a Jewish anarcho-communist who grew up on a kibbutz to a goyish low-church Borderer who voted for Trump and has only barely managed to slip into the cracks of academia given his political disposition. If I were to obtain a well-known position in academia, I would be doing a lot of good for the re-enfranchisement of the White Right in the opinion-molding class.

That's not to say that my ascendancy in the field is even probable if I do stay, but the mere fact there's greater than a 2% chance of it would certainly have surprised me 15, 10, 5 or even 2 years ago. The only question is what aspects of my life am I willing to give up to continue to stoke the fires of this potentiality, or if I can continue to tolerate this lifestyle. On one hand, I've put up with every lie, manipulation, character assassination and "technicality" that could be thrown at me from this department, mostly without flinching, and my detractors are starting to sound like boys-who-cried-wolfs. On the other hand, a cabin for my family in the woods generally sounds like a better lifestyle.

meetnoam

LiberaPay now added (It's better than Paypal and Patreon)

A lot of people said that they'd like to fund the channel/me, but are (understandably) nervous about Patreon and Paypal. I've now added a LiberaPay account, which is a much freer and privacy respecting platform, which also doesn't take a slice off the top fo every transfer.

If you don't trust Patreon or Paypal (which you shouldn't really), throw your support in via LiberaPay. It'd honestly be better generally to get channel funding there anyway!

https://liberapay.com/LukeSmith liberapay

Oral defense next week

I've been preparing for my oral defense in my doctoral program and some other things recently, adding up to one of the more full months I've had in a while. (So if you're curious why I haven't been putting up as much as usual, that's why). For those who don't know what this means, I wrote two qualifying papers as required for my PhD, and afterwards, our department requires an oral defense of both of them, in front of a committee of my choosing from the department.

For those who want to know, my committee is Mike Hammond, Tom Bever, Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, Simin Karimi and Robert Henderson. The only one who non-linguists may be familiar with is Massimo, notorious for his book "What Darwin Got Wrong" with Jerry Fodor, but a couple of the others might have a Wikipedia article or talks on YouTUbe if anyone is interested.

Anyway, after passing this, I'll be officially allowed to start on my dissertation (and after finishing that, I'll be doing another defense of that). I was sort of thinking of recording this defense for public consumption, although I don't think I'm strictly speaking allowed to, as the event is supposed to be private. (I think this has traditionally been just for the privacy of the defender, which I obviously don't care about).

After this is over, I'll the ABD (all but dissertation, as they say) and will have more time on my hands.

oralssoon

tripcode!Q/7 fixes my X220

Watch tripcode!Q/7's video repairing my X220. It's all there!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV1f8raveZo tripcodex220video

wtf i hate linux now! Mac OS is best, and other comments.

I gave the forum a little makeover

https://forum.lukesmith.xyz/thread-426.html aprilfools2018

dmenu is more than an "application launcher"! (video)

I've been playing around with dmenu a little recently, and the way it was intended to be used! In this video, I show some little scripts that exploit dmenu's extensibility to get a lot of functionality out of this little suckless program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9m723tAurA dmenu1

Video on newsboat and RSS feed (video)

A little video on newsboat and RSS feeds. Welcome, if you're just now getting into RSS feeds!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUFCRqs822w newsboat

Arch Install Part 2: Setting up a graphical environment and users (video)

A follow up on the Arch install video, talking about how to install a graphical environment and other basic setup tips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSHOb8YU9Gw arch2

Some tips in a vim project (video)

A little vid on some vim tips and how to customize a workflow for your particular tasks. The content is mostly on how I turned raw file names into easily adjustable links for a personal task.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hraHAZ1-RaM vimsublimeslave

Playing around with i3 blocks (video)

I've had some wanderlust for having a more configurable status bar, so I got back into i3blocks. I manages to create some custom blocks, including one for unread emails and one for a weather report. Check it out and maybe you'll get some ideas yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7_9Xdbsem4 i3blocks

Moving to a VPS, some downtime

I'm in the process of moving the entire website/LARBS/the forum to a VPS, due to the annoying practices of my former host, HostGator. Expect some downtime or certificate errors. My main website and this feed should be done (that's the easy part).

Hopefully I'll have LARBS.xyz finished today as well, but the forum might take another day, just because I have to go through the rigmarole of installing myBB manually on my new server which I haven't done before. That said, I managed to figure out how to install/run/configure an Apache server this morning so I figure myBB can't be much more difficult.

vpsmove

Updates on downtime and server transfer/email

The link is to a forum thread on the topic. I've had a lot of trouble configuring email manually, so I'm going to get a VPS + email server from namecheap instead. I should be able to receive email alright at the time being and the forum will be up.

https://forum.lukesmith.xyz/thread-537.html transfernamecheap

What a waste of time!

Welp I've spent about a week moving my websites to a VPS (several attempts at different services actually). I've only just now finally had some success. I originally was going to try Digital Ocean, but they don't offer good email service. I tried setting up an email server myself, but the amount of work and number of details needed to get everything to work is an order of magnitude more than just running a web server.

So I'm actually using a Namecheap VPS now, which is the registrar of my domains anyway. I thought this would make transferring my hosting easy (It wasn't). Namecheap has atrocious documentation and their site is extremely slow and non-responsive (thankfully their hosting servers/VPSs aren't). Regardless, I've gotten my website working (with https) and my email with their email service after several days of making DNS changes blindly and checking the results on update 24 hours later.

On a side note, SSL is one of the more difficult things to configure manually. While there are tools like Let's Encrypt, they can often be a pain to get working with different hosts and especially when you're like me and want wildcard certificates for your multiple sites. I really do not understand why hosts don't automate this process for most use cases (actually I do, because most of them get money off of selling partial automation).

Anyway, the looming issue is the forum. Host Gator automatically installed the (outdated) myBB backend for the forum, so I've never done the process myself manually. I'm going to have to figure that out soon enough, which will require me to get some mySQL database up and running (again, I've never done this before).

https://lukesmith.xyz timewaste

I'll be at Linux Fest Southeast next month. Come and see me!

I mentioned this in a video or two, but I'll be presenting at Southeast Linuxfest in Charlotte, NC on June 9. Feel free to come if you're in the Southeast. There are actually going to be a lot of talks all weekend, but mine is currently slated for June 9th (Saturday), the last talk of the day.

I should be in town for the full duration of the conference though. I'll also probably be recording the talk as well. I think the conference managers have recorded them in the past, but I want to be sure of the audio quality. Either way, it'll end up on YouTube. That said, for those in neighboring or nearby states, I think it'd be worth your time to come, not just for me, but for all the talks, tutorials, sessions and groups there to choose from. Check out their website for more: http://www.southeastlinuxfest.org/

http://www.southeastlinuxfest.org/ linuxfestintro

Why Vim Doesn't Need a Mouse (video)

A brief video on why vim doesn't use the mouse, and how to do "mouse-like" things like selection and movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQCRVkSFFEc vimmouse

New turbo-minimalist site

New turbo-minimalist site

I've decided to severely trim down my website, not in content, but in frills. We'll see how this works out, and if it does, I plan on keeping it this way with maybe minor beautification.

At a surface level, my site is just going to be two main HTML pages: the main page and a blog/updates page which I have made automatically (This also includes RSS updates).

One of the other things I've made use of is an Apache server's capability to display directory contents in and index page. You've probably seen things like this, see one of mine at talks/. You can also give these pages CSS and descriptions for the files, which I've decided to take advantage of. It seems like a much better way of organizing files on your website and making them accessible than doing it manually in HTML.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-turbo-minimalist-site

New turbo-minimalist site

I've decided to severely trim down my website, not in content, but in frills. We'll see how this works out, and if it does, I plan on keeping it this way with maybe minor beautification.

At a surface level, my site is just going to be two main HTML pages: the main page and a blog/updates page which I have made automatically (This also includes RSS updates).

One of the other things I've made use of is an Apache server's capability to display directory contents in and index page. You've probably seen things like this, see one of mine at talks/. You can also give these pages CSS and descriptions for the files, which I've decided to take advantage of. It seems like a much better way of organizing files on your website and making them accessible than doing it manually in HTML.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-turbo-minimalist-site

On my new blog system

On my new blog system

For the past day or so, I've been "writing" a blog "system". Really it's only about 100 lines in shell script, which sure as hell beats installing WordPress and having huge databases on the server.

I want to have one rolling blog page, automatic RSS feed updates and maybe even standalone pages, so that's what I wrote. I also want to be able to link to individual blog entries on the rolling page, so I have it automatically label each header for the use of interior urls.

If you're reading this, wherever you're reading it, it's been successfuly.

Really all the script does is let you write a HTML draft entry, and when you're done, it appends it to the rolling page and converts its information into an RSS feed entry and appends it to your RSS feed. "Append" is probably the wrong word though, since it's not being added to the end, but in front of other entries.

Anyway, I hope to be able to have a fully functioning and synced blog and RSS feed, without the hassle or bloat, now I'm pretty confident that I'm right about at it. The only thing I haven't implemented (and might not) is the ability to change and delete posts from the RSS/rolling blog/standalone page directory. I'm the kind of person who doesn't believe in revision though, so maybe I'll slide without that.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#on-my-new-blog-system

On my new blog system

For the past day or so, I've been "writing" a blog "system". Really it's only about 100 lines in shell script, which sure as hell beats installing WordPress and having huge databases on the server.

I want to have one rolling blog page, automatic RSS feed updates and maybe even standalone pages, so that's what I wrote. I also want to be able to link to individual blog entries on the rolling page, so I have it automatically label each header for the use of interior urls.

If you're reading this, wherever you're reading it, it's been successfuly.

Really all the script does is let you write a HTML draft entry, and when you're done, it appends it to the rolling page and converts its information into an RSS feed entry and appends it to your RSS feed. "Append" is probably the wrong word though, since it's not being added to the end, but in front of other entries.

Anyway, I hope to be able to have a fully functioning and synced blog and RSS feed, without the hassle or bloat, now I'm pretty confident that I'm right about at it. The only thing I haven't implemented (and might not) is the ability to change and delete posts from the RSS/rolling blog/standalone page directory. I'm the kind of person who doesn't believe in revision though, so maybe I'll slide without that.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#on-my-new-blog-system

New Forum Up and Under Preparation

New Forum Up and Under Preparation

My subscriberbase has been pretty consistently dogging me to put the forum up. I figured I might as well just start a new forum with updated myBB software now. The old forum was a good trial run, but with newer software and now on my own server, there are more possibilities for a longterm forum.

So check out forum.lukesmith.xyz and go ahead and register the name you want and start posting if you'd like. As a minor warning, I don't have https for the forum yet, but that will come pretty soon.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-forum-up-and-under-preparation

New Forum Up and Under Preparation

My subscriberbase has been pretty consistently dogging me to put the forum up. I figured I might as well just start a new forum with updated myBB software now. The old forum was a good trial run, but with newer software and now on my own server, there are more possibilities for a longterm forum.

So check out forum.lukesmith.xyz and go ahead and register the name you want and start posting if you'd like. As a minor warning, I don't have https for the forum yet, but that will come pretty soon.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-forum-up-and-under-preparation

Excuse the RSS mess!

Excuse the RSS mess!

As I said, in a post before, I'm figuring out a new blogging and RSS feed paradigm which has been 95% done for several days, barring those little annoyances. I've been moving things around, including the GUIDs for RSS entires, so you may be seeing double, triple or quadruple entries in your RSS feed reader.

Feel free to purge your RSS feed cache to fix this. You won't lose anything since I have everything on my RSS feed (I'm not one of those people who has a rolling 15 entry RSS feed).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#excuse-the-rss-mess

Excuse the RSS mess!

As I said, in a post before, I'm figuring out a new blogging and RSS feed paradigm which has been 95% done for several days, barring those little annoyances. I've been moving things around, including the GUIDs for RSS entires, so you may be seeing double, triple or quadruple entries in your RSS feed reader.

Feel free to purge your RSS feed cache to fix this. You won't lose anything since I have everything on my RSS feed (I'm not one of those people who has a rolling 15 entry RSS feed).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#excuse-the-rss-mess

Check Github for the blog system

Check Github for the blog system

I put my new blog system on Github. Again, just a little 70-ish line script that generates HTML and RSS/XML code automatically from a post; it'll get me a lot for very little, and obviously doesn't involve any silly databases.

Check out the link at https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/lb. Play around with it if you're interested in it for your own purposes. I might do a video on it in a bit, and I'll be refining it as needed.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#check-github-for-the-blog-system

Check Github for the blog system

I put my new blog system on Github. Again, just a little 70-ish line script that generates HTML and RSS/XML code automatically from a post; it'll get me a lot for very little, and obviously doesn't involve any silly databases.

Check out the link at https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/lb. Play around with it if you're interested in it for your own purposes. I might do a video on it in a bit, and I'll be refining it as needed.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#check-github-for-the-blog-system

More tinkering today

More tinkering today

I'm changing a couple lines in the blog script (lb) that beautify the standalone pages, giving them UTF-8 encoding, actual titles and the website's stylesheet. While the standalone pages were originally an afterthought, I'm sure someone will like using them. I'll also probably put a video up about the blog system anyway

I've also been working on the forum today, and I'll also be putting up an update to the mutt-wizard which will hopefully fix compatibility with certain sites. Originally, I made the apparently improper and pessimistic assumption that some providers don't use +INBOX as the inbox location, encouraging me to writing a very skiddie line in grep to filter out all non-inbox boxes to smartly guess the true inbox. This caused the system to detect people's "Contacts" or "SMS" folders as their inbox in some cases.

I'll be fixing this soon so that it always just assumes that "+INBOX" is the real thing, which I think will lessen the errors people have.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#more-tinkering-today

More tinkering today

I'm changing a couple lines in the blog script (lb) that beautify the standalone pages, giving them UTF-8 encoding, actual titles and the website's stylesheet. While the standalone pages were originally an afterthought, I'm sure someone will like using them. I'll also probably put a video up about the blog system anyway

I've also been working on the forum today, and I'll also be putting up an update to the mutt-wizard which will hopefully fix compatibility with certain sites. Originally, I made the apparently improper and pessimistic assumption that some providers don't use +INBOX as the inbox location, encouraging me to writing a very skiddie line in grep to filter out all non-inbox boxes to smartly guess the true inbox. This caused the system to detect people's "Contacts" or "SMS" folders as their inbox in some cases.

I'll be fixing this soon so that it always just assumes that "+INBOX" is the real thing, which I think will lessen the errors people have.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#more-tinkering-today

Guests now allowed on forum; Perks for supporters.

Guests now allowed on forum; Perks for supporters.

Now that the forum is being reborn, I've openned up one of the subforums, the tech support one to non-registered posters. This makes it so people without an account can come and ask questions.

Additionally, I'm going to give perks to people who support me/the channel on Patreon. For now, it's going to be for anyone who gives any ammount of money, but I make increase the required input in a bit. Perks will include a gold-plated name, access to a private forum, and possibly other abilities like bigger avatar size and such (that's not implemented yet).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#guests-now-allowed-on-forum-perks-for-supporters.

Guests now allowed on forum; Perks for supporters.

Now that the forum is being reborn, I've openned up one of the subforums, the tech support one to non-registered posters. This makes it so people without an account can come and ask questions.

Additionally, I'm going to give perks to people who support me/the channel on Patreon. For now, it's going to be for anyone who gives any ammount of money, but I make increase the required input in a bit. Perks will include a gold-plated name, access to a private forum, and possibly other abilities like bigger avatar size and such (that's not implemented yet).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#guests-now-allowed-on-forum-perks-for-supporters.

Video on the blog system

Video on the blog system

I just put up the video on the blog system, if you're interested. Check it out here.

Again, the link to the Github repo is here. Enjoy!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-on-the-blog-system

Video on the blog system

I just put up the video on the blog system, if you're interested. Check it out here.

Again, the link to the Github repo is here. Enjoy!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-on-the-blog-system

How I Write Accent Marks and IPA Characters in Vim

How I Write Accent Marks and IPA Characters in Vim

I just released a brief video on how I put special characters into vim.. There is a built in system (with control-k) for inputting special characters, but it's not as manipulatable as I'd like. Instead, I have two little vim files that coin functions to enable/disable deadkeys (for diacritics) or extra shortcuts for characters in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The deadkey function turns ', ", :, ` and other symbols into deadkeys that place diacritics onto different characters. The IPA function is similar, but allows a sequence of semicolon plus two letters to correspond to an IPA symbol. E.g., if I want to type 'ʃ', I just type ';sh.

The links are in the video description (the files are in the voidrice repository as usual). The system is pretty customizable, and you can easily add whatever characters you need, potentially imitating the toggling commands I have there already.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#how-i-write-accent-marks-and-ipa-characters-in-vim

How I Write Accent Marks and IPA Characters in Vim

I just released a brief video on how I put special characters into vim.. There is a built in system (with control-k) for inputting special characters, but it's not as manipulatable as I'd like. Instead, I have two little vim files that coin functions to enable/disable deadkeys (for diacritics) or extra shortcuts for characters in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The deadkey function turns ', ", :, ` and other symbols into deadkeys that place diacritics onto different characters. The IPA function is similar, but allows a sequence of semicolon plus two letters to correspond to an IPA symbol. E.g., if I want to type 'ʃ', I just type ';sh.

The links are in the video description (the files are in the voidrice repository as usual). The system is pretty customizable, and you can easily add whatever characters you need, potentially imitating the toggling commands I have there already.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#how-i-write-accent-marks-and-ipa-characters-in-vim

Forum now has HTTP and SSL (Lunduke BTFO once again)

Forum now has HTTP and SSL (Lunduke BTFO once again)

I've finally put HTTPS on the forum for security's sake. I appreciate that people have been signing up already anyway. I'll probably reannounce it on the channel when I do a live stream probably tomorrow.

You may've noticed that there was also some server downtime, that was actually relevant to the SLL upgrade. I stupidly miswrote something and broke my Apache server for a minute or two. All fixed now though.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#forum-now-has-http--ssl-lunduke-btfo-once-again

Forum now has HTTP and SSL (Lunduke BTFO once again)

Forum now has HTTP & SSL (Lunduke BTFO once again)

I've finally put HTTPS on the forum for security's sake. I appreciate that people have been signing up already anyway. I'll probably reannounce it on the channel when I do a live stream probably tomorrow.

You may've noticed that there was also some server downtime, that was actually relevant to the SLL upgrade. I stupidly miswrote something and broke my Apache server for a minute or two. All fixed now though.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#forum-now-has-http--ssl-lunduke-btfo-once-again

Forum now has HTTP & SSL (Lunduke BTFO once again)

I've finally put HTTPS on the forum for security's sake. I appreciate that people have been signing up already anyway. I'll probably reannounce it on the channel when I do a live stream probably tomorrow.

You may've noticed that there was also some server downtime, that was actually relevant to the SLL upgrade. I stupidly miswrote something and broke my Apache server for a minute or two. All fixed now though.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#forum-now-has-http--ssl-lunduke-btfo-once-again

Stream soon

Stream soon

I'll be doing a stream in a bit, probably within the hour. Keep your eyes peeled on YouTube.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#stream-soon

Stream soon

I'll be doing a stream in a bit, probably within the hour. Keep your eyes peeled on YouTube.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#stream-soon

Series on Old Norse and Language Learning?

One request I get a whole lot is to talk about how to learn a language, or one harder, a language using only a book. I could just "talk" about it, but I figure doing it real time might be a lot better. I taught myself Latin this way nearly 10 years ago, and now use my Latin knowledge all the time academically. Part of my knowledge of Chinese also comes from my particular method of learning.

Anyway, I want to record myself going through an introductory language-learning book, verbally externalize my thoughts to make it clear how I interpret what I see. Obviously I have a lot of initial knowledge about languages generally, but as it comes up, I'll mention and explain all the needed concept and why they're relevant.

The language I've chosen to learn is Old Norse/Old Icelandic, which, as it happens, is very close and mutually intelligible with modern Icelandic with some minor differences. WhyOld Norse? (1) It's an ancient language that can be useful for my own understanding of historical linguistics, and the development of Germanic languages, (2) it still has some older linguistic properties that will keep viewers informed of a more highly inflected language, but (3) it also has a vocabulary similar to English, which will minimize the rote memorization aspect of learning it.

The book I'll probably be going through is Old Icelandic: An Introductory Course by Valfells and Cathey. I'll either have a physical copy or a pdf of it, which ever ismore convenient for recording. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to give me them! Again, the point of the series isn't supposed to be just on Old Norse/Icelandic, but on language learning generally, so everyone is welcome to watch! ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#series-on-old-norse-and-language-learning

Whomst lives in Georgia?

Friendship ended with Arizona; now Georgia is my best friend.

I just finished my move from Arizona, which is more relieving than I can possibly express. Classwork is done, and the only possible reason I'll ever be returning to that quite literal hell-hole is for when I defend my dissertation and my graduation ceremony.

The thing is, while I've moved from Arizona, I haven't really moved anywhere in particular; I'll be living with family and friends until I decided where I want to live exactly. Here are my options:

• Just go full innawoods right now, buy land (in Georgia or Tennessee) with my money and get started. The disadvantage is that I don't have as much money as I'd like to get a choice parcel, and this would also interfere with my dissertation (perhaps it doesn't matter of course).
• Partial innawoods. I have some family in Florida with remote land and farmhouses. I could ask to live their and watch the property, maybe practice for real innawoods hours in the meantime. No money required other than my food, unless the relevant family member wants nominal rent.
• Move to an apartment in a practical place to work on my dissertation. This would probably mean a college town where they have a library and bus system (probably Athens, where the University of Georgia is, where I've lived before and have friends, but I don't particularly like the place). Work on the dissertation and finish in a year, then go elsewhere.
• Move into Atlanta, get an internship at an NGO, become a bugman (joke choice).

Other data:

• I don't own a car anymore and don't want to buy one unless I go innawoods. I'll need a truck if I do. Having a car while living in a city is a waste.
• I'll possibly still be getting some amount of money from the University of Arizona for online work. This means that I'll have an income stream. I want to treat this income as going directly into the innawoods fund though.
• If I actually ever get monetized (it's been 5 months of "review"), I might actually be making workable money on YouTube (possibly enough for rent somewhere). Patreon/Paypal is small now, but a lot more than nothing and sort of pays for my groceries and such.

Anyway, the title of the post is "Whomst lives in Georgia?" because I'm curious. I know some subscribers live in Athens, and if there are a lot there, or a lot in Kennesaw or another college town, that might be a reason to move there, so we can have IRL meetups or stuff or I can do stuff at university events, etc. Feel free to respond to the thread on this on the forum or if you don't want to dox yourself, just mail me (luke@lukesmith.xyz).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#whomst-lives-in-georgia

Exile in Suburbia

While I'm looking for a new apartment or land to live on, I've been living in the Atlanta suburbs (or 'boondocks' in some people's definitions) again. After a couple days of rest after the grueling move/drive across country, I'm getting used to the 40 minute walk to the closest town and the extreme lack of people of my demographics (both age and race).

I found a local bookstore today and bought a copy of Cochran and Harpending's The 10,000 Year Explosion, a book I had read a while ago, but never bought. It's actually my style to only buy books after reading them and liking them at libraries. I'm rereading it now.

I've also been going thru A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, which was largely one of the key books in spreading Logical Positivism to the English-speaking work. Intellectually-subtle viewers may know that I'm not a big fan of Logical Positivism-in fact I'm sort of reading it to have a strawman to attack in my dissertation. You never know though; I find it very difficult to enunciate my distaste of it. The vocabulary isn't quite out there to do so with a popular (or un-popular) audience.

Since I plan on my dissertation being in large part philosophy of science and then some, I'll have to overcome this lack of vocabulary, and might do so partially with the aid of my YouTube channel.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#exile-in-suburbia

Lol Linuxfest

I've been at Southeast Linuxfest the past two days. I'll probably do a full review later, but here are some highlights so far.

• My subscribers are not nearly as weird as I anticipated, and seem to be actually less weird than the average Linux user.
• There actually were some girls Linuxfest (although no obvious >girls).
• My talk was pretty crowded; standing room only. It also generated a lot of good discussion. I polled the audience and about half of them knew me (usually the younger ones).
• Some boomer guy began to unironically "Interject" to my use of the term "Linux" as I used it in the talk ;-)
• I even had a very young fan (as in utterly prepubescent fan) besting even Pewdiepie's fans in youth. He asked for an autograph and picture.
• Linuxfest was generally well-organized but there were some huge oversights. The rooms were only equipped to handle HDMI inputs. This basically ruined Michael Tunnell's presentation which was right before mine (and probably others) since they couldn't record from his laptop. Poor guy had to use some useless Chromebook (which its distinct lack of keys) to try to preview kdenlive. They couldn't record from mine either, but I'm not going to let that happen, so I just went Harambe Mindframe and connected to the screen VGA input, bypassing their recording rig and recorded the talk on my own machine. This is something that the speakers should not have to be worrying about.
• People got a little peeved by the organizer's keynote, because it went way, way over on time, and then was followed by another talk that ruffled some vocal SJW feathers (basically a critique of witch-hunting codes of conduct). This is just what I gleamed from people, all of whom were really tired after a long day, because I sat these talks out.

Anyway, it's been nice meeting all of you who have/had come! Again, I might do a video update after the whole thing is over.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#lol-linuxfest

The Secrets in Hamlet's Mill

A week or so ago, I heard about, for the first time, the book Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth. The subtitle should communicate the gist. After ordering it online, it arrived this afternoon and I've gotten five chapters in (barely a fifth of the way through the whole thing).

I was attracted to the book as part of my general sympathy for the idea that pre-classical and primeval knowledge and myth is, to use a silly word scientific, or at least true in a astronomical or quasi-metaphorical level. That's certainly the intended argument of the book, but it certainly labors under that Moldbuggian tendency to beat around the bush quietly, hoping that the deeper argument will eventually sneak up and hit its reader on the head. While the book is definitely designed to be a slow burn, one positive aspect is authors' repeated insistence of the imperfectness of translating early writings and myths, partially on linguistic grounds, but even more so due to the severely underestimated difference between the modern and primeval mindset.

I'll also say that in addition to this book, I've also bought Pandora's Seed (Spencer Wells) and the notable Forbidden Archaeology (Michael Cremo), both of which I'll hopefully be going through this week. The latter book I bought with not too much expectation of seriousness, but out of raw curiosity. It argues an extremely ancient origin of mankind based on reinterpretation of archaeological evidence, its author being what could be described as a Vedic Creationist. I don't expect to be convinced or even unannoyed by the book, but I'm always interested in circumstantial evidence for an earlier date for human evolution, especially given the constant pushing back of the accepted date.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#the-secrets-in-hamlets-mill

Syncthing video, also Patreon changes

New video out on Syncthing for keeping files in sync.

I've said this on Patreon already, but I'm going to be moving to a "per creation" payout on Patreon rather than the "per month" payout. I figure that'd (1) be more fair to people when I go another month like the last one where I don't put much out and (2) give some incentive for me to put stuff out regularly when I'm not moving cross-country or something. I'll treat all contentful videos as "paid" videos, meaning that I won't charge patrons for meta-videos or personal updates. For example, I'll be putting one out today or tomorrow on Liunxfest, etc.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#syncthing-video-also-patreon-changes

Linuxfest 2018 review

A brief video on my experience at Southeast Linuxfest, check it out here.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#linuxfest-2018-review

Linux is the Wild West! Talk is now out

I've uploaded my Linuxfest talk at this link. Check it out. Southeast Linuxfest sends their apologies for not recording my face, but luckily I brought all the equipment for recording on my own machine.

Again, the talk was pretty packed with a lot of standers, especially considering the late time; it was great presenting and meeting all the people I did. I might be going next year as well if I have the time and hope to see all of you again (with many others).

Linuxfest also had set tables for lesser donnors to advertise their wares. At least one group was livestreaming throughout the event, and I figure that might be an option for me in the future. (I've also thought about merch, but it always strikes me as contrived and a little too consumerist.) I'm not actually sure how much they charge for the tables, but it's crossed my mind to crowdfund the money. That's probably something to think about in the future though.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#linux-is-the-wild-west-talk-is-now-out

Consciousness, bicamerality and book reviews

After a good bit more reading, I've given up on Hamlet's Mill, and not lightly. I usually view it as a kind of shame to stop reading a book before finishing, but I frankly don't feel like it's worth it at this point. The book is far too circumambulative to actually communicate its deeper point, but I get the feeling that it's that way out of a desire on the authors' part to avoid criticism with lack of clarity.

From what I can gather (after reading several hundred pages of deep, dank, quasi-poetic prose), it's a general argument that many classic mythological stories (those stories in different cultures that Hamlet is based on) are a kind of folkloric embedding of knowledge of axial procession (the fact that the earth's axis wobbles every several tens of thousands of years). This point is only alluded to or barely said, and only very circumstantial arguments are made for it, at the request of readers to squint their eyes to blurry the argument to make it sound more convincing than it really is.

Instead, I've started reading Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind for the third time. It's one of my favorite reads, no so much because I find it so convincing, but because it's that pleasurable mix of ancient aliens-tier imagination and speculation with at least passable science, neurology, linguistics and other research. This was an enjoyment I hoped to replicate in reading Hamlet's Mill actually.

I've been hinted that I might start doing book reviews at the request of many subscribers, and I might pick Bicameral Mind to be the first candidate after I finish it again. I put up a poll of commonly requested books on the forum, and Taleb's Antifragile, Herrnstein and Murray Bell Curve and an unspecified book by Nietzsche got the most votes, but I'll probably end up doing everything on the poll anyway.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#consciousness-bicamerality-and-book-reviews

Video on GIMP basics

I've put up a video on the basics of GIMP, which you can see here.

I may do more in the future, but even better, I'm going to be doing some videos on Imagemagick (I already have one recorded which I'll release over the weekend). For those who don't know, Imagemagick is a core system for image creating and editing that accessible on the command line. It's hard to full express how useful IM is, so the first video will be just on one of my implementations of it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-on-gimp-basics

Updates about Money and Patreon

First, as a reminder, I do indeed have a Patreon and encourage people to join. As stiff of a veneer I pretend to have when it comes to money, I won't pretend that there is a great psychological effect to getting new patrons and bigger pledges. Now that I'm dissertating, if I can start making decent money on YouTube, it will affect a lot how much free time I'll have if I can live with on part-time work. If you don't like Patreon as a platform, donate via Liberapay or Paypal.

I said so a couple days ago in a part of another post, but I'm switching my Patreon to being based "by creation" rather than "by month" so people get charged by content rather than time. As longer viewers know, sometimes I have to take several weeks off, while other times, I'm making videos every day. If you're already a patron on Patreon, you might want to change your settings. Specifically, everyone has been grandfathered in from the monthly donation scheme with those settings. If you want to pledge by creation now, you'll have to adjust the per unit donation and your maximum.

Of course my Liberapay is, by its nature set to on a weekly basis, so if you want a clearer time-based donation system, try them out. Liberapay, unlike Patreon, does not skim money off the top for themselves, so if you're thinking about using one of them for time-based donations and don't have any account yet, go with Liberapay.

By the way, Patreon says I'm making $180 per video, which isn't accurate. It's really more like $180 per month plus about $10 or so for the first few videos; it simply adds in the monthly donators to that number. If I could actually make near $200 per video or more, I could basically retire and do this full time ;-).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#updates-about-money-and-patreon

First Imagemagick Videos

I've put up two videos on imagemagick today and yesterday covering some of the basics from making canvases and composites and basic effects. You can check the first out here and the second here. Imagemagick is one of the most useful programs out there, and can be a huge boon for automated imageprocessing and also making little modifications (like resizing and minor adjustment).

I'll be doing more like this just because of imagemagick being such a huge and useful world. Specific ideas are welcome.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#first-imagemagick-videos

A Journey to Athens

I've still been looking for apartments in Georgia or thereabout and yesterday I took a full-day trip back to Athens (Georgia of course) to scout out apartments. After a full day and after seeing about a dozen places, I have to admit that I didn't find anywhere too much up to snuff, even given the fact that I don't need to be particularly close to the university.

I may be back there again within a week or so, but I'll concede that I was debating whether I actually want to live there again. I'm really not in the mood to put down a year's rent anywhere, even if it's only $5000 or so, unless I can get a really great place, but I suppose the real problem is a change in my mindset.

In brief, I don't feel like I want to put down money for something that isn't going to last; the bugmanhood of renting an apartment is extremely unappealing. The better alternative now seems like just buying a parcel of land with the little money I've saved up. My goal is 5+ semi-remote acres for less than $20,000, which is doable. I have a couple placing I'm looking at now, but am always looking for more. I just want land that I am extremely free in building restrictions and zoning (preferable none), and that I can have a permanent setup on: possible growing and self-sustaining utilities. I've done a lot of math and think that I can get a decent cabin built (my myself) for less than $5,000, probably closer to $3,000, but maybe with $2,000 of unforeseen costs ;-)

The other thing on the ledger would be me buying a car (or more likely, a pick-up) because I haven't needed a car since honestly 10 years (my old car finally died about two years ago). Granted, if anyone reading this around Georgia has a used pickup truck in good shape they're willing to get rid of, feel free to contact me ;-) Don't rip me off though, I have a YouTube channel!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#a-journey-to-athens

Redesign of Website

I've reformatted my personal website a bit, and I've readded the video gallery page which I had on my last site. YouTube is terrible about showing older videos to users, so it's nice having my own archive of things displayed logically. If I don't do that, I literally get oblvious questions all the time asking me to do a video on things I did a video on last week. I can hardly even blame summerfriends for that since if you're a new viewer, you have no good way of knowing what kind of stuff I've made videos on on YouTube because they never recommend non-recent videos and they have no good UI for looking someone's video history.

That's actually one of the ironies about YouTube. For all they complain about there being a drought of advertisers, they put out all the incentives for people to put out more and more junk videos constantly. It's easy to see from my side the enormous bias YouTube gives to videos that are 72 hours old, but after those 72 hours, very few people will ever see any given video unless it absolutely goes viral.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#redesign-of-website

Monetized with Super Chats

I took a long (several hour) walk to clear my head this morning, and came back to a pleasant surprise: YouTube has finally (after five or six months of review) monetized my channel. I don't have the slightest idea how much money I'll actually end up getting from this, but I hope it's decent enough.

Of course, my studious core of viewers all will be using ad-blockers. The one I usually recommend is Ad Nauseam, which is not just a blocker, but a dazzler. If you don't like ads, don't feel like you need to permit them from my channel to get me more revenue. I'm sure there are plenty other who will be watching them without. I only monetized after polling my audience at the old forum (some 80% just told me to monetize) and if you're part of that remaining 20%, just block them as you usually would.

The other nice detail is that I can now allow "Super Chats" in livestreams. If you don't know, that's when users can pay money to have their chat message plastered prominently in the chat window for a period proprtional to their donation. I think chats in my livestreams are off decent enough size that people would be willing to get some of these. But then again, now doing le bloodsports seems like a much more appealling prospect. Any takers?

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#monetized-with-super-chats

i3blocks reloaded

I've put up a video expanding on my i3blocks status bar, partially in preparation for the LARBS tutorial videos.

I've implemented many new features, including signaling for a lower footprint bar, and some other bells and whistles. I also go through where everything is in the system for people using my configs.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#i3blocks-reloaded

Video on copying and pasting from Vim

A quick little video on how to copy and pasting using the system clipboard in Vim. It's simple enough, but people ask me about this a whole lot. Some brief instructions about registers generally as well.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-on-copying-and-pasting-from-vim

In Defense of "Pseudoscience"

If you keep up with my random asides in videos and elsewhere, you might know that I'm extremely disappointed with the current state of institutionalized science. The post-war era was a disaster for scientific epistemology, in fact, epistemology and science commentary mostly became an exercise to exclude one's enemies by technicality. Academia became an enormous state-funded enterprise, and the best way to ensure that your research program got funding before your rivals was to develop advanced reasoning to exclude their methodology altogether from science.

Thus the term "pseudoscience". In former centuries, there was no such division between "science" and "pseudoscience". Researchers wrote tomes on subjects which were amalgams of hard analysis and what we would now consider baseless or unwarranted speculation. Each were understood for what they were, all ideas were on the table for analysis.

The thing is, all academics-at least all remotely intelligent ones-quietly harbor fringe beliefs. If you push any of them in private, or with vindicating evidence, they'll quickly bounce to support their deeper intuition. One example that comes to mind is geologist Robert Schoch, who after a little empirical prodding, became a vocal supporter of the idea of a prehistoric dating of the Sphinx, and then later other Mesolithic civilizations. Nowadays he brushes shoulders even with the ancient aliens crowd, and why shouldn't he? Once you've earned the designation of "pseudoscientist", you might as well go full-bore and have fun.

The other best-kept secret is that by definition, "pseudoscience" drives advancement in "real science". All new ideas start out as baseless speculation-Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, based on the trivial and child-like realization that South America sort of fits into Africa, was mocked as pseudoscientific by Americans for decades. Now it's science. I wouldn't doubt if Schoch's Sphinx water erosion hypothesis will be similarly vindicated, partially by the many Mesolithic constructions found since then.

In linguistics and archeology, we have a recent "pseudoscientist" in Marija Gimbutas. Gimbutas unearthed many female idols/dolls from pre-Indo-European Europe and jumped to far-reaching, "pseudoscientific" conclusions: Old Europe was a feminist utopia, there was no violence and complete harmony, etc. Because Gimutas's politics were socially unassailable, you don't hear "pseudoscientist" around her much, but that's certainly the word on everyone's lips. If pseudoscience is what Schoch is doing, it's certainly what she was doing. Regardless, this pushed her into making specific claims about the origin of Indo-Europeans, that they originated from the Kurgan (Yamnaya) culture, a claim that has now become consensus due to further archeological, linguistic and nowadays even genetic research.

I've seen first hand that there are really two types of personalities in science. On one had, there's the conventional and petty academic who is "detail-oriented" and "rigorous" in some sense that means religiously adherent to theoretical priors. These people will only truly fight for something when they're on the side of consensus or when the issue is of no social importance. On the other side are the "pseudoscientists", or in other words, the people who actually have something interesting to say.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#in-defense-of-pseudoscience

New st patches: Xresources and pywal compatibility

When I did my original video on st, AKA the suckless simple terminal, a lot of other people decided to migrate over, but there are a couple of features that I hadn't added to my build, or people were confused how to add. Now, partially in preparation for LARBS, I've added some more features, including the fact that the terminal colors now use your Xresources colors by default, enabling the use of wal/pywal for creating universal colorschemes. (If you don't know what this is, I did a video on it a couple months ago.)

You can now check out my patched version of st right here, and it will have all the best patches applied by default now.

I think it's at the point where I consider st just about the best possible terminal for me (and probably for most all people). I occationally get requests to submit by build to the AUR, which I might do, but I can definitely say that you can safely use my build and get all the features you expect from a terminal while it still being bugless and minimal as any good suckless software should be.

Well actually, on bugs, there is one little, minor annoyance in the program and that's that ranger image previews disappear when you mouse away from the given window. While there is a patch for st 0.7 which gives it sixel compatibility, due to its *le bloat* it hasn't been accepted into the program, and aside from that, I don't think ranger is built to work with sixel itself either so far. Either way, I still consider st largely "the best", but being able to patch in something like this would make it closer to "perfect". With the features and bindings I have in my build, I find it a little sad when I have to use another terminal.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-st-patches-xresources-and-pywal-compatibility

Macs, "PCs" and the Power of Public Relations

One of the strangest turns-of-phrase that Apple has tried to hoist on the public is the term "PC" to mean all non-Apple computers. Even without delving much deeper, this is one of the most bizarre choices; Apple Mac computers are not just PCs, but they were arguably the first PCs-you would think that Apple would be proud of more or less inventing the idea of a Personal Computer.

Regardless, what is the point of the term PC to Apple advertising? Why did they run that classic series of commercials contrasting Macs and "PCs"? At a basic level, PC is just a catch-all exonym, that is, a term for all computers outside of a designated group. In reality, there's really nothing common to computers made by Lenovo, Dell, Asus and every other company that aren't also held in common with Apple computers. The only thing in common, at least, is the lack of the characteristic Apple weirdness (no other company is going to get rid of all their computers' important ports, for example).

Regardless, I noticed the actual public relations use of the term "PC" after I did my video on Macs-this term works wonders in the mind of an Mac fan. That is, nearly every dogmatic Apple user would call me a "PC fanboy"! PC fanboy... what could that possibly mean?

At first I thought most hate mail was coming from people who didn't watch 10 or so seconds in when I said that I used Linux (deliberately to avoid inane comments like this). I assumed that "PC" meant "a machine running Windows", which is clearly not what Mac-users thought the term to mean: it was all non-Mac computers. I'd guess that my old TI-84 calculator is a "PC" by that metric. This is a total inversion of what the term "fanboy" means of course. You can be a Mac fanboy: Apple Mac products, while sometimes different, all share the exact same design principles and are all owned by one company notorious for its quasi-cult like public relations.

While on the other hand, "PC fanboy" doesn't really mean anything-there's no common denominator or design or principle behind all non-Apple computers (again, aside from the fact that they don't do the manifestly stupid things that Apple does). A "PC fanboy" in practice just means someone who doesn't like Macs, but that's where the magic is for Apple advertising-Mac users have always been lampooned as cult members, but the term PC is an attempt redirect the claims of irrational devotion backwards. It doesn't have to make sense generally, but it makes sense in the head of an Apple fanboy: non-Mac computers are all the same and if you don't like Macs, you must just have some terrible emotional problem with them for no reason (this is the gist of most of the hatemail I get on this anyway).

Since I made my video on Macs, I don't dislike Macs any more than I did before, but I am continually losing respect for Mac users. I could've just as easily done a video on why I don't use Windows, but God knows that Windows users don't have the same genre of pathological attachment to the brand they use. That's not to imply that all comments from Mac users even disagreed with me, but the vocal members of the hivemind have certainly put a smug anime girl face on me from time to time.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#macs-pcs-and-the-power-of-public-relations

Download any Academic Article Free: A One-Liner

You may know of Sci-Hub, an excellent service by Alexandra Elbakyan that opens pay-walled academic articles for free public use.

The typical use of the service is to go to the main site (right now http://sci-hub.tw, it changes often due to piracy accusations), give it a link to an academic article and it will pop up a new window allowing you to download it.

This is way too much keypressing and clicking for me, and I want an browser-free way of doing this. Instead I made a line like the following to put in your bashrc to run a link through sci-hub and automatically download it.

Then you can simply download an article by passing the link of its preview or abstract, e.g.: shdl https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40806-017-0133-5 and it will download to your current directory.

I have this as part of my linkhandler script, which I have my RSS reader newsboat run on desired entries in my RSS feeds. Specifically, I subscribe to many RSS feeds for academic journals, and now with this script, if I see an article I want to read, I can just run my linkhandler script and download them immediately without laboriously having to open the browser to copy the url and then paste it into sci-hub, etc. Note that in my linkhandler script, I have it detect if the link is of an academic publisher (which is a modifiable variable) and that the Sci-Hub link is also a separate variable because, as I said, it occasionally changes and I want it to be distinct.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#download-any-academic-article-free-a-one-liner

How let your root user use your main dotfiles

When you have a single-user system, or one with only one user with sudoer access, I always used to hate that every time I became root, I'd lose the settings set in my bashrc and aliases, my vimrc and preferred directory shortcuts. About 6 months ago, I had the crazy idea to change the root user's home directory from /root to /home/luke so root would look in my main directory for all its dotfiles.

I was initially worried that this could cause some vulnerabilities, it might still, but I have to say that it's been hugely convenient and hasn't given me any problems in all these months, so I recommend trying it out. All you have to do is open /etc/passwd and change the directory on the line starting with root: to your typical home directory.

So whenever you log in as root, you'll still have access to all your rc settings, and will be in your familiar home folder. I didn't think of it before, but you'll also have fewer log files to have to sort through. For example, if I once worked out a compilcated shell command and am trying to look it up in my .bash_history, I used to have to check /home/luke/.bash_history and /root/.bash_history if I couldn't remember if I ran it as myself or root. Now, however, both accounts use the same history file for bash, and also other programs.

So anyway, I recommend trying it out. I'm sure I'll get a couple emails about how it could be potentially dangerous, but the convenience has been huge and I've had no problems, although I might not recommend doing this on your webserver to hedge against unknown vulnerabilities.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#how-let-your-root-user-use-your-main-dotfiles

Scripting in action

At the request of viewers, I might be putting out a series of videos on shell scripting in the wild. You can see the first video of this here. I cover a small script I use for mounting USB drives on Linux, as opposed to using some fancy (bloated?) daemon or other service.

It's probably part of my sense to not trust anything I didn't write myself ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#scripting-in-action

LARBS is about done

Holy crap, I've probably installed and reinstalled LARBS 50 times in the past couple days as I've ironed out the last kinks. I've totally rewritten larbs.sh twice (arguably three times) this week, but the result is fantastic. The script runs smoother than ever on the user side (a full installation takes less than 10 minutes now) and I've autistically separated the code into functions for portability and customizeability.

And boy is it. Aside from the script now being composed of easy to manipulate functions, larbs.sh now reads in a separate programs file (in .csv format) and can take a custom dotfiles repo as well. You can feed it a .csv like this one and it can parse the list and install the programs in whatever way it needs to. E.g. in the setup now, untagged programs are in the main repo, programs tagged with A are AUR programs and G programs are git repositories installable with make && sudo make install. Depending on the tag, LARBS will run a different install command as needed. Note that the last column (which is a description of the program in a verb phrase) appears at runtime to describe the program while it's installed. A nice little addition.

So you can easily setup a your own LARBS now. Since I said I was going to do real-life videos on bash scripts, I might do an explainer on this one, since I'm sure it might be generally edifying, but also very useful for people who want to extend the scripts.

Check it out: LARBS on Github.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#larbs-is-about-done

Video on cronjobs for managing my system

I just released a brief video on cronjobs, how to make them for new users, including the syntax, but also some of the jobs that I have run on my machine (also about the minor annoyance of specifying displays for some graphical commands).

I didn't start using cronjobs until only a couple months ago, but now I've fully integrated them into my system. As I state in the video, I do my updating via cron by havine a pacman -Syuw --noconfirm command run every two hours to check for and download package updates (it also gives me a preview of the number of updateable packages on my i3blocks bar). I then finalize the update when I want, but don't have to watch the downloading happen. If you want, you could just as easily remove the -w and have the updating done all automatically if you don't feel like you need to see what's new.

Any suggestions on new cronjobs are welcome!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-on-cronjobs-for-managing-my-system

Minor hack: Pausing all mpv videos on any screen

For a while I had been looking for a command to pause all mpv video instances on my computer. I have a lock script which, while locking, automatically pauses the audio from my mpd, but I had wanted a way to pause all mpv instances as well, otherwise I would have to do the potentially annoying task of getting to the right workspace and hitting pause manually. I could find a lot more "complicated" solutions where you have to start mpv on a particular socket, but I ran across a much easier and universal possibility:

Which is a pretty funny command, but works exactly how I want. If you're not familiar with xdotool, this one-liner just searchs for all mpv instances and sends the key , to each of them, which by default moves the video back by a frame and pauses it. So now I've just added this line to my lock script, so if I ever am watching something and want to leave my computer and lock it, I don't have to worry about manually pausing mpv which may be on another screeen. Also, while I've always had Super+p mapped to "pause/unpause mpd audio", I've mapped Super+Shift+P to "pause mpd and all mpv instances", running this one-liner along with the true mpd pause command.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#minor-hack-pausing-all-mpv-videos-on-any-screen

Don't be a Bash BRAINLET!

In a new vid, I talk about the importance of good design, and what that means in your typical shell script. I take the example of the shortcut-sync script I use to keep my bash, ranger and qutebrowser aliases synced and autogenerated. Originally when I wrote it, it was terribly designed, looping through a file and outputting to files six different times per line, adding up for a staggeringly long 1.5 second runtime for a 45 line script! The newer, better version (see the above link to Github), uses streams in the proper way to produce nearly instantaneous completion.

It's a pretty good example of how good (or bad) design principles can add up hugely on a system. It's almost mind-boggling to think about the difference that well-written and efficient code can make even for typical users as you add up the hundres of thousand or millions of lines of code we end up running every day.

A lot of people will repeat the typical mantra that we "need more programmers" for the modern economy. I have to say I've always hugely disagreed with this. A lot of the effort spent in the industry is maintaining the unmaintainable and playing whack-a-mole with the problems that bad design creates. We'd be better off with a smaller contingency of programmers and tweakers mindful of efficiency and machine resources. This is definitely something I've realized directly while I've started using UNIX operating systems.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#dont-be-a-bash-brainlet

Now THIS is Bash AUTISM!

A new brief video and follow-up to the last video. I correctly prophesied that there were more decent optimizations to the script from the last video. Specifically, I briefly talk about tee, a UNIX utility which is lesser-used, but allows us to take an input and output it to multiple places, potentially performing further modifications on each of the separate streams. We save DOZENS of milliseconds in our unrelenting autismal quest for efficiency.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#now-this-is-bash-autism

Podcast series to begin shortly

I've been contemplating for a while to do a podcast series, partially at the desires of viewers and I think it's now going to happen. The general format is going to be on weekly topics, at the beginning focusing on particular books of political, scientific or other note. I originally was searching around for a co-host, but honestly couldn't find anyone I particularly liked for the job. I'm open to one in the future, but I think I'm setting myself on a detailed monologue format for now.

I've gotten specific requests for books and topics, but it's going to follow only my own instincts in the beginning, focusing mostly on unsung but potent works. The first week, I've pretty much settled on Julian Haynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind followed by (in no particular order) Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Feyerabend's Against Method, Hutton's Race and the Third Reich and Nassim Taleb's growing corpus, typically called Incerto.

I'm also open to having non-book based topics or perhaps talking about fiction works. Say, the works of Lovecraft or Dick or Borgres. Now this isn't supposed to be a bookclub, or a learning experience for me though. I want to focus on works and topics I've been familiar with for years, otherwise it would be pretty silly to put out content. It would sort of like those people who do "distro" reviews after playing around on a Linux distro for 10 minutes.

Anyway, I'm still divided on what to call the podcast, but I might just call it No Relation as a joke and allusion to the now famous one episode podcast my roomate and I did last year, and considering it has No Relation to the original.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#podcast-series-to-begin-shortly

Minor blog addition

As an experiment, I've added to my blog system (lb) an extra element, only amounting to a small edition of code. This is an additional (more traditional) blog index page, which you can see here.

It's pretty simple and really just prepends new entries to the top just like the rest of the blog system does for your RSS feed and the rolling blog file. The titling by month is not automatic, so each month, you'd have to add a new heading though. Not sure if I want to bother automating that.

It does add the date to the title as well, which is automatic, but I didn't add it to older entries since I revising that would be a little more difficult.

I've pushed these changes to the Github, but they're still liable to change a little bit. You can feel free to update your local repo or not, as it won't affect the rest of the system whether you use this feature or not.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#minor-blog-addition

Minor blog addition

As an experiment, I've added to my blog system (lb) an extra element, only amounting to a small edition of code. This is an additional (more traditional) blog index page, which you can see here.

It's pretty simple and really just prepends new entries to the top just like the rest of the blog system does for your RSS feed and the rolling blog file. The titling by month is not automatic, so each month, you'd have to add a new heading though. Not sure if I want to bother automating that.

It does add the date to the title as well, which is automatic, but I didn't add it to older entries since I revising that would be a little more difficult.

I've pushed these changes to the Github, but they're still liable to change a little bit. You can feel free to update your local repo or not, as it won't affect the rest of the system whether you use this feature or not.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#minor-blog-addition

I've deleted my Twitter

I've deleted my Twitter. Even when I had originally joined the site, it was considerably past its prime, mainly due to its voluntary amputation of all accounts worth following, but it's now become intolerable to even browse. The site is now a wasteland ravaged by the Eternal Bluecheck, that self-gaslighting conspiracy theorist constantly amped up by the Boomer left media and on the prowl for pearls to clutch and evens to can't. An engineered monster, now laying waste to their allotted space.

This could be fun for trolls, which I'm not anyway, but even trolling these untouchable elites is now "hate speech" and thus immediately banable. There's an esoteric insurgency on Twitter, as esotericism is the only possible cloak to protect against the now routine purges, but it's not enough for me to continue on the site which is utterly useless. Twitter is simply a dead site run by jesters in suits and there's no reason to even stave off its collapse by getting them any hits. I encourage every one else to delete their account if, for some reason, you're still on it. You can use twitrss.me to get an RSS feed for a Twitter account you want to follow it and get its updates in newsboat or your own RSS reader. This is actually always how I've "followed" accounts so Twitter doesn't know who I'm actually following.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#ive-deleted-my-twitter

Intro podcast episode up and RSS feed available.

i've put out a preliminary episode for the podcast, you can go ahead and subscribe to the RSS feed at http://notrelated.libsyn.com/rss.

I'll also be mirroring the episodes on YouTube and the first one is out here. Obviously I suggest using the RSS feed though just because I' ve gone through all the trouble of setting up a system to logically tag all the files for all you autistes who just have to have it that way ;-).

I'm using Libsyn to syndicate my podcasts as you can see by the links. I have a very high opinion of libsyn, especially compared to other platforms like YouTube, as libsyn has a relatively unblemished record of non-censorship. It will cost me money to upload on it monthly, so if you enjoy the show, please feel free to donate or the money will have to come out of my pocket.

If you have a good sense of what I'm shooting for in this podcast and have recommendation of your own, feel free to say so! As I say in this 0th episode, I plan on answering emails in the middle of the show and reading PayPal donations.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#intro-podcast-episode-up-and-rss-feed-available.

Mfw soydevs would use PHP for this

If you check my website regularly, you may've noticed that I added a "Recent blog entries" subheading on the main page. Each time I add a new blog entry, it'll be updated to show only the most recent five. I was asked how I do this, given that my site is static, but honestly it's the easiest thing in the world, but I'll give you a hint in case it isn't obvious.

As background, I edit my website by keeping a mirror offline on my computer, then I use rsync commands (via scripts or bash aliases) to either update individually changed files, or all files. The script that updates all files also checks for other things. For example, if my CV which is in another folder has been updated, it will copy the new udpate to the website directory before uploading everything.

The "Recent blog entries" part is also handled by this "update all script". Using a grep command, I search my blog list file for the first five blog headers, which will be the most recent entries, and I change the formatting into a list (which is actually a single line of HTML for ease) with a sed command. Then, with sed again, I search for the previously created line, delete it and replace it with the new five entries.

As for the specific commands, you can figure them out yourself ;-). Point is, a lot of people have this domain-dependent thinking when approaching web-based file management as if core utils are unusable and we have to rely on server-side scripts even to do basic things. This is a bad mindset that causes incalculable harm on the web. Obviously core utils aren't going to get you true dynamically generated sites, but you can get most use cases out of plain HTML and should try to do so whenever possible.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#mfw-soydevs-would-use-php-for-this

Full MSMTPRC support added to Mutt Wizard

After a recent commit, mutt-wizard will now also generate an msmtprc file based on your settings. While mutt-wizard has had partial, expandable msmtp compatibility, it now all comes by default. This will increase some compatibility with some accounts and will give you more options in sending mail if you want to set personal msmtp settings. Remember to install the relevant msmtp package on your distro before sending mail!

Obviously the wizard will safely store your password and decrypt it only when necessary, just like with offlineimap. If you want msmtp compatibility but you've already run mutt-wizard, I recommend removing your old accounts in the dialog menu and readding them (this won't delete you offline email so you won't have to redownload it so long as you keep the email's account name the same). I encourage you to try it, partially because if there are errors, I'd like to find out soon! ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#full-msmtprc-support-added-to-mutt-wizard

The Real Bronze-Age Mindset!

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast RSS feed: http://notrelated.libsyn.com and you can check out the automatic blog here. I'll be posting podcast updates on my personal RSS feed regardless just for completeness sake, but will gradually keep them to their own magisterium.

The newest podcast episode (direct link here) is on the true Bronze-Age Mindset, well, sort of. It's on Julian Jaynes' theory of the "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", which amounts to arguing that humans before the Bronze Age Collapse were, in fact, not conscious among many other wild, yet surprisingly justifiable things.

I'll also have a YT video equivalent of the podcast, which will be available tomorrow morning at https://youtu.be/lgnMyF-o0sQ.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#the-real-bronze-age-mindset

Cell Phones and the Bronze Age Collapse (1177 BC)

First off, I put up a brief video talking about why I don't like using cell phones, it seems it's already gotten some good feedback, so check it out if you haven't already. Cell phones are devices that encourage a kind of superficiality of mind and habit, and are not nearly as useful as we think they are. Having a truly free-as=in-freedom and privacy-respecting cell phone is, by large part, impossible.

There's also been a lot of great feedback on the first episode of ,Not Related, which I'll go over in the next episode. I've got my prep mostly ready, I don't want to divulge the exact topic, yet. I think I'll let each episode be a surprise. I've also bought NotRelated.xyz, but as of now it will just direct to my own homepage.

By the way, since the first podcast, there was a book I mentioned in passing, Eric Cline's 1177 B.C.: The year Civilization Collapsed. It popped in my head while recording, so I mentioned it, because I had heard very good things about it, but I decided it'd be a little hypocritical to even name-drop it without reading it ;-), so in the time since the episode, I got and read through in full and a half.

I'll say it's definitely good and worth reading. A little repetitive, but in a way that facilitates retention. If you're interesting in the period or want to get a wider view of it after the Bicameral Mind episode, it might be a good starting point for a historical view. There's an audiobook of it floating out there too.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#cell-phones-and-the-bronze-age-collapse-1177-bc

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy UP

New episode of the podcat out: check out the website and subscribe to the the RSS feed if you haven't already.

This episode is on Joseph Schumpeter's classic book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. I cover about 4/5ths of the books content, all of it expect Schumpeter's takes on democracy, but that part I'm thinking to include in an episode on democracy generally (along with yet another biggeder-braned and more recent book on democracy (don't ask which, you'll find out)) either later this week or next week!

I give two potential time slots because there's another book which, due to recent events in the e-celeb world, I want to cover and get out there ASAP (not tellin' which yet!). But this book itself is a sizeable tome of 900 or so pages, which I've of course read before, but want to reread for good prep! The order in which I finish prep for one or the other episode will determine to order of release ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#capitalism-socialism-and-democracy-up

My diet following the memes

Abiding by an ideological "diet" is pure autism. It's peak dystopian, actually. Identifying with some meme diet you've become rationally convinced of is like identifying by the music you listen to or some autistically-differentiated political label. It's something people only do in a bugman society when they've been deprived of their real identity.

Nonetheless, I occasionally get questions about what I eat and as I go on, my functional diet changes, but interesting patterns emerge. Nowadays you've had meme diets from Atkins to Paleo to this new keto meme; all of them circulate around the idea that the food pyramid is a lie, and meats and fats are severely underrated. In my experience, I'm very inclined to agree. In fact, one of the realities of nutrition "science" is that a lot of the jack-booting, tone-setting and "advocacy" has always been done by either Jehovah's Witnesses or vegetarians, two parties who have ideological motivations to downplay the good of meat and to overplay the good of "slave foods" like cereals and starchy staples. I'm not bothered by their ethical pretenses, but it's a whole nother thing to pretend that they're based in the reality of what's good for humans aside from pietisms.

First, for my younger viewers, you'll realize as you get "old" (as you leave puberty at least around 25), your digestive abilities and metabolism change. The young digestive system is much more plastic and durable than someone in the late 20s and on. You've probably heard that you'll put on weight more easier if you eat pizza, true for most people, but for me, I've found that it's increasingly difficult even to properly digest greasy pizza, junk food, sugars and everything processed and terrible about the modern world. As you get a little older, you really can feel the debilitatingly negative hormonal effects of carbo-loading. You get acid-reflux and indigestion more too. Domino's is a one-way ticket to diarrhea. Hell, a couple weeks ago in a silly attempt to put on empty weight, I bought and ate a meek-and-mild Cheerios knock-off and let's just say that came out looking about the same as they went in.

Don't worry, I'm not falling apart. The solution has been easy. Stop eating processed foods. Stop eating sugar. And Stop eating the Virgin Bottom-of-the-Food-Pyramid. Just eat meat.

I don't eat only meat now, but I abandoned the pretense and can acknowledge that meals are nothing more than a serving of meat with some other mostly decorative foods. I have some vegetables and fruits here and there, and I do go out to eat and get a sandwich (with bread of course) every once in a while. I'll say that I've realized that I can detect a little digestive difference between meat treated with antibiotics and that without. Might be confirmation bias, but I prefer untreated or organic meat and will buy it if it's not too much more expensive. Typical meals include:

• Chicken thighs/legs covered in garlic powder, garlic salt, thyme and rosemary. 20 minutes on oiled tray in a 425F oven.
• Steak. Rare, duh. Cooked on the range with an entire diced onion (which becomes caramelized) and about a third of a green pepper. Occasionally topped with cheese that I grate (yup, I use cheese blocks because I'm an artiste)
• Whole chicken, decorated internally and externally with shards of onions, garlic and sometimes potatoes. Washed with egg white. Thyme, rosemary. Covered with foil and ovened for maybe 40 minutes.

Oh and I use olive oil for all of these. None of that Cucknola oil BS. I'm also not big on salt.

And by the way, stop believing Nutrition Facts autism. The reality of nutrition "science" is that the body is a machine far more complex than we understand. The idea that our body needs precisely that 100% of all of those substances that the American government proclaimed back in the 70s is ridiculous. For the same reason, sorry, but eating something with another random protein (like le soy) isn't a substitute for the actual nourishment of meat. My scientific proof is the diminished physical and hormonal state of vegans. Some people will tell them they need B12 or something else, but it's far beyond that. Regardless "diet" foods/sodas are the same. They only exist so they look good on the nutrition facts. They produce equivalent tastes and fill your stomach with things that you're body can't digest and turn into calories/energy. In a sane society, that would be identified as being something way worse than the thing they're supposed to be replacing.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/my-diet-following-the-memes/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/my-diet-following-the-memes/

My diet following the memes

Abiding by an ideological "diet" is pure autism. It's peak dystopian, actually. Identifying with some meme diet you've become rationally convinced of is like identifying by the music you listen to or some autistically-differentiated political label. It's something people only do in a bugman society when they've been deprived of their real identity.

Nonetheless, I occasionally get questions about what I eat and as I go on, my functional diet changes, but interesting patterns emerge. Nowadays you've had meme diets from Atkins to Paleo to this new keto meme; all of them circulate around the idea that the food pyramid is a lie, and meats and fats are severely underrated. In my experience, I'm very inclined to agree. In fact, one of the realities of nutrition "science" is that a lot of the jack-booting, tone-setting and "advocacy" has always been done by either Jehovah's Witnesses or vegetarians, two parties who have ideological motivations to downplay the good of meat and to overplay the good of "slave foods" like cereals and starchy staples. I'm not bothered by their ethical pretenses, but it's a whole nother thing to pretend that they're based in the reality of what's good for humans aside from pietisms.

First, for my younger viewers, you'll realize as you get "old" (as you leave puberty at least around 25), your digestive abilities and metabolism change. The young digestive system is much more plastic and durable than someone in the late 20s and on. You've probably heard that you'll put on weight more easier if you eat pizza, true for most people, but for me, I've found that it's increasingly difficult even to properly digest greasy pizza, junk food, sugars and everything processed and terrible about the modern world. As you get a little older, you really can feel the debilitatingly negative hormonal effects of carbo-loading. You get acid-reflux and indigestion more too. Domino's is a one-way ticket to diarrhea. Hell, a couple weeks ago in a silly attempt to put on empty weight, I bought and ate a meek-and-mild Cheerios knock-off and let's just say that came out looking about the same as they went in.

Don't worry, I'm not falling apart. The solution has been easy. Stop eating processed foods. Stop eating sugar. And Stop eating the Virgin Bottom-of-the-Food-Pyramid. Just eat meat.

I don't eat only meat now, but I abandoned the pretense and can acknowledge that meals are nothing more than a serving of meat with some other mostly decorative foods. I have some vegetables and fruits here and there, and I do go out to eat and get a sandwich (with bread of course) every once in a while. I'll say that I've realized that I can detect a little digestive difference between meat treated with antibiotics and that without. Might be confirmation bias, but I prefer untreated or organic meat and will buy it if it's not too much more expensive. Typical meals include:

• Chicken thighs/legs covered in garlic powder, garlic salt, thyme and rosemary. 20 minutes on oiled tray in a 425F oven.
• Steak. Rare, duh. Cooked on the range with an entire diced onion (which becomes caramelized) and about a third of a green pepper. Occasionally topped with cheese that I grate (yup, I use cheese blocks because I'm an artiste)
• Whole chicken, decorated internally and externally with shards of onions, garlic and sometimes potatoes. Washed with egg white. Thyme, rosemary. Covered with foil and ovened for maybe 40 minutes.

Oh and I use olive oil for all of these. None of that Cucknola oil BS. I'm also not big on salt.

And by the way, stop believing Nutrition Facts autism. The reality of nutrition "science" is that the body is a machine far more complex than we understand. The idea that our body needs precisely that 100% of all of those substances that the American government proclaimed back in the 70s is ridiculous. For the same reason, sorry, but eating something with another random protein (like le soy) isn't a substitute for the actual nourishment of meat. My scientific proof is the diminished physical and hormonal state of vegans. Some people will tell them they need B12 or something else, but it's far beyond that. Regardless "diet" foods/sodas are the same. They only exist so they look good on the nutrition facts. They produce equivalent tastes and fill your stomach with things that you're body can't digest and turn into calories/energy. In a sane society, that would be identified as being something way worse than the thing they're supposed to be replacing.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#my-diet-following-the-memes

You can now donate Bitcoin!

I've finally taken the basic step of setting up a Bitcoin wallet, etc. after many requests from users. So you can donate Bitcoin using the address below:

1FhhM4KgEzKizGsDRyT49JANYwqMU6AeKx

You can go to my Bitcoin page to see a QR code for it if you want.

If you want to donate "publicly" to be read out on the podcast, just send me a notification email with your name, comment and the donation amount for confirmation.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#you-can-now-donate-bitcoin

NotRelated.xyz Website is now up!

The podcast now has its own domain at notrelated.xyz, which is a bit easier to remember than the libsyn subdomain for those who aren't familiar with libsyn.

For people who care, notrelated.xyz does not have SSL/https and I probably won't set it up because, frankly, I don't see it as necessary (I mean I have it for my main domain, but I don't even see that as very necessary). If I change my mind on this, I'll tell you. Of course if you just have to have SSL/https, you can still use the libsyn address to access either the podcast webpage at https://notrelated.libsyn.com or the RSS feed at https://notrelated.libsyn.com/rss.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#notrelatedxyz-website-is-now-up

Alex Jones, increasingly BASED, now even more banned from everything

Well-known and loved water-filter merchant Alex Jones was banned from Twitter, in a move that shocked no one. After a sustained campaign of harassment from Bluechecks, Twitter finally gave in and banned him and his site InfoWars.com, thus depriving Twitter of Super Male Vitality and other high-energy supplements.

Thankfully, the straw that broke the camel's back was absolutely based. The rationalization for the ban was the fact that yesterday Alex posted videos haranguing a CNN journalist who had worked tirelessly to get him and others banned and deplatformed. The journalist was shook to say the least, visibly timid and obviously wishing he was a turtle so he could retract his head into his shell. After several minutes of straight roasting (peppered with some attempted "comebacks" from the journo), Chuck Johnson (the guy noted for being banned from Twitter back when no one got banned) joined in as well, the video later ending with a close up of the journalist's eyes, tearing up and silently distraught.

Journo-bugmen and pseudo-intellects in universities have been subjecting Americans to a non-stop humiliation-fest and struggle session since at least the 1960s. These people are literally paid by corporations and government organizations to demean, destroy and "deconstruct" the lives of the people that pay their bills. They circulate baseless folklore and conspiracy theories about non-bugmen. They live obliviously and smugly sit and design what they want the world of others to look like. They talk tough and snidely on news stations and in university, but as soon as you shine the light on them, they curl up in shame. Their pretenses only exist in their isolated world where they can't be debated, made fun of, humiliated or held accountable. They're also just dumb.

Alex's unpardonable sin is subjecting one of these chosen beings, one of these Excelsites to mockery. Alex deserves a lot of credit for making this joker tear up. Hopefully you're going to see a lot more of it too from more people. If rational debate worked, Someone like Charles Murray would've won it for us decades ago. It doesn't, and now everyone hates Charles Murray. Even people on the real right. The real solution is Chad Nationalism, Day of the Swirly, all that. Buglibs are not serious people. Don't take them seriously. Bugmen only exist because we allow that psychological type to fester. One might want to reread Uncle Ted's section on "the Psychology of Modern Leftism" as a reminder.

As it comes to Infowars, of course, using platforms and social media is for brainlets anyways. Big-branes always subscribe directly to RSS feeds. Here are Infowars'; slap them in your RSS feed reader:

• https://www.infowars.com/feed/custom_feed_rss (Articles)
• http://xml.nfowars.net/Alex.rss (Alex Jones's show)

I'm too woke for Infowars myself, but when they were originally banned from YouTube and everything else, the first thing I did was put these feeds into newsboat in raw solidarity. I'll read an article or two that sound funny and not too Boomer-con. Of course I mean no disrespect to Alex's highly esoteric (essentially Gnostic) understanding of the elite's cosmology and eschatology, which is actually unironically spot on.

The greatest part is that for the shitlib hivemind, it's just not enough! Bugman brainlets are not scREEEsching about Alex being even allowed on the site in the first place.

By the way, stop using Twitter! Twitter, more than any other social media company is on the verge of financial ruin. Do your part and don't use the site unless via RSS feeds. There are a couple of okay people on Twitter, but most everyone worth following has left or been banned a long time ago.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#alex-jones-increasingly-based-now-even-more-banned-from-everything

We need to start studying NPCs scientifically

The talk of the meme-o-sphere recently has been on NPCs (non-player characters), not in video games, but in real life. Originally, "NPC" arose as a term of abuse approximating "normie" or "brainlet", but there have been some who are realizing that it might have more truth to it than anticipated.

For a while now, a post from le Reddit has been circulating from a somewhat disturbed user divulged that he only recently began thinking in language, saying that his life before "mindless" and "soul-less" and described himself as "barely even conscious". One might also be reminded of the quip of James Huneker on Chopin's Étude Op. 25, Num. 11 (better known nowadays by being quoted by Douglass Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach) that "small-souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should avoid it". Of course, listeners of the biggest-braned podcast Not Related! will remember in the episode on the Bicameral Mind, we talked on Julian Jaynes's theory of consciousness, in which consciousness is not something inherent to our biological inventory, but a kind of mental habit we develop, partially based on the metaphors of language and our need in society. Different societies and cultures are liable to create different levels of consciousness in people.

There seems to be circumstantial evidence everywhere that the internal worlds of others just are not quite the same as ours. There's a huge scientific and epistemological problem though: how can we empirically and objectively verify the nature consciousness, an aspect of mental life which is by its nature accessible only subjectively?

I dont think this question is answerable in the scientific mindset we currently have. More interesting as a hint would be a deeper understanding, albeit indirect of what other people's inner worlds are like. I'm sort of curious to hear what your inner life is like, and how you experience "thinking" if it's something unique.

I'll do my part and share with others my mental life. I do have internal speech and am not an NPC and am indeed conscious. My internal speech is a little bit different from how I hear others describe theirs. Sometimes, usually when I'm thinking very slowly and deliberately, I think at only slightly faster than enunciated English in real life. Most of the time, the "speech" is quite different: the best way I can describe the experience is as if you "hummed" the intonation of English to yourself without opening your mouth (this is not something I literally do, but how I experience it in my head). This mild humming occurs at a speed significantly faster than normal speech and though it provokes the same "meaning" and cognitive scaffolding as language does. It's not an annoying or abrasive humming, I should say: it's more like if someone is gently (though quickly) talking in the other room. This hummed speech "feels" like English, but when I slow it down because it just gave me a great idea that I want to write down, I realize that there sometimes aren't actually English words or English syntax that directly capture what I was thinking.

I should say, when I say that it "feels" like English, I mean that, as someone who knows a lot of different languages and has an intuitive grasp of etymology, I have distinct, almost synesthetic feelings that correspond to words of different origins. When I experience what linguists call "tip of the tongue phenomena" (when you forgot a word but can remember what it means and how it starts), I also can recall the approximate etymology. What I mean is that this humming speech has the same feeling as English words do.

I'd probably say that most of my mental time does not use this kind of internal speech. It's not that I'm unconscious, but because I usually think about more abstract and non-linear things with interlocking, organic shapes. This is a little closer to how some savants describe their mental life, but I suspect it's a lot more common than that, not just because I have it, but it seems to be the kind of thing that people would take for granted. The typical description is that invisible shapes of different "meanings" come together and connect, or hydraulic organic machinery interacts in such a way to give you the correct answers to math problems or some advanced mental decision whose actual mechanism is opaque to you. The thing is, while I experience this, it's something I'm only an observer of, and while I say that the shapes have "meanings", that's sort of my assumption, because if you could display my cognitive theater on a screen, I couldn't point out what is what with my conscious mind. I think this is some kind of felt vision into the structure of intuition more than anything else.

As a minor detail, I also have no cognitive "me". Or at least not unless I want one. What I mean by that is that people will often describe themselves in their imaginations as seeing in the first person, or seeing themselves in third person (as if watching themselves on TV). These are sometimes called the "I" and "me". I can easily imagine myself, say, taking a walk and seeing myself walking from above, but that's not something I regularly do without prodding. Whenever I imagine myself doing something, I see everything from my own eyes unless deliberately trying to do otherwise.

Anyway, in the future, as I read more of the literature, I might be interested in doing an episode on "NPC" and people's inner lifes. If you have a mental life that is notable or distinct, feel free to email me a brief explanation. I'm curious to see what's out there.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#we-need-to-start-studying-npcs-scientifically

Terry Davis has died.

You may have heard already, but it appears that Terry Davis is confirmed to have died last month in what seems to have been a suicide. I just put up a brief video on this here.

You can still go to his site at TempleOS.org which has the downloads to Temple OS and a brief update after his death.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#terry-davis-has-died

THICC podcast episode coming

I've been unofficially aiming to release a Not Related episode every week at the end of week, but the THICC book I'm covering this time required a lot of prep, and it's not out yet as you can see! It will be out tomorrow.

I've already recorded an hour and twenty minutes, which requires a lot of stopping and rerecording and audio fixes. As I'm still acclimating to recording this takes a lot of time, but as I improve my process, I'm hoping to record episodes in one run without splicing necessary.

Anyway, just saying this because I haven't forgotten about it and I've been working a lot. I'll have yet another episode out later in the week.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#thicc-podcast-episode-coming

Le Purity-Spiral Nationalism

New episode of Not Related! out on Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.

The general argument of the book is that America, as it exists ethno-culturally has never been one unit, but four loosely competitive and highly distinct cultures, directly rooted in particular British origins. On the surface this book is a dense and well-researched ethnography, but deeper than that, it has a lot of hot take-aways for American socio-political life. It was a fascination back when it was published, but as people are beginning to be more real about the position of racial and cultural identity in politics, it's a book and argument that you're starting to here about more and more.

I say so a couple times in the podcast, but this is a book far more expansive than what I can sum up in a measly 90 minutes for you, so if the podcast piques your interest, check the book out yourself! You'll get a good mind for it in the episode, but this is one of those books that transcends one simple thesis statement in scope.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#le-purityspiral-nationalism

SSL cert failures with Gmail accounts (mutt-wizard)

This actually isn't a mutt-wizard-specific problem, but I've been getting a lot of questions about it since mutt-wizard relies on offlineimap and ergo OpenSSL. Long story short, if you have updated Arch Linux recently, your new version of offlineimap/OpenSSL might give you a certificate error when attempting to sync with a Gmail account.

To solve this, do one of the following:

• Downgrade to an earlier version of offlineimap/OpenSSL
• Add ssl_version=tls1_2 to the remote Gmail repository in ~/.offlineimaprc.
• Sit and wait for a fix.
• Stop using Gmail :varg: (my favorite ;-))

See the Github Issue that GrimKriegor opened on the mutt-wizard repo about this, with links to the relevant sources.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#ssl-cert-failures-with-gmail-accounts-muttwizard

Yes, I'm doing a video on it...

I've been getting non-stop emails about the Linux Code of Conduct thing and Linus leaving the project. A video on it is uploading (will take a while, many GB).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#yes-im-doing-a-video-on-it

R.I.P. Lincucks! Some comments on recent events

A video on the recent Linux code of conduct controversy.

Next episode of Not Related! will be recorded tomorrow.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#rip-lincucks-some-comments-on-recent-events

Democracy: The Rule of NPCs

New episode of Not Related! out. Entitled "Democracy: Rule of the NPCs". Link to the RSS feed: https://notrelated.libsyn.com/rss.

In addition to talking about Schumpeter's previously mentioned book, we also talk about Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter and James Burnham's The Machiavellians: The Defenders of Freedom.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#democracy-the-rule-of-npcs

Any Paleo-Anthropologists or geneticists reading? On the Toba Population Bottleneck

There's an often repeated idea out there that humans went through a population bottleneck about 70,000 years ago, shrinking to a group of only several thousands. This bottleneck is typically attributed to the Toba Eruption. This is something you've probably heard ad nauseam in every popular science depiction of human prehistory, I sure have. I won't give specifics because I don't want to bias you, but in doing research for a future podcast episode, I began to doubt this idea and tried to pry into its actual origins to see what the actual evidence of it was.

I was surprised to learn that the idea didn't actually come from some scholarly consensus, but is a still very controversial idea originally posited by a journalist Ann Gibbons of Science. Now anyone who knows me knows that I am the absolutely last to write off an idea or theory because it's posited by a lay(wo)man out of the academic system, but in the case of a journalist (that class of people whose ratios of what-they-know to what-they-think-they-know are extremely low), my initial doubt feels a little vindicated.

I've been groping through some scientific literature on the subject, there are indeed some mainstream supporters, but from what I can tell, the evidence for it is very scant, at least far too scant to warrant its commonplace presentation in popular science. As well, it seems that a lot of people in other fields base some of their assumptions on this idea, not knowing its non-universality, thus giving their theories a shaky foundation.

I bring this up because I'm curious if anyone reading has had specific, semi-direct knowledge or experience with the feeling in the field. As I said, I'm gradually reading the literature on it already, but I'm curious to know an insider's view (or at least the view of someone well-informed on it). Is this idea well-accepted? Is the circumstantial evidence for it considered up to snuff? Are there good reasons to think it's not true? Email me what you think.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#any-paleoanthropologists-or-geneticists-reading-on-the-toba-population-bottleneck

Break week

I've been taking a week off from some things, including Not Related! to do some reading and research and maybe even bulk up. I'll have a new episode of the podcast (mostly planned out) out next week and I think I'll do a screencast over the weekend.

You may've noticed I haven't done a livestream in a while, but I'm thinking to start again. I'm not entirely sure how my internet up connection is here, but I might be doing a stream next Tuesday or Wednesday around midday around Amerimutt time.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#break-week

Video up on Bash settings and aliases

New video up on what kind of settings and aliases I use and don't use for my bashrc/profile: check it out here.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-up-on-bash-settings-and-aliases

Not Related! episode will be up soon

A note for those waiting patiently. I've been unexpectedly busy this week after my break week and while I've recorded an hour of content for Not Related!, I had to stop in the midst for something else. Hopefully I'll have it done and up either later tonight or tomorrow. I'm already working on another episode that I want to finish early next week as well.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#not-related-episode-will-be-up-soon

Episode on the 10,000 Year Explosion and Pandora's Seed

New Not Related! episode out: "The Agricultural Revolution Has Been a Disaster for the Human Race". Direct download link.

We talk about a lot of things, mainly how agriculture and economic modernization has made us soyboys and brainlets, but get ready for the red-pills on mouth-breathing, child mortality, IQ, mutational load and much more.

Remember to add the RSS link if you haven't already.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#episode-on-the-10000-year-explosion-and-pandoras-seed

Trip up Country and Looking for Land

This coming weekend, I'll be taking a partially-family-related-partially-personal trip up to Indiana with some crucial stops on the way. The only complication is that I don't own a car, so my four-state trip will be mediated by bus, meaning I'll be paying much less than I would be for gas or a plane and I'll have plenty of time for uninterrupted reading and work. I've also bought a ThinkPad slice battery that I'll be picking up right before, so I can try that out as well.

Anyway, why I'm going to Indiana isn't important for you, but as many of you know, I've been in the market for land recently, and have been planning on buying a remote plot for building a large cabin or small house for a long-term home or short-term place for vacation and storage. On my way back from my trip, I'll be stopping in Tennessee to look at some parcels. I don't want to spend more than $20,000 for land, and I'd like to get at least 5 acres for that (ideally less and more of course). I'm already doing the math for how much it will cost to build a house to my specifications, but a lot is going to be a function of what kind of land I can get

I've picked Tennessee because it's still relatively close to my family, but is politically and regulatorily much better than Georgia. There's low property tax, no state income tax, relatively free homeschooling and apparently less zoning/building restrictions in most places. Georgia on the other hand is literally a 56% state nowadays (well according to Wikipedia, 55.9% actually), which means sooner or later it will be a blue state. Of course, even if blue in a presidential election, it would probably only be a generation later before this filters down into local elections, which realistically means over-regulation and extreme managerial state is still fairly distant. Still, since I have the choice of where to put roots down, it's an easy one. I have thought of places further north: Kentucky or West Virginia, but the proximity to Georgia is still a minor plus for me. I don't know how the situation is going to be in Tennessee by the time my children have to think about this, but I'll be working for it to be good.

I'll also enjoy the milder climate in Tennessee. I honestly just want to be where I don't need an air-conditioner for most of the year.

Anyway, if everything works out, there might be a house-building, property-maintenance and bushcraft portion of my channel before too long. I can't say when, but if I find something good, I might be moving into the area and renting a place while I work on my new home. Another hopeful result of this would be reducing my economic needs to nearly nothing by self-sufficiency, enough that I could even life exclusively off my online income... or less.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#trip-up-country-and-looking-for-land

Livestream for those who missed it

We had an actually somewhat long livestream last night, as I had nothing much to do in my hotel room. Thanks to all the Super Chatters (I totally forgot I had super chats now, so I should do streams more often to git some money...). Here are the top d'nators:

• $29 Opinion discarded
• $10 Apocalypse Lemon
• $10 Robert Smith
• $10 Nate Edwards
• $5 Dominick Allen
• $4 Yawning Gull
• £2 Dink Dinkleberg
• €1 Daniel Gómez Bellido
• $2 YouTube
• $2 LibertarianBot

Come to think about it, I might start actually doing topical serious streams on things related to the podcast, or respond to feedback in them. We'll see about this.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#livestream-for-those-who-missed-it

Looking for Land for Uncle Luke's Cabin

I just put out a brief video talking about my recent progress/process in looking for rural land in southern Tennessee. For all those interesting in my goal of self-sufficiency and the recurring battle against bugman-hood, check it out.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#looking-for-land-for-uncle-lukes-cabin

Video review and overview of the Slice Battery for ThinkPads

I recently bought a Slice Battery for my ThinkPad X220, which is a pretty useful tool for all-day cordless use of your ThinkPad. You can get one of these new for around 100 USD, but check outmy video on it for the physical and practical specifics.

It can definitely be useful for many potential workflows and has been very useful for myself so far, but I don't see myself using it every day. I talk about what I do and don't like about it in the video, so check it out.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-review-and-overview-of-the-slice-battery-for-thinkpads

When I bring back the forum, what should its name be?

Some people have already noticed that I revitalized forum.lukesmith.xyz. They've noticed because there are people who are periodically F5ing it still. Yes. The forum is coming back. I've actually already put a lot of preparation and elegant features into it already that I'll talk about when its fully open. Right now, it's not yet open to the public, but it will be soon. I'll update you when that happens via RSS, and might even put up a video.

A more pressing matter is what I should call the forum. Here are a couple of options, feel free to email your suggestions to me or your opinions on one:

• Luke's GNU/Forum (the tried-and-true old name)
• Uncle Luke's Cabin (sounds somewhat ghey, but I think most people get the proper reference)
• Uncle Luke's GNU/Cabin (combo of those two, I'm leaning to this right now)
• Some kind of play on Not Related!, although I don't mean to imply the forum will be about just it.

Note that the URL is still forum.lukesmith.xyz and unless I get a totally brilliant name for a new name that's worthy of a separate domain, I don't see that changing. I might link forum.notrelated.xyz to it though.

I will say I plan on branding the site with my name. Some people suggested in the past I should give the forum a generic /g/ related name to make it accessible to people outside of my channel. Frankly here's no point in pretending it isn't anything my my forum, especially since the topics unified under that might have little relationship with each other except in the sublimated way that the topics on my channel are related at a sublimated level. I'm not against rebranding it without my name in the future, but at the beginning, the unifying force between all my users is me and it wouldn't make sense to base the branding on something that only a subset of the users have in common.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#when-i-bring-back-the-forum-what-should-its-name-be

groff/troff: When LaTeX and Pandoc are bloat

I've just put up a video, the first of several on groff/troff. Check it out here. troff (groff is the GNU version) is a unix utility for document formatting and type-setting which is built into your system and substantially faster, more minimal, and more manipulatible on the command line than TeX or compiling via R markdown or pandoc.

I've been playing around with it for a while now and am continually impressed with how easy it is. Its adherence to UNIX principles makes extending it extremely easy, and in future videos I'll talk about the many ways you can extend it (again, already bulit into your system), including adding images, tables, and refernces in a way similar to Bibtex.

I hope the video piques your interest and there will be extensions coming out very soon. ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#grofftroff-when-latex-and-pandoc-are-bloat

Macros in groff and troff and other basic formatting

I've put up another video on groff/troff where I briefly talk about more basic formatting with the ms macros, but also how to create and implement macros of your own.

Since it's hard to get good documentation on groff/troff, I'll also provide some links: check out https://www.troff.org/ for general information. A user also posted a very useful .pdf which is a general guide to Unix test processing, but contains decent chapters not just on groff/troff, but also on its preprocessor programs like eqn (equivalent of math mode in LaTeX) and pic (equivalent of tikx).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#macros-in-groff-and-troff-and-other-basic-formatting

Easy emoji use with dmenu

I've just put out a video on some dmenu tips, including a simple system for inputting emojis. Check it out, and if you have any dmenu/fzf hacks of your own feel free to share.

Incidentally, this post also serves as a test of my blog system to see if it can handle titles with emojis in it. Let's find out!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#easy-emoji-use-with-dmenu

New addresses for Crypto: Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash

I've had some requests to put up some addresses for other cryptocurrencies, so on my donate Crypto page, you'll now see addresses for Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash in addition to the typical Bitcoin.

Due to some changes in how I do my crypto, there's actually a different Bitcoin address there too and I'll be moving all the old funds to the new address. You can donate to either, but I'm only including the new address on the page.

I might put up some QR codes for each address later if some people have to have them.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-addresses-for-crypto-ethereum-litecoin-and-dash

LaTeX OWNED EPIC STYLE by LOGICAL UNIX COMPLIANCE of groff and refer

I just put up a brief video comparing the efficiency of formatting a document with references in LaTeX via biber vs. using groff/troff via refer.

Check it out yourself, but needless to say, groff gets the job done just as well in a small sliver of the time LaTeX takes. refer as a preprocessor, simply reads a groff file, checking for inserts of refer syntax and edits the stream adding the bibliography details from a database file that groff can read. As expected in stream manipulation, it all happens basically instantaneously, much faster than TeX's method of puking out build files to be read by subsequent commands.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#latex-owned-epic-style-by-logical-unix-compliance-of-groff-and-refer

Accented and other unicode characters in groff/troff

I've already gotten a lot of questions about this, and while I might do a video on it later, I might as well put the answer here for those who are interested.

By default groff and troff have no such compatibility with accented characters, which, if you had the misfortune of being born to a language besides the glorious American tongue, makes writing quite documents in groff difficult.

Obviously there are many ways of bridging this gap, some you could easily invent on your own, but there are indeed built in escape sequences for most characters needed for other languages in the Latin alphabet.

Check out the documentation here in the GNU manuals on escape sequences not only for adding accents to characters, but also for needed symbols in other languages like the German ß, the Spanish ¿ or Icelandic/Old English þ and ð.

If you're like me and you don't want to bother typing such silly escape sequences out, you could always automate their appearance in vim whenever you type the corresponding character. Below I have the lines for the acute characters.

You can add what you want.

Be also sure that vim is properly detecting your filetype, adding autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.ms,*.me,*.mom set filetype=groff beforehand will do the trick for .ms, .me and .mom files.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#accented-and-other-unicode-characters-in-grofftroff

Looking for LARBS-user submissions!

I'm bringing back the official LARBS website: LARBS.xyz, which for the past few months has only redirected to my main site, with one pitiful informational page. LARBS.xyz proper is now up again, and I'm going to be beautifying it and adding content.

As you may know, a recurring joke on the channel is this constant torrent of new users constantly asking "how did you get your computer to look like that". While a lot of you use LARBS, I'd guess that most of the people flippantly subscribed to the channel don't know about it, despite it being the answer to most of their questions.

In an effort to redo the LARBS website for me to advertise it, I'm looking for LARBS users to send me screenshots of them using my dotfiles, or any derivatives of them to put as examples on the site. Maybe you've kept the dotfiles mostly the same, maybe you've switched out the status bar, redone the colors and bindings, use your own fork of LARBS to deploy your own dotfiles, it all works. I want people to have an idea of how LARBS has positively affected users' setups regardless.

So send me (luke@lukesmith.xyz) a simple scrot shot, but also feel free to send a "testamonial" if you'd like, even a meme-tier one. I just want stuff that will give people an idea of what they're getting into in using LARBS.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#looking-for-larbs-user-submissions-

Okay, now THIS is epic. (groff correction)

Feel free to ignore the post about groff that I made a bit ago about escape sequences for accented characters in groff! Ends up in reality, it's even easier and /comfier/!

One of you emailed me soon after noting that you can simply give groff the -k option which will automatically run the file through preconv, a program that automatically converts unicode characters to code readable by groff/troff with no extra work and no ugly formatting! Now THIS is ebin. Thanks again, Efe, for this emendation. You still can do it in the way I mentioned, but would you really want to when its this easy?

Remember also, that while I'm doing videos on groff, I'm probably one of only several dozen who have tried to navigate the scant groff/troff documentation in the past decade. That means if you go reading either the man or the much more copious documentation in a book or hard-to-find online information, you'll very quickly find or notice something I (or anyone else) hasn't. Feel free to post whatever you find or email me about it, chances are, I might be just as pleasantly surprised as you.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#okay--now-this-is-epic---groff-correction-

Bibliographies and references automatically with refer in groff

New video up on how to automatically format references in groff/troff, using refer. Check it out here! You now should be able to get your term papers done in groff pretty easily! 😉

As we talked about in the last video, refer is considerably faster than formatting your references with biber in LaTeX. refer is pretty well customizeable on the command line and in-text, but there's a lot more to the program than is just in the man; feel free to share what things you run across.

I don't think I said so in the video, but refer is mostly intended to work with the ms and me macro set. I haven't tried it on others, but it may have some level of functionality, despite being intended for papers and such.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#bibliographies-and-references-automatically-with-refer-in-groff

Possible email downage today

I'm reconfiguring some DNS and server settings involving email today and it might result in emails not making it to me or getting lost. If everything goes right, there should be no downtime, but otherwise, you might have to resend your email tomorrow. Assume everything will be fixed by then.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#possible-email-downage-today

Some potentially relevant changes in LARBS today

I've been cleaning out a whole lot of old crud on my computer, and some of this is making its way into my dotfiles. To make sure you know what I'm moving around, I'll put a notice here. Especially if you fetch or pull the new changes, be away of what's below so you don't get confused.

• ~/.scripts/shortcuts.sh has now lost the .sh to keep with the style of the other scripts. It also no longer downloads template files if not present (this was a holdover of when it was part of its own repo).
• Similarly, the ~/.scripts/folders and ~/.scripts/configs files that the script used have moved to the home directory, to ~/.key_directories and ~/.key_files. The name change of the later reflects that I now use this file and the shortcut script to just to text documents I'm working on, not just config files. In the short future, I'll have other scripts reading these files as well. I haven't really added any lines to the public copies though, as I still expect them to be very user-dependent.
• The dmenuunicode script I showcased in a recent video has undergone a small addition that will also copy the unicode character's code value to primary selection while the character itself is copied to the clipboard. There are times when this can be very useful when it's necessary to get code. The input file for this script has also been moved to ~/.emojis and now was many more emojis, including flags 🇺🇸.
• Importantly, I am also cleaning out now unused configs files that I do not maintain. Since this is a git repo, obiovusly nothing is lost to time, but the dotfiles for polybar, qutebrowser, rofi and other programs I don't use anymore won't be there by default on LARBS unless I hear an outcrying to the contrary. I know I got many people using polybar and qutebrowser, but qb's settings are constantly changing, so I can't be expected to keep up and polybar has always been riddled with compilation problems. (Since users need to compile it anyway, it's been a thorn in my side for LARBS as well in the past.)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#some-potentially-relevant-changes-in-larbs-today

Big reshuffling of scripts in LARBS dotfiles

In addition to the changes I mentioned yesterday to LARBS, I've also just pushed some changes to the repository that sort all of the scripts into new directories for organizational purpose: a subdirectory for statusbar scripts (statusbar/), one for crons (cron/), etc. All of these directories are now added automatically to the path with this line in ~/.profile:

export PATH="$(du $HOME/.scripts/ | cut -f2 | tr ' ' ':')$PATH"

These changes shouldn't cause any problem so long as this line is added, but be sure to tell me if you get these changes and something breaks for you. I've been running it with these changes and have been without any hiccups.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#big-reshuffling-of-scripts-in-larbs-dotfiles

"Live"streams coming back!

I just put up a video on this, but I'll put it in text for anyone who prefers it.

After a lot of requests, I'm going to start doing livestreams again. Problem is, until next January, I won't have consistent internet at my home to make that possible. So we can manage a little workaround:

I'm now, right now, taking "Super Chats" or donations from PayPal or different crypto currencies. I'll record full responses to questions in the same way I would do a livestream. I'll probably also come with other content prepared.

Then, that full video, the length and style of a livestream will be uploaded to YouTube using the new "Premiere" feature, which allows a set release time and a chatroom just like in livestreams. Everyone can watch it together then, talking in the chat. Obviously I'll be in the chatroom as it plays for everyone simultaneously.

I'm planning to release this video Sunday afternoon.

That means if you want to donate to ask a question or pose a comment or point of discussion, donate (using the links about) ASAP. I'm not entirely sure when I'm going to be recording the video, but I suspect sometime Saturday. If you miss that window though, I'll read your donation and talk about what you want next time, so no problem.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#-live-streams-coming-back-

Quick tutorial on generating QR codes

I've just put up a brief video on making your own QR codes. I guess everyone has seen QR codes, but not everyone has used them, but they're quite useful! I give a brief explanation in the vid.

For some reason, a lot of people use services on other people's computers to do this when you really just have to install qrencode, which is a pretty simple program to use. I illustrate it in the video for those of you too intelligent to just run qrencode -h.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#quick-tutorial-on-generating-qr-codes

Not-Quite-Livestream in preparation

I'm preparing/uploading the Not-Quite-Livestream right now. I believe you can access the chatroom right now! I'm in the chatroom myself now and I'll answer questions so long as it isn't TL;DR. Once the video has finished uploading and processing, it should play for everyone.

Hope you enjoy the experiment! I'm hoping to do real livestreams soon with my neighbor's wifi lmao.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#not-quite-livestream-in-preparation

mutt-wizard ProtonMail Bridge compatibility

I've had a lot of people ask if mutt-wizard can work with ProtonMail's encypted mail. The old answer was "No", but as ProtonMail Bridge has become a thing, it's now possible to have your mail from ProtonMail offline, including in mutt.

ProtonMail Bridge requires a paid account to use, but if you have one, I encourage you to try it with mutt. I've just push a commit that should give mutt-wizard compatibility with ProtonMail and PM Bridge. Since I don't have an account with them, I can't test it, but I invite everyone who does to try it once you have Bridge set up and tell me if it works as expected ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#mutt-wizard-protonmail-bridge-compatibility

Not Related!: When You're Too Rational to Be Rational!

I've just uploaded the newest episode of Not Related! which you can get here!

The topic is the reality of what is actually "logical" in the brain and in human action. In your intro psychology classes, you'll likely be inundated with stories of the cognitive glitches that humans suffer from, most of which stemming from the prying research of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the so-called Heuristics and Biases program.

But in this episode we briefly review this perspective, but also the rejoinder to it in the school of thought typically termed Ecological Rationality, specifically as described in Gerd Gigerenzer's Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty. From this perspective, many very human tendencies which will appear "irrational" in terms of formal logic are very reasonable in real life, and humans are equiped with an Adaptive Toolbox of mental heuristics to deal with complex problems.

Hear the twists and turns in this episode, and remember to subscribe to the RSS feed for the podcast!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#not-related---when-you-re-too-rational-to-be-rational-

Video on eqn: Formatting Math and Statistics in groff and troff

New video out on eqn, which is a groff/troff preprocessor that automatically formats mathematical expressions. It can be compared to LaTeX's math mode, but I actually enjoy the syntax much more.

In the vid, we go from basic math to square roots, summation, integrals, defining eqn macros and doing inline code.

You can get more info on the kinds of things you can get done with eqn with the cornucopia of documentation here: https://troff.org/papers.html#eqn.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-on-eqn--formatting-math-and-statistics-in-groff-and-troff

How do you do URLs or hyperlinks in a groff or troff document?

A question for groff/troff veterans whose knowledge extends beyond mine. Subject explains it all.

I want to have typical clickable hyperlinks in a pdf document generated by groff, but I haven't found a way of doing this so far. If you know, your help is appreciated! Email here: luke@lukesmith.xyz!

The use case is that I'm rewriting the LARBS guide (originally in R markdown) to groff so it can be easily an quickly built and updated a LARBS install (R is not installed by default and I don't want to have it and R markdown as a hard dependency just to build one document). I've had to recompile the R markdown .pdf every time I update the guide, thus causing for a pretty bloated git history, but making it recomile quickly on startup on each user's machine would be much better not just to make the git repo cleaner, but allows a quicker update in response to changes to the text source.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#how-do-you-do-urls-or-hyperlinks-in-a-groff-or-troff-document-

Not Related! Site under construction

I've decided to reengineer NotRelated.xyz since I'm not the biggest fan of the slow-loading web page Libsyn generates by default. You can still get to it at the standard Libsyn address (https://notrelated.libsyn.com, but I'd rather keep the main domain to my own making. Plus, Libsyn is a pain for dealing with SSL/HTTPS despite charging me an extra $2 a month just to have an external site. Thanks, nnnnguys, but I think I'll do it myself now. HTTPS is now active on NotRelated.xyz (free of course) thanks to certbot (fekkin BASTE).

Only trouble now is I'm still deciding exactly what to do for the new site or how... ;-) Right now it's a semi-clone of my website format with relevant links, but that will change soon. I think I'll post user questions on a page, responding to them in text, even if I'm unable to respond to them in the podcast. I'll want to have a rolling index of podcast episodes, but I'm just racking my brain of how to do it automatically linking to the Libsyn podcast downloads or players.

Visit the site now and you'll see that I've linked some sites that Not Related! will be automatically syndicated on. This might not mean anything for my core subscribers who do everything by RSS and newsboat, but for normalfriends and Pajeets, there are links to Google Play, Soundcloud, the YouTube playlist, etc. where episodes will automatically appear. Gloria Deo that I don't have to do any of that manually. Syndication on Spotify and iHeartRadio is also underway. I'll probably even add it to iTunes next time I: (1) have access to a Mac computer (2) install iTunes (3) open up iTunes (which takes several days itself) and (4) configure it all. "It just werks" in action boys. If anyone has any clue how to add a podcast to iTunes just via the browser like a normal service, please tell me, but to my understanding, this isn't possible. Maccucks will still, unironically and unabashedly defend this.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#not-related--site-under-construction

Adobe Reader is LITERALLY Hitler

Happy Thanksgiving Amerimutts!

I had just released a video entitled Adobe Reader is LITERALLY Hitler. Subject matter is self explanitory. ;-) Check it out! I talk about the worst computer program ever written.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#adobe-reader-is-literally-hitler

Battlestation repair video!

I believe I mentioned in the most recent livestream that I'd be refinishing the top of my enormous workdesk, which has sustained substantial damage over the years. I've now put the video of me doing just that up. You can look at it as a kind of tutorial, but I was sort of learning as I went myself.

The whole process of refinishing, even my amateurish job, made the old desk look like new and I recommend you try it on your own degraded wooden furniture. It's a quite easy process. It really amounts to sanding the thing down with increasing grits of sandpaper, then spraying several coats of lacquer staggered by drying times. The end result is quite impressive given how disgusting the original was.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#battlestation-repair-video-

Video up on zathura for reading pdfs, djvus, epubs and everything else

A lot of people asked for a video on zathura the document reader after I mentioned I used in in a recent video where I complained about the acursed Adobe Reader.

Here it is!

Zathura is great because:

• It's vim-based and the shortcuts can be easily configured.
• It is very small, modular and a very quick load and quite responsive.
• It provides keyboard access to zooming, bookmarking, indexes and everything in between.
• It autodetects changes in currently open files.
• It can read standard input, which I discuss a recent use case of mine.
• It can also function modally for giving presentations and other things.
• It's modular and can be easily expanded to read pdfs, djvus, postscript files, epubs, comic books, etc.

Check the video, and the program out!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-up-on-zathura-for-reading-pdfs--djvus--epubs-and-everything-else

Podcast syndicated on Spotify

Just in case there are actually any subsribers of mine who use the DRM-content-restriction manager Spotify, you can now get my podcast on it, see this link! Obviously I don't condone using Spotify, but if you already use it and have clever rationalizations as for why you just have to ;-), you can now get the podcast through it as syndicating it there is costless and effortless to me.

There are, of course, better ways of getting the podcast, including RSS on the podcast website: https://notrelated.xyz

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#podcast-syndicated-on-spotify

How to find minimalist programs

I just put out a video on how to find some minimalist programs.

Pretty simple, but I'll repeat the url recommendations here, some of which I'm sure you've seen:

• My own list of programs that I use.
• The suckless website of programs that "rock"
• A more comprehensive (and gradient) list of minimalist software
• "Harmful" and "less harmful" programs from cat -v
• Install Gentoo wiki recommendations

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#how-to-find-minimalist-programs

Please be on the lookout for this phenomenon among pretentious Zoomers

I've noticed an as-of-yet undescribed linguistic habit among Zoomers (born from late 1990's) who fancy themselves big-braned. If you know the first thing about Labovian sociolinguistics, people who are similar in identity subtly pick up and standardize similar linguistic habits, often without noticing them.

To put it succinctly, some pretentious Zoomer males (of which there are many on YouTube) have a way of talking that I can only describe as sounding like they're talking with their mouths semi-full... It's some unique way of posturing their mouth, but I can't say what exactly this is articulatorily.

I want to compile more examples of this. I actually don't want to link specific examples of this because I'm curious first if other people have noticed this in certain personalities. If so, I recommend sending me links to ensure I'm not going crazy in noticing it; I've already compiled a small list of big-braned Zoomers with this style of talking. Full report later.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#please-be-on-the-lookout-for-this-phenomenon-among-pretentious-zoomers

I DAB ON ALL YOU NERDS

New video up of the Boomer rants genre: Check it out!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#i-dab-on-all-you-nerds

Note to newfriends: Don't share my content on 4chan!

Hi there! It appears you're new to 4chan.

Maybe you heard about it on Reddit or one of the other Content Aggregation sites you frequent. Since you're new, let me let you in on a little secret... You see, 4chan doesn't work like other sites. You don't get upvotes for sharing content and no 4chan user cares about e-celebs.

You see, maybe you really like the videos I put out on YouTube. Maybe they've really changed your life even. That's great! Unfortunately, it is not polite to share my videos on 4chan! Not polite to me, nor to 4chan users!

You see, on 4chan, anonymity is paramount and e-celebrities are frowned upon. Linking to my content unsolicited looks like an extremely cringey advertisement! If someone specifically asks for something that I have covered, this would be an appropriate time to link to one of my videos on 4chan, albeit without fanfare or specific personal glorification of me. However, uninvited links to my content, especially saying "Wow look what Luke Smith did" when no one asks is the highest form of faux pas.

Since 4chan is an anonymous message board, you also make me look bad because people might think I, in sheer desperation for views, am the one linking by videos for consumption on the board. I am very ashamed when I see my personality brought up my a cringey fan on 4chan. As I've become more popular, this evokes stronger and stronger feelings of jealousy among 4chan users. Thus sharing my content is not appropriate behavior there, although on other sites it might be fine!

Remember that everyone who matters on /g/ already watches my channel. Those who don't know about it could easily find my tutorials and other content on any topic by searching for them if needed. On 4chan, respecting other users' Negative Face is a high priority unless you are simply shitposting, so please do not be overbearing, especially with respect to people with public internet presences like myself.

Or as they user to say in the old days: lurk moar. Or at least go back to Reddit where you belong!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#note-to-newfriends--don-t-share-my-content-on-4chan-

GDP and income is a measure of fragility

The common way of looking at Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is that it's a metric of economic success: more GDP is more wealth. Wealth is good. "Poverty" (meaning low per capita GDP) is bad. Nowadays, pretty much everyone talks about "economics" like this as if this truism was scribbled on the back walls of the cosmos.

This is just looking at one side of the ledger in a kind of global double-entry accounting book. A logically equivalent way of looking at it is that GDP is the metric of economic exchange required for survival in society as it exists. You can say that some area "produced" $1B USD of output (sounds good), but you can just as easily say that $1B USD was required for that area to sustain itself (sounds bad). These two are simply logically equivalent.

Let's dive into the Gestalt: when you hear that a family of eight lives on less than a dollar per day (PPP adjusted), you might wonder how they manage! To actually do such a thing would require buying large bags of rice for the whole family, eat only that and live in free cardboard boxes. The reality is that that often uttered phrase means that they use less than $1 a day in the general economy, while the rest of their livelihood is "off-the-grid" or self-sufficient. They may grow food in a family farm, hunt for food, and most of their daily needs from cooking oils, to plates, to pottery, to soap are often made at home as well. There is still "an economy" but often one that is barter based or socialist in the real pre-socialist sense of the word: mediated by direct face-to-face social tit-for-tat between neighbors and friends, none of this mediated by currency being exchanged, thus it is not part of the GDP.

If you read about some Bangladeshi village where the only product is "textiles", that doesn't mean that everyone there makes textiles all day and, without a textile company, everyone would've starved to death. It means that the only on-paper, measurable global industry practiced there is textile manufacturing. Other villagers might farm, hunt, even do some kind of gathering in some places. They will produce the arts and crafts and live the way people live when you leave them alone. If your view of the world is mediated by GDP, you're only seeing the extremely small sliver that pops into existence when people exchange something involving legal tender.

This is extremely difficult for us modern bugpeople to understand because to be a bugman in a large city is to produce absolutely nothing on one's own and buy literally everything you need from the store. To us non-productive people, GDP means income which means survival. But the further out of Bugmanville you go, the clearer the vacuousness of GDP becomes.

A minor example. We had a large Thanksgiving feast near my uncle's house in very rural Florida. As it got cold in the night, we had a fire in a repurposed old sugar cane cooking vat artfully standing on used symmetrical cinderblock pieces. A bugman hipster might pay two hundred dollars or more for a similar looking "authentic" piece of equipment. Those $200 would be counted in the GDP. A bugman hipster might have also bought or rented chairs for the event, "contributing" more to the GDP, but my uncle, as part of the local wholesome church community, simply borrowed some from the church. Thus our event produced basically no GDP output in goods or services, despite being functionally equivalent to some similar but expensive and ergo "productive" "Friendsgiving" practiced by urbanites. In reality we are richer than the bugmen hipsters who blew hundreds of dollars on a faux-folksy party. In this case, we owned the firepit and had easy access and permission to the chairs, thus we are more economically flexible than they are. That GDP that they produced/expended is evidence of deeper reliance on the economic system. That GDP output is a marker of fragility, reliance on the conditions of the outside economy in the same way that a village of Bangladeshis who abandon their traditional way of lives to work on textiles are more fragile, despite being able to save up for iPhones.

Much of the increase in GDP across the world is simply the movement from local partially-social partially-under-the-table economies to economies mediated by taxable currency. An economically self-sufficient village with close social relationships and a barter economy has 0 GDP. A township of entrepreneurs and artisans you partially barter and partially use currency which they don't report has 0 GDP. All of these people are "in poverty" and "earn less than a dollar a day". And if you want to be truly self-sufficient, that means having a personal GDP of zero.

More than that, pretty much everywhere, GDP is a strong indicator of social upheaval. If you think that GDP is some eternal goodness, remember that everything "good" about industrialization shows up in the GDP, while at the same time, everything bad about it will not show up. Or, sometimes bad things are registered as positive economic growth: urbanization has caused mass-disease, and if that means a market for new medical services and pharmaceuticals, great! The GDP just went up! The Ganges is polluted due to the textile plant? That just means more opportunities for local entrepreneurs to sell bottled water! The GDP just went up! Are people being pushed out of fishing or other subsistence occupations because of it? Even better! Now they have no choice but to contribute to the GDP! With every passing year, in fact, more and more of the GDP is produced by dealing with the problems that our higher level of GDP have caused.

To be clear, I am not saying that (a) GDP is utterly useless and means nothing nor (b) that having 0 GDP and thus everyone is totally self-sufficient in a barter economy is best. I'm also not specifically arguing that industrialization is generally bad (I do think that, but my point here is irrelevant to it). Simply put, I'm sick of big-braned moderates posting basic-ass comments on my videos about how "X is good because it increases the GDP", or worse, "the GDP has been going up, so our ever increasing level of bugmanism is good". GDP is a bad justification for Whig history, and in areas of personal independence, it's not a good indicator.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#gdp-and-income-is-a-measure-of-fragility

Github Dotfiles and New i3 Video Soon

In my Github dotfiles repo, in the interest of repo size, I've removed the history of some "binary" files (.pdfs, etc.) from the repo history with git filter-branch. The repo used to be 20-40MB, but now it's down to about a tenth of that after that and some garbage collection.

One side effect has been that this has screwed up the (only two) pull requests on Github, but I assume it has had pretty radical effects if you're adjusting your fork "downstream" if you do something like that. I'm not a big Git n*rd ;-) so I may've been able to do this cleaner, but since it's my own personal dotfiles repo, I'm sure you'll forgive me.

Either way, I'll probably be doing a review of my dotfiles in i3 soon. It feels like I just did my last video of that type, but it's been over a year with significant changes (some of which I've showcased in other videos). More importantly, I have thousands and thousands of new subscribers still continuing to ask the kinds of questions that that kind of video would answer. An unfortunate fact of YouTube is that it only recommends very recent videos, so people scarcely see videos past a certain age, despite how relevant they may be.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#github-dotfiles-and-new-i3-video-soon

Looking for a new colorscheme for my terminal. Recommendations?

My st build now uses Xresources colors (including those set my pywal ofcourse) if available, but otherwise, it defaults to solarized colors. For a default theme, the solarized colors are actually sort of wearing on me, and I'm looking for another sufficiently distinct, but also mostly generic colorscheme to use as a default.

If you have any suggestions, email me or post them here in the Github issue I just made for it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#looking-for-a-new-colorscheme-for-my-terminal--recommendations-

Lazy Sunday video on CPU, Temperature and Memory for general use

This morning I recorded myself writing two brief status bar scripts that illustrate how to get, awk and sort basic Memory and CPU data on the Linux command line. I use just basic commands like ps, awk and others, but it might be useful for either newbies or those looking for ideas. You can see the video here.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#lazy-sunday-video-on-cpu--temperature-and-memory-for-general-use

Video on my vimrc and Vim Plug-Ins I use

I've put up a video going over some of the things I use in my vimrc. When I put up that video yesterday, I got a lot of questions about different plug-ins and such, so I figure we're a little overdue for an actual video on my vimrc.

Check out some of my older now hidden videos on vim topics as well, some of which I mentioned in this video:

• Checking spelling in vim
• Copying and pasting in vim
• Making vim snippets to write out syntax easily
• Creating and using vim macros

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-on-my-vimrc-and-vim-plug-ins-i-use

You can now donate Bitcoin!

I've finally taken the basic step of setting up a Bitcoin wallet, etc. after many requests from users. So you can donate Bitcoin using the address below:

1FjpZkeujhXLJM2FBQpusysALKoZHjbsmk

You can go to my Bitcoin page to see a QR code for it if you want.

If you want to donate "publicly" to be read out on the podcast, just send me a notification email with your name, comment and the donation amount for confirmation.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#you-can-now-donate-bitcoin

New video on i3 configuration and tiling window managers

Check out this new video where I talk about tiling window management for newbs, but I also talk about some of the additions to my dotfiles I've added in the past year and a half since I did my last video on i3.

Additions include:

• Several dmenu interfaces for USB mounting, display selection, emoji insertion and more
• More documentation for other users, including clickable statusbar info and a more complete Super+F1 guide
• Better backends for dropdown terminals

And more...

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-video-on-i3-configuration-and-tiling-window-managers

My public blog script, `lb` is now much improved

I know a couple of you guys out there use my blog script, lb, for your personal blogs. Advertised as a "Blog & RSS system in less than 100 lines of shell script". It's minimal, easy to customize and I've been using it for months now. If you didn't see the original video, there's the link.

The script allows you to write blog posts that are then automatically syndicated in several locations of your choosing:

• A rolling blog page: lukesmith.xyz/blog.html
• A blog index page (can be placed in your index if desired): lukesmith.xyz/blogindex.html
• All posts appear in the blog/ directory, which can be accessible via Apache settings.
• RSS entries, containing the full blog post are added to your RSS feed of choice (e.g. lukesmith.xyz/rss.xml)

But yesterday I rewrote the script, actually making it shorter while adding some nice features.

• The ability to revise already published articles
• Smarter URL creation. The old script made somewhat dumb urls.
• Use of the .htaccess file as a database to store filename-title correspondences and now publishing dates
• In the editing mode, only the text content, not the header or footer will appear in your editor. This is a side-effect of the fact above, since before, I had used the magic of script-kiddery to read from the buffer on publishing to determine the post's title. Now it's stored in .htaccess so that's not necessary.

The script is backwards compatible with the old script, although the commands have slightly changed (just run the command and it will tell you how) and if you've been working on unpublished drafts in lb 1.0, you must still publish them with lb 1.0. This backwards compatibility means that you can also revise old published blog entries without much of a problem. The only hiccup is the fact that if you revise a blog entry published with lb 1.0, when republished it will appear only with the new date. This should not be true of articles published by this lb 2.0.

To "install" the blog script, simply download it to the wanted blog directory and change the variables in it to seek the correct files (the RSS feed, blog file, blog index). You must add a comment line that looks exactly like this:

to each file. That line is the point in the document after which new articles/RSS entries/list entries will be added. See the source files of my above linked pages for examples!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#my-public-blog-script-lb-is-now-much-improved

New st build additions: link handling and Xresources and pywal compatibility

Since people don't austistically check my Github commits, I get a lot of questions about st (the simple terminal by suckless), my build and feature requests. Actually, a lot of people seem to think I'm still using urxvt...

Anyway, I've put up a new video on st here, which is a complement to my original video. I talk about some of the additional features I've patched in, like reading variables, including font and colors from Xresources, more intuitive vim-like binds, and a binding that reads all urls on the screen and feeds them to dmenu for selection. The last feature can largely replace using urlview or urlscan, although it requires xurls (and dmenu).

To be clear, reading Xresources does make st compatible with automatic pywal colorschemes (if you don't know what wal/pywal is, I did a video on it here!). I've actually had this in my st build for a while now, but I still get requests for this feature!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-st-build-additions-link-handling-and-xresources-and-pywal-compatibility

Video up on sed and regular expressions

New video up on sed and regular expressions.

To introduce people or get them a little deeper into sed, I showcase a use case of my own: a simple sed command to trim a document instantly of all comments and blanklines for further processing.

I also show my i3 status torrent module, which is just a sed command writ a little larger, replacing matches with emojis. If you want more basic Unix commands/bash videos, smash that MF like button and say so, because people have been asking for this kind of stuff and I'm curious how wanted it is!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#video-up-on-sed-and-regular-expressions

Download any of my thumbnails easily

Hi everyone. You could always use youtube-dl to download my videos and thumbnails, but out of sheer why-not, I've added a link to the fullsize thumbnail of every one of my videos into my video gallery.

Just click on the "🖼" next to the video title and you'll get the thumbnail.

Also, I released a contentless video here if you want to see it. Just because I've been doing videos pretty consistently the past few days and didn't want to break the pattern despite being very busy today.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#download-any-of-my-thumbnails-easily

Are you thirsty for some Social Media Upcummies?

New video up on the pervasiveness of upcummies on social media. Don't know what an upcummy is? Watch the video and find out!

Social media isn't just a waste of time, but makes everyone around you mediocre. Drawn in by a slow trickle of pseudo-information and statistical noise, you constantly have the feeling that you're accomplishing something despite spendings Onaninist hours being conditioned and advertised to.

You can easily go without social media. I, as you may know, went without direct internet access for 2 years, and this YouTube channel is a partial product of that. Restricting your exposure to the hivemind will always make you more clear minded and make your time connected to the hivemind more productive.

Remember to smash that upcummy button too! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#are-you-thirsty-for-some-social-media-upcummies

My RSS feed is getting too big!

I'm a completionist, so I've been in a habit of putting everything out there in full form. One of these things is my RSS feed, where I've never bothered to purge old entries. This was inevitable, but it's getting too big! Over 200 entries since last summer when I started it!

So pretty soon, probably today, I'll be removing old entries from the feed and backing them up somewhere else. I'll probably have a backup for the old RSS feed though. Of course, you'll still have everything if your RSS reader keeps a cache and you don't need to change the address or anything else. I just wanted to make this note, before I trim it down. It's about 215K now! Considering how many people access it and how often it's way too much of a bandwidth hog.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#my-rss-feed-is-getting-too-big

Physiognomy is real! (A request)

You may've heard of physiognomy, which is the study of how people's physical appearances or faces relate to their psychology or personality. Physiognomy is interesting because it was one of those many fields brushed aside as "pseudo-scientific" ironically enough my the early 20th century bugman scientists who lacked the tools to study it (and were also afraid of something that could be perceived as wacist). Nowadays, however, with better experimental techniques and sometimes even the aid of artificial intelligence, there have arisen a lot of different experimental studies finding that physiognomy is very real as a correlation between body/facial structure and personality, but also that people are very good at judging other peoples' personalities from that structure.

This often trickles into the news media when we hear about faces being "gay" or "racist". We hear about how political persuasion correlates with body strength or religious zeal being readable from one's face. There are more subtle things, like a person's index to ring finger ratio that are registers of prenatal testosterone, thus correlating with all manners of things. And then there's left-handedness.

This shouldn't be a surprise for anyone. The nerd and the chad have separate personalities, but their different bodies and dispositions reflect them. One might cause the other, or be related for other reasons, but the correlations are there and everyone knows and recognizes them.

Anyway, for the podcast NotRelated.xyz, I'm planning on doing an episode on physiognomy. Yes, I know I haven't put out an episode in around month, but I've been unable to record due to factors out of my control ;-). I have this and two (sort of three) other episodes under construction and I think once I move to my new place January, I'll have much more recording time.

I'm saying all this because I'm curious if people reading have any physiognomy data or even anecdotes. I've compiled a lot of studies on this kind of stuff over time, but feel free to send me what you have. There's a big and speculative field out there, so I'd like to cover what people have found interesting even if I haven't found it myself. Do not send me news media links. Send me links to the papers that they're based on.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#physiognomy-is-real-a-request

grug like new notrelated episode

New episode of Not Related! on the new perspectives in early human evolution, downloadable here!

Topics covered:

• The constantly deeper origin of humankind in time (and why this will continue)
• A review of (a lot of) very recent scientific literature on the genetics and archeological cultures of early humans
• Out-of-Africa vs. Multiregionalism
• How much like us are Neanderthals?

Here is a list of the papers cited or alluded to:

• Smith et al. 2018. Humans trived in South Africa through the Toba eruption about 74,000 years ago. Nature 555.7697. Pages 511-515.
• Richter et al. 2017. The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature 546.7657. Pages 293-29.
• Schlebusch et al. 2017. South African ancient genomes estimate modern human divergence 350,000 to 260,000 years ago. Science 358.6363. Pages 652-655.
• Hodgson et a. 2014. Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa. PLOS ONE 10.6.
• Groucutt et al. 2018. Homo sapiens in Arabia by 85,000 years. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2.5. Pages 800-809.
• Demeter et al. 2015. Early Modern Humans and Morphological Variation in Southeast Asia: Fossil Evidence from Tam Pa Ling, Laos. PLOS ONE 10.4.
• Westaway et al. 2017. An early modern human presence in Sumatra 73,000-63,000 years ago. Nature 548.7667. Pages 322-325.
• Pringle, Heather. 2011. Texas Site Confirms Pre-Clovis Settlement of the Americas. Science, New Series 331.6024. Page 1512.
• Raghavan et al. 2015. Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans. Nature 505.7481. Pages 87-91.
• Skoglund et al. 2015. Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas. Nature.
• Ferentinos et al. 2012. Early seafaring activity in the southern Ionian Islands, Mediterranean Sea. Journal of Archaeological Science 39. 2167-2176.
• Jaubert et al. 2016. Early Neanderthal constructions deep in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France. Nature 111.534. 111-114.
• Coop et al. 2008. The Timing of Selection at the Human FOXP2 Gene. Molecular Biology and Evolution 25.7. Pages 1257-1259.

Also, check out the new and improved simple HTML Not Related.xyz website here!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#grug-like-new-notrelated-episode

Luke Smith in 1080p!

I want to thank again Henok S. for getting me and the channel the simple yet elegant ThinkVision T2224D monitor! I showcase it here in a new video! This is less of a gift to me than a gift to everyone who watches my channel because it means that my screencasts will be recorded in full wide 1080p HD, and not the awkward 1680x1050 resolution of the fatt TV monitor I used to use and then mutilated by the resolution requirements of YouTube into 1152x720!

You can see from the video (probably if you're watching in 1080p or even less) that the screen and webcam should be a good bit crisper since it's no longer going through that awkward conversion. On my side, the color of the monitor is also fantastic. Obviously you can't really see it, but it definitely makes a difference for me.

I deliberately also got an IPS panel and it looks great (I had to read up on screen technology a little when shopping around). I have an IPS on my X220 and had always noticed the much more vivid colors compared to other screens. It made me prefer to use the smaller laptop screen on occasions. The IPS panel is seriously great looking. It doesn't come over in photos how good it looks, so I can't directly show you, but it is very comfortable. I had to read up on different options, but it seems that IPS is pretty much the best unless you want more Hertz for video-gayming. I definitely love it.

The monitor I got was on the cheap side, a little over $100. There are more expensive equivalents, including other made by Lenovo, that often come with either speakers, USB ports, more ports for displays and other options, sometimes even webcams. I just wanted a monitor that was a monitor (and didn't want to make my benefactor feel obliged to buy an extortionate item ;-)). If I want to "expand" later, I can get a dual display with a fancier thing, but what I have is already great, and much better than before!

So again, you can look foward to seeing my screencasts in 1080p and can thank Henok for that!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#luke-smith-in-1080p

Transparency/chroma keys in mpv or vlc?

As you may know, when I screencast, I record the entrety of my screen and when I have my face in the bottom right, it is a literal floating mpv window on my desktop. I don't use either video editing or OBS to produce this effect.

There is a little feature I've been thinking to add to this though, and that is using a green screen and chroma keying out the background, leaving only me. I don't know of a way to do this in mpv (or the commonly used alternative vlc), but I was curious if anyone had any experience automatically keying out some color in a video stream as that's sort of what I want to do.

This isn't necessary, and if I really wanted it, I could just use OBS, but I'm curious if there's an established way to do this. Email me at luke@lukesmith.xyz if you have a solution for this.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#transparencychroma-keys-in-mpv-or-vlc

Do you hate Patreon and PayPal?

Most people do. Luckily, for all the complaining, there is a simple replacement for it that cuts out the middle man altogether and transfers money directly and immediately between bank accounts.

You probably haven't heard of it, but there is a new money transfer system that most banks in the United States maintain called Zelle. It's really just a protocol for transferring money directly from account to account with just an email, so it works pretty much with the ease of PayPal. It is actually a service offered for free (no fees at all) by most American banks.

If you have any bank account in the United States, you probably already have Zelle and don't know it.

So for all those who want to donate to the channel but don't want to be bothered to use Paypal/Patreon, here's how to use it:

• Log on to your online banking for whatever bank you have.
• Search for a "transfer money" or "Zelle" section.
• (You may have to confirm your email, but "setup" is automatic.)
• When asked for a recipient, just put in my email address: luke@lukesmith.xyz

Benefits of Zelle:

• It's managed by banks as a free tool for their customers, so it doesn't skim some money off the top of your donation.
• You don't need to sign up and create an account on some new website.
• You can send a single lump-sum donation if you hate PayPal, or set up recurring donations if you hate Patreon.
• Zelle, being owned by banks regulated up the wazoo is less likely to ZUCC you. I've never heard of anyone being ZUCCed by them in fact.

Again, you can donate directly to me, no charge using Zelle and my email:

luke@lukesmith.xyz

I'll be adding these directions here for reference.

I might actually do a video on this, just so more people know.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#do-you-hate-patreon-and-paypal

I'M GOING TO USE THE NNN FILE BROWSER

New video out on nnn, which is a much lighter and faster equivalent of ranger for browsing files on the terminal.

nnn is quite speedy and has a design that will be somewhat unfamiliar to some, using only environmental variables for configuration, instead of either traditional dotfiles or suckless-like config.h with the intent of recompilation. Nonetheless, nnn has all the basics you need, lacking the bloat of ranger. I'll still be using ranger, as I've fallen into some of its more specific features, but nnn will probably be the best for some of you out there.

Source code is here, although it should be in the Arch default repos.

Also, check out my video on ranger. I still always get the most questions about what ranger is, so here's the link again ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#im-going-to-use-the-nnn-file-browser

Running commands whenever a file is changed with entr

New video up on entr, which is a very handy command that will monitor whatever files you give it on standard input and will run a requested command on them whenever they are saved/changed. While it's not a core utility, it's almost a must have for system administration and for those interested in autocompilation or automating other aspects of your system or development environment.

The main website of the project is here which actually gives some pretty salient use cases, but I detail some I've used in the video a bit. I'm sure for a lot of people this is "what they've always been looking for" because it's a task not perfectly filled by the typical programs.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#running-commands-whenever-a-file-is-changed-with-entr

'Boomer Rants in Woods' series

I've officially created a new playlist for a certain genre of my videos: the "30-year-old Boomer Rants in Woods" series.

Title self explanatory, although the Boomer-ranting-in-woods should be understood as a Gestalt that might include some videos that are not, strictly speaking, rants, some scenes that are not actually in the woods and additionally, I'm neither actually a Boomer nor 30-years-old.

For those of you who use YouTube playlists, you may now enjoy this one.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#boomer-rants-in-woods-series

What is 'the best' Linux distro?

New video out: "The TOP 1 LINUX DISTROS for 2019".

I've long found conversations about different Linux distributions tedious and meangingless. For people familiar enough with *nix systems, the superficial differences between distributions can be easily erradicated or changed by any basic system knowledge. "Distros are not desktop environments", as some people have started to say. I sort of got this ball rolling on YouTube at the start of my channel when I put out my How to Choose a Linux distro: Stop Thinking! video and it was the first result for any "Linux" search for a while.

I certainly don't take any of it back, but as time has gone on, I'm starting to think that the distribution I've been using for all this time might be "the best" in some sense. It doesn't do anything particularly good, but avoids all the hassles that most distributions do not. It also puts users in a place where they can more competently deal with system problems in an intelligent way.

What distro am I talking about? Well, you probably already know, but let's find out! 👉 The TOP 1 LINUX DISTROS for 2019

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#what-is-the-best-linux-distro

Merry Christmas! and Bitchute Update

While most of my family is napping after the Christmas dinner, I'm taking some time to back-up some videos on my Bitchute channel (feel free to subscribe). Yes, I have a Bitchute channel. Stop telling me to get one. I've had one for over a year now. If you had looked you would've found it!

If you don't know, Bitchute is a video channel based on the bit torrent protocol, meaning that while it is still a niche video site, it has the potentiality to improve quality and bandwidth with more viewership while traditional sites would rely on buying up a huge server farm. Bitchute also has a relatively firm commitment to non-censorship, a commitment which has cost them much, including access to PayPal, but they have never renegged.

Anyway, Bitchute automatically mirrors any new video on my YouTube channel, so it has all the videos I've put up since I started it, but is lacking those I made in early 2017, so I'm in the process of manually uploading them. If anyone knows an automatic upload system, feel free to tell me, but Bitchute's channel UI tends to lack those kinds of perks.

So anyway, you'll see some old (but new) videos popping up on my Bitchute, if you haven't seen them, now's your chance. Again, the link is: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/lukesmith/

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#merry-christmas-and-bitchute-update

Year Review-End of Year Livestream Incoming!

I'm in the process of moving into a place with much better internet, and as such, I'll be able to do livestreams! As I say briefly in this video, I'll be having an end-of-year livestream which will have the functionality of a typical livestream, but with some prep in the /var as well: a review of all the content and happenings on the channel in the last year along with topical meme videos.

I'll announce the exact time(zone) later on this feed. You can also feel free to send in suggestion videos as well.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#year-reviewend-of-year-livestream-incoming

The New Year's Livestream will be on Atlantis time

The New Year's livestream will be treating a timezone out in the middle of the Atlantic (UTC -2) as the "real New Year". That is, we will be on the time of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. This is most convenient for me, but also pretty much avoids any personal conflicts most people will have with the climax of the New Year. I might start as early as 3 hours beforehand, or probably will at least open up the chat while preparing, so these are the times you can come in at:

• For the Eastern US, that is 6PM to 9PM.
• For the Western US, that is 3PM to 6PM.
• Britain/Portugal: 10PM to 1AM.
• Most of Western Europe: 11PM to 2AM.
• For East Australia: 9AM to noon.
• Etc. etc. Just refer to the link above for the time I'm looking at. Don't trust my math.

I have no huge plans for the actual moment of the New Year, so feel free to come and leave whenever. I'll probably open up the chatroom relatively early. As I said, I'll probably mostly be reviewing the peak moments of 2018 on the channel, playing short meme videos and responding to viewer supercummies and such (gibs info here).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#the-new-years-livestream-will-be-on-atlantis-time

Livestream now scheduled on YouTube and video requests?

I've set up the livestream link here. It should go live in around 6 hours: 6:30 EST. You might be able to use the chatroom in the meantime; I'm not sure myself, but you can try it out.

As I mentioned, I'll be playing some short, mostly inane meme videos during the stream on occasions. If you have any you'd like to recommend, send them to me now! Any topic, so long as they're short (3 minutes is really pushing it) and actually entertaining.

Send them via email without delay: luke@lukesmith.xyz

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#livestream-now-scheduled-on-youtube-and-video-requests

New Year and New Plans

Hi everyone! I want to thank all who showed up for the New Years livestream, especially those who donated.

If I occasionally sound burnt out on making videos, I have to say that that's mostly illusion or temporary and I'm very glad with the success the channel has had in the past year. I hope to go a lot further, while not fundamentally altering the quality or realness of the channel. No irrelevant sponsors or special production team.

I forgot to say until deep into the stream, but the thing I have my eye on getting for the channel next is an EOMA68 computer card and casing. This is an upcoming and experimental kind of privacy/freedom-respecting computer that appeals to my non-consumerism and sense of efficiency: it's modular, utterly free/libre from the bottom up and designed with a mostly 3D printable case. I talked about the EOMA68 in a video, but haven't yet gotten my hands on one, despite thinking that it represents very positive movements in computer construction. Obviously I plan on testing and reviewing it for all of you; I'm optimistic about it.

The "actual computer" part is a severable card that is supposed to be hosted in different ports: a laptop shell or a desktop shell, etc. This reduces redundancy and easily separates the outward shell from the computer itself, both of which can be easily replaced if damaged or obsolete. The computer card itself actually has pretty unimpressive specs, but this early in the game, that's part of the fun. It is also lacking some typical ports (last time I did research on it, I don't believe there was an ethernet port, so you'd either need an ethernet adapter or wifi dongle). These deficiencies are related to the adherence to strict open hardware standards from what I can glean.

In the livestream, I raised enough money for the computer card itself (I'll be getting one with Parabola GNU/Linux), but also for the desktop casing and then some. I'll be buying these soon (together they are $120 and then taxes, etc.). I'd also like to buy the laptop casing which is either $450-500 depending on whether I can 3D print the parts myself, but we didn't quite raise that much. If you'd like to see me review the laptop casing as well, please donate and I'll order it too! Honestly, I'd sort of like to start a crowd funding account just so people can see where there money is going to, I might do that. Either way, I'll be getting the desktop casing and the computer card before they ship out on February 1st.

Of course if you or someone you know is involved with the EOMA68, you could always send me a freebie and that money can go to the project next on the list. 😉

Anyway, I can't tell you what's next for my channel because part of it has always been its non-planned nature (otherwise it would be lame), but remember to keep tabs on the RSS feed.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2018.html#new-year-and-new-plans

In Defense of "Pseudoscience"

If you keep up with my random asides in videos and elsewhere, you might know that I'm extremely disappointed with the current state of institutionalized science. The post-war era was a disaster for scientific epistemology, in fact, epistemology and science commentary mostly became an exercise to exclude one's enemies by technicality. Academia became an enormous state-funded enterprise, and the best way to ensure that your research program got funding before your rivals was to develop advanced reasoning to exclude their methodology altogether from science.

Thus the term "pseudoscience". In former centuries, there was no such division between "science" and "pseudoscience". Researchers wrote tomes on subjects which were amalgams of hard analysis and what we would now consider baseless or unwarranted speculation. Each were understood for what they were, all ideas were on the table for analysis.

The thing is, all academics-at least all remotely intelligent ones-quietly harbor fringe beliefs. If you push any of them in private, or with vindicating evidence, they'll quickly bounce to support their deeper intuition. One example that comes to mind is geologist Robert Schoch, who after a little empirical prodding, became a vocal supporter of the idea of a prehistoric dating of the Sphinx, and then later other Mesolithic civilizations. Nowadays he brushes shoulders even with the ancient aliens crowd, and why shouldn't he? Once you've earned the designation of "pseudoscientist", you might as well go full-bore and have fun.

The other best-kept secret is that by definition, "pseudoscience" drives advancement in "real science". All new ideas start out as baseless speculation-Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, based on the trivial and child-like realization that South America sort of fits into Africa, was mocked as pseudoscientific by Americans for decades. Now it's science. I wouldn't doubt if Schoch's Sphinx water erosion hypothesis will be similarly vindicated, partially by the many Mesolithic constructions found since then.

In linguistics and archeology, we have a recent "pseudoscientist" in Marija Gimbutas. Gimbutas unearthed many female idols/dolls from pre-Indo-European Europe and jumped to far-reaching, "pseudoscientific" conclusions: Old Europe was a feminist utopia, there was no violence and complete harmony, etc. Because Gimutas's politics were socially unassailable, you don't hear "pseudoscientist" around her much, but that's certainly the word on everyone's lips. If pseudoscience is what Schoch is doing, it's certainly what she was doing. Regardless, this pushed her into making specific claims about the origin of Indo-Europeans, that they originated from the Kurgan (Yamnaya) culture, a claim that has now become consensus due to further archeological, linguistic and nowadays even genetic research.

I've seen first hand that there are really two types of personalities in science. On one had, there's the conventional and petty academic who is "detail-oriented" and "rigorous" in some sense that means religiously adherent to theoretical priors. These people will only truly fight for something when they're on the side of consensus or when the issue is of no social importance. On the other side are the "pseudoscientists", or in other words, the people who actually have something interesting to say.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/in-defense-of-pseudoscience/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/in-defense-of-pseudoscience/

A Hacking Wishlist

I've decided to put up a "Hacking Wishlist", which will be a running list of all the things I need or would like to know how to do, but don't yet know. I've started it with two big problems I've had for a while and am looking for any clues as to how to solve them. Check out the list!

The first I need to solve is to make LARBS's pausing system and lock screen better, and the second I really want for mutt-wizard to make it easier for users to add new mail accounts.

I'll post updates as I add more entries to the list or me or someone else solves one. You can, of course, email your solutions to luke@lukesmith.xyz.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#a-hacking-wishlist

i fell Ior the suckless meme in image viewers too: sxiv

I just put up a video on sxiv, "the simple X image viewer". I've switched from feh to it for several reasons:

• You can designate arbitrary commands to run on images via a custom script. I set up commands to make images the wallpaper, move or copy them to directories and run imagemagick commands on them.
• .gif animations are supported, which feh can't do.
• It comes with a free thumbnail view as well, which can be very handy for sorting through images. I'm moving away from using ranger with its single image previews and this is a big plus.
• It can read from and write to standard input/output. As I say in the video, I don't quite know what to use this for yet, but it can be very handy in user scripts to provide a dmenu-like menu for selecting images for other commands.

I also mention that I don't know yet if sxiv can be used to set backgrounds. feh can, hence I still have it installed and use it for that, but if anyone knows how to make sxiv do the same, please tell me so I can save a dependency in LARBS. ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#i-fell-ior-the-suckless-meme-in-image-viewers-too-sxiv

Why I don't use polybar anymore? (And on ricing)

I occasionally get asked why I use my "ugly" status bar which is a simple i3blocks with gaudy emojis rather than the more elegant polybar which I used in earlier videos, like say, this one, or bumblebee-status, which I used even earlier here.

First, right off the bat, I know a lot of people think of me as a desktop "ricer", i.e. someone who makes substantial changes to their computers for aesthetic purposes, but this really isn't the case. The only sense in which I care about my computer's appearance is its ability to present important things very obviously and the speed with which I can do whatever thing I'm doing on a computer. "Ricing" a term that comes from the automobile-modification world meaning "Race-Inspired Cosmetic Enhancement". A true ricer is all about making his computer elegant. I'm not. I care about efficiency and do have some minor aesthetic things (like transparency), but these are only to keep me from getting bored out of my mind. I even used solarized colors for a while which shows obviously I don't care that much about how a computer looks.

If you want a very good example of real ricing, I recommend you check out this recent video by iBSD, where he shows a AwesomeWM configuration theming it to Game of Thrones. That might sound absurd and pure flex, but check it out; it's very impressive.

But anyway, there are a couple specific reasons I don't use "the pretty" polybar:

• On Arch Linux, there is no polybar binary and you must compile it from the AUR. No big deal for a user, but since I maintain LARBS and have hundreds of people weekly (sometimes daily) installing my system, this constant compiling of a system basic component on many different computers leads to a lot of problems, many of which I can't troubleshoot.
• Related to the above, polybar has a bad tendency to break on the updating/renaming of a library. It's the only package I know of that does this regularly.
• Polybar is different from and independent from the typical i3bar and lacks some of its abilities. Honestly one of the things that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me was the fact that you can't easily run a command to toggle/hide polybar. Additionally, you have to get use to restarting polybar on screen refresh and having an extra script for generating in the way you want on multiple monitors. Some of that is good in that it means customizeability on different monitors, but since I'm not a big fan of multi-monitor setups, it doesn't mean much to me.
• I do sort of enjoy the "ugliness" of

My reasons for bumblebee-status anymore are somewhat similar (with the additional fact that it's written in Python and tended to eat up system resources).

Anyway. I only write all this because I am sort of thinking of configuring a "prettier" statusbar, but since people ask about my previous choices I want to make it clear what I care about in system configuration. If you have any suggestions of a status bar that...

• ...exists in the main Arch repos,
• is configurable,
• light on system resources,
• has few (or no) dependencies,
• can be easily togged,
• and still can be made very pretty...

Please tell me.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#why-i-dont-use-polybar-anymore-and-on-ricing

Nassim Taleb on IQ, and what is IQ anyway?

I've been asked by several people to opine on Nassim Taleb's recent Twitter war against IQ as a concept. You can read a preliminary write up of his critiques on a Medium article he wrote. Not too refined, but if you listen you get the point. I'll see if I can sum some of the ideas up:

• IQ is a very effective measure of outcome... on the dumb side of the distribution, but not the "intelligent" side. People of measured IQs of 70 are well predicted to not get far in life. The difference between 70s and 100s is massive, but the difference between 100s and 130s is not on average.
• Because of the above, many very strong correlations between IQ and other things are spurious because IQ isn't really so predictive/causative at all levels.
• Thus, IQ tests are pretty much effective in that they can detect utter morons fairly well, but so can any other arbitrarily defined test; the IQ test isn't especially effective or some grand discovery.
• IQ tests have been designed to award a particular type of abstract thinking that is not generally helpful and can lead people to be oblivious, naïve, boring and dangerous. The Talebian IYI.

On that last point, you might want to listen to the podcast I did on Gerd Gigerenzer's work, which is related: we, especially psychologists, have this fetish for cargo-cult rationality, often when it leads us to be dumber/bigger chumps IRL. Taleb is also keenly aware of the sociological aspect of academia, the replication crisis, the wishful thinking and confirmation bias ubiquitous in the soft (i.e. non-) sciences. Many people will correctly call IQ or g "the most successful" finding of psychological sciences in the 20th century. I say "correctly" because everything else psychological "sciences" have found is either totally non-reproduceable or the result of smoke-and-mirrors, so, sure IQ is number 1 in a field of continual failure.

Anyway, on the topic, a lot of Boomers will deny any potential reality of IQ/g or any other kinds of cognitive tests out of a deep-seated faith in total human cognitive uniformity (otherwise that would make them literally Hitler). This isn't really Taleb's motivation: his, if I my psychoanalyze for a moment, amounts to a disappointment with the pseudo-rationalist "funcionary" thought-patterns that an IQ test favors being celebrated as a cognitive ideal, when in reality these mental habits aren't really so correlated with success outside of bureaucracy. Taleb certainly loves to dab on n*rds and I support his efforts. That and a conviction to sound understanding of statistics drive him.

Is "IQ" utterly meaningless? No I don't think so, nor do I think Taleb thinks so, but it's only a clumsy and introductory mosaic used to approach human cognitive differences and we shouldn't necessarily treat it as a mentalistic holon without careful caveats. As he puts it in the above Medium article:

"If you renamed IQ, from "Intelligent Quotient" to FQ "Functionary Quotient" or SQ "Salaryperson Quotient", then some of the stuff will be true. It measures best the ability to be a good slave. "IQ" is good for @davidgraeber's "BS jobs"."

"Autism Quotient" might be another candidate. IQ shows something, but I think a lot of Taleb's critique comes down to assumption that "high IQ" tendencies are not necessarily either good or indicative of intelligence in a meaningful sense. I think there is a strong correlation between IQ what we intuitively think of as "intelligence", but you must take that with Taleb's qualifiers mentioned above and the fact that for some cultural reasons (and pity), we think of autistic shut-ins and losers in high-school as being "intelligent" (thus the concept of IQ has affected what we think of as being smart). In the past, autistic shut-ins were understood to be utter morons and the ideal intelligent person might be an outgoing, socially-aware, but "irrationally" cautious, high-agency person with little attention to detail. If "IQ" measured that kind of person, which we could easily do, we would likely find some of the same correlations since like our "IQ" it rules out the extremely dull, but such a test might be likely to have better life-performance correlations as well.

To sum up, I mostly concur with what Taleb says, but I also don't particularly mind using the term "IQ" in the way it's conventionally understood so long as it's not understood as some eternal metric of goodness. I did speak somewhat about the selection of cognitive ability, measured by IQ in one of my other podcasts, but my editorial stance was that that selection was not necessarily "good". Like Taleb says in the quote above, a person with a high IQ tends to be a good functionary, a good cog in the system. Perhaps to slavishly obey social orders one does necessitate some level of real intelligence, but that servile and autistic mentality not what true intelligence causes per se, nor should we celebrate than kind of mindset.

If anything Taleb says sounds like gibberish, I recommend you either to read his books (Skin in the Game, Antifragile, etc. etc.) or wait for his next inevitable book which I'm sure will include the IQ discussion. Taleb has a tendency to put things in superficially coarse phrasing online, but his books are lucid beyond comprehension.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#nassim-taleb-on-iq-and-what-is-iq-anyway

Why I don't do GNU/Linux 'evangelism'

I just released a video talking about why I don't do Linux "evangelism". This is part of the ever growing "Boomer Rants in Woods" series.

I detail why in the video, but it ammounts to two main points:

• People are egotistically attached to what operating system they use and treat you trying to convince them what to use as a personal insult. Trying to convince people usually ammounts to making them less open to change.
• Even when you can convince people that using Linux is "good" in an abstract sense, they don't know how to and usually end up trying to replicate their behavior on Windows/Mac OSX and become disappointed that they can't perfectly do so. I use my example of foobar2000 in the video.

The "solution" to these constraints is simple: if you want to get people to be more open to Linux, show them what you can actually do on it. This solves both problems.

While I certainly don't have my channel for Linux evangelism, I do feel like the channel has approached doing just that as time has gone on. I don't talk conceptually about Linux or *nix generally unless it's after showcasing some feature or explaining the efficiency of a design. This encourages people to actually understand Linux, how it's different from their common experience and encourages them that they might benefit from using it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#why-i-dont-do-gnulinux-evangelism

Adding transparency and removing whitespace from images automatically with imagemagick

I've put up a new imagemagick video, where I briefly talk about how to quickly trim junk from images with the -trim option and basic usage of the -transparent option, which allows you to automatically choose a color to treat as transparent. Just a brief topic, but you can get a whole lot out of these little tools in terms of making image modification way faster.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#adding-transparency-and-removing-whitespace-from-images-automatically-with-imagemagick

Contemplating a brief series on creating a website

I've been contemplating doing a series on creating and maintaining your own website. The motivation is simple: too few people have their own platforms on the internet and are increasingly at the technical and frankly emotional mercy of social media sites, begging not to be "deplatformed". I talk about this in a new video.

I'm already starting to think through how I want the series to look, it might only be two somewhat long videos, but I'll probably show people the kind of setup that I have with a VPS. Suggestions are welcome, so long as they are... reasonable. Also, in the process of making this video, I will probably be using real life hosts/registrars: If anyone has anything bad or good to say about a registrar or host service, feel free to tell me. I say this because if I use or bring up Namecheap (my VPS host) as an example in the video, that will probably bring new users/customers to them. I don't want to positively or even neutrally mention any host/registrar that has a bad record (for example, GoDaddy is a terrible host and I'll probably specifically note it).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#contemplating-a-brief-series-on-creating-a-website

Hacking wishlist addition: Moving all before a match to end of file!

I've added a new entry to the Hacking Wishlist. This one I was racking my brain a little on last night, but couldn't find an elegant solution. It's probably obvious though.

I want a sed/awk command (probably awk, actually) that can take a stream and a regular expression and move all the lines before that regular expression to the end of the file. Sounds simple, but for whatever reason, I haven't developed a solution! I need to brush up my awk skills!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#hacking-wishlist-addition-moving-all-before-a-match-to-end-of-file

Anyone want the domain name `currentyear.net`? Looking to sell.

A couple years ago, I bought currentyear.net with the idea of turning it into a meme news site for fun. I obviously didn't end up doing it, so I'm thinking about parting with the domain name to anyone who thinks they might be able to put it to good use!

If anyone wants it, name a price and I'll sell it to you relatively cheap as far as domains go. If there are no takers within a couple of days, I'll probably put it on sale publicly with Namecheap for a good bit more than I'd settle for now.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#anyone-want-the-domain-name-currentyearnet-looking-to-sell

Suck on this, black-pillers!

New Boomer Rants video on why Pessimism is *literally* for losers. ;-)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#suck-on-this-blackpillers

Anyone want to redo the CSS for my website?

I'm not a big color person and whenever I have to pick a theme for a website, it sort of annoys me. I don't like the current theme of my website, in fact, I've never liked any of the themes I've used so I was curious, before I start manually start retinkering with it until I find another scheme I tepidly can approve of, I was curious if anyone out there who has a knack for design would like to offer me a new .css stylesheet with a better colorscheme and other possible tweaks.

The current stylesheet is at https://lukesmith.xyz/style.css. I've added a couple of comments to make clear what novel thing is what. Feel free to send me new colors for everything, although I want a dark theme. Be sure that everything still werks, including the rolling blog page. I'll give it a couple days before I pick "a winner" unless I get one really quickly that's just perfect.

Do not offer to redo my website, especially if that means rewriting it with javascript code everywhere! I also do not want to have to move anything around unless there's just the best reason to: .css changes only.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#anyone-want-to-redo-the-css-for-my-website

Luke steps on the Python snek

New video up on Python, talking about computer language speed and abstraction, but also why I don't use Python for scripting or much of anything.

This is partially in response to some responses I got when I committed microaggressions against Python the language in this video.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#luke-steps-on-the-python-snek

Recent work

I neglected to mention on the RSS feed yesterday, but I put up a new video just talking about some channel progress and workflow.

I've actually already recording one of the videos for the "make your own website" series and I may have another done soon. Expect them some time next week.

I've also started putting together a review of my new Unicomp Endurapro keyboard. There are actually a lot of things I want to put into it to give people a full view of it. I might finish this video either today or tomorrow.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#recent-work

Livestream now

Livestream at the bottom of the hour. 7:30 East Coast US.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#livestream-now

The 'Horrors' of the Linux Terminal...

I've put up a video briefly explaining the benefits, dare I say, superiorities of command line management as oppose to flopping around like a fish in GUIs. A lot of novice users are strangely afraid of the terminal, but as I say in the video, it's a much more efficient and direct way of getting things done on a computer, similar to giving orders to a Siri. Here are the video links:

• YouTube
• Bitchute

Recorded another video in the website series today. Putting the pieces together. Now two videos done and will probably be released next week.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#the-horrors-of-the-linux-terminal

Anyone got ueberzug image previews working in vifm?

I was playing around with ueberzug, which is a possbly more consistent replacement for the w3m image preview. Give it an images and a location/dimensions for it and it will print it to the terminal. The preview will survive after multiple resizing, mouse away and anything else. Much more robust than w3mimg.

A brief example in bash. I recommend installing ueberzug via pip to ensure all the right dependencies.

The above will print pix/image.png in the top left (0x0) and ensure it fits within 400x400 by resizing it. If you spawn a bunch more windows and move it around, the image is very consistent.

Now vifm does provide some built-in arguments for the size of the preview window and location, but despite a little tinkering, I couldn't actually get any previews to pop up. I tried in my build of st, urxvt and alacritty and none worked in vifm.

I could toy around with it a little more and figure it out, but if any of you guys have already done it, feel free to share your script/command to do it. Ideally I'd like vifm previews, but also an independent script that could simply print out an image argument to the command line.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#anyone-got-ueberzug-image-previews-working-in-vifm

A showcase video on fish as a shell

I've put up a brief video on fish (the Friendly Interactive SHell). I'm not too opinionated about shells, I use vanilla bash myself, but there are definitely some things to really like or hate about fish.

• YouTube
• Bitchute

I talk about fish's idiosyncratic (and not very POSIX) syntax, but also its perks: syntax highlighting, autocompletion of commands an command options, abbreviations and more.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#a-showcase-video-on-fish-as-a-shell

Unaboomer/Geocities Livestream SOON

As the kick off to the creating-a-website series, I'm going to be having what was originally going to be an "HTML/CSS tutorial", but since everyone already knows HTML and CSS, it's going to be a light-heared Geocities-themed livestream where I construct an early-ninties-style webpage.

Typical livestream behavior expected as well.

For you Zoomers out there, Geocities was... oh well you'll figure it out. Just come to the livestream. I'll probably start in less than 30 minutes... We'll see.

LINK HERE. CHAT IS OPEN NOW!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#unaboomergeocities-livestream-soon

Audio problem fixed. Stream active immanently.

I've fixed the audio problem in the original stream attempt. I'll go live in less than 30 minutes at the bottom of the hour.

New link.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#audio-problem-fixed-stream-active-immanently

Some entry tips to using suckless programs

I've just put up a video on some general tips I have for people who are looking to use suckless programs.

• YouTube
• Bitchute

This is in response to a lot of the complaints I hear about suckless from people who are trolling their minds for reasons not to use it. I also saw that Distrotube had put out a video talking about trying suckless utilities out, so I wanted to give my personal recommendations.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#some-entry-tips-to-using-suckless-programs

Do you know the Via Negativa?

New video up on Via Negativa, which is about the closest I'll ever get to offering "self-help" advise. NEETs won't want to hear it anyway.

• YouTube
• Bitchute

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#do-you-know-the-via-negativa

How to Get a Domain Name for Cheap or Free

Check out the new video out on how to get a domain name. I list out a couple different registrars in the description, feel free to recommend others if you'd like. Here's the vid:

• YouTube
• BitChute

By the way, you may've noticed that I haven't been releasing RSS posts as quickly as I used to when I put out new videos (and even missing some). There are some practical reasons for this, but in the future, I might go without posting video releases on the blog/RSS, unless I specifically feel like it. This blog is, after all, supposed to be just a blog.

I'm not sure, but to be extra careful, I recommend subscribing to my YouTube channel's RSS feed here: (https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA). Entry links will be the direct video links.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#how-to-get-a-domain-name-for-cheap-or-free

Pre-/innawoods/ livestream now

Doing a livestream starting in 10 or so minutes (7PM New York time). Check my channel.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#preinnawoods-livestream-now

One week in nowhere

As I mentioned in my last livestream, I'm spending this coming week in a remote, undiscolsed location with minimal internet connection. Earlier today I was Booming as usual back home, but I took a long drive to a family area several hundred miles away where I'll probably be for the next week. If you're reading this on or shortly after the 15th, it means I at least had the cell service to update the blog, but don't expect any videos this week (although I will be recording some for later release).

I decided to leave town because I can, and because I'd like to have free time to work on whatever strikes me. I always recommend building a "schedule" which is purposefully mostly empty: only then can you truly end up doing what matters. Perhaps I'll make some videos or record podcasts or work on my dissertations. We'll see.

You often forget, even when you live in a pretty small city what exactly true silence sounds like. Back where I live now, there is still the constant nightly buzz of Zoomers at the club listening to that damned Kanye/Lil Pump song 6 million times a night. Here during nightime, however, at first you hear nothing, and only after long exposure do you hear the distant packs of wolves and wild dogs howling at each other, or the bleating of a boar. When in non-rural areas usually most of what you hear is drowned out as the unimportant mess it is, if you go for a midnight stroll in a dark forest, every sound becomes meaningful, if not alarming. Even as I write this on the porch of the isolated house, a larger animal is rummaging gently in the bush just out of my field of view. I'm a little unnerved as it seems to be working its way slowly to me, perhaps trying to figure out the clacking of a ThinkPad keyboard and the brightness of the accompanying ThinkLight.

I thought about soiling an earlier night walk by recording a video, but while your eyes adjust to the only light, the moon, a cell phone can hardly make the adjustment and capture the actual appearance of anything, not least by blaring its electronic luminescene on everything. Anyway, I'm going to try to upload at least this post and turn of what remaining electronics I have here.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#one-week-in-nowhere

Some riverfront surveying

Today was my first full day of my weeklong outing, and I spent a lot of the time walking through the pines and on firelanes. I went to visit some family land by the river, which had been partially flooded with some residual marshland. There's a non-negligible chance that in the future I might be building a house on that parcel, albeit much further away from the river for fear of the occasional hurricane-based flooding.

I also visited the church cemetary where many of my ancestors are buried.

I did have the chance to record some material for videos, but I won't be able to upload it until I either get back or drive quite a while to get to an area with public internet. Out here, the main way people even have an internet connection is via satillite. Dial-up was common relatively recently.

I didn't mention it yesterday, but the "urbanization" of the area is somewhat jarring. I mean "urbanization" in the loosest sense (I'm not quite sure what to call it, perhaps "commercialization"), but a lot of the small towns in the area have started to produce Subways, McDonalds, chain gas stations and even a couple of Walmarts. The essence of the area hasn't changed that much, but it could mean the beginning of a potentially irreversable process. Still, where I am is imminently rural, without the hint of even a non-chain restaurant or a grocery store for miles and miles.

When I was young, my grandfather used to arrange for gasoline to be shipped to a tank on our property, but that was a long time ago. If you wanted to go "shopping", you'd have to drive more than an hour to get to Valdosta, which in the grand scheme of things is still a relatively small college town, although I much confess that that city has balooned in size and business in the 10 years since I did my first year of college there in 2008-2009.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#some-riverfront-surveying

You don't choose who you are

I put up a brief "Lunchtime with Luke" video earlier today. Links below.

• YouTube
• BitChite

Lunchtime with Luke is now an official playlist.

In this video, I talk about the term "Bugman" and give a brief Gestalt of what it means.

Really the deeper point I was making was the non-arbitrariness of identity. There are now forces overwhelming in society pushing people to disconnect from and reject their families, religions, traditions, culture and even their countries.

One of the falsest notions now common in modernity is the idea that "identity" is something chosen by unaffected personal whim. To the Bugman, "identity" is something chosen like a favorite color, and it offends their programmed ego to be told that they were born how and where and in the social context that they were, and all of that is immutable.

In reality, an "identity" that is chosen is not an identity at all, but a coping mechanism for those people who have lost touch.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#you-dont-choose-who-you-are

Boomer LARPs in Woods

I recorded some videos while I was gone last week and now that I have internet again, I'll be uploading the vacation. There are several screencasts and many new episodes of "Boomer Rants in Woods" and "Lunchtime with Luke". I'll probably be releasing one a day for a while.

First, 29-year-old Boomer LARPs in Woods. I walk through some family land through the river just for exploration. There's a chance in the future I might build something there or maybe move to this area. I'll talk more of my trip later.

By the way, due to some changes YouTube made to how videos are uploaded, my videos will not automatically be appearing on Bitchute for a bit. Hopefully Bitchute will adjust to the changes soon.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#boomer-larps-in-woods

Why you should learn Latin

There's nothing essentially magical about Latin, but I've recommended a lot of people learning it because for many different reasons, it straddles easiness and rigor, and opens fairly unexpected opportunities. Watch the video here.

I also talk about some of Latin's particular benefits to me, even aside from just learning other languages, but also give some recommendations as to how to learn it effectively.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#why-you-should-learn-latin

Fuzzy finder (fzf), a 'dmenu' for the terminal

I'm sure some of you have run across this before, but after getting a lot of questions about it, I figured it might be worth it to do a video on fuzzy finder (fzf). For long-time channel subscribers, fzf can be thought of as a dmenu-like program for the terminal, you can pipe an input and it allows the user to select one of those input lines by typing, then it prints it to standard output.

That opens up a world of possibilities, so I show some of my minor implementations in the video. Check the fzf website for a couple more suggestions, but I think you can come up with a lot on your own as well.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#fuzzy-finder-fzf-a-dmenu-for-the-terminal

New Git repo: Greek Septuagint/New Testament on the command line

I got an email this morning from a subscriber asking about command-line tools for Biblical textual criticism/study, specifically in Greek or Hebrew. Most of you know I'm terrible with email due to the sheer quantity I get, but for whatever reason, I saw this and was a little inspired to actually work it out.

Before this morning are were some good English tools, like this one on Github (kjv-git in the AUR), but no to my knowledge, nothing really in the original language. kjv-git can return any (English) King James Version Bible verse, series of verses or whole book at your command, but there is no obvious equivalent in Greek or Hebrew. This is an annoyance because for anyone like me who occasionally needs a Bible verse or the original wording of a passage, you have to open up a browser and search for it in a bloated website written by a Soydev.

Anyway, this morning since I was skipping church for highly justified reasons, I forked the repository and painstakingly found and rearranged a plaintext Greek Septuagint (i.e. the Old Testament) and the SBL Greek New Testament so that they could be read by the same system. Took a lot of regexing, but you can get it for yourself here: https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/grb. Many Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books are included if you like the Bible: Expanded Universe.

I'll probably eventually record a video on it, but I'm travelling and didn't bring by mic/webcam to record, so I might do it next week. Before then, I recommend you check it out and find any glitches if there are any.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#new-git-repo-greek-septuagintnew-testament-on-the-command-line

Wow what a bad day for Fedorafriends! (Luke Smith BTFOS Logic MLG Epic Style)

You know what, I released yet another video today, this one on """rationality""" or at least on how the term is clumsily understood.

I have a lot of videos slated for release soon and I honestly forgot about this one today, I suppose in conjunction with my last post, this constitutes a bad day for all Reddit-tier fedorafriends out there!

I talk about the limits to how people commonly misunderstand rationality and how we often find ourselves in destructive logical holes when we too blindly assume that the straight-jacket of formal logic corresponds to the world out there.

To go a little more in depth, check out one of my recent podcast episodes on the same topic. There I talk about Kahneman and Tversky's Heuristics and Biases program and Ecological Rationality àla Gigerenzer.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#wow-what-a-bad-day-for-fedorafriends-luke-smith-btfos-logic-mlg-epic-style

The downsides of bloated software: R Markdown and LaTeX

I just released a new video talking about the downsides to bloated software. It's not just about lines of code or dependencies, but about potentiality for breakage and frustration.

Nowadays, the standard modus operandi for many """devs""" is to write programs to substrate over previous ones. Sounds sensible, but when everyone is doing it, we have nothing but an ever increasing mound of mutually-dependent programs for which even the most minor error can cause everything to come crashing down.

In the video above, give a particular recent example in my life, involving writing a book in R Markdown (compiled with a LaTeX engine), comparing that to the less bloated groff/troff.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#the-downsides-of-bloated-software-r-markdown-and-latex

Thinking about getting a document camera: Any suggestions?

I'm thinking about getting a document camera for recording videos in the future that require writing on paper. I'd like it to have a USB interface that I can connect to my computer an screencast directly as if it were another webcam.

I honestly don't know what's out there, so if anyone is familiar with anything recommendable and not too expensive (I don't want to spend more than a hundred dollars or so), feel free to tell me your experience with any particular model.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#thinking-about-getting-a-document-camera-any-suggestions

Pacman for package management on Arch: All the basics and more

New video up on pacman, the Arch Linux package manager.

One of the weird things that has happened since I put out my video on installing Arch Linux and since I release LARBS is that I get a lot of people who install Arch and LARBS without knowing anything about it! I suppose that's a good thing, but I've begun to get very basic questions from people who don't know the absolute basics of pacman.

The video above is a response to this. It covers installing, updating, searching for, listing and manpulating packages and other pacman settings, some of which maybe even veteran users might not be familiar with.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#pacman-for-package-management-on-arch-all-the-basics-and-more

College tour livestream soon

I'll be starting a Livestream within the hour, linked here. Will start 5PM East Coast US time.

I'll talk about the possibility of a college tour (or a tour outside of colleges) and some other things that I may be doing soon.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#college-tour-livestream-soon

College stream starting now

Livestream starting now.

Donations, which you can give here, will be read out on the stream.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#college-stream-starting-now

Boomer forest LARP episode 2/2

Part 2/2 of my forest LARP has been released. See it here.

There are actually still a couple more contentful videos from my vacation that will be coming out in the next couple of days. I'll probably do a review of my experience there too. I've noted it to those I know IRL, but I'm thinking about moving down to the place I visited for some different reasons. I'll discuss them soon.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#boomer-forest-larp-episode-22

New Latin Vulgate Bible repository

A couple days ago, I put up this repository (https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/vul) which is a command-line interface to the Greek Bible (the Septuagint and SBL New Testament).

Since I had gone ahead and done that, I decided I'd make and put up two other related repositories:

• A fork of the original King James Version Bible interface that the repo above is based on. Get it here. My repo, compared to the original it's forked from is the same, but with the Apocrypha also included.
• A similar program, but for the Latin Vulage Bible. Get it here.

I'll put up a video on these in a while so my non-blog/RSS viewers will know about them.

Enjoy!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#new-latin-vulgate-bible-repository

A visit to the Georgia Guidestones

A couple days ago, I went by Elberton, Georgia, home of the notorious Georgia Guidestones. Just for fun, I filmed a brief video there. Check it out!

The Guidestones are a mysterious monument built only a couple of decades ago by unknown persons with inscriptions in several modern and ancient languages, also including astrological guides. They've often been attributed to the Rosicrucians, Luciferians or some other clandestine groups and have popped up in numerous conspiracy documentaries and commentaries.

As I mention in the video, I have a somewhat indirect connection to the monument, as a former professor of mine at the University of Georgia was hired to give the Greek and Sanskrit translations. I believe other UGA professors provided the other translations as well, but they were all commissioned by a unknown "Mr. Christian" to do so and no one really knows what's behind these stones.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#a-visit-to-the-georgia-guidestones

Plumbing in Linux, Plan 9 from Bell Labs style

I usually abstain from using the mouse, but I've noticed a lot of interest in plumbing recently, and have got a lot of emails about it. Plan 9 is a highly unique operating system, integrating the mouse directly into the most basic UI, and the right click importantly can "plumb" selected text. This can mean various things from opening or running the file corresponding to the text or something else, but as a design feature, plumbing is something worth playing around with on other operating systems.

I've put out a video here on my current plumbing script. It's part of my dotfiles now, mapped to Super + C since that's one of the lone leftover keys. I'm sure you could bind it to one of your many mouse buttons as well if you have one of those meme mouses.

Of course, this kind of plumbing is piecemeal compared to the Plan 9 orignal: it really is a kind of text handler mediated by dmenu, but it gets at part of the functionality. It can open files whose text is displayed on the terminal, it can search for text in the browser or on eBay or on OpenStreetMaps, or generate QR codes for text. You're welcome to suggest elegant ways to improve the script on the git repository.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#plumbing-in-linux-plan-9-from-bell-labs-style

My repos are now on Gitlab and will be updated there as well

I've actually had a Gitlab since Github was bought by Microsoft, but I had never bothered using it and simply had it mirror my main repos. Since a lot of people actually do use it now, and some exclusively, I will actually be pushing all of my changes that I push to Github to Gitlab as well. I'll also be watching Gitlab for Issues and PRs, for those of you who use Gitlab and Gitlab only, so feel free to abstain from using Github entirely to communicate with me and my repos.

Subscribe to the RSS feed of my Gitlab events here: https://gitlab.com/LukeSmithxyz.atom Or follow me?? I don't actually know if there's following on Gitlab. Sorry, Boomer here when it comes to technology. You might know that I never follow/subscribe to anyone on any site as a rule myself so I never keep track...

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#my-repos-are-now-on-gitlab-and-will-be-updated-there-as-well

YangGang.us Website building livestream at 4:00 EST

You may've already seen that I'll be having a livestream at 4:00 EST. The link is here..

Since the Unaboomer website building stream didn't go public, I've decided to do another basic 1990's-tier plain HTML website stream, this one making YangGang.us, which will be a classic repository of YangGang memes.

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang is the newest, hottest meme as in our increasingly degenerate country, as he has abandoned all pretense and merely promised to give everyone $1,000 a month if elected president. This has inspired hope among the black-pilled and a $1,000 stipend can go a long way for NEETs and those who choose an /innawoods/ lifestyle. How can Orange Man even compete?

Send me any good YangGang memes you run across. Chances are I already have them, but send them just in case.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#yanggangus-website-building-livestream-at-400-est

LARBS update to vifm/überzug may require manual intervention

I've just pushed updates to the voidrice and LARBS repos that officially change the default file browser from ranger to vifm.

If you update via git, you might also need to manually run yay -S python-ueberzug to install überzug from the AUR, otherwise image previews may stall and (obviously) not work.

I mentioned überzug's ability to preview images in this video, but I've found a solution to getting them to work in vifm and it is now default in LARBS.

I'll probably be doing a video on vifm sometime soon now, but if you want an explanation of the script which was written by the developer of überzug, I believe, Distrotube has talked about it in this video last week.

My video will probably cover this, basic info, colorschemes and more. It might be a somewhat long video, but people have been asking for it for a while.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#larbs-update-to-vifmuberzug-may-require-manual-intervention

Livestream starting in less than 30 minutes

YangGang website building stream is starting in less than 30 minutes.

The link is here.

Send any last-minute Yang memes to luke@lukesmith.xyz.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#livestream-starting-in-less-than-30-minutes

In defense of 'Pseudo-science' in video form...

I've put up a video entitled "In Defense of Pseudoscience", a new episode of "Lunchtime with Luke".

A couple months ago, I wrote a brief blogpost to this effect, but in general, I've always rejected the entire invented problem of "the demarkation problem" which was the fuss of a lot of philosophers in the early 20th century. It was an attempt to formally specify what constitutes true "science" versus non-science or "pseudoscience".

I explain precisely why in the video, and provide some example of how "pseudoscience" is often the only real drive of scientific development.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#in-defense-of-pseudoscience-in-video-form

The Bible on the command line (tutorial)

I've put up a video on getting/reading/searching the Bible, in English, Greek or Latin, on the command line. I mentioned this on the blog a week or so ago, but I had forked this repository, which included a very economical sh/awk script that can parse and interface with a tsv file to give you a very intuitive and light interface to the Bible or any other versified text you need.

My personal repos on this are below:

• A fork of `kjv` including the Apocrypha
• The Greek Bible with the Septuagint for the Old Testament and the SBL for the New
• The Clementine Vulgate Bible (Latin)

Of course, this system isn't just useful for religious texts, but anything that is divided into books, chapters and verse. Feel free to implement the system in whatever way you like.

By the way, yesterday, I put out a idle video on a trip I made to George L. Smith Park, nothing too deep, but I figured I might record and put it up.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#the-bible-on-the-command-line-tutorial

Not Related! (LIVE) Coming soon (tomorrow?)...

As Not Related! fans will know well, I haven't made an episode in several months! This is for a variety of reasons, but I've decided to switch it up for an episode tomorrow by recording LIVE, streaming on YouTube.

The link will be HERE. The chatroom will be open until then. I might stop in every so often in the wait. I've scheduled it for 2PM New York time tomorrow, but I might change that by an hour or two if I need to. Check back at that link for updates.

Here's how it's going to work:

• Not Related! episodes I typical arrange as 30 minutes of depthy content, followed by a brief break and donation reading, followed by another 30 minutes of content. The beginning of the stream will work like this.
• The podcast is still audio and will still be released as such. I might occasionally use a minor visual aid, but nothing that will make consuming the content via audio diminished. I'll probably just have the topic and a webcam in the video.
• Chat will be live, but I will not be actively reading it until the break and it will not appear on the video (it will, as all YouTube streams, appear on the edge).
• Related/serious donation will be answered in that in-between break time. Non-serious/meme/joke or just unrelated donations will be answered at the very end (this will not be included in the audio version of the podcast, unless I deem it high-quality discussion).

In this arrangement, we can have all the typical glory of a Not Related! episode while still "devolving" into a general purpose stream as time goes on. Obviously it can be interactive at the same time.

The starting topic of the episode/stream:

This episode/stream will be on the absolute(ly terrible) state of "statistics" as it is used in the "soft" sciences: psychology, neuroscience, medicine, econometrics, here in linguistics and many others. All of these disciplines are in hot water. A lot of people are aware that there is flimsy knowledge of statistics in a lot of non-specialist fields, but in this episode, I go to an even deeper problem: the "Null Ritual" (Gerd Gigerenzer's term), a statistical analysis procedure that is essentially required for publication, but is also a historical misunderstanding and mistake that has produced entire fields of people running statistical tests of unclear scientific and epistemological meaning, while also abiding by totally arbitrary conventions (p < 0.05 and more).

I'll go into the original history of modern statistics, as expounded by Ronald Fisher and his "adversaries" Neyman and Pearson. Their competing theories were motivated in entirely different ways, but have been distorted and confused over the decades, resulting in the hybridized "null ritual" we see today.

I'll also talk about how this contributed to the "replication problem", reminding one of Ioannidis's now well-known 2005 paper: "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False."

Do not read Wikipedia or even a textbook on anything related to this before the podcast! You will be misinformed! Refer to Gigerenzer's 2004 article "Mindless Statistics" and the ensuing literature, but I should say that there is a very big gap between this specialist literature and the mostly cargo-cult understanding of the statistical methods that filter into textbooks and then into public repositories like Wikipedia, etc. This is why I think this topic is highly important to get out there!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#not-related-live-coming-soon-tomorrow

Not Related! LIVE: The Problem with Academic Statistics (in 1 hour; 2PM EDT)

Reminder that there will be a live stream of Not Related! in an hour. That's 2PM EDT (New York City time).

Related donations will be read at the midway point and at the end, then other donations will be read in a livestream portion not to be included in the audio episode that will be released.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#not-related-live-the-problem-with-academic-statistics-in-1-hour-2pm-edt

Don't document software! (If you want to avoid pain!)

New video up.

One irony of making things more clearly documented and sometimes even hand-holding is that it actually tends to increase the stress you go through!

I talk about this in this video, and my own experience for everyone, and especially those interested in making software and interacting with the people who use it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#dont-document-software-if-you-want-to-avoid-pain

GNU/Esotericism Stream in an hour...

Stream here in an hour. Chatroom should be live now.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#gnuesotericism-stream-in-an-hour

Clear your RSS cache; error fix

It was only just reported to me that the GUIDs generated by my RSS feeds weren't directly correctly, and haven't been for a while. I've fixed the problem in the lb repository in the future, but to fix it retroactively, I've changed the problematic GUIDs of my previous blog entries.

So this probably means that many, many of my previous blog posts are now duplicated in your RSS reader. Clean out your RSS reader's cache to fix this.

If you've been using lb and have noticed the same problem, just run this on your RSS feed to fix it in the same way:

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#clear-your-rss-cache-error-fix

Minor dunst ugliness/breakage on update in LARBS

If you're using LARBS/my dotfiles and noticed that some of the statusbar info pages (accessible on right-click) are not properly parsing markup as bold, and thus are showing tags like <b>, etc., this is because a new update to dunst.

If it annoys you, it can be easily fixed by updating the dotfiles to some changes I just pushed to the voidrice repo.

Both the dunst config file and the statusbar scripts have been adjusted to the new changed.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#minor-dunst-uglinessbreakage-on-update-in-larbs

Boomer rants in woods about koding these days

New video up here, I talk about the Soydev problem, and how the evermore superficial general standard of programming knowlede among "devs" is counteracting developments in processing power.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#boomer-rants-in-woods-about-koding-these-days

Using shuf and $RANDOM for randomization in the command line

I put out a video here on getting random numbers and randomizing files in the Linux command line. I talk about:

• /dev/urandom/
• $RANDOM in bash
• shuf in GNU/Linux

Check it out! I don't think I mentioned it, but shuf can also take standard input!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#using-shuf-and-random-for-randomization-in-the-command-line

Boomer vs. Doomer Livestream Starting Imminently!

I'm doing a stream with Rudy Hill, we'll be starting soon!

The Link Is Here!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#boomer-vs-doomer-livestream-starting-imminently

Blocking links from certain websites on an Apache web server?

This might be a strange request, but I was looking for an elegant way to block or redirect traffic to my website from certain websites. I'm running an Apache webserver.

I've been playing around with the documentation for htaccess etc., but can't find anything exactly like what I'm looking for.

As an example, let's say I want to ban all traffic from R*ddit or 4gag and redirect links from those sites to an error page. How would I go about doing this? I'm not sure if it's possible without resorting to Soydet-tier server-side scripts, but I might be wrong.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#blocking-links-from-certain-websites-on-an-apache-web-server

Before I get to deep into this... Does this exist already?

I'm going to start giving perks, extra videos, personal vlogs and reviews and Mumble server access to people who support me monetarily. I do have a Patreon, which you can support me on, but I've never really done much more than start one, only posted for a brief period and just sort not delete it. I've never made a fuss about it and I've been at the same level of support for more than a year which is basically just some monthy groecery income, which is nice, but I'd like to start earning more and I have some stuff to offer now. Obviously I'm not a big fan of Patreon's past behavior, I will use them if needbe, but I was curious about a server-side equivalent.

I'd like this: a service I can host on my own website that allows users to log in and will verify that they've donated X ammount in the last month by Zelle or Paypal or whatever. If so, it will give them access to extra content. As far as I'm concerned, this would be better than Patreon just because it cuts out the Middle Man.

It isn't too difficult to make password-protected content on a webserver, nor is it too hard to create usernames and passwords for people. I'm more thinking of if there is a service that can verify a payment.

If there's nothing quite like this and I can't come across a quick way to do it myself, I'll just end up using Patreon.

By the way, thanks to all of you who answered my previous question about redirecting traffic from a particular source. Apparently you can refer to a %{HTTP_REFERER} in a RewriteCond. I knew it was something obvious!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#before-i-get-to-deep-into-this-does-this-exist-already

Starting a Mumble server and 'Unaboomer Cabin' series

I'm going to start offering elite stuff to donators:

• I've started a Mumble server, which allows people to talk to me directly via audio and text. People who donate $10 a month will get access to it.
• I'll be starting a "Dispatches from the Unaboomer's Cabin" series, covering my ongoing quest to move /innawoods/. The first episode(s) will go up at least by early next week. Donate $25 in a month to see the updates.
• People who are chad enough to donate $50 a month will get all that stuff, and also an invitation onto the livestream. So we can talk live on air and you can move the discussion without me brushing aside your $2 superchat ;-).
• There are many unreleased videos I've had over the years or other content that is more private or just not necessarily YouTube material. I'll be making a lot of one-off stuff available to different tiers.

Go to Patreon to join now. The Mumble passwords will be up in a couple days (actually maybe later today if everything goes right).

If you don't have or don't want to get a Patreon, if you say you want one of the perks in the comment of a Paypal or Zelle donation (be sure to include your email too), I will give you that month's password. All donation methods are listed here. That's a little more work for me though, so Patreon is preferred at this point.

I'll also say what I did in the Patreon post: I am looking at some open source equivalents to Patreon that can be run on my own server. In the future, I might switch to one of these if I can get them to do everything I need, but if I do, everything on Patreon will carry over, so don't sweat it.

I'll probably do a video saying all this tomorrow or the next day when I have the chance, but I wanted to offer it to RSS chads first of course.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#starting-a-mumble-server-and-unaboomer-cabin-series

Exclusive Boomers Only Content!

I've just put out a brief video talking about the new chad-tier content levels on my Patreon. Note that if you refuse to use Patreon, you can still get the perks by donating and providing your email.

• Soydev level: Will be able to see some behind the scenes vids and if I bring back the forum, you'll be invited
• Zoomer level: Same as above, but also get access to my Mumble server and be able to chat with me and others there.
• Boomer level: Mumble access and the "Dispatches from the Unaboomer's Cabin" series, on my on-going process of going /innawoods/ (series starts April 15th)
• Chad leve: Mumble access, "Dispatches" series, and the ability to come onto livestreams and direct discussion

See the video here!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#exclusive-boomers-only-content

Bibliographical references for LaTeX, groff and pandoc without the effort

New video out on how I autocreate bibliographic citations. I like to abstrain from writing out references, not just for fear of error, but because with some multi-author papers, it can take forever. In this video, I show how to use an article's DOI to get its full citation perfectly from an online database.

I'll also link this video that I mention (by Conner McDaniel) from which I lifted the idea of using Crossref's APIs to get bibtex citations. The links to the script in question are in the video description (too lazy to paste here :-)).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#bibliographical-references-for-latex-groff-and-pandoc-without-the-effort

Tagging Ogg or Opus files?

I actually mentioned this on the last stream with Rudy, but despite .ogg and .opus audio files being generally very compressed, while retaining good audio quality, I don't know of any simple command line tools for tagging them. If anyone does, keep me posted about them! I've tried most of the stuff in the Arch repos and the AUR, and I can't find something that doesn't require some GUI that loads the required library, or requires you to tag while encoding.

As I think Rudy said, ncmpcpp doesn't have the ability to tag these files either, and I suppose some other library is either required or unintigrated into it.

I've put this on the Hacking Wishlist, but hopefully the solution is something simple and obvious.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#tagging-ogg-or-opus-files

Why prefer free and open source software?

I've put up this video, where I answer a common question I get: Why should a normal person care about free/libre and open source software?

I put it as a response to an email I got, which makes some seemingly good points for not caring about the difference, so I state give a rejoinder and explanation.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#why-prefer-free-and-open-source-software

Pretty funny clip of Alex Jones harrassed by Boomer liberal

As you may know, I occasionally listen to Coast to Coast AM, which is an American late-night conspiracy and paranormal radio show. Alex Jones was interviewed a couple days ago, and he got a pretty funny call-in listener harrass him.

It's pretty short. I uploaded it so you can check it out here.

Coast to Coast viewers can be pretty crazy, but this is definitely the craziest one I ever remember hearing!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#pretty-funny-clip-of-alex-jones-harrassed-by-boomer-liberal

How to mount and access Android phones on Linux computers

Short video out today, but one on a commonly asked question: how do you mount, access and sync an Android phone on Linux?

Check out the video here. I'll show you how I use simple-mtpfs, and how I automate the process with dmenu.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#how-to-mount-and-access-android-phones-on-linux-computers

Video on basic configuration of mutt/neomutt

New video on setting up mutt/neomutt.

I've actually done several mutt-related videos in the past, but none detailing the basics of how you actually go about configuring it from step 1. I might make some related videos in the future, mainly about using isync to backup email offline.

If you want to use mutt, but don't have the time to bother with it, I've made a mutt-wizard which I've actually been revising recently.

• https://gitlab.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard
• https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard

The Gitlab version is more recent, and uses isync as a backend with many improvements. The Github version I'll be taking out of commission soon, but it's better tested as of now. Check the README for information and try it out for yourself!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#video-on-basic-configuration-of-muttneomutt

Is the terminal just for hipsters? Also, livestream soon.

I put up this video an hour or so ago, answering some user questions on the terminal usage is so important, and why I often give instructionals for mostly cli/tui/terminal program.

I'll also be having a livestream at the top of the next hour! (about 45 minutes from when I'm writing this). Tune in!

I'll probably be having Rudy on the stream again. You can donate or send messages during the stream or whenever by going here.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#is-the-terminal-just-for-hipsters-also-livestream-soon

Get all your email offline for archiving, mutt, etc: Using isync

New video up here, where I talk about how to use isync (mbsync), which is a extensible program for downloading mail from any mail server or host to your computer.

I use isync in my daily email workflow to read mail locally with mutt (as I talked about in the video on terminal applications yesterday). This not only acts as a backup, but allows email to be loaded and modified instantaneously, and I can run typical Unix commands on the mail directories that it creates. My mail module in my status bar, which displays unread mail is based on this for example.

In the video, I also briefly mention how to set up mutt to read this mail. It's actually as easily as setting the folder variable to the mail directory.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#get-all-your-email-offline-for-archiving-mutt-etc-using-isync

'The Right Side of History' is a Spook. On Whig History and Self-deception.

I've put up a new Lunchtime with Luke episode, this one on the (dumb) idea that there is a natural and unavoidable trend to history.

Every ideology convinces itself of its inevitability. In this video, I talk about the myth of inevitability: in the Third Reich with Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century, in Marxism, in the "End of History" in Liberal Democracy and more. Check it out!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#the-right-side-of-history-is-a-spook-on-whig-history-and-selfdeception

mutt-wizard 2.0 release (everything is better and easier)

Some of you had already tried out the new version of mutt-wizard on Gitlab, but I've now release it on the Github repository as well. mutt-wizard has always be able to:

• Access your mail on the command line without having to set anything up. It looks pretty and has sensible default settings.
• Optionally download, store and sync your email offline, so you can browse your email with no latency and read and write replies while offline.
• Securely encrypt all your passwords with GPG so you don't have dangerous plaintext floating around or to avoid typing your passwords in constantly.
• Configs for neomutt, isync and msmtp automatically generated based on your server settings, which in many cases, mutt-wizard already knows.

Here are some of the biggest changes in mutt-wizard that make it much better now:

• The original mutt-wizard required three annoying steps for each account: (1) data input, then (2) the user manually running offlineimap and then (3) running the script again to finalize boxes. Wow that was dumb. isync now enables all the configuration to happen in one quick sitting as fast as you can type your info in.
• You now have the option of not keeping mail offline, in case you don't want that.
• Passwords are now saved with pass, which avoids some headaches.
• dialog is no longer used as user-interface.
• More error handling, but also less errors.

Check the link above to get it. Be sure to read the README for how to use it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#muttwizard-20-release-everything-is-better-and-easier

ACSHUALLY... Some even better mutt-wizard changes!

I've actually just revised the mutt-wizard in another important respect; this isn't much on the backend, but actually makes it a lot easier to use and install.

Instead of being a script you just have to keep in your mutt folder along with companion files, you can now just clone the repo and permanently sudo make install it.

Instead of being an interactive loop, it's now a command you run like this: mw init once to initialize the files, then mw add to add an email account, etc. etc. That official mutt-wizard script, mw, is installed in your path now, along with mailsync allowing you to easily run them wherever and treat them like noraml programs.

Also, the template muttrc, mailcap and the domains.csv are held in /usr/share/mutt-wizard so you don't have to worry about them cluttering your personal mutt folder proper.

Not quite sure why I didn't do this before, but now it should be even easier.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#acshually-some-even-better-muttwizard-changes

Layin' down Pipes like a Unix Chad

New video up today: "Layin' down Pippes like a Unix Chad".

It's a simple demonstration of the elegance of pipe-based commands and drawing userinterface from them: using a single line of shell script, I produce a list of all manuals on the system, ask the user to choose one and pop up a pdf rendering of that manual page.

The specific use-case might be useful to some, but that's actually not the importance of the video. It's really an attempt to make the usefulness and intuitiveness of editing text streams clear.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#layin-down-pipes-like-a-unix-chad

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal (also another Chad-piping video)

Late yesterday I put up a follow-up video to Friday's video on piping: the update is here. I give a pratical example of two of the biggest pitfalls for cli newbies: problems with spacing and understanding streams. We write a command that gives you a choice of all videos in a directory from which you can select and watch one.

I also just released a video "Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal" on the book by Joel Salatin by the same name. Superficially, it might not sound too relevant to too many of my subscribers' interests, but I think you'll find it pretty important.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#everything-i-want-to-do-is-illegal-also-another-chadpiping-video

Luke 'Digest' for this week

I haven't been puttin up RSS feed links for my new releases in a couple days, but there have been several! If you've missed any of these episodes, be sure to check them out:

• A video on my torrenting setup with transmission
• "Why All Teaching Is Ineffective", self-explanitory
• A video on common misunderstandings of the "Chinese Room Experiment" as it's used to talk about problems of consciousness and cognition in humans and potentially machines

I will also be starting a stream at 9AM my time. That's in about an hour of when I'm writing this. Not quite sure how long it will last, but we'll say it's to 'celebrate' the achievement of 50,000 subscribers.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#luke-digest-for-this-week

Looking for a comprehensive book on gardening and planting (best if #Lindy too)

Come June, I'll be moving to a rural environment with plenty of space, and as soon as possible, I'll be starting a garden that will hopefully be able to produce all the produce I need in perpetuity, although I obviously expect a lot of set-up time and effort.

The thing is, there are a lot of ins-and-outs and details that I just don't know about growing a garden: what is best to plant when, what plants reinforce others, how long does a plant take to get to maturity. I'd like a physical book reference with all the major details for growing the most common fruits and vegetables, possibly along with other information that I don't even know that I don't know.

I'm curious if there is "that book" out there for gardening and planting. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to email me it (luke@lukesmith.xyz). It would be extremely handy to have such a book to leaf through and use as a reference.

I suspect that there is one out there, probably a very #Lindy book too. That is, don't send me some meme book published two years ago by a quirky gardening YouTuber with a glossed and plastic cover printed by Amazon, send me what that tried-and-true dusty manual is loved by old pre-Boomers.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#looking-for-a-comprehensive-book-on-gardening-and-planting-best-if-lindy-too

Send me all your suckless surf hacks!

I'm going to probably be doing a video on suckless sent relatively soon, showing it off and some of the patches on suckless's website. If you use surf, or have had any smart ideas in your own build of it, feel free to go ahead and mention them to me and I might give you a shoutout!

Usually I do a video on something, and obviously afterwards people will volunteer their ideas for the program, but this time, I want to be ahead of the curve. ;-)

luke@lukesmith.xyz

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#send-me-all-your-suckless-surf-hacks

Who needs a mouse to copy output? The extensibility of st

Check out this new video. It could change everything ;-).

Jaywalker suggested adding a new ability to my st build: let the user choose a previously run command via dmenu and copy its output to the clipboard. This is something that you often want to do, but I never thought could be easily added to a terminal. He suggested using externalpipe, which outputs all the visible text, which I already use to follow url links on the command line.

We worked on it a bit last night and this morning and came up with a little script that when run from st, will give you a dmenu prompt of all commands run, and once you choose one, xclip will copy that command and all its output to your clipboard to easily paste anywhere else for troubleshooting, sharing or for anything else.

Get my st build here. It has all this built into it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#who-needs-a-mouse-to-copy-output-the-extensibility-of-st

Stream with Kris Occhipinti

Me and Kris Occhipinti are doing a stream around now. Here's the link!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#stream-with-kris-occhipinti

Technology meme review stream

A the (potentially last) one of my streams before leaving my stable internet connection, I'll be doing a stream with tripcode!Q/7.

We will be leafing through a folder of technology memes are reviewing and responding to them.

Don't even ask, I'm not uploading them!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#technology-meme-review-stream

Luke's Digest: Mid May

Here's a brief list of updates in case you missed them:

• "Bash is Bloated!": What's the difference between bash and POSIX sh and why is important for everyone serious about scripting and systems administration?
• /g/eaboos are SEETHING: cringe and blue-pilled Boomer defends known NSA honeypot systemd: first video in the woods, second more detailed video indoors.
• How to bind keys in Linux univerrsally, independent of your WM/DE. This is the first (public) video I've ever recorded in dwm. (Boomer patrons will have access to the true first...)
• I did a meme review live stream with tripcode!Q/7; Parts 1 and 2
• In other news, YouTube retroactively marks every post with the word "cuck" in it as spam. I've had to manually approve hundreds of comments from years ago dabbing on Wordcucks... The change is still ongoing and more and more comments are being flagged as spam.

In other news, I've deleted the section on my programs page on my website talking about why I don't use dwm...

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#lukes-digest-mid-may

LARBS is going throught significant changes

I'm making significant changes to my dotfiles repos and LARBS, so I wanted to give people a heads up about it. It's possible (probable?) that there will be some breakage (now and soon) because there are a lot of moving pieces that have moved around. Here are the changes coming soon:

• There will be a new version of LARBS, which will eventually be the default if everything works smoothly. I will maintain the current version for Arch Linux using i3-gaps, but I will be adding another version for Void Linux that runs dwm.
• Reflecting some of the movements to mutal compatibility I moved keybinds from the main i3 config to ~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc (as I discussed in my video today) and moved some startup scripts to ~/.xinitrc.
• ~/.scripts/ in the repo is now ~/.local/bin/ to be XDG compliant and save you one extra element in your home directory.
• I've moved things around in the LARBS repository as well, and this could interfere with the LARBS website and how it redirects requests, but everything seems to be in order.

So every one of these developments bode well, but all can cause temporary breakage! If you run into a problem install LARBS, you will not be bothering me to email it to me. I would appreciate people to test it if you have a spare machine/VM as well, but I'm a little burdened right now. I'll be testing in a bit.

Note that the Void Linux/dwm version of LARBS is not supposed to be working yet. I'm still on the basic level with that. The Arch/i3 version hopefully should be still fine though.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#larbs-is-going-throught-significant-changes

Possible mail downage today

I'm messing around with my email setup today, so there's a possibility that if you sent me a mail today, it might get lost. Be aware. Everything should be back to normal by tomorrrow.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#possible-mail-downage-today

Email is still down

My email adjustments are lasting longer than expected. Right now, if you send an email to me, it will be sucked up into oblivion without an error message.

I am, as you may be able to guess, moving to a new (personal) email server. For a part of late yesterday everything was finally working, but there are some other components I'm working to add in that will again, make my email inaccessible. As anyone who has done a mail server before knows, there are a lot of annoying moving pieces that go into one, some I'm making sure that everything is just as I need it.

I'll give a public blog post when I'm done with everything just in case someone needs something. If you really need to contact me, you can contact me via my University of Arizona email (lukesmith@email.arizona.edu).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#email-is-still-down

A script that automatically sets up your personal mail server

My email should be back in commission as I've fully worked the kinks out of my new personal email server.

I have at least something to show for it that might be useful to people.

Long story short, after running into some nagging problems getting all the pieces to come together, I wrote a script in parallel that configured a Debian email server from the vanilla install with all the settings a normal human would need for personal email use. It installs and configures Postfix (SMTP), Dovecot (IMAP), Spam Assassin and OpenKDIM (so you don't get spammed yourself). Check it out on Github:

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/emailwiz

So now my email is working and in the end, I configured it without manually editing a single file!

Check the readme, but I encourage you to follow the steps and try it out on your own server if you've been looking to host your own email. The requirements are listed. I might do a video on this, maybe even tomorrow, so if anyone wants to get ahead of the curve and try it out and see if it works, feel free to give me feedback.

I suspect it will work on Ubuntu as well, but I don't have a server to try it out on. Even if it doesn't I'll be adding more documentation and comments to the script to make it a useful instructional to read.

Work with mutt-wizard obviously too and that's my new email setup.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#a-script-that-automatically-sets-up-your-personal-mail-server

You have 1 unread mail from the Unaboomer's cabin

As I said in my most recent video several days ago, I am moving (and now am completing moving) into a very rural place to a house/putative homestead which has due to memes been colloquially referred to as "the Unaboomer's Cabin". As I always say, it's not a cabin, but a full house, but this does mean pretty significant lifestyle changes for me and a new page for the channel as well. As I said in the video, I might not be able to easily upload videos for a short while until I get settled, but here are some updates:

• I've moved my stuff to the house and am now going through a life's worth of papers, tools, books, furniture and everything else trying to decorate my house. In addition to my own stuff, there's a lot of furniture and other accouterments that came with the house and there is even more that my dad has been keeping in a nearby shed for extra storage. I'm collocating and organizing all of this
• I have more room than I've ever had, as you would hope. I have three (or depending on how you count four) bedrooms, one of which I'll be using as an office/studio. It will be nice for insomnia's sake to keep my electronics (which are internetless anyway) away from being a distraction in bed!
• I also have lots of land that I need to fully assess. My relative who lived here before didn't have so much of a garden, but did plant and maintain several useful plants (although some I don't even know!). There are definitely unattended grape plants/vines and some fruit-bearing trees.?
• It will be a day or two more before I'm done sorting all my stuff indoors and in the garage/workshop, but after that, the priority is making a garden. Many, including many of you suggested using raised beds, and I think I've decided to try them. It might be late to plant some things, but the growing season this far south is long, so I'll be consulting with some of my growing guides and people around for best practices.
• My internet is truly bad! I haven't even tried to upload videos yet, but text-based and (small) image based browsing is okay. Videos will buffer and will take a bit with youtube-dl. Luckily, I've designed my computer usage over minimizing bandwidth use for a day like this, but I still need to upload videos. I'll figure out the best way to do this soon. I also am going to need to get into the crawlspace to run an ethernet cord to my new office.
• I get no cell service in my house, and am further thinking of getting rid of my cell phone forever. There are other providers with better coverage here though, but I think I might go max-Boomer and just get a landline which obviously is infinitely more reliable.
• It was sad leaving my friends in Statesboro, but I will be going back at some point soon (there of course are things I left behind ;-) and other chores to do). It is nice all the things I do avoid here: like Zoomers blasting that Kanye/Lil Pump song every night at the club across the street. Won't miss that.

More updates and a video soon! I'm answering email a little more consistently now though due to the better workflow I have here though. I only have logged on maybe once or twice today though just for a bit because I'm still very busy.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#you-have-1-unread-mail-from-the-unaboomers-cabin

New crypto currency addresses

As a note, I've changed by cryptocurrency donation addresses. You can see them on my crypto donation page, but in short, they're now:

• Bitcoin: 39Z2PRPXCiB7eFWQJPaoWChbAgmjmZYKRC
• Ethereum: 0x2f3D63580028b618f3204F01d156AB6A3E3470dB
• Litecoin: MSzeXUaBTAEdf6YEFK8NuFGcbbUvRqugUD

There are QR codes on the donate page as well if you want to scan them visually.

I was just changing wallets for some optimization reasons. I've never bought any crypto myself, but I have accepted donations with it, but only a small handful. It was a little surprising to check them to see a significant rally: last time I checked several months ago, all my crypto wallets totalled to maybe $50, now they're $250+. We'll see how long that lasts though.

Either way, if you think crypto is going to rally or fall or do nothing, feel free to donate at any of the above addresses. If you want to donate with another currency, just say so and I'll add an address. I might list out a lot of them on that page in a bit because I do have other addresses, but I just haven't used them yet.

More big news soon though... Been working on some new projects, one of which I mentioned on Patreon earlier.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#new-crypto-currency-addresses

The Stallman stuff is cringe.

I put up a new video here about the Richard Stallman silliness. It probably means the end of the FSF in multiple tangible ways, although I suspect the organization will live on. If you know my view on things, I doubt it will seriously change things for better or worse.

As I say in the video, people who out of one mouth whine about the "SJW" takeover of technology, but have also have piled on Stallman are hypocritical. I don't really have any sympathy for Stallman either. If you live by leftist degeneracy, they'll be coming for you too eventually, and I'll be lolling. Stallman is just another guy who tried to "be reasonable" with people who are motivated singularly by winning and getting what they want in the public socio-political theater rather than by honesty and thinking things through.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#the-stallman-stuff-is-cringe

Video on the zsh or z shell, whatever the z stands for...

New video on zsh, as many have long requested. Watch/download it here.

Get my current zshrc here.

I talk about some unique features of zsh that make it preferrable to bash (syntax highlighting and coloring, better tab completion), but also fish and other shells.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#video-on-the-zsh-or-z-shell-whatever-the-z-stands-for

Little neomutt fix for mutt-wizard users

A recent update to neomutt is causing a warning message when neomutt is opened if you have used my mutt-wizard to set up your mail. I've already pushed a change that will fix it for new accounts, but you will have to manually make a change for accounts you have already added.

You should be able to fix the problem on installed accounts by running this:

The issue is that mutt-wizard has historically added "fake" mailboxes to mutt to make the account name appear in the corner of mutt. Due to an update, this is no longer possible. The above line deleted all those fake mailboxes in your config files. GNU utilities required.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#little-neomutt-fix-for-muttwizard-users

I'm back! 6 new videos out and more coming...

I took advantage of my weeklong Thanksgiving break to get back in the loop of making some videos I've meant to for a while. In case you're too intelligent to use YouTube's subscribe feature, I'll link them all here.

Oh course, you can follow my YouTube feed directly with your RSS feed reader (i.e. without having to use YouTube subscription) via the url: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA, but you knew that already ;).

• I DISAVOW the "Boomer" Meme (& LARBS Updates
• HELP! LINUX NERDS keep BULLYING ME!!!
• Doing some real-world work in VIM!
• Old ThinkPads are Computing Perfection (don't @ me)
• Truly Great Black Friday for a Boomer Consoomer!
• Only Linux Brainlets CAT into GREP!!!

I'll have more coming soon. K, keep yourself posted.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#im-back-6-new-videos-out-and-more-coming

Two more videos and important LARBS problem

I've put up two more videos in the past two days:

• Terminal vs. Bash vs. Command line vs. Prompt
• "Keep Politics out of Technology!" t. Boomer

Also, I've been unable to fix LARBS installs in the past several days for general business reasons and I need to test some things with respect to fonts. The main emoji font used by LARBS, ttf-symbola, has had its license changed and that is an upstream problem I need to find an alternative for. This is especially a problem because if unicode characters aren't rendering correctly, st especially has a tendency to crash when rendering them. If you install LARBS, run into this kind of problem and want to fix it, you'll have to find an alternative font yourself until I get the chance to find a permanent solution.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#two-more-videos-and-important-larbs-problem

I'm thinking about using bspwm

Well my anprim internet just ruined another upload of a 3GB video... ;-) So I might as well give this little update to RSS/blog followers before I'm able to upload vids from a more stable location.

As I've said before, I saw thinking of making LARBS compatible with both i3-gaps and dwm. Both of them have their advantages: i3 is much more easy for newbs (and non-newbs, and non-weebs for that matter) to customize, while dwm's master and slave layout is pretty hard for me to give up despite the fact that its default statusbar is atrocious and comes with the non-unfounded fragility of some suckless applications.

On a whim, I decided to play around with bspwm over this weekend, and I've got to say that it has a lot of both... or really, it is so customizable that it can be extended to both.

If you don't know anything about bspwm, I'll direct you to a video by Wolfgang on bspwm, specifically comparing it with i3 (Although my informants tell me he is a GNOME-cuck or something nowadays or something ;-)-maybe I should try that?)

bspwm, unlike i3 and dwm is just a raw window manager (WM): it does not even have a unique status bar or keybinding system: you are expected to use a modular bar of your own choosing and a binding program like sxhkd to map what you need.

My setup is modular enough, in that I already have sxhkd for most my binds, including many scripts and even statusbar scripts that the change-over has been pretty quick. If I feel like bspwm is more stable and can get everything I want from i3 and everything I want for dwm, I might use it for good.

I've also dusted off the old polybar config, which I had barely modified before... and I've begun to add new modules, like those I made for i3blocks (which again is a pretty simple process due to the modularity of both). People always liked polybar more and many have been asking for it back, despite the fact that I did a post earlier this year or so on why I had stopped using it for LARBS' sake.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#im-thinking-about-using-bspwm

Merry Christmas to all and a vid from the archives

I've been on break for a while and am with family (and without my microphone and equipment), so I won't be putting out a video until after Christmas.

If you want to consoom some classic Luke Smith products in your downtime, YouTube, as is randomly does, has been re-recommending the video I put out quite some time ago on my experience living 2 full years without internet at home. Come to think of it, I recommend you to watch it if you haven't, or haven't in a while. It touches on some themes we've been talking about recently on the channel.

Another older video you might want to see if you haven't is this one, on "upcummies" and the effects of social media.

Anyway, I'm in Atlanta and will be back home probably the day after Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all, even (especially) to the haters and losers!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2019.html#merry-christmas-to-all-and-a-vid-from-the-archives

New video on new books

I did a video covering every book I got in 2019.

Check it out, as some people often ask me what kind of books I tend to get.

You can also check out my library page at my website for a full inventory of my library if you have interest in that.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#new-video-on-new-books

New/old episode of Not Related! out: Every scientific paper you've read is wrong

That's only slightly a hyperbole.

I'm thinking about bringing back the podcast; it's probably the only old content I get constant requests to bring back. I'm already compiling stuff for a few new episodes for Season 2, which might actually include some joint episodes with people you may or may not know... We'll see!

Anyway, I finally finished and put up an episode I did in a stream months ago: The Flaws of Academic Statistics: the Null Ritual which you can see on YouTube as well. This episode is talks about some of the fundamental and acknowledged issues in how statistics is used in nearly all sciences. Nearly every science paper you've heard of in the popular press and in academia is built on flawed statistical footing.

Add the podcast's RSS feed to your RSS reader! You can also go to the podcast's webpage https://notrelated.xyz to get links to other services to get the episodes from (Spotify and Google if for some reason you do that stuff (just use RSS)).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#newold-episode-of-not-related-out-every-scientific-paper-youve-read-is-wrong

New/old episode of Not Related! out: Every scientific paper you've read is wrong

That's only slightly a hyperbole.

I'm thinking about bringing back the podcast; it's probably the only old content I get constant requests to bring back. I'm already compiling stuff for a few new episodes for Season 2, which might actually include some joint episodes with people you may or may not know... We'll see!

Anyway, I finally finished and put up an episode I did in a stream months ago: The Flaws of Academic Statistics: the Null Ritual which you can see on YouTube as well. This episode is talks about some of the fundamental and acknowledged issues in how statistics is used in nearly all sciences. Nearly every science paper you've heard of in the popular press and in academia is built on flawed statistical footing.

Add the podcast's RSS feed to your RSS reader! You can also go to the podcast's webpage https://notrelated.xyz to get links to other services to get the episodes from (Spotify and Google if for some reason you do that stuff (just use RSS)).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#newold-episode-of-not-related-out-every-scientific-paper-youve-read-is-wrong

Big fix for the st/suckless 'Crash-On-Emoji' error

Suckless software has long been burdened by a peculiar error that causes crashes whenever trying to load a colored emoji. This has meant extreme annoyance for me and confusion for people who use my dotfiles. The only band-aid for this error has been just installing a font with good unicode coverage and hoping that monospace fonts dare not to print out colored emojis, and making a fontconfig that keeps it that way.

Recently, however, a fix has been posted to the AUR in the libxft-bgra package, which will hopefully become part of the Xft upstream soon. This will avoid the error, and allows unpatched st to view colored emojis without a problem.

I do a video on this here.

For those who use my dotfiles, update everything: the st build, the dwmblocks build if you use it, the dotfiles, etc. and install libxft-bgra. I had variously patched software to avoid these problems, but those patches have now been reverted to allow color emojis if you want them.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#big-fix-for-the-stsuckless-crashonemoji-error

I'll be at Linuxfest Southeast June 12-14 in Charlotte, NC

I'll be at Linuxfest Southeast June 12-14, 2020 in Charlotte, NC. (vid). I'll probably be making some presentations as well. Although I missed the 2019 conference, I had gone in 2018 and it was a good experience.

If you're in the region, I recommend you come. I'll be commuting from a distance, but I expect it will be worth it. I met a lot of subscribers in 2018 (and there were many more who were too awkward to come up and greet me 😉).

Anyway, check out their website at southeastlinuxfest.org. I don't think they've opened sing-up for attendence, but I expect it to be in a month or so.

By the way, if you want to see my talk at the 2018 Linuxfest the link is here: Linux Is the Wild West! And let it be that way!.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#ill-be-at-linuxfest-southeast-june-1214-in-charlotte-nc

What should be the default browser for LARBS?

I'll probably record a video on this tomorrow, but I might as well ask my blog audience first, What should be the default web browser in LARBS?

Right now it's Brave, since that's what I do and it comes with a lot of features I consider basic already built in. The problem with nearly all web browsers is that it's pretty hard and annoying to put together "dotfiles" for them, a default profile that has sensible defaults.

Brave is especially nice because it comes with add-ons that block adds, redirect to HTTPS and add Tor and torrenting capabilities. But while sometimes Brave will prompt the user on first run for their preferred start engine, on some systems after running LARBS, it will just assume Google, which I absolutely want to avoid.

I'm sure you all have the agency to change your search engine to something more sensible, most use DuckduckGo (I prefer Searx), but when it comes to the default, the sileny majority is going to continue with the default idly, and I don't want to set them on the wrong path. Why even use Linux if you're just going to send everything straight to Google anyways?

Possible browsers

• Brave – Again, great defaults, but Google might end up as the default search engine.
• Ungoogled-chromium – Possibly the safest bet, no cringe branding or bad policies, but it doesn't look like it has any search engine by default... That will be a big annoyance to novices.
• Palemoon – Manjaro i3 uses it, fast, good-looking, but it has an incestuous development team which has made... odd choices (`~/.moonchild productions/` makes me want to kms whenever I `ls -a`), but okay on privacy (weird startup screen, but could be worse). Bad/limited add-ons/extensions.
• Icecat – I'll admit it, two years, Icecat was absolutely unusable on pretty much all sites, but it looks like it's evened most everything out. Probably the best browser for raw privacy, but still probably the least usable since users have to keep in mind if they need to turn some script blocker off for a site, etc.
• qutebrowser – I haven't used it in years and I don't know if I want to get back into figuring it out for the third time, lol. I don't know where it is nowadays, but if I'm making normies use it, it's going to have to be able to play YouTube videos and without 400% CPU usage. qutebrowser does have the _massive_ advantage of __actually having dotfiles__ so I can easily change defaults.
• Waterfox – Well, a better form of Firefox on most fronts, but Bing is the default search engine.

Premptive 'no' to the following

• surf – Too much work for an individual, let alone managing one build to rule them all. There are cool suckless things you can do with it, but it's also just slow.
• Browsers I'm not familiar with (uzbl, luakit). I hear they're really cool, but for me to install it on other peoples' computers, I need to be organicly familiar with it. You'd have to convince me to use them individually first.

I'll also say, and I had never heard this take until I did my video on Brave, I obviously have no qualms about using a chromium-based browser. Apparently there are people out there who have the idea that source code is just magically evil if it was written by Google, even if it is 100% free and open source and well-audited. Anyway, share your opinions! What did I miss?

Email me what you think at luke@lukesmith.xyz and you might influence me before I record the video tomorrow morning.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#what-should-be-the-default-browser-for-larbs

Font gone crazy in LARBS?

An Arch update to ttf-inconsolata has temporarily broken the font. If you're a member of an Arch forum or IRC, I recommend notifying them/the developer of this. I don't have an account there.

Since Inconsolata is the default monospace in LARBS, I've been getting a lot of emails as to how to fix or patch this. Just change your default monospace font in ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf to another install monospace font. If you don't know what monospace fonts you have installed, list them with fc-list | grep -i mono. See our Github issue.

https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/LARBS/issues/186

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#font-gone-crazy-in-larbs

Lincucks Fest has been canceled!

Although I said around a month ago that I would be in Charlotte this year for Southeast Linuxfest, it looks like they have decided to cancel it! Sad!

If the world continues existence until 2021, I will still probably plan on going then.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#lincucks-fest-has-been-canceled

Check out my dwm and dwmblocks builds (and say goodbye to i3)!

Firstly, I haven't actually really been updating my website and blog, maybe I will with some personal stuff that doesn't warrant a Boomer-Rant or two.

Anyway, after literally a year of using it, I've finally got a dwm build that I'm pretty happy with, get it here, and I also have a build of dwmblocks which is a modular status bar which now basically has all the features of i3blocks for i3.

I encourage my blog/RSS-reading elite to check them out first to find any obvious lacunae before I do a video on them.

dwm is a way better experience than i3. I'll do a video on why I've been so happy with it. I know I just said I've been playing around with it for a year, but really I've always had a good build, now it's just notable enough to talk about.

Here are some traits/features:

• The LARBS/dwm manual in pdf form is now actually just built into the dwm build. Just press super+F1 when in dwm. You'll need zathura installed with a pdf module for it to appear.
• The statusbar now has color characters/emoji due to the libxft fix out there. Great! I always hated fontawesome...
• The statusbar is clickable now thanks to a streamlined version of the statuscmd patch by Daniel Bylinka <daniel.bylinka@gmail.com>. He actually contacted me himself suggesting the patch (which I was aware of), but quickly responded to my feedback, producing two new patches for dwm and dwmblocks (here).
• I'm making the binds both usable and "logical" in a way. Maybe I'll mention this in the video. I'm also trying to add new binds by slimming down unnecessary ones.
• I've added only those layouts that I actually find most useful. There are a lot of meme-tier layouts on dwm which might be interesting, but I think are so practical. I've settled on 8 (bound to four keys) that I like, but I might slim that down or replace them if I find even better ones. I also have the fullscreen mode as well.
• Xresources/pywal compatibility
• A million other little things: gaps, a scrachpad, sticky windows... etc. etc.

Note that you will absolutely want to install libxft-bgra from the AUR to be able to run my build, since it allows color characters. If you aren't using an Arch distro, just install one and then get it from the AUR!

You'll also need the my statusbar scripts for them to appear in the bar. These are the same that are used for i3blocks and as I said, they are just as clickable.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#check-out-my-dwm-and-dwmblocks-builds-and-say-goodbye-to-i3

New website setup, also a statusbar module for network traffic

I've actually decided to change my website's index page, check it out. I made it a bit more autobiographical and visual. Maybe I missed something important? Feel free to remind me.

There are images on the mainpage now, which means a little more bandwith used, but it's nowhere close to the odious things that soydevs do with massive 8MB background images. Even a really slow internet like mine should be able to load it all in a fraction of a second.

I want to move step-by-step back to the old simple days of the early internet, where personal webpages were actual webpages, not two lines of links to social media profiles over off-white bacgrounds and massive javascript to make sure the site load sufficiently slowly. Sooner or later, I'm going to make a LARBS-like thing for setting up a VPS with a good weserver. Already did it for an email server.

I haven't wanted to upload videos recently. I don't fake it. I will want to overview in a video all of the chages and features I've integrrated into dwm, but I'm not totally sure that I'm all the way done. Most of the binds on the middle and lower rows under the left hand I'm just not sure about!

By the way, yesterday or so I add an optional network traffic module to my statusbar scripts. I think I wrote it about as efficiently as it could be written (and no dependencies), but I was knew to figuring out how RX/TX info appears in a Unix system. Check it out and see if it can be improved.

Also, I'm thinking about, since I can make it clickable, adding some kind of network monitoring TUI program, ideally one that either gives visual information about network traffic over time, or (maybe better if it's done well) an application that lists connections made to different sites/IP addresses. If anyone has any recommendations, let me know,

EDIT: Oh and by the way, if my website looks funky right now, refresh your browser's cache (specifically of the stylesheet (style.css) on my site).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#new-website-setup-also-a-statusbar-module-for-network-traffic

Politics matters most to slaves.

Now onto the second point I didn't get to in my post yesterday: politics only matters so much when you're a slave. Or as I put it there, "You will need politics less than you think."

That is to say that if you live in a city where your every action is watched, if you use proprietary software and communicate only via social media services, if you have no marketable skills because you have some inert degree and questionably productive and definitely replaceable job and a large company, you need politics quite a great deal.

Your entire existence in the system is based on being a good boy within the established boundaries of what is deemed by the mass media to be socio-politically appropriate. Maybe you've gone into debt, but you definitely rely the whole "system" for all the basics. If you don't think you do, just ask yourself whether your life has changed for the better after the Coronachan Panic of 2020.

What's the alternative? Well, boomer rants viewers might see some of this coming...

The fact of the matter is that both the daily ins-and-outs of politics and the overarching trends of politics matter very little the more independent your are of the system. Earlier, I always mumbled about how conservaboomers seemed a little too apathetic about the cultural changes being forced on them. This social engineering still is the most serious problem in all technologically-complex mass-media societies, but I must admit for people who choose personal independence and independence for their families and local communities, it is much less of a problem.

When I was plugged into the system, minorly red-pilled and generally peeved because I actually paid attention to the media as something other than to laugh at, I found the idea of Political "Exit" pretty cucky. How much sense does it make to leave the "political process" altogether? Sounds like giving up.

It sounds like giving up because the "political process" is something internal to the media system at large. That's why even when the political process does something the media doesn't like (like electing the Orange Boomer, for example), its actions are immediately rendered inert by fakery.

The actual solution is creating and participating in organic society, which still very much exists outside the purview of the media and NGOs and the like. People still need plumbers. No one is going to fire a plumber because he says trannies are mentally ill men in dresses-otherwise there'd be no plumbers. Or electricians, or builders or anyone who actually does anything productive. It'd just be HR, journalists and professors left... and some open source developers who write more codes of conducts than they do software. Do you think they'll be able to feed you?

Exiting the system is actually the opposite of surrender. Why would you think the solution is something like voting or even "owning the libs" or something publicly advertised as a solution? The actual solution is building an alternative. Or maybe rebuilding the alternative.

Do you really want to make your boss rich if you think he'd turn around and betray you because of a media witchhunt? It's better for you to be doxxed and fired now rather than wait 20 years for it, getting more ensconced in the insanity. Start becoming more independent now.

A lot of people LARP about what they're going to do when they take over "the system" by revolution. Revolution, the idea of abrupt enforced change, however, is fundamentally their idea and if you buy it, you're going to keep running your head into a wall.

Being independent, living out of the city and the Matrix, however, is simultaneously like transporting yourself back in time to when things were saner, but at the same time, transporting yourself into the future where "the system" has already collapsed and we're already rebuilding. Be a part of it now rather than later.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/politics-matters-most-to-slaves/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/politics-matters-most-to-slaves/

Why do I so rarely talk about politics on my channel?

It's not a huge secret that I'm somewhere in the high echelons of the red-pill, however you define it. I'll openly talk about pretty any topic that people organically bring up in streams, or that I'm asked about, but I've never really made any kind of political content on my channel, aside from jokes and memes. That might be surprising because especially three years ago before the mass-bans and algoritm tampering, right wing political channels were a dime-a-dozen and an easily way to get views. There are two main reasons I never took part. Arguably "fear of being ZUCCed from YouTube" could be a possible third, but I have a kind intransigence that makes me relish me being banned. I'm also pretty tired of YouTube, and am increasingly questioning if using it is even a reasonable compromise...

So why do I not do political videos? Why do I not have a set list of deep facts that will blow you away and red-pill you? The two reasons:

• Reason one: 道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。
• Reason two: You will need politics less than you think.

Okay, reason one there is just the first line of the Daode Jing. The Daode Jing is the basic book of Daoism (Taoism), and Dao (literally "Way") is an amorphous concept in Chinese thought that could be crudely comparable to Western concepts of "natural order/law" or maybe even "spontaneous order." "Sounds gay," you say. So what does this famous first line mean and how is it relevant to why I don't talk about how to get red-pilled? I would say it's hard to translate, but even saying that would sound even more pretentious as if I actually know classical Chinese as a native language, but here's a rendering.

The Dao (way) that you can follow isn't the true eternal Dao. A name that you speak, isn't its true name.

An aside, it should be a capital offense to translate classical Chinese. It is so perfect and terse and everything autisitically limited to four elegant syllables that it's just criminal to mutilate it into another language, but we'll forgive it this time.

So what do I mean by quoting this? I mean that the journey to getting red-pilled is not something that can be explained. If I could just explain it, tell it to you, it wouldn't be the true story. It is a varied, and in each case, personal journey, that one goes on.

Although you've been lied to, it's not the lies that's the problem. As an adult, you can a lot of the times tell when the media is manipulating you, especially in the last past decade it's gotten so obvious even a Boomer could see it. But what you don't see is how when you were lied to (or told selective truths) as a child, you didn't have the same BS-detector, and that allowed a lot of deep-seated impressions about the world to be formed. So a lot of people who don't believe anything the media says now (rightly) are still mind-cucked. They accept the programming and differ on the details.

I will give you this hint. Basically all of your programmed emotional responses are your enemies. There was an old Moldbug blog post where he talked about even far after "awaking from his dogmatic slumber," he still was surprised that if he saw a group of Nazi LARPers, he would reflexively have a pang of emotional stress, but if he saw Stalinist LARPers, he wouldn't have the same kind of emotional reaction. I think everyone raised in the West has that same programmed reaction. You might know with your head that the communist death count is supposed to be higher and the suppression wider, but it doesn't click because you weren't made sensitive to it.

A good heuristic is whenever you see one of these emotional responses, especially an emotional response to a political term: democracy, equality, racism, feminism, literally all of them actually, your Pavlovian conditioning is telling you to avoid an intellectual area specifically because it is the ideological weak spot of the background propaganda of modernism. If it was not a weak spot, there would be no harm in you being allowed to calmly investigate it. People's thoughts are regulated in liberal democracy not by laws, but by psychological programming that goes off when someone is tempted to evaluate an idea they're not supposed to. Okay, actually I guess in Europe they're regulated by that and laws, and it's coming to America very, very soon now.

All of this is to say that breaking out of this programming is not so much of an issue of me or anyone else explaining a series of facts to you. 道可道，非常道。 That's what Laozi said. As cringe as it sounds, it is primarily a battle against yourself, or at least the part of yourself that has eaten up the tacit assumptions of modernism. Before you own the libs, you must own yourself. Laozi said that too.

In case quoting classical Chinese and talking in floating, general terms isn't getting across, I'll say that getting red-pilled is sort of mystical... literally. Of course, "mystical" in the old, original Greek sense. A "mystic" in Greek is just a synonym for an "initiate." Many cultic religions of two millennia ago where like modern Freemasonry: not a ideology one could just go and read about on Wikipedia, but one where people were slowly initiated in the thought and mindset of the religion over time. While people were born into Paganism, they were initiated into Gnosticism, Hermeticism or even early Christianity. The only difference is that you are being initiated out of the cultural bubble of modernism. Into what? It can vary person to person, experience to experience. You'll always be in some bubble, so don't be arrogant, but you will be out of the big bubble that's going to pop everywhere and is dominated by liberal cat-ladies, professors, sanctimonious NGO-members and journalists.

All of this is to say that it is simply impossible for me to provide you direct direction. Even direction might sound stupid before or after. Maybe I can lay out some random disorganized recommendations.

• Years ago as young college student, I remember reading Steven Pinker's Blank Slate (dl) and thinking I was finally red-pilled. Now I think Steven Pinker is a moron (that book and only that book of his is good, the rest is beyond garbage). I've actually met many people for whom this book was the first step away from basic boomer-tier progressivism. I suspect that Pinker almost regrets writing this book because he's actually very basic in politics. He wrote it back before the elite recognized any threat of a resurgence of energy on the right.
• I think everyone knows that Uncle Ted's manifesto is another favorite on my channel. I never read it until long after I needed it, but since it's a meme now I should recommend it explicitly.
• If you're prepped for harder stuff Radishmag has it. This one tries to evoke that programmed emotional response in a devilish way, but it might be exactly the next step with plenty of actual original sources on historical articles to follow up with.
• Everything Nassim Taleb has written is good. He might be the only living author worth reading now in fact, which isn't saying that much considering our age, but Taleb is pretty based and has attracted a constellation of non-retarded people who employ the very useful concepts he's popularized: antifragile, Lindy, buttercuck... (okay maybe the last one he didn't coin himself, but I'm buttercucked and proud). Read his books before you even look up videos of him or shadow him on social media. His books are lucid, but you won't get it based on mere social media. He also has no patience for brainlets.

Also, you can be red-pilled too quickly and end up like that guy in the Matrix who looks like me and betrays his friends so he can be put back in the matrix to have nice juicy steaks again. Did he make an appearance in Runescape as well?

Anyway, I wrote more of this than I thought I was going to, and I never got to reason two! I'll write it tomorrow after church. You can read it once you get back from church providing it isn't banned where you live.

Speaking of church, for those interested in early Christian theology, or frankly Greek philosophy generally, notice how similar 名 name/word "míng" in the Chinese above is equivalent to logos. In fact, 名 is even used both in the particular sense "the name that you speak" as I render it, and in the universal abstract sense of logos. This pun, which doesn't exist in English without some explanation, does exist in both classical Chinese and Greek. More on that later.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-do-i-so-rarely-talk-about-politics-on-my-channel/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-do-i-so-rarely-talk-about-politics-on-my-channel/

Why do I so rarely talk about politics on my channel?

It's not a huge secret that I'm somewhere in the high echelons of the red-pill, however you define it. I'll openly talk about pretty any topic that people organically bring up in streams, or that I'm asked about, but I've never really made any kind of political content on my channel, aside from jokes and memes. That might be surprising because especially three years ago before the mass-bans and algoritm tampering, right wing political channels were a dime-a-dozen and an easily way to get views. There are two main reasons I never took part. Arguably "fear of being ZUCCed from YouTube" could be a possible third, but I have a kind intransigence that makes me relish me being banned. I'm also pretty tired of YouTube, and am increasingly questioning if using it is even a reasonable compromise...

So why do I not do political videos? Why do I not have a set list of deep facts that will blow you away and red-pill you? The two reasons:

• Reason one: 道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。
• Reason two: You will need politics less than you think.

Okay, reason one there is just the first line of the Daode Jing. The Daode Jing is the basic book of Daoism (Taoism), and Dao (literally "Way") is an amorphous concept in Chinese thought that could be crudely comparable to Western concepts of "natural order/law" or maybe even "spontaneous order." "Sounds gay," you say. So what does this famous first line mean and how is it relevant to why I don't talk about how to get red-pilled? I would say it's hard to translate, but even saying that would sound even more pretentious as if I actually know classical Chinese as a native language, but here's a rendering.

The Dao (way) that you can follow isn't the true eternal Dao. A name that you speak, isn't its true name.

An aside, it should be a capital offense to translate classical Chinese. It is so perfect and terse and everything autisitically limited to four elegant syllables that it's just criminal to mutilate it into another language, but we'll forgive it this time.

So what do I mean by quoting this? I mean that the journey to getting red-pilled is not something that can be explained. If I could just explain it, tell it to you, it wouldn't be the true story. It is a varied, and in each case, personal journey, that one goes on.

Although you've been lied to, it's not the lies that's the problem. As an adult, you can a lot of the times tell when the media is manipulating you, especially in the last past decade it's gotten so obvious even a Boomer could see it. But what you don't see is how when you were lied to (or told selective truths) as a child, you didn't have the same BS-detector, and that allowed a lot of deep-seated impressions about the world to be formed. So a lot of people who don't believe anything the media says now (rightly) are still mind-cucked. They accept the programming and differ on the details.

I will give you this hint. Basically all of your programmed emotional responses are your enemies. There was an old Moldbug blog post where he talked about even far after "awaking from his dogmatic slumber," he still was surprised that if he saw a group of Nazi LARPers, he would reflexively have a pang of emotional stress, but if he saw Stalinist LARPers, he wouldn't have the same kind of emotional reaction. I think everyone raised in the West has that same programmed reaction. You might know with your head that the communist death count is supposed to be higher and the suppression wider, but it doesn't click because you weren't made sensitive to it.

A good heuristic is whenever you see one of these emotional responses, especially an emotional response to a political term: democracy, equality, racism, feminism, literally all of them actually, your Pavlovian conditioning is telling you to avoid an intellectual area specifically because it is the ideological weak spot of the background propaganda of modernism. If it was not a weak spot, there would be no harm in you being allowed to calmly investigate it. People's thoughts are regulated in liberal democracy not by laws, but by psychological programming that goes off when someone is tempted to evaluate an idea they're not supposed to. Okay, actually I guess in Europe they're regulated by that and laws, and it's coming to America very, very soon now.

All of this is to say that breaking out of this programming is not so much of an issue of me or anyone else explaining a series of facts to you. 道可道，非常道。 That's what Laozi said. As cringe as it sounds, it is primarily a battle against yourself, or at least the part of yourself that has eaten up the tacit assumptions of modernism. Before you own the libs, you must own yourself. Laozi said that too.

In case quoting classical Chinese and talking in floating, general terms isn't getting across, I'll say that getting red-pilled is sort of mystical... literally. Of course, "mystical" in the old, original Greek sense. A "mystic" in Greek is just a synonym for an "initiate." Many cultic religions of two millennia ago where like modern Freemasonry: not a ideology one could just go and read about on Wikipedia, but one where people were slowly initiated in the thought and mindset of the religion over time. While people were born into Paganism, they were initiated into Gnosticism, Hermeticism or even early Christianity. The only difference is that you are being initiated out of the cultural bubble of modernism. Into what? It can vary person to person, experience to experience. You'll always be in some bubble, so don't be arrogant, but you will be out of the big bubble that's going to pop everywhere and is dominated by liberal cat-ladies, professors, sanctimonious NGO-members and journalists.

All of this is to say that it is simply impossible for me to provide you direct direction. Even direction might sound stupid before or after. Maybe I can lay out some random disorganized recommendations.

• Years ago as young college student, I remember reading Steven Pinker's Blank Slate (dl) and thinking I was finally red-pilled. Now I think Steven Pinker is a moron (that book and only that book of his is good, the rest is beyond garbage). I've actually met many people for whom this book was the first step away from basic boomer-tier progressivism. I suspect that Pinker almost regrets writing this book because he's actually very basic in politics. He wrote it back before the elite recognized any threat of a resurgence of energy on the right.
• I think everyone knows that Uncle Ted's manifesto is another favorite on my channel. I never read it until long after I needed it, but since it's a meme now I should recommend it explicitly.
• If you're prepped for harder stuff Radishmag has it. This one tries to evoke that programmed emotional response in a devilish way, but it might be exactly the next step with plenty of actual original sources on historical articles to follow up with.
• Everything Nassim Taleb has written is good. He might be the only living author worth reading now in fact, which isn't saying that much considering our age, but Taleb is pretty based and has attracted a constellation of non-retarded people who employ the very useful concepts he's popularized: antifragile, Lindy, buttercuck... (okay maybe the last one he didn't coin himself, but I'm buttercucked and proud). Read his books before you even look up videos of him or shadow him on social media. His books are lucid, but you won't get it based on mere social media. He also has no patience for brainlets.

Also, you can be red-pilled too quickly and end up like that guy in the Matrix who looks like me and betrays his friends so he can be put back in the matrix to have nice juicy steaks again. Did he make an appearance in Runescape as well?

Anyway, I wrote more of this than I thought I was going to, and I never got to reason two! I'll write it tomorrow after church. You can read it once you get back from church providing it isn't banned where you live.

Speaking of church, for those interested in early Christian theology, or frankly Greek philosophy generally, notice how similar 名 name/word "míng" in the Chinese above is equivalent to logos. In fact, 名 is even used both in the particular sense "the name that you speak" as I render it, and in the universal abstract sense of logos. This pun, which doesn't exist in English without some explanation, does exist in both classical Chinese and Greek. More on that later.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-do-i-so-rarely-talk-about-politics-on-my-channel/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-do-i-so-rarely-talk-about-politics-on-my-channel/

Why do I so rarely talk about politics on my channel?

It's not a huge secret that I'm somewhere in the high echelons of the red-pill, however you define it. I'll openly talk about pretty any topic that people organically bring up in streams, or that I'm asked about, but I've never really made any kind of political content on my channel, aside from jokes and memes. That might be surprising because especially three years ago before the mass-bans and algoritm tampering, right wing political channels were a dime-a-dozen and an easily way to get views. There are two main reasons I never took part. Arguably "fear of being ZUCCed from YouTube" could be a possible third, but I have a kind intransigence that makes me relish me being banned. I'm also pretty tired of YouTube, and am increasingly questioning if using it is even a reasonable compromise...

So why do I not do political videos? Why do I not have a set list of deep facts that will blow you away and red-pill you? The two reasons:

• Reason one: 道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。
• Reason two: You will need politics less than you think.

Okay, reason one there is just the first line of the Daode Jing. The Daode Jing is the basic book of Daoism (Taoism), and Dao (literally "Way") is an amorphous concept in Chinese thought that could be crudely comparable to Western concepts of "natural order/law" or maybe even "spontaneous order." "Sounds gay," you say. So what does this famous first line mean and how is it relevant to why I don't talk about how to get red-pilled? I would say it's hard to translate, but even saying that would sound even more pretentious as if I actually know classical Chinese as a native language, but here's a rendering.

The Dao (way) that you can follow isn't the true eternal Dao. A name that you speak, isn't its true name.

An aside, it should be a capital offense to translate classical Chinese. It is so perfect and terse and everything autisitically limited to four elegant syllables that it's just criminal to mutilate it into another language, but we'll forgive it this time.

So what do I mean by quoting this? I mean that the journey to getting red-pilled is not something that can be explained. If I could just explain it, tell it to you, it wouldn't be the true story. It is a varied, and in each case, personal journey, that one goes on.

Although you've been lied to, it's not the lies that's the problem. As an adult, you can a lot of the times tell when the media is manipulating you, especially in the last past decade it's gotten so obvious even a Boomer could see it. But what you don't see is how when you were lied to (or told selective truths) as a child, you didn't have the same BS-detector, and that allowed a lot of deep-seated impressions about the world to be formed. So a lot of people who don't believe anything the media says now (rightly) are still mind-cucked. They accept the programming and differ on the details.

I will give you this hint. Basically all of your programmed emotional responses are your enemies. There was an old Moldbug blog post where he talked about even far after "awaking from his dogmatic slumber," he still was surprised that if he saw a group of Nazi LARPers, he would reflexively have a pang of emotional stress, but if he saw Stalinist LARPers, he wouldn't have the same kind of emotional reaction. I think everyone raised in the West has that same programmed reaction. You might know with your head that the communist death count is supposed to be higher and the suppression wider, but it doesn't click because you weren't made sensitive to it.

A good heuristic is whenever you see one of these emotional responses, especially an emotional response to a political term: democracy, equality, racism, feminism, literally all of them actually, your Pavlovian conditioning is telling you to avoid an intellectual area specifically because it is the ideological weak spot of the background propaganda of modernism. If it was not a weak spot, there would be no harm in you being allowed to calmly investigate it. People's thoughts are regulated in liberal democracy not by laws, but by psychological programming that goes off when someone is tempted to evaluate an idea they're not supposed to. Okay, actually I guess in Europe they're regulated by that and laws, and it's coming to America very, very soon now.

All of this is to say that breaking out of this programming is not so much of an issue of me or anyone else explaining a series of facts to you. 道可道，非常道。 That's what Laozi said. As cringe as it sounds, it is primarily a battle against yourself, or at least the part of yourself that has eaten up the tacit assumptions of modernism. Before you own the libs, you must own yourself. Laozi said that too.

In case quoting classical Chinese and talking in floating, general terms isn't getting across, I'll say that getting red-pilled is sort of mystical... literally. Of course, "mystical" in the old, original Greek sense. A "mystic" in Greek is just a synonym for an "initiate." Many cultic religions of two millennia ago where like modern Freemasonry: not a ideology one could just go and read about on Wikipedia, but one where people were slowly initiated in the thought and mindset of the religion over time. While people were born into Paganism, they were initiated into Gnosticism, Hermeticism or even early Christianity. The only difference is that you are being initiated out of the cultural bubble of modernism. Into what? It can vary person to person, experience to experience. You'll always be in some bubble, so don't be arrogant, but you will be out of the big bubble that's going to pop everywhere and is dominated by liberal cat-ladies, professors, sanctimonious NGO-members and journalists.

All of this is to say that it is simply impossible for me to provide you direct direction. Even direction might sound stupid before or after. Maybe I can lay out some random disorganized recommendations.

• Years ago as young college student, I remember reading Steven Pinker's Blank Slate (dl) and thinking I was finally red-pilled. Now I think Steven Pinker is a moron (that book and only that book of his is good, the rest is beyond garbage). I've actually met many people for whom this book was the first step away from basic boomer-tier progressivism. I suspect that Pinker almost regrets writing this book because he's actually very basic in politics. He wrote it back before the elite recognized any threat of a resurgence of energy on the right.
• I think everyone knows that Uncle Ted's manifesto is another favorite on my channel. I never read it until long after I needed it, but since it's a meme now I should recommend it explicitly.
• If you're prepped for harder stuff Radishmag has it. This one tries to evoke that programmed emotional response in a devilish way, but it might be exactly the next step with plenty of actual original sources on historical articles to follow up with.
• Everything Nassim Taleb has written is good. He might be the only living author worth reading now in fact, which isn't saying that much considering our age, but Taleb is pretty based and has attracted a constellation of non-retarded people who employ the very useful concepts he's popularized: antifragile, Lindy, buttercuck... (okay maybe the last one he didn't coin himself, but I'm buttercucked and proud). Read his books before you even look up videos of him or shadow him on social media. His books are lucid, but you won't get it based on mere social media. He also has no patience for brainlets.

Also, you can be red-pilled too quickly and end up like that guy in the Matrix who looks like me and betrays his friends so he can be put back in the matrix to have nice juicy steaks again. Did he make an appearance in Runescape as well?

Anyway, I wrote more of this than I thought I was going to, and I never got to reason two! I'll write it tomorrow after church. You can read it once you get back from church providing it isn't banned where you live.

Speaking of church, for those interested in early Christian theology, or frankly Greek philosophy generally, notice how similar 名 name/word "míng" in the Chinese above is equivalent to logos. In fact, 名 is even used both in the particular sense "the name that you speak" as I render it, and in the universal abstract sense of logos. This pun, which doesn't exist in English without some explanation, does exist in both classical Chinese and Greek. More on that later.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#why-do-i-so-rarely-talk-about-politics-on-my-channel

Politics matters most to slaves.

Now onto the second point I didn't get to in my post yesterday: politics only matters so much when you're a slave. Or as I put it there, "You will need politics less than you think."

That is to say that if you live in a city where your every action is watched, if you use proprietary software and communicate only via social media services, if you have no marketable skills because you have some inert degree and questionably productive and definitely replaceable job and a large company, you need politics quite a great deal.

Your entire existence in the system is based on being a good boy within the established boundaries of what is deemed by the mass media to be socio-politically appropriate. Maybe you've gone into debt, but you definitely rely the whole "system" for all the basics. If you don't think you do, just ask yourself whether your life has changed for the better after the Coronachan Panic of 2020.

What's the alternative? Well, boomer rants viewers might see some of this coming...

The fact of the matter is that both the daily ins-and-outs of politics and the overarching trends of politics matter very little the more independent your are of the system. Earlier, I always mumbled about how conservaboomers seemed a little too apathetic about the cultural changes being forced on them. This social engineering still is the most serious problem in all technologically-complex mass-media societies, but I must admit for people who choose personal independence and independence for their families and local communities, it is much less of a problem.

When I was plugged into the system, minorly red-pilled and generally peeved because I actually paid attention to the media as something other than to laugh at, I found the idea of Political "Exit" pretty cucky. How much sense does it make to leave the "political process" altogether? Sounds like giving up.

It sounds like giving up because the "political process" is something internal to the media system at large. That's why even when the political process does something the media doesn't like (like electing the Orange Boomer, for example), its actions are immediately rendered inert by fakery.

The actual solution is creating and participating in organic society, which still very much exists outside the purview of the media and NGOs and the like. People still need plumbers. No one is going to fire a plumber because he says trannies are mentally ill men in dresses-otherwise there'd be no plumbers. Or electricians, or builders or anyone who actually does anything productive. It'd just be HR, journalists and professors left... and some open source developers who write more codes of conducts than they do software. Do you think they'll be able to feed you?

Exiting the system is actually the opposite of surrender. Why would you think the solution is something like voting or even "owning the libs" or something publicly advertised as a solution? The actual solution is building an alternative. Or maybe rebuilding the alternative.

Do you really want to make your boss rich if you think he'd turn around and betray you because of a media witchhunt? It's better for you to be doxxed and fired now rather than wait 20 years for it, getting more ensconced in the insanity. Start becoming more independent now.

A lot of people LARP about what they're going to do when they take over "the system" by revolution. Revolution, the idea of abrupt enforced change, however, is fundamentally their idea and if you buy it, you're going to keep running your head into a wall.

Being independent, living out of the city and the Matrix, however, is simultaneously like transporting yourself back in time to when things were saner, but at the same time, transporting yourself into the future where "the system" has already collapsed and we're already rebuilding. Be a part of it now rather than later.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#politics-matters-most-to-slaves

New video showcase of my dwm build

I haven't been using my RSS feed to annouce videos recently, but I feel like I should be... 🤔

Anyway, I've released a video showcasing dwm here. If you're reading this post right as I'm releasing it, it's been set as a premiere on YouTube to release at the top of the hour.

The title is naturally self-aware clickbait, the video is just a brief, updated explanation of the logic of dwm, similar to my original video a year or so ago on it, albeit catered to my build.

I also go into some of the stuff I've added recently that make it a drop in improvement over my old i3 dotfiles.

The dwm build is here, the status bar, which I'll do an idividual video on later is here, and remeber that you'll need to install libxft-bgra for it to render color characters without crashing.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#new-video-showcase-of-my-dwm-build

The advantages of dwmblocks...

Just put up a video on dwmblocks which I've been using for a statusbar for a while now.

Get the build here.

It has probably three main advantages over other paradigms for doing statusbars, especially in dwm:

• It is fully modular and can use independent scripts.
• It doesn't just constantly update: while you can tell a module to update every 5 seconds, you can also tell it only to rerun a script when the program receives and external signal.
• It's clickable. I have each modular run different commands, programs, help panes, etc. for each kind of click.

On the last point, you can pretty arbitrarily add in new click sequences in your dwm build as well. I mention in the video that I have it so if I hold shift while left clicking, the an instance of vim with the module script opens up so you can edit it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#the-advantages-of-dwmblocks

Ripping and spliting and tagging audiobooks and albums from YouTube

Check out my scripts folder for two new uploads today (although I made them quite a bit ago).

First is tag, a simple wrapper for opustags and vorbiscomment that gives a easier interface for manually tagging .opus and .ogg files.

More notable, however is booksplit, which uses the script above to take a long audio file and a list of timecodes and automatically splits that file up into tracks/chapter files.

I use this when I can only find some audio content on YouTube and want to convert it to typical music files for listening offline, all with appropriate tags.

I just put up a video on all of this here.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#ripping-and-spliting-and-tagging-audiobooks-and-albums-from-youtube

A full commentary on vim while 'let's playing' vimtutor!

At the top of the next hour, I'll be releasing a full-length video commentary and instructional on vim. I decided to record this yesterday somewhat flippantly: I got through the entirety of vimtutor adding extra information and tips along with commentary. The whole thing ended up being one cut and slighty longer than an hour! I'm releasing it as a premiere.

Note also I did a video yesterday talking about the ever-expanding ways you can be monitored with cell phones and software.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#a-full-commentary-on-vim-while-lets-playing-vimtutor

Full timecodes for the Vimtutor 'Let's Play'

The YouTube premiere for the Vimtutor Let's Play just ended successfully. It's a long vid, so if you want to see something specific, I made timecodes which I'll put here, but if you go to the video above, they'll be clickable in the description.

Enjoy! And thank you Kenneth for the Vim Diesel thumbnail! He said it cost him a C- in art class, lol.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#full-timecodes-for-the-vimtutor-lets-play

Two factor authentication without a cell phone

I've thankfully developed a tendency to make side remarks about things in videos that I'm not sure or don't know about because often times people will fill me in on them.

Yesterday I complained about having to use a cell phone to do Two Factor Authentication (2FA) and asked for another way. As it ends up, using a cell phone for 2FA is apparently just a bad, normie-friendly way to do it. And we aren't normie friendly, anyway are we?

Many informed me that SMS protocol (i.e. texting) is actually a highly insecure way to do Two Factor Authentication. I did also know that there are authenticator apps, but these are often talked about as if they are always cell phone applications. Very not true.

In fact, pass, the password manager that I use (and I also require it for mutt-wizard) has an installable module pass-otp in most repositories that does just this without the need for a celular monitoring device and service, etc.

Install it, and let's say I want it to manage my coinbase 2FA. Well, go to Coinbase's website and click the option to add/change an authenticator app. They'll give you a QR which you can download (I'll assume it's called 'download.png' here). Then, use zbar (which you may need to install) to read the QR code image and pipe it into this pass command.

Now, whenever you run pass otp coinbase, you will get a 6-digit 2FA code. After a few seconds, of course, it will change to another 6-digit code like other 2FA applications.

So this is pretty dope. You could also start using this for scripting/API access if you know what you're doing. One more thing I don't have to use my cell phone for. I feel like a boomer for not knowing this before...

Now the other thing I'd really want is the ability to access SMS protocol on a computer to receive text messages without (a) a cell phone and (b) cell phone service at my location. The big issue for me is that I have no mobile service in my house (I have to walk out to the north side of my property to get texts). I don't have wifi-calling either. Some people have submitted some suggestions and I'm still going through them, but we'll see. I just wish normies could send me a message at a number they think is a normal cell phone, but I can receive on my computer without a cell signal.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#two-factor-authentication-without-a-cell-phone

I'm going to be ending i3 support in LARBS very soon!

I'm not deleting any of the i3-related config files, I'll just be doing the following:

• Removing i3, i3blocks and other i3-only programs from the install list.
• Removing the visual i3 option on the LARBS script that changed ~/.xinitrc for you.
• Consolidating the config files, mainly profile files to make things a little more elegant. I am also adding in a custom dwm.desktop file so GUI-cucks can log into dwm with their log-in screens.

That last point might cause breakage in i3 builds that people keep up to date with git. In case it hasn't been clear for the past year, I really want to move past i3. I haven't used it in months and am not reliable to troubleshoot problems on it.

If you still want to use my i3 setup, you can still:

1. Run LARBS.
2. Manually install i3/i3blocks afterwards.
3. Manually change what WM ~/.xinitrc starts (if you don't use a login screen/display manager).

I have basically not been maintaining i3 for months. I accept PRs and fixes if offered, but not much more.

I might add a little extra i3 script to be run after LARBS that makes the changes necessary for i3... maybe. I really recommend moving on to dwm though.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#im-going-to-be-ending-i3-support-in-larbs-very-soon

New vids on shell scripting and substring removal

Yesterday and just a bit ago I put out two videos of extreme relevance if you want to script efficiently:

Now the first formally was about writing a network traffic module without dependencies, we talking about the file location of network information, shell arithmatic and some other efficiencies.

The second video is on an important trick for getting a substring from a string without having to call separate programs like awk or cut, and thus saving time. That is, substring removal, which you've probably seen before. It looks something like this:

That particular command will echo a file name removing its extension. I explain the logic of what all the symbols mean and how to manipulate them in the video.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#new-vids-on-shell-scripting-and-substring-removal

Help me livestream from the remote Unaboomer's Cabin!

I want to have a way to stream from my home internet, which is beyond bad. It is certainly at least good enough to upload audio: I've used some VOIP services perfectly, but the issue is that YouTube and most other sites specifically require a video stream as well.

Probably the best solution would be something like streaming an audio feed to a server of mine, which is doable given my bandwidth, and on that server, combining it with a video feed which can then be fed to YouTube or other streaming sites.

If anyone can give me good specifics on this it would be highly appreciated. My eyes still glaze over when I hear about sockets and such, but there might be a more streamlined (bloated) solution as well...

I made a previous request for how to do a simple audiostream on my own server: most people recommended Icecast, which I've been playing around with. I might just go with that platform-independent solution despite the fact that it will probably lessen the viewership by a good bit! (Maybe that's a good thing?)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#help-me-livestream-from-the-remote-unaboomers-cabin

I don't trust Wikipedia anymore. Also, a request for a Stallman meme!

I put up a video on why I don't use or trust Wikipedia anymore. It's gotten so bad over the years that I don't even trust it for little things. I might do more on this later, because I think it's a weather-vane kind of issue, but that's my take on it now.

Obviously I don't trust it for news or politics, but I also can't trust it for specialized topics I'm familiar with: it doesn't very accurately represent academic issues in linguistics, philosophy or especially the history of thought. This has totally undermined my view of the enterprise in total and I'll be relying on a constellation of smaller sites when I need "basic" encyclopedia information.

Also, for a thumbnail, I'm looking for any meme containing a depiction of Richard Stallman as either a crying wojak or a pink wojak. I'm sure someone has this and I'm very busy today and can't look too much more after a cursory search... I'll be leaving the house soon...

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#i-dont-trust-wikipedia-anymore-also-a-request-for-a-stallman-meme

Github sponsorship

I went through the rigamarole of setting up Github Sponsors today. Basically it's just a built-in funding mechanism using Stripe with Github. So now people can donate to me from Github and support from/for specific projects.

Go to my Github page and you'll see "Sponsor" buttons on my profile and all my main repositories. Hey, free software gotta pay some bills. Or at least start the expansion cabin... Did I mention I might be starting a business soon? Maybe more on that later.

Anyway if you want platform independent ways to donate to me, including direct bank transfers and crypto currency, you can always just see https://lukesmith.xyz.

I always feel like a shill to even say so (or to put the link in video descriptions), but then again, people still come up asking me how to donate. That's how. You have a lot of choices! Thanks for all who do donate; I'd hate to have to resort to selling bath water!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#github-sponsorship

Converting Facebook feeds to RSS?

I'm going to record a video today on RSS-one nice fact of RSS is that there are some services that can automatically generate RSS feeds of social media profiles, even those that have intentionally shirked off RSS to be able to further control content.

https://twitrss.me/ is an example of this for Twitter, so you can subscribe/follow any Twitter account without Twitter being able to filter what you see (and importantly without having an account in the first place).

Unfortunately, despite looking several times, I've never found something like this for public Facebook pages, which I think a lot of people would find hard to live without. There are a lot of normie/Boomer businesses whose only internet presence is their Facebook page. Even in my case, there's a local grocery store that has weekly deals that I could only see by navigating to a public Facebook page, which I don't like doing: I'd rather the updates just appear in my RSS feed reader.

Anyway, if anyone knows of a free service that produces RSS feeds for Facebook pages, please tell me ASAP so I can include it in the video.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#converting-facebook-feeds-to-rss

First episode of a full series on the basics of shell scripting

I actually somewhat enjoyed doing the "Vim Diesel" hour long vim tutorial...

So I decided to do something I've been asked about over the years, and that is to do a series on very basic command-line/terminal/shell/bash usage.

I've put up the first video in this series here so check it out. Although it's very basic, covering the key commands and key-bindings on the terminal, you might learn something or another new or forgotten...

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#first-episode-of-a-full-series-on-the-basics-of-shell-scripting

Not Related! is officially back. New episode tomorrow morning.

The madman has finally done it.

I've finally restarted Not Related!, my long lost podcast!

Download the new Season 2 introducion episode.

You can also see the episode on YouTube, although obviously the audio format is primary.

I always shot for the perfect sweet spot between that signature "Big-Braned" content and a kind of non-pretentiousness: while the topics of Not Related! are always different, they're all in depth coverages of topics out of the typical realm of common knowledge and internet discussion, oftentimes found in somewhat abstruse study... If I've wasted time in my life learning something, I might as well make it more accessible to others, even if part of that is just previewing it in audio format.

Some had noted that a kind of a pattern emerged behind some podcast episodes: deflating some of the academic pretentions of institutionalized science. That might continue in some episodes (definitely the first real episode, which will come out tomorrow morning), but I really only promise varied and unexpectedly interesting content.

I've learned on the internet that you can never wait around and expect someone else to cover topics, so while I sort of quit the podcast out of tiredness, I view returning to it as a kind of duty. I was happy with its content and direction.

Anyway, blah, blah. Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed. Listen or relisten to the older episodes too.

I read any kind of donation during the middle-of-the-episode break, so if you have a smart comment or an innocent question about a previous episode, submit it with a donation and I'll read it. Again, I've already recording the first real episode for the second season, but I might be recording #2 soon after.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#not-related-is-officially-back-new-episode-tomorrow-morning

Manjaro is good for noobs.

I put out a video on why I always recommend Manjaro for new users. Get Manjaro at manjaro.org.

Manjaro has a couple of main benefits over other distros:

• While other distros idiotically try to containerize programs allow people to get either normie/proprietary software or very up-and-coming software, Manjaro can just use the AUR.
• The frequent updates give Manjaro a substantial edge over Ubuntu and Linux Mint since it allows noobs to get quick updates to highly-active software areas like gayming.
• On a minor point, pacman is better than apt-get on pretty much any metric.
• Manjaro eases the transfer into Arch Linux, which is a typical rite of passage into mature Linux.

Of course, reading the comments from new users, I am continually reminded that the real hurdle to getting the most out of Linux is a psychological one: most users want to replicate their Windows 10 setup perfectly and more than that, have the mindset of a passive consooomer for whom even the most inconsequential unexpected things on an operating system are a world-ending impossibilities and sources of frustration.

There's a lot to say about that. I spend a lot of time making videos to make life easier for other people. One thing I've realized is that there are some people who get a lot more excitement out of complaining than having solutions to their problems.

I don't understand that psychology, but it's ubiquitous.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#manjaro-is-good-for-noobs

On the swallowing patch in dwm

dwm has a somewhat unique patch called swallow which automatically positions a window opened from a terminal over that terminal that would otherwise be non-responsive, uncloseable and thus a big annoyance.

I show this patch and why it's needed in a new video I just released: "Does your Window Manager Swallow?"

I'm also going to start putting my dwm videos into a playlist here so if you want to keep up with them individually you can.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#on-the-swallowing-patch-in-dwm

Oooof! Big server downage!

I was playing around with my server today, you know, the one where I host my website the LARBS website and the Not Related! website.

I ended up "accidentally" install a nginx server which obviously interferred with my preexisting apache server (well, at least because I was running a hand-holding distro that automatically turns everything on when you install something!). This caused a general crash of everything a couple hours ago.

It would've been an easy fix, but I decided instead to just wipe the whole thing and restart on a clean server, so that's what I'm doing. This time, I'm just running nginx.

Anyway, some things are still down and I'm going to dinner tonight, so it might be until tomorrow that I fix everything:

• The LARBS link at larbs.xyz/larbs.sh is offline until I figure out how to link stuff on nginx the way I did with htaccess on apache.
• Some old links might not rewrite properly, similar to above. I think I have it removing .html at least on my personal site.
• My personal files on my website are down since again they were Apache based.
• My git server is down. I might just remake it on video because people always ask about it.
• If you have the Not Related! link at the notrelated.xyz address, it might be down too: https://notrelated.libsyn.com/rss will work instead; the one at notrelated.xyz was just a link to that one.

Thanks to that email script I made a while ago I can receive emails, but it looks like I have to tinker with it a little more for isync. I guess that's for the best since I'll update the script for other people.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#oooof-big-server-downage

I'll have server downtime tomorrow.

I'm going to make some more changes to my server. Expect my websites to be offline tomorrow, hopefully no more than a couple hours. I just want to make sure to get everything right. 😉

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#ill-have-server-downtime-tomorrow

Le Shill Lion

Redditors have been spamming my videos asking me to respond to the "controversy"/"fiasco" that Brave has been using affiliate links to certain sites openly for their intended purpose.

In March, a commit added additional links that added in suggestions to sites like Coinbase that included Brave's affiliate link. This was merged into the upstream in April. You can see the relevant git history.

These affiliate links have displayed openly in the url bar and in the autocomplete as options for months. Mind you, Brave already had a built-in autocomplete/suggestions that recommend sites that you've never been to. (This has actually always annoyed me to no end and there's no obvious way to turn off these recommendations to useless sites like the New York Times, LinkedIn or Google Calendar.)

Yet in the past couple of days, some regular investigative journalists discovered what had been in front of their faces every time they typed in their url bar. A lot of people and pages melodramatically call this "link hijacking." I wish they held those standards for any other program...

The "controversy" is that when Brave added links to Coinbase and other sites will affiliate links, it includes those affiliate links into the autocomplete. (With non-affiliate suggestions as well.) Some non-intrusive affiliate pages would autofill as well (while intrusive pages like Coinbase's would only open if manually selected by the user).

Really, what is Brave supposed to do? It already recommends sites, including the sites with affiliate links and Brave is actually literally leading users to these sites anyway. Using an affiliate link is the right way to do it: these companies want to know and incentivize people who share their sites. Brave is already doing that. It's not like it's costing the user anything. The sites already know your browser anyway.

Note that DuckDuckGo has done exactly the same thing and makes money from forcibly putting their affiliate links on Amazon and eBay search results.

There are a lot of furry communists who think that anything involving money must be "shady" or untrustworthy. The fact is, if Brave is not going to make money by shilling for NGOs and political non-profits like Firefox, or sell user data like Google, it should be making money on things like this. This is literally what affiliate links are for. I can't even pretend it's bad. This is just dumb.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#le-shill-lion

GNUtards unequivocally destroyed eternally

Important meme video.

"I use Linux as my operating system," I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. "Actually", he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!' I don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "I use Alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. It's Linux, but it's not GNU+Linux."

The smile quickly drops from the man's face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!" Coolly, I reply "If windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?" I interrupt his response with "-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even you were correct, you wont be for long."

With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I've womansplained him to death.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#gnutards-unequivocally-destroyed-eternally

I have my own search engine now

I'm actually a bit ahead in making videos: tomorrow or the day after or so, I'll have a video coming out about Searx the decentralized meta-search engine which runs on free software and anyone can install and use.

There are already many public instances of Searx out there, but I've also decided to make my own at searx.lukesmith.xyz, so you can try that out if you want. It's hosted on this very server.

If I get too much traffic, I might close or more it, but I'll leave it up for now to see if the traffic isn't too inconvenient. After all, if I'm the only one using the instance, it's easy enough for the engines it polls to determine it's just me that's searching!

Absolutely no coomers allowed!

Again yeah, I've already made videos on Searx and the process of actually installing your own instance of it and they'll be out within the week.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#i-have-my-own-search-engine-now

Anyone done Peertube before?

I get emails about Peertube semi-frequently. Peertube is software you can install on your server to make a kind of a YouTube site. This would actually be a goal of mine: to be able to host all of my videos, serve them and have a platform truly independent of YouTube (or at least the core of it).

I've never bothered to join an instance because I can't necessarily trust individual terms or my bandwidth requirements are too big for most, but I figure it's worth figuring out now and I'm fiddling around with a separate VPS for doing it myself.

I will admit that the installation process has been a pain. I've come 99% of the way a couple times in the past couple of days, but there's always something missing or out of sync by the time I finish. I've even degraded myself by deploying containerized versions of the program (soydev.jpg), but to no avail.

Anyway, I was wondering if any body out there is passionate and knowledgeable about Peertube and could either help me set it up or has principled suggestions. I'd like to get this done soon.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#anyone-done-peertube-before

A Guide to Using RSS to Replace Social Media

I've just released a video on RSS, more or less talking about the basics.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the best way to keep tabs on things online. While social media sites have tried to replace it, it is still the best way to consoooome content, even on social media sites.

For all basic blogs and smart websites, RSS feeds will be obvious and sometimes your browser will automatically detect them, but here is how to get RSS for some common social media sites.

YouTube

Thankfully, YouTube still has RSS feeds, albeit very hidden ones: for example, mine is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA, where my channel ID (starting with U).

All YouTube channels have channel IDs that you can either see in their channel page URL, or which you can find by looking at their page source and looking for something like channel_id.

To "subscribe" to a channel via RSS, just take that channel ID and put it in the format of mine I gave above. The main link goes directly to the video page and I usually stream/download them directly with mpv and youtube-dl.

Twitter

Nitter.net is a Twitter proxy that mirrors Twitter, but without Javascript soyware and spying. Importantly, Nitter also openly displays links to RSS feeds they generate for accounts in the upper right-hand corner.

Github/Gitlab

Github and Gitlab offer RSS for repositories so you can watch activity.

Want to watch development of my dotfiles? Just use https://github.com/lukesmithxyz/voidrice/commits/master.atom.

As you can guess, replace my username and repo name with whatever you want to get a feed for that.

Note also that there is an option to get a "private feed" which lists even more things (who follows you and repository events you watch).

Facebook (and basically every other site)

RSS-bridge is the ultimate RSS feed helper and will not just give you RSS feeds for Facebook pages, but basically anything else.

This is software that can run on a server. You can just do an internet search for instances, then feed them a link you want an RSS for and RSS-bridge will autogenerate a feed.

Podcasts

Podcasts literally just are RSS feeds! That's why it's so easy to view them anywhere.

For example, my podcast Not Related! is syndicated by Libsyn and its RSS feed url is https://notrelated.libsyn.com/rss. If you want another Libsyn podcast, just replace "notrelated" with the podcast name on the site.

My RSS feeds:

This blog, a link to my youtube RSS and my podcast RSS.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#a-guide-to-using-rss-to-replace-social-media

I'll be returning to make videos on Monday. Check out Peertube.

After a full month of doing videos pretty much every day, I decided to take a two week break early July. In case you're new here, it's pretty normal for me to go weeks or months without a public appearance only to end that hiatus with a long video series.

I hope all of you have enjoyed making your own website: it will be probably the best technology investment you will make. You get a lot of freedom and knowledge in doing it. I'll be doing more videos about having your own website/server pretty soon, along with other videos. If you haven't jumped on the bandwagon:

• I have a playlist on all the basics and I'll do more on how I manage my website soon.
• I put out affiliate links to the registrar/VPS provider I use/recommend:
• Use Epik as a registrar, prices are as cheap as they get and they have made sacrifices in the past to avoid suppressing political speech. In a day when registrars have started dropping domain names at the minor calls of the media, this is essential.
• Use Vultr as a VPS provider. That link gives you a $100 one-month credit to play around with and if you stay with Vultr, your first $25 spent goes to me instead of them.

Additionally, I encourage you to check out my new self-hosted Peertube instance at https://videos.lukesmith.xyz . I want to see what kind of bandwidth I need. If you want to watch the videos above on Peertube instead of YouTube: check it out here 👈 instead of on YouTube.

Now one important key to internet independence is what's called federation, i.e. "social media sites" that can be run on your own or your friend's server and can interact with other instances of that site. I'll talk about this in videos soon, but you might want to look it up if you don't know. Peertube is an example of a federated site. While you will only see my videos on my site now, I can "follow" other instances to make their content visible from my site. You can also join as a user on my instance for the time being-that might have to change in the future, so you might want to do it if you want.

Obviously if you're running a Peertube instance, come follow mine and back up/mirror videos if you want! I might follow some instances soon myself.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#ill-be-returning-to-make-videos-on-monday-check-out-peertube

I'll be migrating to a superior server for Peertube

As I say in this video (exclusively on Peertube 😉), I did a video yesterday about my new video site at videos.lukesmith.xyz, which is a Peertube instance.

As I predicted, I wouldn't be able to tolerate the bandwidth needed on my puny Vultr server, so after the suggestions of many subscribers, I've decided on another company to host the Peertube instance (I'll still be using Vultr for all of my other VPS's for their other advantages).

A subscriber, Harambe (I'll just assume that's his real name) has agreed to fund the instance for the first few months, so thanks a lot to him. Thankfully, it offers infinite bandwidth, (nearly) infinitely expandable space and is much cheaper than I anticipated. It also has a beefier processor, which actually does make a difference when Peertube is trying to transcode your most recent upload all while serving a thousand people.

Peertube does have some documentation on migrating your instance, but my new server is currently also running Debian (the original Peertube server runs Arch). In the worse case scenario, I won't be able to migrate and that means people will have to reregister and comments will be deleted. Hopefully that won't be the case though.

I'll need to set everything up again, but hopefully it will be done in a couple days before we meet the 1TB bandwidth cap. If you want to donate to the maintain the instance and my management of it in the meantime (or well, all the other stuff I do online), you can always donate! I'm going to feel like a shill for asking, but I'm starting to take bigger financial investments with my channel and hope to be able to be fully YouTube-independent very soon.

I also may be able to mirror other people's videos, with a focus on people who have been recently banned or are in the threat of being banned on YouTube. I was sad to hear that Roosh Valizadeh was banned from YouTube yesterday and while he is on D.live was looking for a new platform to stream on. I've also noticed that Ryan Faulk (the Alternative Hypothesis) has privated his videos. I don't have Ryan's email, but if anyone has his contact information, I might be able to offer some space. (Actually both of these guys make long videos/streams, but it might be possible.)

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#ill-be-migrating-to-a-superior-server-for-peertube

PeerTube will be down for migration today

My new PeerTube instance will be temporarily down today as I migrate to a new and much better server with plenty of storage space and bandwidth (and a better processor to boot).

I've already started the transfer, but I'll need to stop the current instance in an hour or so to make sure I can transfer the whole database without a problem and test it all. That means that the video site (but nothing else) will go dark for a couple hours.

The new instance will still be at videos.lukesmith.xyz. Hopefully I will be able to move the whole database over without data loss, but if I fail to do that, it will just start a new instance and people can recreate accounts and re-follow my instance. Hopefully that won't be necessary though.

And yes, I'll be able to transfer all my old videos over once this migration is complete. PeerTube has some scripts that automatically mirror YouTube channels and I'll have plenty of hard-drive space.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#peertube-will-be-down-for-migration-today

Peertube migration is done! No obvious errors. Full video sync to happen soon!

Title says it all. videos.lukesmith.xyz was only offline for an hour or so before I managed to migrate everything over. If there are any errors in the meantime, feel free to tell me.

It looks like everyone's accounts have synced over and it still has all of its following instances. Great.

The next step is that I want to do a full sync with all my videos on YouTube including banned and privated ones. I'll be scripting that soon, so you might see literally hundreds of videos randomly being added to the instance in the next day or so.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#peertube-migration-is-done-no-obvious-errors-full-video-sync-to-happen-soon

Open call for LARBS users

I was thinking of adding to the LARBS website some screenshots, but I thought it would be really lame if I just pulled up some htop windows and took some screenshots myself.

For those of you who use LARBS, if you have changed it a little or a lot, if you see yourself doing something "interesting" looking that could look like a good advertisement, just hit PrintScreen and send it to me.

Anonymize/blur whatever you want private on your own.

If I post a small gallery of these on a page on the LARBS website, give me a screen name or real name if you want it to be identified with you (being anonymous is, of course fine).

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#open-call-for-larbs-users

Redesigning the website

I've been redesigning the website again, trying to simplify it. Before, I was going for a "personal introduction" with pictures on the mainpage, but now I'm going for something slimmer.

The biggest problem is always fitting all the links I have so that they aren't annoying! While I lack most social media sites, it's a pain having so many video archives and other things to link... I've decided to go with a classic dropdown menu (pure CSS, sorry JS-soydevs).

I do want to start writing up more guides and content on my website proper, and that might happen soon. We'll see.

I might be changing around the aesthetics of the site a little bit more, but I think it has the general look I want. I sort of need a new headshot. I have a sketch of my drawn by a friend on the mainpage now just because I'm getting tired of all my profile photos.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#redesigning-the-website

Recommended libre/open source crypto wallet?

First off, congrats to all you Stinky Linkies who've become millionaires on your internet Monopoly money in the past weeks! (I actually went ahead and added my Chainlink wallet to my donate page just because it might actually become a thing...)

What a retard I was for having a meme folder of Chainlink Pepes for months and it wasn't until it was nearly $9 that I bought! Sad! Even if the price gets bogged, I'll still make some good money, so I'll live with it.

Anyway, on a related note, unfortunately there are too many dirty normies who trade crypto who have no taste in software. I've never been happy with the crypto wallets/services I use. Most applications I've used are Bitcoin only.

So if anyone is semi-passionate about their wallet, I'm looking for a better one. The ideal credentials would be:

• Libre/open source.
• Can deal with a wide variety of cryptos and ETH tokens. The ones on my donate page are the ones I generally care about.
• Is heirarchical deterministic (i.e. one key (usually of words) can backup and restore the whole wallet with all currencies).
• As private as possible: no centralized sign-in or something silly.

Preferably also...

• Has some kind of exchange interface with sensible exchanges.
• Has some kind of price monitoring.
• Not written in a soydev language.

I've been using Coinomi, which became closed source a while back due to people freeloading their services and some other issues.

Of course, there is probably a way to generate a wallet on the command line and use it from there. Theoretically if I was going to look how to do that up on YouTube, I would look on my channel, but I do not know how, so if someone wants to red-pill me on an easy way to do without using some obvious program on the Linux command line, feel free to tell me.

Actually, open season on any crypto-tips: if anyone has based recommendations for how best to buy/sell/withdraw in a cost effective manner or anything else, feel free to share. It wasn't until the past year or so that I had any crypto holdings, so I'm sure that there's a lot I don't know, especially because most of the "resources" for crypto on the internet are literally paid shills or scammers.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#recommended-libreopen-source-crypto-wallet

Internet has been cucking me

I had actually been planning to release videos every day this week, but I've been having severe internet issues. The ISP in our town has been laying new wires as well and for whatever reason even the internet in town seems to be running slower. I've had the same video uploading since noon Thursday (lol).

I'm always looking for a more permanent internet solution, but it looks like I might have to postpone by videos a little bit until I can get everything uploaded.

This has been one inconvenience. When I lived in a larger town, I had 30 megs up and could wake up, come up with a video idea and record and have it uploaded before 10AM. For the last year, uploading videos is a full or multi-day affair.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#internet-has-been-cucking-me

Only Mediocre Minds Nitpick (new article)

I'm going to be writing some slightly more pictorial articles on my website with memes and such. I have a couple in the works and you can see the first here: Only Mediocre Minds Nitpick.

Yeah it's separate from my blog system. I'm going to mull over how to best do it all.

Either way, the message of that article is highly important! More to come!

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#only-mediocre-minds-nitpick-new-article

New documentaries and lectures on PeerTube

I've created a new channel on my PeerTube instance called "Documentaries" where I plan to put up talks, lectures and documentaries.

The goal is just to provide my choice of decent TL;DR talks for you NEETs who have some time on your hands and want at least something to consoooom. The standards on my PeerTube instance is a little higher than YouTube so less distracting noise...

• Channel link
• Channel RSS feed: https://videos.lukesmith.xyz/feeds/videos.xml?videoChannelId=982

I've already put up four talks:

• The Website Obesity Crisis
• Sugar: The Bitter Truth
• The Oiling of America
• The Truth about Mobile Phones and Wireless Radiation

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#new-documentaries-and-lectures-on-peertube

Hedonism, Asceticism and the Hermetic Answer

The modern world more or less gives you the philosophical choice of either Hedonism or Asceticism. You never really hear it in those terms, but that's how it is.

Hedonism living for pleasure. Your default lifestyle is eating whatever, watching Netflix and playing video games irrespective of how late it is. You watch porn, masturbate, have sex as much as you can and any consequences of any of this are just facts of life which you view as either out of your control or worth the suffering. You might not use drugs because you are worried of the hedonistic damage it can cause, but you're at least “chill” with people who do. At a basic level, modern society is hedonistic because it more or less openly holds as highest moral value what can stimulate people the most. You know this is the case because anyone who condemns hedonistic behavior will immediately be judged as “judgemental.”

Asceticism is supposed to be the “smart” alternative. Asceticism is rejecting pleasure, normal life and anything else enjoyable in the world as morally inferior to some higher non-physical ideal. Buddhism, which rejects the physical world, has become a popular meme philosophy in the West and is highly acetic. Vegans are acetic: they abandon basic life for their own principles and intense vegans will eventually start talking about "transcending" and "vibrations" and non-sense. Look at the anti-global warming movements and they fall perfectly, almost neurotically into this category. Asceticism come in many forms nowadays, but it is always a reaction to the indulgences of hedonism.

The Poetic Worldview

The Poetic Worldview is the solution. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with poetry.

The Greek word that poetry/poetic comes from actually is just a generic word for make, create, produce. The word "poetry" originally just meant something like "creative output."

This view is tied into early Platonism and monotheism. The physical universe is a creation or manifestation or "the One" or "the Source" or really [God]{.dfn}. God is the ultimate creator, and an individual is good insofar as [he reflects this creative tendency of God]{.dfn}. We see it expounded in the Hermetic Corpus:

“The other name of God is Father, again because He is the that-which-maketh-all. The part of father is to make.” To Asclepius (17), from the Hermetic Corpus

In the Poetic Worldview, the highest moral goal is creation. That can be:

• affecting the world,
• improving what is around you,
• having children,
• making money not to spend it on pleasures, but to make something new and great with it,
• writing or making something useful or edifying for others,
• clearing up misconceptions that get in other people's way in accomplishing these things.

From the Poetic worldview, hedonism is evil because it is expending otherwise creative energy into nothing of consequence. Racking up video-game achievements that no one will ever know or care of but you, watching pornography, pursuing fleeting relationships, impulsively wasting time browsing the internet and fiddling with social media.

This passive and impulsive pleasure-seeking reduces someone's ability to live as intended, instead, they are prisoners to their lusts and conveniences:

“But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational. For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires towards which [such souls] are borne,-[desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor ever are they satiate of ills. For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner.” About the Common Mind (4), from the Hermetic Corpus

Hedonism is additionally harmful because it isn't even hedonistic. It's clumsy and self-destructive. Spend your life from ages 16-23 playing videogames, masturbating and smoking weed and you have destroyed your capacity to enjoy life, sex and have normal interactions with normal people. Your capacity for enjoyment ends and you fall into asceticism as a cope.

Asceticism is just as evil because it sees this issue with the hedonistic lifestyle and tosses up its hands in surrender. It internalizes the lie that wasteful and sinful living is somehow obviously funner-when they see they aren't actually having fun, they throw the whole world away.

Most ascetics are liars anyway. They pretend to reject pleasure and worldly things, but they often just seek it in perverted or unconventional ways. There are men who call themselves MGTOW (Men going their own way) who "swear off" women. In reality, most of them are just desperate porn-addicted men who just can't get the girl they want.

Contrary to all of this, having a Poetic view proposes that the more moral and also most enjoyable life is one where one is constantly creating something new out of what he is given. In Hermetic thinking (and, well, Christian thinking) man must hold God as the idea to emulate. Since God's principle feat is creation from nothing, our goal is to celebrate that creation by making something new and productive from the raw materials we have.

Asceticism views the material world as a mistake or illusion which leads people to reject life itself. The Poetic view is that the physical world is a reflection of its spiritual state, and what you do in the physical world reflects your spiritual stature.

The Poetic view is somewhat similar to Nietzsche's Will to Power, which was an attempt to unite both human and material sciences under the idea that the ideal is maximizing one's output on the external world. Will to Power is a little more morally ambivalent though; it can include destruction, while Poeticism merely values creative power.

Distractions are literally evil.

This is why I highly condemn wasteful activities like videogames and pornography and social media. They are principally habits that divert your natural energies into something absolutely sterile. Many people ask me “What can I do to be more productive?” and I have to say that the most important thing is to remove inert distractions and habits.

Due to bureaucratic workplaces and bureaucratic education, there are many modern people who just don't know what it means to be productive. Most of their lives might be someone trying to fill their day with busywork. Since the normal enjoyable ritual of creative output is unknown to them, this causes a kind of aimlessness and the feelings of inferiority that comes with that.

But in truth, you live at an ideal period in that you can have a highly impactful and ergo poetic effect on the world using internet technology and the higher material standard of living. The only trick is to sidestep the distractions of hedonism that turns you into a passive consumer and the apathy of asceticism.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hedonism-asceticism-and-the-hermetic-answer/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hedonism-asceticism-and-the-hermetic-answer/

Hedonism, Asceticism and the Hermetic Answer

The modern world more or less gives you the philosophical choice of either Hedonism or Asceticism. You never really hear it in those terms, but that's how it is.

Hedonism living for pleasure. Your default lifestyle is eating whatever, watching Netflix and playing video games irrespective of how late it is. You watch porn, masturbate, have sex as much as you can and any consequences of any of this are just facts of life which you view as either out of your control or worth the suffering. You might not use drugs because you are worried of the hedonistic damage it can cause, but you're at least “chill” with people who do. At a basic level, modern society is hedonistic because it more or less openly holds as highest moral value what can stimulate people the most. You know this is the case because anyone who condemns hedonistic behavior will immediately be judged as “judgemental.”

Asceticism is supposed to be the “smart” alternative. Asceticism is rejecting pleasure, normal life and anything else enjoyable in the world as morally inferior to some higher non-physical ideal. Buddhism, which rejects the physical world, has become a popular meme philosophy in the West and is highly acetic. Vegans are acetic: they abandon basic life for their own principles and intense vegans will eventually start talking about "transcending" and "vibrations" and non-sense. Look at the anti-global warming movements and they fall perfectly, almost neurotically into this category. Asceticism come in many forms nowadays, but it is always a reaction to the indulgences of hedonism.

The Poetic Worldview

The Poetic Worldview is the solution. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with poetry.

The Greek word that poetry/poetic comes from actually is just a generic word for make, create, produce. The word "poetry" originally just meant something like "creative output."

This view is tied into early Platonism and monotheism. The physical universe is a creation or manifestation or "the One" or "the Source" or really [God]{.dfn}. God is the ultimate creator, and an individual is good insofar as [he reflects this creative tendency of God]{.dfn}. We see it expounded in the Hermetic Corpus:

“The other name of God is Father, again because He is the that-which-maketh-all. The part of father is to make.” To Asclepius (17), from the Hermetic Corpus

In the Poetic Worldview, the highest moral goal is creation. That can be:

• affecting the world,
• improving what is around you,
• having children,
• making money not to spend it on pleasures, but to make something new and great with it,
• writing or making something useful or edifying for others,
• clearing up misconceptions that get in other people's way in accomplishing these things.

From the Poetic worldview, hedonism is evil because it is expending otherwise creative energy into nothing of consequence. Racking up video-game achievements that no one will ever know or care of but you, watching pornography, pursuing fleeting relationships, impulsively wasting time browsing the internet and fiddling with social media.

This passive and impulsive pleasure-seeking reduces someone's ability to live as intended, instead, they are prisoners to their lusts and conveniences:

“But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational. For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires towards which [such souls] are borne,-[desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor ever are they satiate of ills. For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner.” About the Common Mind (4), from the Hermetic Corpus

Hedonism is additionally harmful because it isn't even hedonistic. It's clumsy and self-destructive. Spend your life from ages 16-23 playing videogames, masturbating and smoking weed and you have destroyed your capacity to enjoy life, sex and have normal interactions with normal people. Your capacity for enjoyment ends and you fall into asceticism as a cope.

Asceticism is just as evil because it sees this issue with the hedonistic lifestyle and tosses up its hands in surrender. It internalizes the lie that wasteful and sinful living is somehow obviously funner-when they see they aren't actually having fun, they throw the whole world away.

Most ascetics are liars anyway. They pretend to reject pleasure and worldly things, but they often just seek it in perverted or unconventional ways. There are men who call themselves MGTOW (Men going their own way) who "swear off" women. In reality, most of them are just desperate porn-addicted men who just can't get the girl they want.

Contrary to all of this, having a Poetic view proposes that the more moral and also most enjoyable life is one where one is constantly creating something new out of what he is given. In Hermetic thinking (and, well, Christian thinking) man must hold God as the idea to emulate. Since God's principle feat is creation from nothing, our goal is to celebrate that creation by making something new and productive from the raw materials we have.

Asceticism views the material world as a mistake or illusion which leads people to reject life itself. The Poetic view is that the physical world is a reflection of its spiritual state, and what you do in the physical world reflects your spiritual stature.

The Poetic view is somewhat similar to Nietzsche's Will to Power, which was an attempt to unite both human and material sciences under the idea that the ideal is maximizing one's output on the external world. Will to Power is a little more morally ambivalent though; it can include destruction, while Poeticism merely values creative power.

Distractions are literally evil.

This is why I highly condemn wasteful activities like videogames and pornography and social media. They are principally habits that divert your natural energies into something absolutely sterile. Many people ask me “What can I do to be more productive?” and I have to say that the most important thing is to remove inert distractions and habits.

Due to bureaucratic workplaces and bureaucratic education, there are many modern people who just don't know what it means to be productive. Most of their lives might be someone trying to fill their day with busywork. Since the normal enjoyable ritual of creative output is unknown to them, this causes a kind of aimlessness and the feelings of inferiority that comes with that.

But in truth, you live at an ideal period in that you can have a highly impactful and ergo poetic effect on the world using internet technology and the higher material standard of living. The only trick is to sidestep the distractions of hedonism that turns you into a passive consumer and the apathy of asceticism.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hedonism-asceticism-and-the-hermetic-answer/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hedonism-asceticism-and-the-hermetic-answer/

Hedonism, Aceticism and the Hermetic Answer

Hedonism, Asceticism and the Hermetic Answer

The modern world more or less gives you the philosophical choice of either hedonism or asceticism. You never really hear it in those terms, but that's how it is.

Hedonism living for pleasure. Your default lifestyle is eating whatever, watching Netflix and playing video games irrespective of how late it is. You watch porn, masturbate, have sex as much as you can and any consequences of any of this are just facts of life which you view as either out of your control or worth the suffering. You might not use drugs because you are worried of the hedonistic damage it can cause, but you're at least chill with people who do. At a basic level, modern society is hedonistic because it more or less openly holds as highest moral value what can stimulate people the most. You know this is the case because anyone who condemns hedonistic behavior will immediately be judged as judgemental.

Asceticism is supposed to be the smart alternative. Asceticism is rejecting pleasure, normal life and anything else enjoyable in the world as morally inferior to some higher non-physical ideal. Buddhism, which rejects the physical world, has become a popular meme philosophy in the West and is highly acetic. Vegans are acetic: they abandon basic life for their own principles and intense vegans will eventually start talking about "transcending" and "vibrations" and non-sense. Asceticism come in many forms nowadays, but it is always a reaction to the indulgences of hedonism.

The Poetic Worldview

The Poetic Worldview is the solution. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with poetry.

The Greek word that poetry/poetic comes from actually is just a generate word for make, create, produce. The word "poetry" originally just meant something like "creative output."

This view is tied into early Platonism and monotheism. The physical universe is a creation or manifestation or "the One" or "the Source" or really God. God is the ultimate creator, and an individual is good insofar as he reflects this creative tendency of God. We see it expounded in the Hermetic Corpus:

The other name of God is Father, again because He is the that-which-maketh-all. The part of father is to make. To Asclepius (17), from the Hermetic Corpus

In the Poetic Worldview, the highest moral goal is creation. That can be:

• affecting the world,
• improving what is around you,
• having children,
• making money not to spend it on pleasures, but to make something new and great with it,
• writing or making something useful or edifying for others,
• clearing up misconceptions that get in other people's way in accomplishing these things.

From the Poetic worldview, hedonism is evil because it is expending otherwise creative energy into nothing of consequence. Racking up video-game achievements that no one will ever know or care of but you, watching pornography, pursuing fleeting relationships, impulsively wasting time browsing the internet and fiddling with social media.

This passive and impulsive pleasure-seeking reduces someone's ability to live as intended, instead, they are prisoners to their lusts and conveniences:

But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational. For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires towards which [such souls] are borne,-[desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor ever are they satiate of ills. For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner. About the Common Mind (4), from the Hermetic Corpus

Hedonism is additionally harmful because it isn't even hedonistic. It's clumsy and self-destructive. Spend your life from ages 16-23 playing videogames, masturbating and smoking weed and you have destroyed your capacity to enjoy life, sex and have normal interactions with normal people. Your capacity for enjoyment ends and you fall into asceticism as a cope.

Asceticism is just as evil because it seeing this issue with the hedonistic lifestyle and tosses up its hands in surrender. It internalizes the lie that wasteful and sinful living is somehow obviously funner-when they see they aren't actually having fun, they throw the whole world away.

Most ascetics are liars anyway. They pretend to reject pleasure and worldly things, but they often just seek it in perverted or unconventional ways. There are men who call themselves MGTOW (Men going their own way) who "swear off" women. In reality, most of them are just desperate porn-addicted men who just can't get the girl they want.

Contrary to all of this, having a Poetic view proposes that the more moral and also most enjoyable life is one where one is constantly creating something new out of what he is given. In Hermetic thinking (and, well, Christian thinking) man must hold God as the idea to emulate. Since God's principle feat is creation from nothing, our goal is to celebrate that creation by making something new and productive from the raw materials we have.

Asceticism views the material world as a mistake or illusion which leads people to reject life itself. The Poetic view is that the physical world is a reflection its spiritual state, and what you do in the physical world reflects your spiritual stature.

The Poetic view is somewhat similar to Nietzsche's Will to Power, which was an attempt to unite both human and material sciences under the idea that the ideal is maximizing one's output on the external world. Will to Power is a little more morally ambivalent though; it can include destruction, while Poeticism merely values creative power.

Distractions are literally evil.

This is why I highly condemn wasteful activities like videogames and pornography and social media. They are principally habits that divert your natural energies into something absolutely sterile. Many people ask me What can I do to be more productive? and I have to say that the most important thing is to remove inert distractions and habits.

Due to bureaucratic workplaces and bureaucratic education, there are many modern people who just don't know what it means to be productive. Most of their lives might be someone trying to fill their day with busywork. Since the normal enjoyable ritual of creative output is unknown to them, this causes a kind of aimlessness and the feelings of inferiority that comes with that.

But in truth, you live at an ideal period in that you can have a highly impactful and ergo poetic effect on the world using internet technology and the higher material standard of living. The only trick is to sidestep the distractions of hedonism that turns you into a passive consumer and the apathy of asceticism.

https://lukesmith.xyz/poetic.html https://lukesmith.xyz/poetic.html

Hedonism, Aceticism and the Hermetic Answer

Hedonism, Asceticism and the Hermetic Answer

The modern world more or less gives you the philosophical choice of either hedonism or asceticism. You never really hear it in those terms, but that's how it is.

Hedonism living for pleasure. Your default lifestyle is eating whatever, watching Netflix and playing video games irrespective of how late it is. You watch porn, masturbate, have sex as much as you can and any consequences of any of this are just facts of life which you view as either out of your control or worth the suffering. You might not use drugs because you are worried of the hedonistic damage it can cause, but you're at least chill with people who do. At a basic level, modern society is hedonistic because it more or less openly holds as highest moral value what can stimulate people the most. You know this is the case because anyone who condemns hedonistic behavior will immediately be judged as judgemental.

Asceticism is supposed to be the smart alternative. Asceticism is rejecting pleasure, normal life and anything else enjoyable in the world as morally inferior to some higher non-physical ideal. Buddhism, which rejects the physical world, has become a popular meme philosophy in the West and is highly acetic. Vegans are acetic: they abandon basic life for their own principles and intense vegans will eventually start talking about "transcending" and "vibrations" and non-sense. Asceticism come in many forms nowadays, but it is always a reaction to the indulgences of hedonism.

The Poetic Worldview

The Poetic Worldview is the solution. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with poetry.

The Greek word that poetry/poetic comes from actually is just a generate word for make, create, produce. The word "poetry" originally just meant something like "creative output."

This view is tied into early Platonism and monotheism. The physical universe is a creation or manifestation or "the One" or "the Source" or really God. God is the ultimate creator, and an individual is good insofar as he reflects this creative tendency of God. We see it expounded in the Hermetic Corpus:

The other name of God is Father, again because He is the that-which-maketh-all. The part of father is to make. To Asclepius (17), from the Hermetic Corpus

In the Poetic Worldview, the highest moral goal is creation. That can be:

• affecting the world,
• improving what is around you,
• having children,
• making money not to spend it on pleasures, but to make something new and great with it,
• writing or making something useful or edifying for others,
• clearing up misconceptions that get in other people's way in accomplishing these things.

From the Poetic worldview, hedonism is evil because it is expending otherwise creative energy into nothing of consequence. Racking up video-game achievements that no one will ever know or care of but you, watching pornography, pursuing fleeting relationships, impulsively wasting time browsing the internet and fiddling with social media.

This passive and impulsive pleasure-seeking reduces someone's ability to live as intended, instead, they are prisoners to their lusts and conveniences:

But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational. For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires towards which [such souls] are borne,-[desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor ever are they satiate of ills. For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner. About the Common Mind (4), from the Hermetic Corpus

Hedonism is additionally harmful because it isn't even hedonistic. It's clumsy and self-destructive. Spend your life from ages 16-23 playing videogames, masturbating and smoking weed and you have destroyed your capacity to enjoy life, sex and have normal interactions with normal people. Your capacity for enjoyment ends and you fall into asceticism as a cope.

Asceticism is just as evil because it seeing this issue with the hedonistic lifestyle and tosses up its hands in surrender. It internalizes the lie that wasteful and sinful living is somehow obviously funner-when they see they aren't actually having fun, they throw the whole world away.

Most ascetics are liars anyway. They pretend to reject pleasure and worldly things, but they often just seek it in perverted or unconventional ways. There are men who call themselves MGTOW (Men going their own way) who "swear off" women. In reality, most of them are just desperate porn-addicted men who just can't get the girl they want.

Contrary to all of this, having a Poetic view proposes that the more moral and also most enjoyable life is one where one is constantly creating something new out of what he is given. In Hermetic thinking (and, well, Christian thinking) man must hold God as the idea to emulate. Since God's principle feat is creation from nothing, our goal is to celebrate that creation by making something new and productive from the raw materials we have.

Asceticism views the material world as a mistake or illusion which leads people to reject life itself. The Poetic view is that the physical world is a reflection its spiritual state, and what you do in the physical world reflects your spiritual stature.

The Poetic view is somewhat similar to Nietzsche's Will to Power, which was an attempt to unite both human and material sciences under the idea that the ideal is maximizing one's output on the external world. Will to Power is a little more morally ambivalent though; it can include destruction, while Poeticism merely values creative power.

Distractions are literally evil.

This is why I highly condemn wasteful activities like videogames and pornography and social media. They are principally habits that divert your natural energies into something absolutely sterile. Many people ask me What can I do to be more productive? and I have to say that the most important thing is to remove inert distractions and habits.

Due to bureaucratic workplaces and bureaucratic education, there are many modern people who just don't know what it means to be productive. Most of their lives might be someone trying to fill their day with busywork. Since the normal enjoyable ritual of creative output is unknown to them, this causes a kind of aimlessness and the feelings of inferiority that comes with that.

But in truth, you live at an ideal period in that you can have a highly impactful and ergo poetic effect on the world using internet technology and the higher material standard of living. The only trick is to sidestep the distractions of hedonism that turns you into a passive consumer and the apathy of asceticism.

https://lukesmith.xyz/poetic.html https://lukesmith.xyz/poetic.html

Working on something big. Possible momentarily LARBS downage.

You don't have to tell me that I haven't posted in a bit. I've been working on something big: a service/community for users that I might be making money off of too. It's been taking up some time, and I've had many things to do in real life recently hence my lack of videos.

I've been learning a lot, and have been nailing out some details, but hopefully I'll be publishing it all soon. One little, tiny side effect is that there might be a chance of the LARBS script and the site going offline for very short periods: just for maybe a minute at a time. This isn't a problem unless someone tries to download it right on the exact wrong time! Just telling you you don't need to be alarmed and tell me, I know.

Additionally, I've gotten some emails congratulating me on hitting 100,000 subscribers today or recently. That looks true. Maybe I'll mention it on the YouTube channel when I start putting up videos again.

I guess I always have to tell new viewers that it's a normal thing that I go without putting up a video for a month or so. They always go apoplectic. I do it multiple times a year, relax.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#working-on-something-big-possible-momentarily-larbs-downage

Making free money off Credit Cards

Making free money off Credit Cards

"The NEET will work harder than the wagie to stay out of a job."
-Nullennial (YouTube comment)

On this page, I tell you now I make an extra paycheck or so of free money a year just exploiting credit cards without any effort. It even looks good on your credit score too!

While I've done a video on this topic before (PeerTube, YouTube), some people asked me for more information, so here it is.

• The idea behind it
• Lists of cards to exploit
• Common questions
• General advise about credit cards

Aren't you glad to be an AMERICAN?

In America, people are so notoriously dumb with credit and money that credit card companies can literally give out free money by the hundreds to attract new customers. For brainlets who don't bother to understand the basics of credit and debt and the fact that you apparently have to pay back the money you spend, this is like a fly trap. For non-retarded people it is what it is: free money.

Exploiting introductory offers

Many credit cards have introductory offers like this: "If you spend $500 on this card in the first 3 months, you'll get a free credit of $200." That would be a cool offer in the first place, but since there are so many cards that have offers like this, a pattern emerges:

1. Open a card with an introductory offer, for example: "Get a $200 credit when you spend $500 in 3 months."
2. Use it for your normal daily life until you spend that $500.
3. Get/redeem/spend the credit/cashback/points on that card. Literally free money.
4. Disable the card and lock it away unless it has some other extremely good offer.
5. Rinse and repeat, this time with a new card and new offer.

Every year, I go through a couple cards like this, making a couple hundred or thousand dollars back. If you do the math, it can be like living with a permanent 20-25% off coupon that you use on literally everything.

Cards to churn

Here's a brief list of some cards whose introductory offers I've taken advantage of. This is just an example list, there are many more.

Note that the link to the Chase card (actually probably the most useful one) is an affiliate link. If you apply for the card at that link, I get a $100 credit. Nice. Unfortunately I can only get it 5 times a year, or else I could get filthy rich recommending credit cards on the internet. Either way, you can "donate" to me by free by clicking it, and you can get $200 yourself with the bonus.

That's it! That's all you need to know, to take advantage of this, but the rest of this page is just details that people ask about. Read on for more!

How credit card companies try to mitigate this

As I said, introductory offers exist primarily to get dim-witted people who don't know how credit works into using cards unwisely or at least normal people into switching to a different company. They know that high-agency people can exploit this system, so there are some rules they put in place to mitigate the extent to witch you can take advantage of their offers.

Chase, for example, will not approve anyone for a credit card who has gotten five other cards in the past two years. Wells Fargo will not allow you too open cards with introductory offers without a 18 month gap in between. Those are the main ones; other banks like Bank of America don't bother preventing it at all, but it's possible that they will start something like this soon.

Cautionary note for credit brainlets

I suppose it goes without saying that credit cards are not magical money devices and everyone who has a credit card should only spend what they have the account that autopays their card or even better, do what I do and never let my head hit the pillow before paying off all debts.

This might sound like a condescending thing to say, but obviously some people out there don't understand how credit cards work and are going into debt for no good reason. I know everyone who follows me is smart of course, but I say this rhetorically.

When I did a video on this I was surprised to learn that there are also people that resist and detest credit cards but still don't understand them. Some people have this strange idea that merely possessing a credit cards causes debt to occur in some cultic fashion outside of your control. And for people who can't know better, maybe it's better for them to think of credit cards as essentially magical objects if it means they aren't misusing them. For everyone else, credit cards are easy to use and exploit and benefit from.

Common questions about exploiting introductory offers

A lot of people hear this and think, "sounds too good to be true." Makes sense, but we live in a complex world which again is primarily targeted to the unwise. I've been doing this for years and have made back a lot of lot of money and even increased by credit score.

Let's talk about some of the concerns people new to credit card churning might have:

"But what about muh credit score?"

I'm not entirely sure why people think this, but there's this idea that somehow you're scamming or defrauding credit card companies by doing this. You aren't. You're just obeying their terms of service. You're certainly not neglecting payment or proving yourself a bad investment for a loan, which is what a credit score is actually about.

Opening new credit, including credit cards, will mean an inquiry on your account and for a time being, you'll be marked as "looking for credit." This will decrease your credit score by a small amount; it's normal. But over time, having lots of credit which you have paid off is good for your credit score. That, like, what a credit score is. Having more credit cards and properly paid off is a great plus on your account.

"B...but that's unethical!"

You gotta be an extreme simp to see these companies massively ripping off retards and nickel-and-diming people and say something stupid like, "I mean is this really ethical?" You're an idiot. You don't deserve free money. Why use your principles to defend people who obviously don't share them?

A lot of these companies even charge people to have checking accounts. Just in case you don't know how banks work, they make money loaning out their reserves. They are already making money off of every account. Charging you extra so they can make money off you is just more icing on the cake for them. There are many banks who are less shills who simply don't do this because it's totally unnecessary.

People who think this, do you go to the grocery store and chide people who get free samples as unethical? It quite literally is the same thing except for the store never makes money off people who just take samples. A bank whose offer you exploit still might make a lot of money loaning out money you put in a checking account there or even on the credit card transaction fees they charge merchants. And if they didn't, who cares?

"Do I need a checking account?"

If you get a bonus from a Chase card, do you need a Chase checking account to redeem your bonus or points? Usually not.

Every credit card company I've used allows you to set up automatic payments from another bank. So you shouldn't have to worry about paying your bills.

If you get an account credit, that will appear as a negative number on your card and you will be able to spend it without paying it off. If you get points, it might be that you need a checking account to redeem it as cash, but you can also usually redeem previous purchases or sometimes receive your bonus in the form of a bunch of gift cards.

This is an important question because some companies like Chase or Bank of America will charge you several dollars a month to have a checking account open, which I find utterly ridiculous. In both cases, you can waive the fee if you have either direct deposit into the account or if you just have a certain amount of money in the account (I think it's $1,500 in the case of Chase). It's no problem for me to transfer that amount from my savings into the account and let it sit there, but if you don't have the money, watch out.

The Bright Side of Checking Accounts

Since those companies charge for checking accounts, they also will put out incentives of free money for people who don't know how to waive them. I actually recently started an account at Chase and they were offering $200 free dollars if I set up direct deposit on a new checking account. Great, free money. Thanks suckers!

Just be wary of the terms. In Chase's case, you have to keep the account open for 6 months or they'll deduct $200 back, but again, if you're putting in the minimum account requirement and can keep it there for that time, you get that free vacation money.

Three important notes on Credit Cards

The psychology of spending

One aspect of human psychology is that people are more likely to be okay with spending or wasting money if they're using credit or debit cards rather than paper money. It makes sense. If you have to part with a physical object to spend something, it can hurt. It doesn't hurt as much to use a card.

I find that the antidote to this is actually in introductory offers. If I get a card that gives me a bonus for spending $500 in 3 months, I treat that $500 as my absolute budget no matter what. Bills included if possible.

Additionally, I started pasting sticky slips on the back of my cards where I keep track of the exact amount of money I use on each card so I know when I hit the required amount for the bonus. Each time I spend, I deduct that amount from the original number. This actually serves the double purpose of making the money-spending more real to me. I'm not just swiping my card, but subtracting the amount and can feel what I'm spending.

Don't use cards with annual fees.

Or at least if you do, be smart about it.

None of the cards I recommended above have any annual fees. So you can get them and not worry about canceling them. You can logically exploit the offers of cards with annual fees and cancel them afterwards to avoid paying the fee, but I don't do this myself.

Firstly, annual-fee cards are usually targeted to big spenders: their offers will be something more like "spend $4000 in the first 3 months and get $750." If you're making a big purchase, that might be worth it, but I personally am the kind of guy who feels guilty for spending too close to $300 a month. I would definitely contemplate one of these if you know you're going to spend some massive amount of money though. Don't forget to cancel it later!

The bigger issue with annual-fee cards because they are used primarily for social engineering and corporate sponsorships. That might sound strange, for example, but some cards which cost several hundred dollars a year might give you a big free annual credit on their favorite airlines or on Uber or Lyft or Amazon or some other godless corporation. That makes them work for people who are loyal consooomers of their chosen affiliates, but for most people, getting the benefits of those cards requires you to use the products they want.

I've seen some cards that give you bonuses for using them 30 times a month or something else. Sure you can juke the system, but I feel like the incentives they put forth are too strong and will probably manipulate you into spending more than you usually do. The reason I recommend the other cards I do is because you can easily spend that much if you're an independent person without feeling like you have to spend more.

Minimizing Privacy Exposure

Now if you're someone principally concerned with privacy, there are ways for you to take advantage of these kinds of offers without exposing your daily purchases. Obviously opening a credit card does require some basic information, like who you are and where you live (other things your bank already knows). But you can minimize your exposure by using the money on the card for a single recurring payment credit.

For example, let's say you pay an electric bill every month. Many power companies/co-ops allow you to prepay or accumulate a credit, so if you open a spend-$1,000-get-$250 card, you can immediately prepay $1,000, wait for your free $250, then prepay that amount as well.

In that, you've got your free $250 (and you can forget about paying bills for a year or so) and the only new thing the credit card company knows is your power supplier (which they could probably guess anyway from where you live). You could do the same with other recurring payments.

A lot of people I've talked to plan on using these offers to by over-the-table cryptocurrencies. That works too.

Additionally if you make a large purchase like a car that is going to have to be registered with "the system" anyway, it might be a good time to get one (or maybe more) of these cards.

The most important thing, however, is that you are the one ripping them off and never the reverse. Do not spend more or waste more because you feel richer because you have something that feels like a free money card.

"Daily drivers"

When not pumping-and-dumping a credit card for an introductory offer, there are also generally good cards that you can keep to maximize idle cash back. Obviously the true red-pill is using cash, but if you'd rather get bonuses from cards, here are some options I use with links:

• 5% on gas and purchases on military bases (unfortunately USAA is very exclusive (you must have family in the military), but great for members)
• 5% on groceries (only for first year, but there are multiple cards that do this can can be cycled (or get your wife to get it next year))
• 3% at supermarkets
• 3% at restaurants and on travel expenses

It should also go without saying that you should have fixed costs/bills set to charge credit cards just for the free cash back. I mean if you have $250 dollars in bills a month and hook them up to a mere 1.5% cashback card, that's $45 back a year. It adds up over the years.

Again:

"The NEET will work harder than the wagie to stay out of a job."

https://lukesmith.xyz/credit-cards.html https://lukesmith.xyz/credit-cards.html

Making free money off Credit Cards

Making free money off Credit Cards

"The NEET will work harder than the wagie to stay out of a job."
-Nullennial (YouTube comment)

On this page, I tell you now I make an extra paycheck or so of free money a year just exploiting credit cards without any effort. It even looks good on your credit score too!

While I've done a video on this topic before (PeerTube, YouTube), some people asked me for more information, so here it is.

• The idea behind it
• Lists of cards to exploit
• Common questions
• General advise about credit cards

Aren't you glad to be an AMERICAN?

In America, people are so notoriously dumb with credit and money that credit card companies can literally give out free money by the hundreds to attract new customers. For brainlets who don't bother to understand the basics of credit and debt and the fact that you apparently have to pay back the money you spend, this is like a fly trap. For non-retarded people it is what it is: free money.

Exploiting introductory offers

Many credit cards have introductory offers like this: "If you spend $500 on this card in the first 3 months, you'll get a free credit of $200." That would be a cool offer in the first place, but since there are so many cards that have offers like this, a pattern emerges:

1. Open a card with an introductory offer, for example: "Get a $200 credit when you spend $500 in 3 months."
2. Use it for your normal daily life until you spend that $500.
3. Get/redeem/spend the credit/cashback/points on that card. Literally free money.
4. Disable the card and lock it away unless it has some other extremely good offer.
5. Rinse and repeat, this time with a new card and new offer.

Every year, I go through a couple cards like this, making a couple hundred or thousand dollars back. If you do the math, it can be like living with a permanent 20-25% off coupon that you use on literally everything.

Cards to churn

Here's a brief list of some cards whose introductory offers I've taken advantage of. This is just an example list, there are many more.

Note that the link to the Chase card (actually probably the most useful one) is an affiliate link. If you apply for the card at that link, I get a $100 credit. Nice. Unfortunately I can only get it 5 times a year, or else I could get filthy rich recommending credit cards on the internet. Either way, you can "donate" to me by free by clicking it, and you can get $200 yourself with the bonus.

That's it! That's all you need to know, to take advantage of this, but the rest of this page is just details that people ask about. Read on for more!

How credit card companies try to mitigate this

As I said, introductory offers exist primarily to get dim-witted people who don't know how credit works into using cards unwisely or at least normal people into switching to a different company. They know that high-agency people can exploit this system, so there are some rules they put in place to mitigate the extent to witch you can take advantage of their offers.

Chase, for example, will not approve anyone for a credit card who has gotten five other cards in the past two years. Wells Fargo will not allow you too open cards with introductory offers without a 18 month gap in between. Those are the main ones; other banks like Bank of America don't bother preventing it at all, but it's possible that they will start something like this soon.

Cautionary note for credit brainlets

I suppose it goes without saying that credit cards are not magical money devices and everyone who has a credit card should only spend what they have the account that autopays their card or even better, do what I do and never let my head hit the pillow before paying off all debts.

This might sound like a condescending thing to say, but obviously some people out there don't understand how credit cards work and are going into debt for no good reason. I know everyone who follows me is smart of course, but I say this rhetorically.

When I did a video on this I was surprised to learn that there are also people that resist and detest credit cards but still don't understand them. Some people have this strange idea that merely possessing a credit cards causes debt to occur in some cultic fashion outside of your control. And for people who can't know better, maybe it's better for them to think of credit cards as essentially magical objects if it means they aren't misusing them. For everyone else, credit cards are easy to use and exploit and benefit from.

Common questions about exploiting introductory offers

A lot of people hear this and think, "sounds too good to be true." Makes sense, but we live in a complex world which again is primarily targeted to the unwise. I've been doing this for years and have made back a lot of lot of money and even increased by credit score.

Let's talk about some of the concerns people new to credit card churning might have:

"But what about muh credit score?"

I'm not entirely sure why people think this, but there's this idea that somehow you're scamming or defrauding credit card companies by doing this. You aren't. You're just obeying their terms of service. You're certainly not neglecting payment or proving yourself a bad investment for a loan, which is what a credit score is actually about.

Opening new credit, including credit cards, will mean an inquiry on your account and for a time being, you'll be marked as "looking for credit." This will decrease your credit score by a small amount; it's normal. But over time, having lots of credit which you have paid off is good for your credit score. That, like, what a credit score is. Having more credit cards and properly paid off is a great plus on your account.

"B...but that's unethical!"

You gotta be an extreme simp to see these companies massively ripping off retards and nickel-and-diming people and say something stupid like, "I mean is this really ethical?" You're an idiot. You don't deserve free money. Why use your principles to defend people who obviously don't share them?

A lot of these companies even charge people to have checking accounts. Just in case you don't know how banks work, they make money loaning out their reserves. They are already making money off of every account. Charging you extra so they can make money off you is just more icing on the cake for them. There are many banks who are less shills who simply don't do this because it's totally unnecessary.

People who think this, do you go to the grocery store and chide people who get free samples as unethical? It quite literally is the same thing except for the store never makes money off people who just take samples. A bank whose offer you exploit still might make a lot of money loaning out money you put in a checking account there or even on the credit card transaction fees they charge merchants. And if they didn't, who cares?

"Do I need a checking account?"

If you get a bonus from a Chase card, do you need a Chase checking account to redeem your bonus or points? Usually not.

Every credit card company I've used allows you to set up automatic payments from another bank. So you shouldn't have to worry about paying your bills.

If you get an account credit, that will appear as a negative number on your card and you will be able to spend it without paying it off. If you get points, it might be that you need a checking account to redeem it as cash, but you can also usually redeem previous purchases or sometimes receive your bonus in the form of a bunch of gift cards.

This is an important question because some companies like Chase or Bank of America will charge you several dollars a month to have a checking account open, which I find utterly ridiculous. In both cases, you can waive the fee if you have either direct deposit into the account or if you just have a certain amount of money in the account (I think it's $1,500 in the case of Chase). It's no problem for me to transfer that amount from my savings into the account and let it sit there, but if you don't have the money, watch out.

The Bright Side of Checking Accounts

Since those companies charge for checking accounts, they also will put out incentives of free money for people who don't know how to waive them. I actually recently started an account at Chase and they were offering $200 free dollars if I set up direct deposit on a new checking account. Great, free money. Thanks suckers!

Just be wary of the terms. In Chase's case, you have to keep the account open for 6 months or they'll deduct $200 back, but again, if you're putting in the minimum account requirement and can keep it there for that time, you get that free vacation money.

Three important notes on Credit Cards

The psychology of spending

One aspect of human psychology is that people are more likely to be okay with spending or wasting money if they're using credit or debit cards rather than paper money. It makes sense. If you have to part with a physical object to spend something, it can hurt. It doesn't hurt as much to use a card.

I find that the antidote to this is actually in introductory offers. If I get a card that gives me a bonus for spending $500 in 3 months, I treat that $500 as my absolute budget no matter what. Bills included if possible.

Additionally, I started pasting sticky slips on the back of my cards where I keep track of the exact amount of money I use on each card so I know when I hit the required amount for the bonus. Each time I spend, I deduct that amount from the original number. This actually serves the double purpose of making the money-spending more real to me. I'm not just swiping my card, but subtracting the amount and can feel what I'm spending.

Don't use cards with annual fees.

Or at least if you do, be smart about it.

None of the cards I recommended above have any annual fees. So you can get them and not worry about canceling them. You can logically exploit the offers of cards with annual fees and cancel them afterwards to avoid paying the fee, but I don't do this myself.

Firstly, annual-fee cards are usually targeted to big spenders: their offers will be something more like "spend $4000 in the first 3 months and get $750." If you're making a big purchase, that might be worth it, but I personally am the kind of guy who feels guilty for spending too close to $300 a month. I would definitely contemplate one of these if you know you're going to spend some massive amount of money though. Don't forget to cancel it later!

The bigger issue with annual-fee cards because they are used primarily for social engineering and corporate sponsorships. That might sound strange, for example, but some cards which cost several hundred dollars a year might give you a big free annual credit on their favorite airlines or on Uber or Lyft or Amazon or some other godless corporation. That makes them work for people who are loyal consooomers of their chosen affiliates, but for most people, getting the benefits of those cards requires you to use the products they want.

I've seen some cards that give you bonuses for using them 30 times a month or something else. Sure you can juke the system, but I feel like the incentives they put forth are too strong and will probably manipulate you into spending more than you usually do. The reason I recommend the other cards I do is because you can easily spend that much if you're an independent person without feeling like you have to spend more.

Minimizing Privacy Exposure

Now if you're someone principally concerned with privacy, there are ways for you to take advantage of these kinds of offers without exposing your daily purchases. Obviously opening a credit card does require some basic information, like who you are and where you live (other things your bank already knows). But you can minimize your exposure by using the money on the card for a single recurring payment credit.

For example, let's say you pay an electric bill every month. Many power companies/co-ops allow you to prepay or accumulate a credit, so if you open a spend-$1,000-get-$250 card, you can immediately prepay $1,000, wait for your free $250, then prepay that amount as well.

In that, you've got your free $250 (and you can forget about paying bills for a year or so) and the only new thing the credit card company knows is your power supplier (which they could probably guess anyway from where you live). You could do the same with other recurring payments.

A lot of people I've talked to plan on using these offers to by over-the-table cryptocurrencies. That works too.

Additionally if you make a large purchase like a car that is going to have to be registered with "the system" anyway, it might be a good time to get one (or maybe more) of these cards.

The most important thing, however, is that you are the one ripping them off and never the reverse. Do not spend more or waste more because you feel richer because you have something that feels like a free money card.

"Daily drivers"

When not pumping-and-dumping a credit card for an introductory offer, there are also generally good cards that you can keep to maximize idle cash back. Obviously the true red-pill is using cash, but if you'd rather get bonuses from cards, here are some options I use with links:

• 5% on gas and purchases on military bases (unfortunately USAA is very exclusive (you must have family in the military), but great for members)
• 5% on groceries (only for first year, but there are multiple cards that do this can can be cycled (or get your wife to get it next year))
• 3% at supermarkets
• 3% at restaurants and on travel expenses

It should also go without saying that you should have fixed costs/bills set to charge credit cards just for the free cash back. I mean if you have $250 dollars in bills a month and hook them up to a mere 1.5% cashback card, that's $45 back a year. It adds up over the years.

Again:

"The NEET will work harder than the wagie to stay out of a job."

https://lukesmith.xyz/credit-cards.html https://lukesmith.xyz/credit-cards.html

mutt-wizard is better now

Over the past few days I've made some changes to mutt-wizard. I was always fearing feature bloat, and it was getting to the point that to install a single email address, you had to it through like 5 or 6 questions asking if you wanted to limit the number of offline emails you wanted to keep or if you had a Protonmail account, etc.

I've now released a version that uses command-line options. You can manually specify options, or if mutt-wizard cannot determine them, only then will you be prompted for them.

In the simplest case, to add an email, just run: mw -a luke@lukesmith.xyz and that's it. If you use my emailwiz to setup your own email server, that system uses a system login, so you'll have to specify your user login with -u as well: mw -a luke@lukesmith.xyz -u luke but that's it.

Check the manual for more. For example, instead of an annoying prompt asking if you use Protonmail, Protonmail users are now just expected to add -p when they run the command. Use -m to set a maximum number of messages. Use -o to have only an online account without storing mail offline or use -f to force adding an account and guess mailboxes without attempting an initial connection. Set or override server details with one of -iIsS.

Expect more improvements too. I've been putting of some changes just because I had intended to do this for a while. I cannot guaranee that mutt-wizard 3.0.0 is backwards-compatible with mutt-wizard before. If you add new accounts, it will not break anything, but the sync commands and the delete commands work a little different, so you might want to backup and remove your current settings and re-add all your accounts in the new system. The big backend change (for those who know the script) is that I got rid of the $title variable, which is a name you give the account and that its profiles are stored as. Now, it's just stored by its real email address for simplicity's sake so users don't have to be prompted for another variable.

I might add the ability to specify passwords on the command-line as well so you can run the script without any human interaction as well. Might be soon when I get the chance. Find and report any errors to me or documentation I missed. None of the user-interface of mutt will have changed at all.

https://lukesmith.xyz/2020.html#muttwizard-is-better-now

Advice on Some Other Languages

This page is just for minor pointers on lesser studied languages that I don't have enough to have on their own pages.

Gothic

Gothic is a dead language and the only thing existing in it is a partially translated New Testament by Wulfila. It still is a very important language for the study of Germanic and Indo-Europeanism because it is the only language of "Eastern Germanic" so well attested. Eastern Germanic languages are distinct from other Germanic languages in their lack of umlaut and some other characteristically Germanic features, while Gothic still retains some earlier Indo-European inflectional categories.

I mention Gothic only because one of the best ever language learning books I've ever seen is written for it, and that is Thomas Lambdin's Introduction to the Gothic Language. I actually took a Gothic class flippantly in graduate school, but the book stuck out to me as being perfectly designed for the typical target audience of Gothic in historical linguistics.

The book has very well designed lessons and activities, but I think greatest is that in the back of the book, for each chapter there is a corresponding lesson on the historical grammar of the content learned. It goes through what conjugates of each word exist in English, Latin, Greek or Sanskrit or other Indo-European languages and provided comparative paradigms of noun and verb inflections. No word or concept is left without a real mneumonic device, not a fake one fake from some joke about the word, but one tied into the actual historical facts of the word.

I've said before that one of the reasons I never use things like Anki and "spaced repetition software" is that the real way to retain information is to understand how it fits within a wider web of information. In historical linguistics, you have an ideal of this because the more you learn, the easier it is to "remember:" remembering that the Gothic word for "field" is akrs is incredibly simple when you realize it's the same as Latin ager, Greek agrós, Sanskrit ájra and English acre.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is the crown jewel of Indo-European languages and there are very few resources for it. Luckily, there is Devavanipravesika by Goldman and Sutherland, which again is a star in terms of language books.

I do recommend you have some of these abilities before attempting Sanskrit:

1. Some grammatical knowledge of a classical inflected Indo-European language like Latin or Greek.
2. Knowledge of the Devanagari script which is used for Sanskrit nowadays (also the script of Hindi and many other modern Indian languages).

Sandhi

In English, if you say the sentence "What are you up to?" it usually comes out closer to "Whatchu up to?" This kind of phonological compression is a natural and systematic process in all languages. What is interesting is that when written language was younger, it was very common to express these phonological changes in the writing system itself. It looks slangish in modern English to write "whatchu," but it is more accurate after all.

Sanskrit overtly writes every alternation like this, including when words seem to combine together into a single prosodic word. The term for this is [Sandhi]{.dfn}.

The tricky thing that newbies to Sanskrit must understand is that knowing the principles of Sandhi are the first priority in knowing Sanskrit because it's impossible to even parse a basic sentence before you understand it. Phonemically, many Sanskrit words end in an -s, but one of the first rules of Sandhi is that words are not allowed to end in -s in most cases. So -s might show up as -h or -o or something else depending on the phonetic context.

I say this because before you get excited about diving into Sanskrit, you have to make sure you know the basics of Sandhi or it will all be a mess.

Classical/Koiné Greek

Greek, much like Spanish, I never really sat down to learn. Greek is close enough in form to Latin that I learned it from reading a biglottic Bible in both languages. Its grammar presents very few concepts alien to Latin, the only big hurdles probably being the novel uses of the article and if you want to learn classical Greek like a pro, the pitch accent system.

What I mean is that I only read very little of Greek grammar before I could pick up my Latin-Greek Bible and start reading the Greek with the aid of the parallel Latin. This was also a nice experience because you can see the similaries between the two languages, but also how the expressiveness of Greek is sometimes lost in translation.

Greek, for example, has such a complete and elegant paradigm of participles that many of them are unstranlatable in Latin. Latin has only passive perfect participles and active present participles, while Greek has participles for the whole spectrum of voice, tense and aspect. What that means is that Latin has to talk around some common Greek expressions, often utilizing Latin deponents (which can have perfect active participle) to get the meaning across.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/other-langs/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/other-langs/

Command Line Bibles

I've made a couple very useful command-line accessible Bibles for a quick and scriptable lookup of Bible verses and passages. They exist not only in English, but for Latin and Greek as well.

1. English King James Version (including Apocrypha) - Github, Gitlab
2. Latin Vulgate - Github, Gitlab
3. Greek Septuagint & New Testament - Github, Gitlab

Installation

Or just replace kjv with vul for the Latin version or grb for the Greek.

Usage

Single run

Run the program name followed by a passage. The text will appear to you in your pager. Arrows or vim-keys to scroll, q to quit.

Note that you may also give whole books or chapters. kjv genesis will give you all of Genesis. kjv mat 1:1-10 will show only Matthew 1:1-10. Note also that you can usually abbreviate books.

Searching

/ searches for patterns. For example, kjv /offering will search the whole Bible for the word "offering." You may specify a book/location before it to search only that book.

Interactive mode

Just type kjv (or vul or grb) alone to enter interactive mode. You can then just type verses/books without prefixing them with the command name each time if you prefer.

Origin

I forked the original software from this repository which is an incomplete English King James Version (without the Apocrypha). With the use of coreutils and vim, I found online texts of the Apochrypha, Vulgate, Septuagint and the SBL New Testament and formatting them to function with this program.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/command-line-bibles/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/command-line-bibles/

Hating Brave is Cool!

I like and use the Brave Browser. It's a free and open source browser with features like:

1. Ad-blocking by default.
2. Tracker-blocking by default.
3. Anti-fingerprinting mechanisms to prevent you from being monitored.
4. Built-in Tor windows.
5. Run by a based Christian and not furry leftists.

As far as I'm concerned, Brave is indisputably the best out-of-the-box general-purpose browser out there. There are other okay browsers, and I'll mention things about Brave I don't like, but Brave is especially good because it comes with all of these sensible features out of the box (you don't have to go install an ad-blocker), so this makes it very good for installing it on your grandma's computer. The anti-fingerprinting abilities are even unique among power-user browsers.

Despite that, there is a loud clique of anti-Brave agitators and Brave skeptics. Whenever I do a video on Brave, I can expect at least 20% dislikes and a torrent of comments from people with anime avatars calling me a "shill" for “recommending” this browser.

This, I suspect, is because Brave has an optional extra feature: Brave Rewards, which is "too good to be true."

Brave Rewards

By default, Brave blocks all ads, but users can turn on "Brave Rewards" to voluntarily view occasional ads and will receive a small amount of Basic Attention Token (BAT), Brave's cryptocurrency. The ads don't mess up webpages by appearing in them, but appear in their computer's notification system.

Brave's entire motivation is to replace traditional ads that fill up webpages with these kind of ads that share revenue directly with the web page owners and the people browsing the sites themselves. Ad companies disappear, the internet debloats and users and actual sites get a direct cut.

This ad feature is not just optional, but is disabled by default.

The Archetypical Brainlet Brave Skeptic

“The fact that brave has exploded on the scene so quickly make me suspicious. There's money involved somewhere.” -Comment on a YouTube video of mine

Yes. Because Brave users literally get money to browse with it. Duh.

So there is no conspiracy theory about this. Brave just does everything right as a browser and they give you free money. In the Basic Attention Token system, companies buy ads and the revenue is shared directly by the owners of sites and the people who view the ads. This cuts out the middleman ad-companies from the internet. It removes and disincentivizes bloat in webpages. This is a drastically more effective and bloatfree way to monetize the internet than old-school ads. Or, you can just keep the default functionality where there are no ads.

I literally have people post on my videos constantly about how Brave is a big scheme and "you'll never see a cent of that money." Meanwhile, literally every Brave user, including me, gets a monthly payout. You can even receive your payout directly in US dollars if you want! Even if the Basic Attention Token framework totally flops, it's not like you're putting any money into it. The worst that can happen is you saying, "Oh no, all I have left is the browser with the best out-of-the-box functionality!"

It reminds me of the joke of two economists walking down the street. One says, "Hey look, there's a $100 bill on the sidewalk!" The other one replies, "That's not possible, if there were, someone would've picked it up already."

The anti-Brave crowd's argument is always some form of "it's too good to be true." In reality, you don't realize how inefficient and wasteful the previous way of internet ads was. Why pay an ad agency with employees to pay website developers to put ads into the actual code of websites, contorting it all into a mess? The BAT system and Brave just cuts out the middle man and keeps webpages clean by allowing ads to only be shown when wanted in the user's already existing notification system. The goal of the BAT project is to universalize Brave and perhaps similar browsers which block ads and trackers by default, thus cutting off the very lifeblood of that inefficient and anti-social system.

If you still don't trust the BAT project or think it's gimmicky, great. By default, the "Brave Rewards" system is off. Complaining about Brave because it has an optional feature to make money is like complaining about another browser because it has an add-on you don't plan on using.

Tactical Ignorance

“I use to love brave. NOT anymore.. I'm sure that they are fingerprinting and using my browsing habits and even search queries and shows relevant ads. It is not like they are showing some random pop up for ads. I get ads for NordVPN if I search for best vpn 2020. I instantly get pop up for lenovo laptops as soon as I search for laptop. Obviously, with all the utm source and other tracking stuff. I am making around 15 BAT/month. I don't need those pennies. Back to Firefox with Ublock Origin and Privacy Badger.” -Comment on a YouTube video of mine

This guy is literally talking as if how Brave works is some kind of mystery, as if its entire code base isn't openly auditable. No, Brave doesn't take or "fingerprint" your browsing habits, instead, if you are enrolled in Brave Rewards, you browser pulls the entire list of adds from the system, then locally decides on your own computer what ads to serve.

On Brave's FAQ:

“Only the browser, after HTTPS terminates and secure pages are decrypted, has all of your private data needed to analyze user intent. Our auditable open source browser code protects this intent data on the client device. Our server side has no access to this data in the clear, nor does it have decryption keys. We do not run a MitM proxy or VPN service. We provide signals to the browser to help it make good decisions about what preferences and intent signals to expose to maximize user, publisher and advertiser value. Each ad request is anonymous, and exposes only a small subset of the user’s preferences and intent signals to prevent “fingerprinting” the user by a possibly unique set of tags.”

Is Brave bad for privacy?

A popularly linked Neocities site Spyware Watchdog ranks Brave as having a rank of "High" spyware. The information on the site is generally good, but a little context-less: if you compare their Brave article to their articles on other browsers, this bad ranking for Brave is utterly out of place.

Many people who read things and lack basic critical thinking skills wanted me to either admit or refute this page. Again, the website's information is good, but there is that same implicitly more skeptical standard held to Brave than other browsers.

As a point of comparison, take the browser Pale Moon. On their site, the Spyware Watchdog classifies Pale Moon as being "Top Tier" in privacy, while Brave is "Low Tier." But if you look at their own analysis, on nearly every point, Brave is superior to Pale Moon.

On pretty much all of these points, when Brave is lacking, Pale Moon is much worse (that isn't to say that Pale Moon is a bad browser either). So it doesn't really make sense to me why Brave, which also comes with additional privacy features like fingerprint-blocking, should be classified as lower than Pale Meme. That site also claims that Brave uses the Google search engine as default. If that was ever true, it isn't now, or at least not on any version of Brave I've used. Brave asks the user on the first start up which search engine he would like to use as default. Google is among the choices though.

Note that in their articles they admit that Pale Moon has "auto-updates," but complain that Brave has "shitty auto-updates." Okay. I wonder what the difference is aside from personal emotion. In the last paragraph or so, they do mention, if not skirt around all the actual features of Brave:

“and the fingerprinting protection I don't think is found in any other browser (but I didn't confirm if it actually works).”

It does (of course it's an arms-race). But this is an acknowledgment that Brave is fighting on a level that no other browser is. While other honorable browsers like Ice Cat are committed to free software, Brave is also committed to an internet free from ads enmeshed in web pages and the people who simp for them.

Brave for normies

Aside from nit-picking different browsers, if you want to install a browser on a computer for a normie relative or friend, there is no debate that Brave is the best. Again, Brave is built with ad and tracker blocking. Browsers like Pale Moon or Firefox are bad browsers that can become okay browsers after you manually disable their junk features and download a bunch of add-ons, but Brave comes as it should be. Even Brave's token feature of viewing ads to get paid is not on by default. As it ships, Brave is just a good browser.

This is why I have Brave ship with LARBS: it's a pain to hosts a repository and edit browser settings via dotfiles, while I can just have Brave installed and that gives a passable, ad-free experience for users.

So if you want to make a normie's life easier, install Brave. They will be able to do everything they could do on Chrome, but now they have decreased their Google liability and no longer have to put up with ads.

Grasping at Straws...

Chromium based

When you corner an anti-Brave aggitant, they usually mumble something about how Brave is bad because it's "Chromium-based." I've never seen people use this argument about, say, qutebrowser or other minor Chromium-based browsers, but I think it's just become "that reason" for Brave. I honestly, really can't get worked up against a free and open source software project just because it's been spearheaded by Google. The ability to fork it always remains if the code goes south or if it does degenerate stuff.

I think it's especially absurd to place your trust in Mozilla FurryFox and their team of stereotypical SJWs and soydevs as a functioning alternative. Remember Mozilla spends its money developing fun add-ons like this to "protect" people emotionally from scary "conspiracy theories" and "alt-right content" on YouTube. I consider Google just as insane and dangerous, but not necessarily so much more insane so that I for some reason trust the judgment of Mozilla developers over Google ones.

EDIT: Here's another one from Mozilla FurryFox: "We need more than deplatforming" Moreso than Google, Mozilla's openly stated goal is an internet totally controlled by stereotypical dyed-hair SJWs with bad physiognomy.

What I mean by this is, sure, I'd like some browser with an independent engine. Pale Moon does sort of has that. That's cool. But that is not enough to make a difference for actual usage. Again, look at the list of benefits of Brave at the top of this article, all of those are hard to replicate or find in other browsers. I could go into it elsewhere, but there are a million little reasons why I don't use Pale Moon (but you might like it).

Affiliate links

Twitter users/Redditors went apoplectic several months ago when they realized Brave had included affiliate links to some sites whose names are filled in in the url bar. I have already written on this. It's literally nothing. As I say there, this is what affiliate links are for. I've never heard the same crowd through a fit that DuckDuckGo does exactly the same thing. You could even actually see the Brave affiliate links fill in, which is not the case when clicking on a DuckDuckGo affiliate site link. Still took these guys months to even notice... This is only something "controversial" to people who are trying their damnedest to find something to not like about Brave.

Actual good complaints about Brave and BAT

Since most visceral anti-Brave agitators just have a kind of general ax to grind, I want to take this time to voice my actually annoyances with Brave and the BAT project. I consider all of these ultimata: I only use Brave with the expectation that these issues will be fixed in the future.

Get rid of Uphold!

Actually, let me say that in <h1>...

Get rid of Uphold!

So you can get BAT from viewing ads, and people with websites and YouTube channels can receive donations, great. The annoying thing however is that you can't just get payouts to a random Ethereum wallet, instead, you have to use the company Uphold. This is probably because of legal issues and because I'm sure they have some financial arrangement, but the BAT project cannot be considered to be a universal and private solution if users are funneled into some site that requires a real-world identity.

Legally or technologically difficult to do otherwise? Maybe. But that is one of the goals of cryptocurrencies anyway and it should be met. Build the technology so that it's impossible to legally constrain. Most blockchain technology is already like that.

Users should just be able to give a public Ethereum/Token address and receive BAT there. That should be it. If you want to offer a normie-friendly partner service like Uphold, fine, but that should not be either the default or required. Uphold, I should say, is definitely not normie-friendly anyway. Since they did a redesign late September/early Ocotober, I admit I literally cannot figure the site out and how to transfer my BAT out efficiently.

I should say, in development Brave has had some suboptimal or non-private features in the past before better solutions were devised. I mentioned the fact that Brave pulls a non-personalized ad list, but that wasn't always the case to my understanding: when Brave was starting out, the browser did request specific ads, giving the central service some information about user browsing habits. So that at least indicates that Brave is open to reevaluating methods that are exploitable.

BAT as a 💩coin

Let me state it again though, if the BAT system requires Uphold for basic functionality, it is not a serious long-term service. That's it. I only use and recommend the BAT system under the expectation that this is a temporary situation that they are actively seeking to remedy. If anti-Brave shills want to shill about something that actually matters, this should be it!

Like most 💩coins, BAT is not decentralized in any meaningful sense. It’s KYCed into oblivion and relies on a significant number of platforms in bottleneck positions, including in particular the BAT Project itself. I wouldn’t say I even support the BAT Project itself for this reason, I just don’t mind using Brave since you can dip your fingers into it without getting KYCed.

Auto-updates and integrations

I agree strongly with the argument from the Spyware Watchdog site above that Brave should not make any unsolicited requests to sites, especially auto-updates, and if it has a reason to, it should have some menu option to disable it. Any connections a browser makes in the background for these purposes or for analytics should be disabled by default too.

The Browser should be neutral and decentralized.

Somewhat related to the above, if Brave is actually serious about becoming the commonly used system not just for browsing, but for internet monetization, it has to be as neutral and decentralized as possible. Brave has added a lot of optional features for different services and other little annoyances. Obviously, you can immediately disable them, but if you want to have a personalizable and universal browsing experience, Brave should be absolutely blank when you pull it up on a fresh install.

General little features

• The ability to not keep track of history but to still keep cookies. All Chromium browsers lack this menu feature which exists in Firefox. I'm not sure why this isn't an option because it has always seemed to me the most sensible way to browse. I don't want sites I've already seen filling in my url bar!

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hating-brave-is-cool/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hating-brave-is-cool/

Learn Chinese

Chinese is the hardest language to learn according to normies who have never tried to learn it.

In reality, Chinese is really easy. It has literally no complex morphology: no tense, plurals, gender. It doesn't have irregular verbs or nouns because it has no verb and noun endings whatsoever. It's almost difficult to explain how easy Chinese is.

The only different thing is the writing system which is I hesitate to say anachronistic. The Chinese character system is more structurally similar to Sumerian cuneiform than to English morphophonemic writing. That presents a unique hurdle, but one if properly tackled is not too difficult and also edifying. It's important to realize in any case that learning a language and learning its writing system are two separate things.

Knowing this is important for mastering or even beginning Chinese.

These are the best Chinese Books

The Yale series by John DeFrancis is not just the absolute best for learning Chinese, but they are an eternal exemplar of basically the best you can do for any language. The books all have generic names and they're linked below with audio. The books are massive. Even if you just get "Beginning Chinese" and "Beginning Chinese Reader, Part 1," you'll know around 4 semesters worth of Chinese compared to your average university course. They have free audio too. Remember that if you get nervous about their price tags, which might be as high as $50. These books are severely worth it though.

There are actually two parallel book series in the DeFrancis/Yale series: the green books, which cover the spoken language (in Romanization) and the red books (the readers) that cover characters. It might sound strange to cover the language itself and the characters separately, but it is massively superior.

The Green Books (for the language)

The great thing about the main series is that they come with many, many exercises and drills which are actually good for individual use. Books that expect you to read something once and internalize it are irreparable.

Links are to the official Yale site. Probably better to buy on eBay or something though. Worth the money even when they are expensive.

• Beginning Chinese (audio)
• Intermediate Chinese (audio)
• Advanced Chinese (audio)

You can get .pdfs of all these books on Library Genesis. I have physical copies, except some an ex-girlfriend borrowed and never gave back. If you read this, you better send them back!

Note that I've also linked audio that was recorded for these books, which is great. They used to cost a lot too, but now they're free!

The Red Books (for characters)

The reason the language in transliteration and the characters are in two books is because learning them is really two different processes. The green books are more typical language learning books. The red books/readers are different.

Every chapter, they teach you 10 characters, but with those 10 characters, you might learn to combine them into 50 new words based on them. The pacing here is for only learning the essential and most used characters as simply as possible as you advance. The readers do not explain grammar and expect you to be advancing in the green books to understand grammatical things.

• Beginning Chinese Reader, Part 1 (audio for parts 1 and 2)
• Beginning Chinese Reader, Part 2
• Intermediate Chinese Reader, Part 1 (audio for parts 1 and 2)
• Intermediate Chinese Reader, Part 2
• Advanced Chinese Reader (audio)

The Blue Books?

I won't link them because they sort of the defeat the point, and I don't have them, but there is also a blue series which is just the green series but with the language in characters. I think it's intended more for classes that can't do the DeFrancis method due to bureaucratic constraints. If it has the exercises of the green books, that's good and all, but really the value of the system is the fact that when you do the spoken language in the green books, you don't have to worry about unknown characters and when you do the characters in the red book, that's all you need to pay attention to.

I'm not dismissing the blue books, because the quality of the Yale/DeFrancis series is still light-years ahead of all other series, but I'd stick with the classics here.

Notes about Chinese

The tone cope

I remember having normalfriends in my Chinese class (which was a waste of time, just get the DeFrancis books) who would say that Chinese wasn't too hard "except for the tones." Mandarin Chinese has four tones that distinguish words. If you've sat through your first day in Chinese class or even seen a YouTube video on Chinese, you know this.

Normies see this alien concept of having tones and they turn their brains off. There were kids in my class who said they'd "just not learn" the tones. Which is sort of like saying you're going to learn English, but not the vowels "because they're too hard."

Actually around half of the world's languages have tones. They are not bizarre or highly "marked" in an objective sense. They are much more common that the "th" sound in English. You can bear it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-chinese/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-chinese/

Learn Latin

Latin was the first language I learned and has probably been the most useful. Here I'll talk about some of the things it's gotten me and some recommendations for how to learn it well.

What I've gotten out of learning Latin

You get multiple languages for one.

Latin, as you probably know is the ancestor of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc. Once you know Latin, it is quite literally downhill learning any of these. In college, I decided to take Spanish for a degree specialization (I was doing an international business thing and required a foreign language). Merely based on my knowledge of Latin, I just tested into fifth-level Spanish and figured it out from there. I don't even remember learning Spanish, but I can speak it and still do every once in a while.

In grad school I took classes taught in Spanish and French. I can basically read all Romance languages. I even read Rhaeto-Romance poetry for fun (the languages of Switzerland). All of this is nearly free stuff when you learn Latin.

Latin will unironically red-pill you on many subjects.

Looking to other cultures in the world might change your view of things in some superficial way, but looking into the past will revolutionize how you see it. A recurring point I make in many contexts is that the past is literally an alien civilization. Most of what people pretend they know about it is repeatedly cited modern rumors about it. Seeing it in its own words is very different.

It's insane the amount of writing done in Latin in the medieval period and antiquity, so much of which isn't even on the mind of translators. A lot of historians just cite modern historians. Theologians cite modern theologians. Scientists cite modern scientists. Once you crack open a traditional book on any of these subjects you realize the provinciality and oblviousness of modern "frameworks."

In generative linguistics, people who have never read anything written before 1950 pat themselves on the back for all the "problems" they've solved not knowing they are only retreading paths long established by Stoics, Modistae and early Indo-Europeanists. There are a lot of theologians and philosophers who are trapped in modern citation circles because they don't have the power of Latin that can bring them in touch directly with Aquinas or Augustine or other philosophers of the early periods.

Knowing Latin is like an academic superpower and supposed intellectuals will fear you. Latin used to be the bare minimum of a respectable intellectual... actually... you know what, it still is. Now is your chance to have an actual one up over more pompous people whose only function is writing lit reviews with a disability to read original sources. Being privy to an original and long-neglected source will be a continuous content mill which will unironically be the envy of others in academia.

Knowing Latin is better academically than an undergraduate degree in linguistics.

The process of learning Latin and the lore around you will equip you with all the terminology and principles to make you superior to someone who just studies "linguistics" without any actual application. I really mean this. When I was a grad student in linguistics, all the brightest undergrads had one thing in common: Latin. I actually came to judge people based on how they first got interested in linguistics. The smartest ones always started with Latin, the biggest plebs always started because they liked some Steven Pinker book (sorry Pinkucks! Those are the honest facts!)

How to Learn Latin

What I used

When I learned Latin, all I had was a copy of this book: Collar & Daniell's Beginner's Latin Book. The truth is that most old Latin books are good (old being at least 70 to 100 years old). After language learning became commercialized, it all became dismissable. You can see a list of downloadable Latin textbooks and other materials here here.

The only other source I used in the past to learn and read Latin in a biglottic Latin/Greek New Testament (i.e. Greek on the left and Latin on the right). This is probably actually the single most significant book I own, now that I think about it. I learned Greek from it too and I've had it for around 15 years now.

Lingua Latina per se Illustrata

Although I didn't know about until later, there is another very unique and excellently made Latin series called Lingua Latina per se Illustrata "The Latin Language Illustrated by Itself" by Hans Orberg. You can see an English publisher here, but you can also find them on eBay or pdfs on Library Genesis or Pirate Bay (along with audio for the books).

LLPSI is unique and really stands out. The entire book, including explanations is in Latin. Latin words and grammatical concepts are explained by illustration and example. This sounds absurd frankly: how are you supposed to learn a language from a book written in that language? But the design is so perfect that it works.

I recommend to get LLPSI and some classical grammar primer like Collar & Daniell's because I think especially for newbs, it might be necessary to have explicit instruction about grammar points in English.

Read this

Read this article: "Latin by the Dowling Method." It's back from the early internet and its recommendations have stood the test of time and I agree with them.

Latin links

You may've known about these already, but they're worth noting.

• The Latin Library – Massive collection of classical and medieval Latin works
• Textkit – Greek and Latin resources and forum

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-latin/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-latin/

Learning European Languages (Michel Thomas)

I've said on a couple livestreams that the ideal way for an English speaker to begin learning or excel in learning other major European languages (Spanish, French, Italian and German) is to use Michel Thomas's audiotapes. They can be found for free on Pirate Bay and other sites, but you can also buy them on his official site.

This style of audiotapes is so far above any other, it's hard to even put it in words. They make really exceptional promises: "learn a language in 8 hours" and in some sense I'm inclined to agree.

They certainly give a reflexive foundation that makes learning anything else about a language very easy. There are multiple courses and they're worth listening to multiple times until it's a totally internalized.

Explanation of the Method

The tapes all have Thomas locked in a room with two people who don't know the language, one male, one female. Thomas simply teaches and illicit basic responses from the two students, teaching them as they go. As the listener, your part is to say the proper responses to yourself before the example students. At all points in time, the students are creating novel sentences, combining basic concepts.

Lack of vocabulary

Probably the most important part of the tapes is the lack of vocabulary taught. You don't get 20 irrelevant nouns with each lesson to memorize that you don't even now how to use. What new words you "learn" are mostly shared in common with English. The goal is to make you fluent before you have to memorize words.

Thomas, instead, actually teaches the language and how to be constructive in it: the verbs, the verb inflections, how to combine them, basic pronouns and the like. Only once the students understand them does he move on to the words for real-world objects. Thomas will sometimes explain why he does this in the course, but it amounts to what I've said in other places: you can guess or figure out nouns or talk around them, but if you don't know how to put verbs together, you just don't know the language and you can't even fake it. It is much easier to learn nouns after you actually learn the structure of the language and can actually use them.

Lack of "comprehension"

You're never told to "listen to this passage and think about what it means" in the Thomas method. The Thomas method is entirely productive: you make the sentences and you have to put yourself in the mindset of how the language works.

A lot of other audiotapes, say Pimsleur, have you sit and listen to text and implicitly ask you to "translate" it. This in essense, keeps you thinking in English, or thinking in translating mode. The also keep you chained to canned responses in a single dialog. When people do this, they ignore the actual structure/grammar of the language, listen for big noticable nouns, and then piece together what the sentence means. This is always a bad idea.

Michel Thomas actually just knows what he's doing.

It's honestly rare that you even ever see a "good teacher." By that I mean someone who can easily keep track of what his students know and can devise questions perfect to pry their knowledge. Thomas is just honestly good at this and it goes a long way. In the tapes, if he notices that a student repeatedly messing something up, he knows how to elicit better responses and remind them of what they need. This is 99% of teaching, despite the fact that it's a really rare skill.

Don't bother getting the tapes without Michel Thomas

After Michel Thomas's death (or perhaps a little before) the company running his website above put out tapes for many other languages: Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, etc. under his name. They are done "in his method" theoretically, but they are no good. They do weird things like have two different teachers: one who instructs the students and one who is a native speaker of the language to say the sentences in it. I think the idea behind it was to make sure you hear a "perfect" accent, but it's a total waste and the sponteneity required for actual teaching is lost because you have these two different people trying organize among themselves. I think the teachers lack the introspective skill to keep tabs on the students' learning that I mentioned above, so all-in-all, I think they're awkward and fake.

Donovan Nagel (you may know him from his YouTube channel on BSD) gave Michel Thomas a negative review after using the "Michel Thomas" Arabic tapes. I listened to part of the Chinese tapes and they were not worth it (if you want to learn Chinese I've written about what I recommend).

But the real Michel Thomas tapes: Spanish, French, Italian, German, done by the man himself, are the best for all their respective languages.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learning-european-languages-michel-thomas/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learning-european-languages-michel-thomas/

Making Free Money off Credit Cards

While I've done a video on this topic before (PeerTube, YouTube), some people asked me for more information, so here it is.

Aren't you glad to be an AMERICAN?

In America, people are so notoriously dumb with credit and money that credit card companies can literally give out free money by the hundreds to attract new customers. For brainlets who don't bother to understand the basics of credit and debt and the fact that you apparently have to pay back the money you spend, this is like a fly trap. For non-retarded people it is what it is: free money.

Exploiting introductory offers: "Churning"

Many credit cards have introductory offers like this: "If you spend $500 on this card in the first 3 months, you'll get a free credit of $200." That would be a cool offer in the first place, but since there are so many cards that have offers like this, a pattern emerges:

1. Open a card with an introductory offer, for example: "Get a $200 credit when you spend $500 in 3 months."
2. Use it for your normal daily life until you spend that $500 which you would be spending anyway.
3. Get/redeem/spend the credit/cashback/points on that card. Literally free money.
4. Lock away the card and don't use it anymore unless it has some other extremely good offer or cashback perk.¹
5. Rinse and repeat, this time with a new card and new offer.

This cycle is often called "credit card churning" and some people like me don't mind living off of it.

Every year I go through a couple cards like this, making a couple hundred or a thousand dollars back. If you do the math, it can be like living with a permanent 20-25% off coupon that you use on literally everything. Individual cards will have even more perks to pump-and-dump for extra cash back.

I recommend especially young guys to try this out: it's a way of saving money, while improving your credit by paying off many lines of credit, and once you're done churning, you have a wide selection of credit cards to use for their various normal features.

Cards to churn

Here's a brief list of some cards whose introductory offers I've taken advantage of. This is just an example list, there are many more.

• Chase Freedom
• Discover It
• American Express Cash Magnet
• American Express Blue Business

Links to more cards per company:

• Bank of America
• Wells Fargo
• Citi Bank

That's it! That's all you need to know, to take advantage of this, but the rest of this page is just details that people ask about. Read on for more!

How credit card companies try to mitigate this

As I said, introductory offers exist primarily to get dim-witted people who don't know how credit works into using cards unwisely or at least normal people into switching to a different company. They know that high-agency people can exploit this system, so there are some rules they put in place to mitigate the extent to witch you can take advantage of their offers.

Chase, for example, will not approve anyone for a credit card who has gotten five other cards in the past two years. Wells Fargo will not allow you too open cards with introductory offers without a 18 month gap in between. Those are the main ones; other banks like Bank of America don't bother preventing it at all, but it's possible that they will start something like this soon.

Cautionary note for credit brainlets

I suppose it goes without saying that credit cards are not magical money devices and everyone who has a credit card should only spend what they have the account that autopays their card or even better, do what I do and never let my head hit the pillow before paying off all debts. This might sound like a condescending thing to say, but obviously some people out there don't understand how credit cards work and are going into debt for no good reason. I know everyone who follows me is smart of course, but I say this rhetorically.

When I did a video on this I was surprised to learn that there are also people that resist and detest credit cards but still don't understand them. Some people have this strange idea that merely possessing a credit cards causes debt to occur in some cultic fashion outside of your control. And for people who can't know better, maybe it's better for them to think of credit cards as essentially magical objects if it means they aren't misusing them. For everyone else, credit cards are easy to use and exploit and benefit from.

Other advantages of having multiple cards

It's actually nice to have a number of rewards cards from different companies. I will occasionally check the bank or card's web interface and there will often be additional perks especially for points-based cards. It can often mean 10% in addition to everything else from buying from a hardware store or grocery store. There are many niche businesses and I don't recommend into getting roped into buying something you wouldn't be buying anyway, but I keep tabs on if there is anything familiar.

Similarly, it's nice to have "rotating category" cards that offer say, 5% on a certain type of buy for a period of several months. The Chase card I mentioned above, for example is giving 5% cash back on every purchase made on PayPal as I write this in Q4 of 2020 (it looks like they do PayPal every year or so). I've actually been deliberately making all purchases I would be making anyway over PayPal, just so I can maximize earnings. I'm even going to be paying bills in advance with PayPal so when they are actually due next year, they'll be paid, and I'll have the extra cash back.

Common questions about exploiting introductory offers

A lot of people hear this and think, "sounds too good to be true." Makes sense, but we live in a complex world which again is primarily targeted to the unwise. I've been doing this for years and have made back a lot of lot of money and even increased by credit score.

Let's talk about some of the concerns people new to credit card churning might have:

"But what about muh credit score?"

I'm not entirely sure why people think this, but there's this idea that somehow you're scamming or defrauding credit card companies by doing this. You aren't. You're just obeying their terms of service. You're certainly not neglecting payment or proving yourself a bad investment for a loan, which is what a credit score is actually about.

Opening new credit, including credit cards, will mean an inquiry on your account and for a time being, you'll be marked as "looking for credit." This will decrease your credit score by a small amount; it's normal. But over time, having lots of credit which you have paid off is good for your credit score. That's, like, what a credit score is. Having more credit cards and properly paid off is a great plus on your account.

"B...but that's unethical!"

You gotta be an extreme simp to see these companies massively ripping off retards and nickel-and-diming people and say something stupid like, "I mean is this really ethical?" You're an idiot. You don't deserve free money. Why use your principles to defend people who obviously don't share them?

A lot of these companies even charge people to have checking accounts. Just in case you don't know how banks work, they make money loaning out their reserves. They are already making money off of every account. Charging you extra so they can make money off you is just more icing on the cake for them. There are many banks who are less shills who simply don't do this because it's totally unnecessary.

People who think this, do you go to the grocery store and chide people who get free samples as unethical? It quite literally is the same thing except for the store never makes money off people who just take samples. A bank whose offer you exploit still might make a lot of money loaning out money you put in a checking account there or even on the credit card transaction fees they charge merchants. And if they didn't, who cares?

"Do I need a checking account?"

If you get a bonus from, let's say, a Chase credit card, do you need a Chase checking account to redeem your bonus or points? Usually not.

Every credit card company I've used allows you to set up automatic payments from another bank. So you shouldn't have to worry about remembering to paying your bills, although I usually pay everything manually anyway just to be careful.

If you get an account credit, that will appear as a negative number on your card and you will be able to spend it without paying it off. If you get points, it might be that you need a checking account to redeem it as cash, but you can also usually redeem previous purchases or sometimes receive your bonus in the form of a bunch of gift cards.

This is an important question because some companies like Chase or Bank of America will charge you several dollars a month to have a checking account open, which I find utterly ridiculous. In both cases, you can waive the fee if you have either direct deposit into the account or if you just have a certain amount of money in the account (I think it's $1,500 in the case of Chase). Either way, you can avoid this problem as having a checking account is not usually necessary.

Three important notes on Credit Cards

The psychology of spending

One aspect of human psychology is that people are more likely to be okay with spending or wasting money if they're using credit or debit cards rather than paper money. It makes sense. If you have to part with a physical object to spend something, it can hurt. It doesn't hurt as much to use a card.

I find that the antidote to this is actually in introductory offers. If I get a card that gives me a bonus for spending $500 in 3 months, I treat that $500 as my absolute budget no matter what. Bills included if possible.

Additionally, I started pasting sticky slips on the back of my cards where I keep track of the exact amount of money I use on each card so I know when I hit the required amount for the bonus. Each time I spend, I deduct that amount from the original number. This actually serves the double purpose of making the money-spending more real to me. I'm not just swiping my card, but subtracting the amount and can feel what I'm spending.

Don't use cards with annual fees.

Or at least if you do, be smart about it.

None of the cards I recommended above have any annual fees. So you can get them and not worry about canceling them. You can logically exploit the offers of cards with annual fees and cancel them afterwards to avoid paying the fee, but I don't do this myself.

Firstly, annual-fee cards are usually targeted to big spenders: their offers will be something more like "spend $4000 in the first 3 months and get $750." If you're making a big purchase, that might be worth it, but I personally am the kind of guy who feels guilty for spending too close to $300 a month. I would definitely contemplate one of these if you know you're going to spend some massive amount of money though. Don't forget to cancel it later!

The bigger issue with annual-fee cards because they are used primarily for social engineering and corporate sponsorships. That might sound strange, for example, but some cards which cost several hundred dollars a year might give you a big free annual credit on their favorite airlines or on Uber or Lyft or Amazon or some other godless corporation. That makes them work for people who are loyal consooomers of their chosen affiliates, but for most people, getting the benefits of those cards requires you to use the products they want.

I've seen some cards that give you bonuses for using them 30 times a month or something else. Sure you can juke the system, but I feel like the incentives they put forth are too strong and will probably manipulate you into spending more than you usually do. The reason I recommend the other cards I do is because you can easily spend that much if you're an independent person without feeling like you have to spend more.

Minimizing Privacy Exposure

Now if you're someone principally concerned with privacy, there are ways for you to take advantage of these kinds of offers without exposing your daily purchases. Obviously opening a credit card does require some basic information, like who you are and where you live (other things your bank already knows). But you can minimize your exposure by using the money on the card for a single recurring payment credit.

For example, let's say you pay an electric bill every month. Many power companies/co-ops allow you to prepay or accumulate a credit, so if you open a spend-$1,000-get-$250 card, you can immediately prepay $1,000, wait for your free $250, then prepay that amount as well.

In that, you've got your free $250 (and you can forget about paying bills for a year or so) and the only new thing the credit card company knows is your power supplier (which they could probably guess anyway from where you live). You could do the same with other recurring payments.

A lot of people I've talked to plan on using these offers to by over-the-table cryptocurrencies. That works too.

Additionally if you make a large purchase like a car that is going to have to be registered with "the system" anyway, it might be a good time to get one (or maybe more) of these cards.

The most important thing, however, is that you are the one ripping them off and never the reverse. Do not spend more or waste more because you feel richer because you have something that feels like a free money card.

"Daily drivers"

When not pumping-and-dumping a credit card for an introductory offer, there are also generally good cards that you can keep to maximize idle cash back. Obviously the true red-pill is using cash, but if you'd rather get bonuses from cards, here are some options I use with links:

• 5% on gas and purchases on military bases (unfortunately USAA is very exclusive (you must have family in the military), but great for members)
• 5% on groceries (only for first year, but there are multiple cards that do this can can be cycled (or get your wife to get it next year))
• 5% on bills, specifically, you get 5% on rotating categories and home utilities is one of them.
• 3% at restaurants and on travel expenses
• 2% on everything else

It should also go without saying that you should have fixed costs/bills set to charge credit cards just for the free cash back. I mean if you have $250 dollars in bills a month and hook them up to a 2% cashback card, that's $60 back a year. It adds up over the years.

Again:

"The NEET will work harder than the wagie to stay out of a job." -Nullennial (YouTube comment)

"I'm Jewish and I find this video Jewisher" -shiran (response to my original video on this)

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/making-free-money-off-credit-cards/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/making-free-money-off-credit-cards/

Notes on Learning Languages

I get asked a lot about learning languages, so I have a few comments about it here. Hopefully I can awaken you from some dogmatic slumbers about language.

Vocabulary is the least important part of learning a language.

This is hard for people to understand because I think most monolingual people think that languages are just different word lists that people use. As a result, 101 students will manually look up every word in the dictionary to translate. This actually increases the mental load of learning a language because people have the idea that to speak it, they have to think of something in English, then translate the sentence word by word, then say that. What a pain.

So what is a language if not words? It really is a set of constraints as to how words can go together: what order they go in when modifying each other, but also languages are morphology. Verb endings and tenses and such are literally the most important part of a sentence. If you don't have a productive and reflexive use of verbs, you are literally just going to be reciting nouns you know like a monkey.

This is actually why I recommend people learning Romance languages or German to use Michel Thomas's audio. Thomas doesn't lecture at all about what he's doing, but he focused only on using verbs and building up basic expressions from the bottom up until it's understood reflexively by students. To actually learn any language, this is more or less what you are going to have to mentally do anyway in the process.

I would say it's actually possible to fluently speak a language knowing only about 50 words. If you understand the "grammar" of a language, you can basically get by anywhere anytime with a couple dozen words only. What words you don't know can easily be figured out, but you can't wing it with grammar and you can't wing it with morphology.

Computer metaphor

Granted, the same is true of programming "languages" as well, weirdly enough. No one would think "knowing a [computing] language" means just knowing all the function and variable names. The important thing is knowing the syntax of how you put functions (loosely verbs) and variables (loosely nouns) together. After all, variable names are always different and functions can be easily invented too or called from some obscure library. Someone who knows a language is someone who can use its syntax to produce novel expressions. If you take a Python script, replace its functions with C functions, it's still Python, just calling a bunch of undefined functions. People can only get away with even sort of believing this in the domain of human languages if you just don't know enough and end up assuming that all languages just work the same.

Then what is a language?

So really when you learn a language, you can't look at it as new words, but new patterns of speech that interconnect in a logical way.

Speaking fluently in that language means being able to use and combine its basic constructions into complex thoughts put in words. This is why I'm really against "translating in your head." If you're doing that, you're not actually using the language. You're teaching yourself a silly English-word-replacement game. I know it's very hard for word-thinkers not to think in words, but if you can't stop doing that for a second, you're not going to be able to learn a new language.

You will not learn a language by consoooming media.

There's this lazy idea that somehow if you passively sit around and watch people using a language this will somehow endow you with the ability to flexibly produce a language in the same way you see others using it. People want to believe it because they want to be able to watch TV or play a cell phone game like Duolinguo or valueless Rosetta Stone-like software and somehow gain competence in a language.

It's not going to happen ever. Learning to play a boring computer game using words from a different languages is not the same as learning to speak the language.

You might say of "just listening to speech" that "that's what children do," but that's not true at all. Children try pretty hard to participate and understand conversation. They sometimes have a desperate personal need to understand each passing sentence and hear the language they are trying to learn for hours a day for years. You watching some forgettable movie in the background as you play with your phone don't.

Are you actually thinking?

If you want to know if you are actually learning a language, ask yourself that. People are weirdly afraid against actually thinking through things and making new expressions in other languages when that's exactly how you learn them.

A lot of language nerds love to email me about their Anki cards or their harebrained schemes for mass-memorizing words as if they're an Asian studying for a chemistry test. Given what I've said about "learning words," you can guess my opinion on that. Once people abandon the lazy route, sometimes they take up the via dolorosa: the route of suffering and assume that training themselves like a Pavlovian dog will help them become fluent in a language.

In reality, the only question that matter is: "Are you actually thinking?" Are you actually going through the mental process of creating new sentences in a new language?

When I was learning Latin obviously I had no Latin-speaking friends and could barely get my hands on anything Latin-related. But after I learned the basics of the language I started thinking in it constantly. First that starts in my always implicitly translating English song lyrics or ads in my head into Latin. That's actually difficult if you're dealing with something modern and idiomatic. Not as bad with church songs. As time goes on, I would overtly remember things in Latin sentences instead of English. If I mumbled something under my breath I would make sure it was Latin. At all points in time, I was thinking about how the language was structured and what it meant to produce sentences in it.

The sad fact is that most people who "learn" languages in school treat them as advanced cross-word puzzle like games where they don't actually think in the language, but have hilarious mnemonic devices in their head for relating what they want to say in English with something in the language they're learning.

Translating is a bad habit.

If anything, you should become worse at translating the further you go on and the more independently you can stand on your own in another language.

Latin is a good example. I can read and comprehend Latin very well, but if asked to translate what I'm reading, I find that more and more difficult the better I read Latin. Now it's easy for me to report the meaning of a passage, but phrase-by-phrase translation is something you have to think through because Latin and English are structurally very different. This isn't just word order, but even how a Latin speaker approaches expressions and the kinds of phrases they use can translate only very delicately into English.

The problem nearly doesn't exist between English and Spanish, which are basically the same language. I'm sure someone who only knows Spanish will feel like English and Spanish have many differences, but in the context of other languages, like Latin or Chinese or Japanese, it's hard not to view English and Spanish as having basically the same kind of syntax 95% of the time. That actually goes for most modern European languages.

You sound stupid if you don't sound stupid.

Every language has its own set of phonological rules that determine what particular sounds are said how and where. Phonological rules give us "our accents." When someone speaks English in an accent, they are really just speaking English using the phonological constraints of whatever language they're more familiar with. If they speak English competently, there's at least some extent to which they are abandoning their native phonological rules.

When you first start learning a language, you might read something aloud and say "I sound stupid." This is because your natural way of speaking is obviously to say everything with an accent consistent with English. You can probably remember the apathetic jock in Spanish class or whatever who religiously pronounced every Spanish word he mindlessly read with an almost intentionally non-Spanish accent.

To actually speak another language is to adopt the phonological tendencies and even the prosodic and tonal traits of that language. When you initially do that, you will probably sound very stupid to yourself since violating phonological rules you're familiar with always sounds wrong. If you do overcome that illusion of felt stupidity, you won't sound stupid when it counts. If you refuse to improve your accent immediately and from the beginning you will sound like an utter moron forever.

There's actually a trick too: when you imitate a foreign accent, you are actually implicitly adopting the phonological rules of their language that you have noticed in real life. My suggestion is when you are starting out, read the other language in what you'd guess would be a stereotypical accent of the person speaking the language. If your imitation is good, you're speaking their language without an accent.

"The Critical Period" is fake.

That reminds me.

There's an idea in academic and clinical linguistics as well as popular culture that children have a magical plasticy of the brain that makes them uniquely good at learning languages. This is supposed to be the reason why children learn languages "fast" and adults don't. I think this is a myth. You don't have to send me all the "proof" about this (don't worry, the Universities of Georgia and Arizona would've failed me totally if I hadn't seen it for my linguistics degrees there). I sort of assumed that this was true for years, but on further thought, I think it's just a conspiracy of irrelevant data and copes... or at least, it's not nearly as true as people pretend it is: adults are just about as capable of learning languages in most senses.

After all, think about it, children actually take several years to function in a language, which is often much longer than an adult that knows what he's doing. The Michel Thomas style tapes which I alluded to above are good at giving an adult a passable diving-board for a language in about 8 hours. It can be done. You can also give an adult a crash-course in phonology and articulatory phonetics that will make it easy to understand and with practice produce the sounds children take years to master.

The motivation of a child and adult are utterly different. A language-less child has lots of reasons to invest most of his mental life in attention to language. Apathetic adults don't.

What I really get sick of is doomer adults who cope with their laziness by talking about how hard it is to learn a language as an adult. Many adults still learn languages all the time. There is some circumstantial evidence that infants cue into some acoustic cues and other things quicker than adults, but I think in most cases we're just looking at infants semi-consciously honing in on what details they've acknowledged to be linguistically relevant. In reality, developed humans have huge institutional and intellectual advantages to learn.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/notes-on-learning-languages/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/notes-on-learning-languages/

Only Use Old Computers!

If there is a single point of advice I can offer novice computer users, it is stop using modern computers.

If you look at "technology YouTube," by which I mean the massive multi-million subscriber channels, nearly all of it is devoted to constantly reviewing and comparing every new computer, processor, graphics card and product. There's big money in it because obviously all of these companies put money in it, but also if you're a normal person, you automatically assume you need the "best" technology.

Do you need a modern computer?

Absolutely not. More than 95% of people could be using a computer from 2008 or before without any problems. Needing a recent machine is limited to people who:

1. Do extreme, professional, processor-intensive video-rendering.
2. Compile massive programs and operating systems with severe time constraints.
3. Play recent triple AAA video-games on high settings.
4. Use many massive Electron apps and other inexcusably bad software written by soydevs and other people who shouldn't be writing software.

The last two reasons aren't really real reasons at all because they are totally unnecessary and avoidable things.

But to the point, watching YouTube videos and using a word processor does not require last month's new release.

Every video I upload, I transcode for settings optimal for YouTube, meaning I render each video I record. On my computer from a decade ago, that still takes only a couple minutes. A fancy $5000 computer might be able to do it in less than one, but it is honestly not worth the pain associated with modern computers.

How much should a computer cost a normal person?

Either nothing or just around $200, I say. I use a ThinkPad X220 I got for $90 on eBay. Before that, I used another ThinkPad X220 I also got for $90. Like anything else, if you are buying things on Amazon, you're doing it wrong.

The Pain of Modern Computers

Modern computers are more breakable

As computing has become more and more popular, companies have started to realize that a consumer's first reaction on having their $5 wifi card die is immediately buy a whole new computer. This means two things: (1) they don't bother to make computers easy to repair, in fact, they make it more difficult and (2) there is absolutely no need to make computers durable at all. In fact, it's probably better to let computers break so you'll get yet another sale.

Apple is by far the most anti-social computing company because of this. I'll let the larger tech channels show you the specifics, but every Apple product is brilliantly designed to make it difficult to fix very basic and otherwise fixable problems. They have quite a racket licensing out the ability and tools to companies that want to fix their terrible hardware. Apple even used pentalobe screws just so normal people couldn't open their computers up with a typical screwdriver. Of course nowadays every other computer manufacturer imitates the Apple style where apparent "sleekness" is supposed to be a signal of high quality.

Modern computers are increasingly monitoring devices and come with proprietary junk.

The Management Engine

You might've heard that all Intel i3/i5/i7 processors (that is, after the Intel Core 2 Duo) have an onboard alternate processor that is meant to function as spyware. This is called the Intel Management Engine. It can view your memory and connect to the internet: basically all modern computers have this permanent back door. In older computers, say the ThinkPad X200, you can, with a little hardware action, remove the other processor and replace the proprietary BIOS with Libreboot or Coreboot, but that is not possible on more modern computers (you can install Coreboot on a more modern machine, but not all of the components of the Management Engine are removed).

More recent computers, however are non-removable spyware by design and, yes, the NSA can monitor any machine with a Management Engine. There are actually even rumors that one of the taps that the FBI under the Obama administration put on Trump during his campaign was a Management Engine bug.

Note that AMD (Ryzen) processors have what they call a "Platform Security Processor" that is equivalent to the Intel Management Engine, so you're not escaping the issue by using one of them.

NVIDIA

Again, unless you play modern videos alone all day, you literally have no reason to have a modern computer, especially one with an expensive graphics card. NVIDIA is a great example because they make graphics cards and develop proprietary drivers for them to make it harder and harder to use them on machines that aren't running whatever the most recent spyware variant of Windows 10 is. Linux works perfectly on all computers ancient and modern, but if you plug some NVIDIA thing up to it, you might lose your screen or not be able to boot. A lot of gaymers whine about their NVIDIA products "not working" on Linux without realizing that is by design. NVIDIA and other companies and all CPU designers go out of their way to keep their source code and standards private which makes their products tangibly worse because it is harder for other parties to write drivers for them. Why? Because most of them have partnerships with Microsoft.

The Problem of Windows

How many times have you heard a normie explain to you that their computer is slow because it's "really old" and they bought it "way back in 2015?" It's an absurd statement of course. Computers don't just get magically slow... ...unless they've been running Windows.

In the future, once even Microsoft has switched over to a purely Unix-based backend for their operating system, we're all going to have a good laugh about how Microsoft Windows, literally the worst and least functioning operating system ever devised, was the largest consumer market share for decades.

I might go into how Windows is poorly designed in another page or video, but I want to be clear that there is no such loss of speed on any Linux distribution, which is what you should be using. I am one of the first to complain about the feature bloat of the Linux kernel and Linux software, but compared to Windows, it's no contest: Linux runs fast on old hardware. You'll know from some of my videos, however, that I'm not big into "Linux Evangelism," mostly because it's sort of strident and doesn't really work with a high success rate. Using Linux is just something that normies have been immunized against (mostly because "It's what smart people do"), but I always find myself in a position where someone's Window installation has permanently crashed and they're at the awkward decision of having to buy a license to reinstall the dysfunctional and slow operating system they've grown to hate.

There is quite literally no problem that normal people have with computers that is not immediately alleviated by installing Linux.

Why do people use ThinkPads?

As I said above, I use a X220 ThinkPad. Older ThinkPads are fairly popular among people who think and care about doing things effectively and economically on a computer. Why is this?

ThinkPads were always designed for enterprise environments, meaning the financial incentives for the manufacturer are not always planned obsolesce, but a long-standing reputation among large companies of having durable, fixable and expandable machines.

To replace a hard drive on the X200 requires unscrewing just a single screw. Same to replace the memory. To replace a spoiled keyboard is no more than three screws. Modern laptops, including the degraded modern ThinkPad have abandoned this simplicity and opt for the Apple-Mac/cell phone design technique of making batteries, memory and the rest functionally soldered and irremovable.

How far can $500 go?

Over the years, I’ve had many things break on my laptops, but since I’ve been using ThinkPads, it is incredibly easy to keep a working computer even after rough use. I estimate that I have never spent more than a combined total of $500 on computers, which is usually a bare minimum for what someone can buy a “modern” laptop for nowadays.

When the keyboard on my ThinkPad breaks, I can just buy a replacement keyboard for $30 or $40 and replace the old one much easier than any other model. That’s the modularity of these computers.

Even in the worst case scenario when something on the motherboard makes the computer unbootable, I still get to keep my “broken” ThinkPad and repurpose the memory, wifi card, keyboard and everything else. I still have some parts of every laptop I’ve had just because they do come in a lot of use. The other month, a friend’s wifi on his desktop went out and I could replace it with one of my old ThinkPad modules.

This is the kind of thing you lose with modern computers. This is purposeful on the part of manufacturers, and it’s important not to pay them huge amounts of money to incentivize this behavior. It’s very easy to live off of 10 year old computers nowadays. The eBay-and-etc resale market is massive even thought many of us have gotten wise to the value of these old computers.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/only-use-old-computers/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/only-use-old-computers/

Reviews of All Linux Distros (That Matter)

Firstly, once you reach basic competency in Linux, different distributions don't matter. A lot of newbies analyze distros based on what they look like when you install them, often not realizing that it's a pretty simple affair not just to change superficial things like your theme and setup, but entire desktop environments. Basically all distro reviews online are wastes of time for people who know what they're doing. When I came to YouTube, all Linux YouTube was was people constantly installing distro after distro in a virtual machine and critiquing minutiae. It was a bleak and boring world. One of my first and greatest achievements on YouTube was making this video: How to choose a Linux distro: Stop Thinking!, which went semi-viral and sort of put a damper on distro reviews. Either way, I'll say what I think about different distro minutiae here.

Things that matter

• Free software. If you are switching to Linux, there is no point of you just using junk proprietary spyware "apps" that you used on Windows. Any distribution that advertises proprietary software as a feature should be viewed as suspect. You can always install proprietary software if there is some particular need (usually the only "need" is a lack of knowledge of free software that is more extensible and performs the same tasks and more).
• Up-to-date software. This matters because if you want to install a program, you're often going to need recent libraries/depencencies. This is especially important if you want to use software in active development: say software for video-game compatibility on Linux.
• No gimmicky additions. Probably the worst thing you can do is install a distribution that puts a giant wall between you and the system itself. One of the biggest advantages of using Linux is the ability to understand what's going on on your computer and optimize it. If you use a distribution that hand-holds basic things, it might seem convenient at first, but as time goes on, you won't have a clue when that fragile system fails.
• Consistent and reliable maintainence. Lastly, you'll want to make sure that your distribution has humans on the development side that are at least fixing basic problems. As programs change and are updated, it often requires some changes in your distro's repositories and more. Unmaintained distributions are usable, but it becomes annoying to deal with as time goes on if you want to install software with the distribution's package manager.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a common distribution because it is the distribution shilled by the company Canonical. Canonical has probably had a positive effect on making GNU/Linux more widely used and accessible, but Ubuntu has a lot of long-term headaches that will plague users.

That said, Ubuntu is nearly the worst distribution for new users. It is maintatined at least, but fails on all the metrics above:

1. It advertises proprietary software in its software center and encourages users to use programs because they are "familiar" from Windows.
2. It releases slowly and you'll run into problems if you try to install something out of the box.
3. It is full of gimicks, the elephant in the room being the Snap system, but Canonical has thrown in a lot of junk features in the past and a lot can break.

Debian

Debian is just a more reasonable version of Ubuntu: it separates free and non-free software clearly-it has a optional version that allows unstable and testing packages for some recent software and it has so few gimmicks it's probably the most boring distro!

I haven't used Debian much as a desktop system (I do use it on my servers), but the package manager and even the release speed of the testing versions isn't quite fast enough for me personally.

Artix and Arch

Artix is the distribution that I use and have been using for a while. It is really the same thing as Arch, except for Artix allows the usage of different init systems (I use runit).

Arch and Arch-based distributions are "bleeding-edge" in their release time and have access to the Arch User Repository (AUR) allowing the single widest software library of all major Linux distributions.

Artix offers many installable desktop-environment ISOs for newbie users, but thankfully they don't over-bloat them with gimmicky features. Arch itself only has an official minimal installation, and that's kind of its thing.

If I had to choose, Artix is the distribution that I recommend for both novice and most veteran users.

Manjaro

Manjaro is another Arch-based distro. I've even recommened it before for new users in the past and installed it on many people's computers in real life, but I will admit that my view on it is souring. They have definitely started to go the way of Ubuntu by adding lots of extra features, directly people to rely more on flatpak and "harmful" systems and generally adding more layers of abstraction between the user and the system.

All the good things that can be said about Manjaro can also be said of Artix, which also has easy to install ISOs, so I consider Artix the superior system.

Parabola

Parabola is the FSF-approved, all-free software version of Arch Linux (it also has an OpenRC version for soystemd-haters). In the abstract, Parabola is my optimal distribution, but I don't actually use it anymore for two reasons:

1. It uses the Linux-libre kernel, which is all free software, but networking will not function with laptops with proprietary wifi cards.
2. It is not quite as well maintained as Arch and Artix, and you'll be a little more likely to run into package breakage.

The second problem isn't the end of the world, but it can be annoying.

Gentoo

Gentoo is one of the best distributions and excels in all of the 4 requirements I give. Not only is non-free software obviously separated, but it isn't too difficult to have your Gentoo install with a Linux-libre kernel if you want.

Gentoo is also unique because it is a source-based distribution: you can set basic compilation settings for your programs and have a lot of control over them. While Gentoo is very well maintained, you actually end up with a good bit more control over your system. That is a responsibility that has some prerequisite knowledge of course, so Gentoo has a reputation of being difficult to install.

If you want to look into Gentoo, you should first be familiar with Linux and what specific kind of system you want. When you first install Gentoo, because you can customize it so specifically, it obviously helps to know what exact network backend you're comfortable with, whether you want to use GTK or QT, or many other little things that a Linux noob might not know too much about.

Void

Void is another great distribution. It's notable also for using runit instead of soystemd, having a musl version, and having a package system reminiscent of Arch, but in many ways more minimalist and extensible. It again separates free and non-free packages, and has a wide repository of them, included even more installable via the xbps-src system which is somewhat analogous to the AUR, although unlike the AUR, I don't believe it's quite as easy to update packages.

Void has had a somewhat tumultuous development culture. It was originally the brainchild of one man, one man who went missing for a year... After he returned, drama eventually caused other member of the team to encourage his retirement. Either way, while I used the distro for a while and was one of the first people advertising it online, I never remember this translating into any downstream problems on my computer.

Distro not here?

This is only a list of distributions that I've used for a bit. I don't do "distro reviews" or just install random distributions just to test them, so if it isn't here, I'm not going to have an experience-based opinion.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/reviews-of-all-linux-distros-that-matter/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/reviews-of-all-linux-distros-that-matter/

Science vs. Soyence

There's nothing necessarily wrong with science, reason, knowledge etc. To some degree, they're fundamental for survival in this world in one way or another. But one of the more worrisome problems which have arisen since the Enlightenment, and especially in the past several years, is the fact that whenever scientific knowledge has increased, human arrogance has accelerated even faster. This isn't a metaphysical, moral arrogance; it's one that is more and more jeopardizing the human cosmos.

We live in a pop-scientific and pop-technological world. Because common people are constantly weighing themselves down with new gadgets and state-of-the-art genetically engineered food, there's a tendency to want to pay homage to the amorphous blob of "knowledge." Of course, much like the Greek Gods, we cannot seem to speak to "knowledge" directly, or to mentally murky academics, but only to official mediators: journalists and "science communicators" and the like.

The religious metaphor is intentional. Of course the actual view of Popperian science is that scientific "advancement" is less of an increase in knowledge than a decrease in falsity. We can never be sure of what is true, but we can gradually establish what is false and contradictory; science does exclusively the latter. Real scientific work refutes and calls into question established fact and is in a constant self-regeneration. Facts mean nothing in themselves.

And scientific models, from our models of the atom, to models of the Earth's weather and climate, to models of our body are highly circumstantial, and as a rule, will nearly all inevitably be proven false. Theories are the narratives we cast over facts which have not yet been ruled false. We know nearly nothing of how the brain works. Sure, we know there are synapses, and we know what brains end up doing in some circumstances, but we haven't begun to scratch the surface of how a brain is actually engineered (computational models be damned). The same is true of the human body and is especially true of human society.

Now Neil deGrasse Tyson has the annoying mantra that he repeats at every possible opportunity, which goes something like: "the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." First off, I don't know what's good about that; it'd be pretty damn convenient to live in a world where we could imagine away gravity or CO2 or cancer, but aside from this, science, actual science as a critical methodology is manifestly not true and is not the truth. Science is a way of marginally approaching truth by discovering falsity, and in most endeavors, this approachment is so marginal as to be inert in all our daily lives. There is nothing to "believe in" in science anyway, because it's an exposer of non-truth.

But in pop-science, Science^® is "knowledge" and deviation from the scientific catechism is "irrational." It's not just irrational to dispute consensus, but irrational to fail to implement it in your personal life.

In Practice

The greatest danger of pop-science is the unquestioned assumption that life should be led "scientifically." That we should "look for evidence," "question everything," and universally "challenge authority" (unless that authority is a professor). The problem should be blatantly obvious in hindsight.

An obvious example: in the 20th century, Western societies had to deal with the very real problem of a bizarre increase in lung cancer rates. We "know" now that smoking tobacco and other substances apparently cause drastically higher lung cancer rates, but this was lost on the people at the time.

The relationship between smoking and cancer was highly circumstantial; there were some statistical correlations established, but as any pop-science guru will tell us "correlation is not causation!" For decades, scientifically minded people looked for evidence while millions more died. Smoking companies took refuge in the fact that there was no mechanism understood behind how smoking could cause lung cancer. With all scientific rigor, they insisted for decades that the increase in lung cancer was due to something else, or merely an increase in diagnosis capacity. And they were on the side of scientific skepticism!

Only now that there is some understanding of how carcinogens in smoke can damage the lungs can we say that the "scientific consensus" is that smoking causes lung cancer. Cute, but if people had been "irrationally" cautious, the human tragedy would've been substantially mitigated.

The problem is that "looking for evidence" before acting or non-acting is personally and socially dangerous. In nearly all circumstances, our intuition (crafted by millions of years of evolution) or social norms (which keep us to established safe routes) are much better guides to life than the scientific consensus, despite them being "irrational" (and sorry, religion is part of this too). When someone guzzles down some newly fabricated energy drink or gallons of soda, they're nearly certainly damaging their bodies in ways science does not yet understand. Don't wait 40 years for some longitudinal peer-reviewed study to prove that eating plastic is bad for you. Trust your instincts before you give credence to some YouTuber who says inane things like "There's no evidence that..."

My favorite little "irrationality" that we all commit is of course, sleep. After millennia of trying to understand it, there is no established scientific reason or justification for why humans "need" sleep. Sure there are hypotheses (memory processing, repair, maybe even something Freudian), but none close to common currency. In the words of one of the world's most prominent sleep researchers, William Denent, "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy." Of course the absence of logical evidence to the necessity of sleep keeps no NdGT fan from wasting their time on the "Bronze-Age Myth" of the importance of sleep.

(Not) (Mis-)Understanding Complex Systems

The human body is a complex system in which every "system" is overlapping, somewhat redundant, all-affecting and fundamentally beyond linear analysis. Our scientific studies can find binary variables that correlate with a low p value, but that tells us nothings about what's actually going on and nothing about the underlying mechanisms. Again, the same is true of the human brain and the same is true of human society. Nothing is a simple input-output system.

What this means is that basically nothing from the world of pop-science can ever affect the basics of our lives because the interaction of our component parts are just non-amenable to any kind of generalizations that make intuitive sense to us. Everything we do affects out bodies in ways we can't predict so the proper strategy is always an "irrational" precaution and avoidance of novelty.

Things, of course, get especially touchy when talking about the "rational" management of society. Every good denizen of the post-Enlightenment world, even most of those on the "Right" have the idea that the economy and social relationships are simple one-to-one hydraulic systems that can be managed like a little steam engine. Now we've been rationally managed to hell and not back (and the solution is always more rational management).

The terrible truth is that traditional social norms are irrational and still do exist for a reason in the perennial gale of social evolution. Social change and social progress (note the lack of scare quotes) have always been happening, but only now do we have the naive idea that the units of society (people) have the competence to design and contribute to an otherwise unconscious evolution of social memes.

Anyway, I'll give the last word on this issue to Noam Chomsky, who somehow manages to say something clear and admirable on the subject:

“Science is a very strange activity. It only works for simple problems. Even in the hard sciences, when you move beyond the simplest structures, it becomes very descriptive. By the time you get to big molecules, for example, you are mostly describing things. The idea that deep scientific analysis tells you something about problems of human beings and our lives and our inter-relations with one another and so on is mostly pretense in my opinion-self-serving pretense which is itself a technique of domination and exploitation and should be avoided. Professionals certainly have the responsibility of not making people believe that they have some special knowledge that others can't attain without special means or special college education or whatever. If things are simple, they should be said simply; if there is something serious to say that is not simple, then, fine, that's good and interesting. We can perhaps find deep answers to certain questions that do bear directly on issues of human interest and concern, but that is rarely true.”

"'Science' 'Communicators'"

One of the worst aspects of all of this is that this understanding of pop-science encourages people to distrust what they know or can judge of the world in favor of the caricature of the consensus of institutionalized academics. People have this idea that there are these intellectual, peer-reviewed demigods in universities who discover the secrets to the universe and communicate them through their messengers stationed at BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post. Betraying their infinite wisdom would make you "irrational" or a "fundie." The reality is that these demigods really just went to graduate school because they were lazy and initiativeless, and even in the abstract, most of their real work has nothing to do with your life whatsoever. It's only the messengers that convince you of that because it stimulates their power trip.

Science journalists, much like journalists generally, are people too incompetent and emotional to work in the private sector, too dumb to be academics (and the standards are abysmally low these days), too full of themselves to work in charity and too bumbling, weak and arrogant to work in a blue collar or manual occupation. Journalism is an attractive career to many because it demands the least rigor and honor and promises the greatest power and influence.

Their self-ordained duty is to overwhelm the public with a confusion of "studies" that increasingly seem to micromanage a neurotic person's life. "Studies show that" classical music may help infant brain growth, or that gluten ravages the intestines, or that simply owning more books causes higher scholastic achievement, or that Vitamin C or antioxidants or kale or whatever health-food de jour solve all the world's problems.

At the end of the day, the worst part is that we talk about "science" as if it's some kind of anthropomophic creature with desires and feelings and a plan for us all. It's a uniquely modern flaw to say things like, "Science tells us that..." "Science is about.." "Science is against..." Does this not strike anyone else as creepy? The interpretation of science forced on the public is a scriptural one, where law to live life by are codified in "peer-reviewed" journals and communicated by intermediaries. 'Science's' purview is infinite and any failure to conform is some congenital failure or reason.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/science-vs-soyence/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/science-vs-soyence/

The Fragility of Physics

Physics has a reputation of being a uniquely "scientific" field. In other fields, you might hear of the concept of "Physics Envy" which is supposed to be a deep-seated desire of academics of other disciplines for the rigorousness and elegance of physics. Only physics, so the popular understanding goes, is truly able to abstract away from the messiness of detail and create truly beautiful and solvent models of their subject matters. Physics is thus the queen of the "hard sciences."

I object to the very idea of "hard vs. soft sciences" for reasons that will soon be clear, but I think it is most important to remember that for all its pretensions, physics is the most fragile science. That isn't necessarily bad, but it's true.

Why "fragile?"

Put simply, physics, partially due to its somewhat abstract nature, is exactly that domain where our interpretation of the universe is most likely to change radically in the event of any kind of theoretical sea change. That is, while in other more terrestrial sciences, the data is well-known and the theory is in debate, in physics, the opposite is arguably true. In astrophysics, quantum mechanics, the study of gravity or relativity, this should all be obvious.

Even without departing the cuddling embrace of mainstream physics, we can actually see this clearly. What is the ultimate fate of the universe to be? A continuous expansion of the universe until heat death? Perhaps gravity or some other force will pull everything back in a Big Crunch? The correct alternative is a statement of very specific and tendentious data which changes quite a great deal with any kind of new interpretations of what we see.

It's worth it to remember that for most of man's history, including the initial development of what we nowadays call physics, the "normal state" of the universe was assumed to be the state of affairs we're familiar with on the surface of the Earth: everything falls down to the ground and things propelled in space will slow down until they stop.

But modern physics now looks at the nature of our life on Earth as an exception to the general rule of frictionless and continuous movement in the vacuum of space. A valid question to ask is how much more that we take to be normal is a special case of reality? As we encounter more and more abberrant data, such as quantum mechanics, we might soon find ourself unifying seemingly disparate forces in the same was that Newton in a novel and seemingly absurd way the fact that objects fall to the ground with the apparent fact that the Earth orbits the Sun into one new concept: Gravity. Such a unification religates all our universals to a special case.

Does light really go the speed of light?

Physics is fragile because it is like a game of Jenga. Pull out or change one piece and the whole thing is either reordered or simply collapses.

As an example, say that within several years, we realize that the speed of light, for some known or unknown reason, doesn't function with the universality we assumed. Suppose that there is some kind of interaction of light and gravity such that light is faster in some parts of the universe. The reason isn't important. Or suppose we merely find out that in the past, there has been a systematic principle (similar to the Heisenberg Principle) that has miscalibrated all of our measurements of light.

Even if we have minutely mismeasured, the Jenga piece of light will radically alter everthing: our ideas of how old the universe is, our relationships with other planets, the solvency of general relativity, etc. You might say that there is a "concordance of evidence" that attests to our single known speed of light, but another way of putting that is that we have many other things tied into our interpretation of light that will have to change if we realize our models of it are flawed.

Poverty of data

Especially in the astronomical domain, it's worth remembering exactly how circumstantial our ideas of space are. We sometime speak of the traits of other solar systems' planets as if we've been there. But in reality, astrophysicists guess the chemical compositions of foreign planets based on their light frequencies and other fragile data. Any systematic error in observation over those thousands or millions of lightyears and we have been counting angels on pinheads the whole time.

People have the idea that because astrophysicists make extraordinary claims about planets, galaxies and time periods far beyond our mortal ken that they must have extraordinary evidence for them. That is frankly not the case. We have a piece-meal and jury-rigged set of circumstantial reasoning leading us to these claims. Seeing them computerized in full color in a science documentary doesn't make them more real. It just makes them look more official.

Physics vs. "soft sciences"

I remember talking to someone over the internet who accused me of having a low view of institutionalized science and being a dreaded epistemological anarchist because one of my degrees is in the "soft science" of linguistics. While I have a lot of bad things to say about the current state of linguistics, as a field, it is substantially more advanced and its findings are substantially more solid than physics. At that, formalizing ideas in math doesn't just make something a better or a more rigorous science anyway, which is the assumption of many people have.

While linguistics undergoes theoretical changes every several generations, the data, or really more importantly the phenomenology of linguistics is as secure as ever across all theoretical frameworks. That is, we know how language works. We can see abstract relationships between morphemes and syntactic structure. Even if we totally rewrite our narratives and theories about linguistic basics, there is no debate about the structure of language and how basic data relates to other data. This is absolutely the opposite of physics.

Physics is pretty solid on earth, and solid when you are running objects at each other in a vacuum, but once we broach the territory of astrophysics, relativity, gravity and more or less anything else that we as humans lack direct intuition of most of the "facts" of physics are theory-internal facts, and will fade away or be rendered obsolete when the next theoretical fad comes around.

My standard for theoretical frameworks

I think any serious scholar needs the ability to operate cognitively with multiple different theoretical frameworks in mind.

For example, (on linguistics) I don't really take Generative Grammar very seriously, in fact, despite it being on of the most well-funded dialects of linguistics nowadays, it's pretty inert. Despite that, I view it as very important for me to be able to process linguistic problems within Generative Grammar and word explanations within its ideas. It's nice to be able to say to someone "this alternation is accounted for if this DP occupies the spec of CP." I don't believe in CPs or specifiers as being psychologically real, but I can recognize the language as communicative.

A good theoretical framework is one that can produce facts and observations that can be recognized and explained outside of its framework as well.

That is, a framework should cue us in to finding utterly novel observations and thus a new phenomenology. This goes against the egocentric motivations of a lot of scientific frameworks whose practitioners are trying to edge out "the competition." Fields that spend most of their time trying to formalize previous observations within their own theoretical language are mostly a waste of time (this is Generative Grammar, frankly, although due to historical ignorance, many people in GG do not know they are re-treading steps).

One of the biggest issues of modern post-war institutionalized science is that the funding and peer-review mechanism is self-reinforcing: all fields converge to be "unipolar": only one methodology or framework is deemed "scientific." This creates a community of "scientists" who are more an more incestuous and generally oblivious not just to other possibilities of inquiry, but don't even have to be aware of their own priors or assumptions.

The blinders of positivism

As I've interacted with physicists more, I'm often surprised by how irrelevant they think even the most basic theoretical awareness is. That's "philosophy" for them. It's not uncommon to hear zingers like these:

1. "Science isn't about truth, it's about creating models."
2. "Physics is about fitting equations."
3. "We don't do philosophy."

Things like these are said as if they are some kind of statement of universal and well-consented-to truth, when in reality they are absurd Zen koans of the positivist religion. This was a loony opinion a hundred years ago and people saying these things now know that they are ludicrous. They have just become identifying marks of the social club.

Yep, science is about creating models... models that replicate reality, i.e. Truth.

A scientists who doesn't do philosophy isn't a scientist: he's a meter-reader. A philosopher who doesn't do science isn't a philosopher: he's just a stoner. The attempt to sever these two words from each other is part of the problem.

Physicists seem to be particularly touchy on this point. On one hand, they insist that philosophy is "not their thing" and "not related." On the other hand, they get incredibly angry when anyone else dares to either put the methodology of modern physics to any kind of philosophical tests or even to look into philosophical ramifications of their work.

In reality, modern scientists and positivists have their own metaphysics, it is just an implicit one that they advertently or inadvertently sneak into their theories. They can only do it because its clumsy sterile "materialism" is the background-radiation of the modern world.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-fragility-of-physics/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-fragility-of-physics/

The Parable of Alien Chess

A parable on the Logical Postivist "interpretation" of scientific models.

The Parable

Suppose an alien race comes to Earth and wants to observe our games. They are very interested in chess, despite the fact that they have eyes with properties that make it impossible to make out what actually happens on a chess board. (The whites and blacks and squares all blur together.)

They can still learn about chess experimentally, they know they can sit two players (a so-called "white" and "black" player) down to play it, and they can tell behaviorally who at the end wins.

After extensive experimentation, they realize this: 50% of the time, the white player wins and 50% of the time, the black player wins (we'll ignore draws and any first-move advantage for the example).

The "best" model

A logical positivist alien thus creates the ultimate, long-term model of chess as an iterated game: Chess amounts to just a drawn-out coin flip. Half of the time white wins, half of the time black wins, just as if they were tossing a quarter.

The aliens then decide to model chess as a coin flip, as a 50-50 game with no underlying principles. While this statistical technique might not be useful for predicting a single game, over the long run and over iterated games, it is the most efficient and parsimonious possible model.

"Inferior" models

Suppose, however that a "crank" scientist of the alien race posits that "God doesn't play dice" and that chess is a more complicated game, despite the fact that the aliens cannot observe it. Suppose even he asks around and determines from humans that there are actually pieces on the board with functions, and he even devises a machine that allows his alien eyes to see the first move of the game of chess.

Seeing this move allows him to create a new theory and model of the game, one that takes into account the first move made and he tries to generate a new set of probabilities of victory based on that move. The model he makes, is of course highly arbitrary, stipulated and ad hoc. In fact, this model is inferior on many inevitable accounts. For example:

1. It is less predictive over iterated games than the coin flip model.
2. It is not as parsimonious/minimal as the coin flip model.
3. It adds new variables to the theory (pieces) that are suspect.

Which model is "right?"

Which model is closer to truth?

Since we, unlike the aliens, are not prevented by defect from observing chess, we know that the second, "inferior" theory of chess is truer. Its theoretical categories, if apparently arbitrary in the eyes of the aliens, are getting at the actual underlying mechanics of chess. Even if the model is less effective, it is certainly righter.

Which will cause fruitful scientific inquiry?

The coin flip model is a scientific dead-end. Firstly, the coin flip model is constructed statistically, which presents the underlying mechanism to be randomness, and thus unworth of inquiry. This isn't statistics hoisted above random variation we know to exist, instead, it's utterly blind statistics that covers over whatever principles underlie it.

Secondly and more importantly, in order to actually improve that model, it has to lose empirical solvency: embracing the abstractions of pieces means introducing mess and deviating in some way from the empircal generalization that half of all chess games are won by white and half by black.

This is not an abnormal circumstance.

The parable here, really an example is not abnormal. In most affairs in science, whether that be physics or neuroscience or economics or chemistry, we are exactly like the partially-blind aliens.

"But science isn't about truth!"

Yeah, it is dude.

Even if you are pretending that science is about "models" or fitting equations and the like, again, the well-fit model is impossible to perfect, while the flawed, yet more true to reality model does have a potential over the long-term to be a superior one. After exhaustive inquiry, an alien race might not only discover the pieces and the full set of rules behind chess, they might be able to predict what moves are good or bad and predict individual chess games. Even on the standards of mere instrumentalism, the mindless positivistic theory is still actually inferior.

Local maxima

The plot

One of the ways I visualize science and models is that each model is really like an n-dimensional optimization plot. "Truth," or if you deny truth as metaphysics, "accuracy in data" or "well-fit equations" are upwards and the goal of science is to get further that way.

At the point you're at, you can tell which direction you can go to move upward, or, which little changes you can make to improve your model. That is what incremental science is, after all: don't change assumptions and just fine-tune your equations. The endless fine-tuning is sometimes thought of as "progress." Of course I don't think that this is bad, but it is a very minor and scientifically less important part of science as a whole.

The reality of incremental science is that once you're at a local maximum, once you've fine-tuned your equations about as perfectly as possible, it's over. Everything next to you looks like a disimprovement. It looks just like those inferior theories of alien chess that posit the existence of pieces. From that, you might erroneously conclude that you have found the global maximum, which due to the nature of the complexity of the universe and the multiplicity of possible answers and theories, you flatly haven't.

Logical positivism is kind of theoretical lobotomy that implicitly tells scientists that they should never, ever, ever change foundational assumptions: tweaking equations like an oblivious autist is Science^® and everything else is "philosophy" or "metaphysics" or "pseudoscience." This amounts to keeping each scientific field on whatever local maximum is closest, utterly unable to extricate themselves from it even when they see on the horizon abberant data. If you want to understand the stagnation of science or any other specific field, this is where it comes from.

Purposefully "bad" science

In Against Method, Paul Feyerabend, in what an unreflective mind might misinterpret as a "troll," says that it is important for science that people have biases, financial interests, interfering religious and political doctrines and the like in science. Looking at the plot, you might now see why. When we are stuck on a local maximum, every new data keeps our already-optimized model where it is no matter how low that maximum actually is. What you need to shake it up is an external shock that totally moves our theoretical position somewhere new on the plot where we can try to optimize at another point, and then compare.

Basic assumptions

A prudent person should be able to question, "Am I even on the right track or am I playing with some model that has a fundamental flaw?" I can guarantee you, optimizing for data and fitting math and equations is easy. All theoretical programs are wrong because they make incorrect core assumptions. This is very hard for the ego of scientists because it means:

1. Possibly illiterate dilettantes on the internet might see and bring to attention legitimate theoretical flaws.
2. All the years you spend in graduate school counting angels on pinheads in your respective theoretical framework is mostly a waste of time.
3. The borders of science are borders more of a sociological club than being the border of raw rigor.
4. Most of the scientific work is not meaningful outside of the theoretical framework that gave rise to it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/

Advice on Some Other Languages

This page is just for minor pointers on lesser studied languages that I don't have enough to have on their own pages.

Gothic

Gothic is a dead language and the only thing existing in it is a partially translated New Testament by Wulfila. It still is a very important language for the study of Germanic and Indo-Europeanism because it is the only language of "Eastern Germanic" so well attested. Eastern Germanic languages are distinct from other Germanic languages in their lack of umlaut and some other characteristically Germanic features, while Gothic still retains some earlier Indo-European inflectional categories.

I mention Gothic only because one of the best ever language learning books I've ever seen is written for it, and that is Thomas Lambdin's Introduction to the Gothic Language. I actually took a Gothic class flippantly in graduate school, but the book stuck out to me as being perfectly designed for the typical target audience of Gothic in historical linguistics.

The book has very well designed lessons and activities, but I think greatest is that in the back of the book, for each chapter there is a corresponding lesson on the historical grammar of the content learned. It goes through what conjugates of each word exist in English, Latin, Greek or Sanskrit or other Indo-European languages and provided comparative paradigms of noun and verb inflections. No word or concept is left without a real mneumonic device, not a fake one fake from some joke about the word, but one tied into the actual historical facts of the word.

I've said before that one of the reasons I never use things like Anki and "spaced repetition software" is that the real way to retain information is to understand how it fits within a wider web of information. In historical linguistics, you have an ideal of this because the more you learn, the easier it is to "remember:" remembering that the Gothic word for "field" is akrs is incredibly simple when you realize it's the same as Latin ager, Greek agrós, Sanskrit ájra and English acre.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is the crown jewel of Indo-European languages and there are very few resources for it. Luckily, there is Devavanipravesika by Goldman and Sutherland, which again is a star in terms of language books.

I do recommend you have some of these abilities before attempting Sanskrit:

1. Some grammatical knowledge of a classical inflected Indo-European language like Latin or Greek.
2. Knowledge of the Devanagari script which is used for Sanskrit nowadays (also the script of Hindi and many other modern Indian languages).

Sandhi

In English, if you say the sentence "What are you up to?" it usually comes out closer to "Whatchu up to?" This kind of phonological compression is a natural and systematic process in all languages. What is interesting is that when written language was younger, it was very common to express these phonological changes in the writing system itself. It looks slangish in modern English to write "whatchu," but it is more accurate after all.

Sanskrit overtly writes every alternation like this, including when words seem to combine together into a single prosodic word. The term for this is [Sandhi]{.dfn}.

The tricky thing that newbies to Sanskrit must understand is that knowing the principles of Sandhi are the first priority in knowing Sanskrit because it's impossible to even parse a basic sentence before you understand it. Phonemically, many Sanskrit words end in an -s, but one of the first rules of Sandhi is that words are not allowed to end in -s in most cases. So -s might show up as -h or -o or something else depending on the phonetic context.

I say this because before you get excited about diving into Sanskrit, you have to make sure you know the basics of Sandhi or it will all be a mess.

Classical/Koiné Greek

Greek, much like Spanish, I never really sat down to learn. Greek is close enough in form to Latin that I learned it from reading a biglottic Bible in both languages. Its grammar presents very few concepts alien to Latin, the only big hurdles probably being the novel uses of the article and if you want to learn classical Greek like a pro, the pitch accent system.

What I mean is that I only read very little of Greek grammar before I could pick up my Latin-Greek Bible and start reading the Greek with the aid of the parallel Latin. This was also a nice experience because you can see the similaries between the two languages, but also how the expressiveness of Greek is sometimes lost in translation.

Greek, for example, has such a complete and elegant paradigm of participles that many of them are unstranlatable in Latin. Latin has only passive perfect participles and active present participles, while Greek has participles for the whole spectrum of voice, tense and aspect. What that means is that Latin has to talk around some common Greek expressions, often utilizing Latin deponents (which can have perfect active participle) to get the meaning across.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/other-langs/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/other-langs/

Command Line Bibles

I've made a couple very useful command-line accessible Bibles for a quick and scriptable lookup of Bible verses and passages. They exist not only in English, but for Latin and Greek as well.

1. English King James Version (including Apocrypha) - Github, Gitlab
2. Latin Vulgate - Github, Gitlab
3. Greek Septuagint & New Testament - Github, Gitlab

Installation

Or just replace kjv with vul for the Latin version or grb for the Greek.

Usage

Single run

Run the program name followed by a passage. The text will appear to you in your pager. Arrows or vim-keys to scroll, q to quit.

Note that you may also give whole books or chapters. kjv genesis will give you all of Genesis. kjv mat 1:1-10 will show only Matthew 1:1-10. Note also that you can usually abbreviate books.

Searching

/ searches for patterns. For example, kjv /offering will search the whole Bible for the word "offering." You may specify a book/location before it to search only that book.

Interactive mode

Just type kjv (or vul or grb) alone to enter interactive mode. You can then just type verses/books without prefixing them with the command name each time if you prefer.

Origin

I forked the original software from this repository which is an incomplete English King James Version (without the Apocrypha). With the use of coreutils and vim, I found online texts of the Apochrypha, Vulgate, Septuagint and the SBL New Testament and formatting them to function with this program.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/command-line-bibles/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/command-line-bibles/

Hating Brave is Cool!

I like and use the Brave Browser. It's a free and open source browser with features like:

1. Ad-blocking by default.
2. Tracker-blocking by default.
3. Anti-fingerprinting mechanisms to prevent you from being monitored.
4. Built-in Tor windows.
5. Run by a based Christian and not furry leftists.

As far as I'm concerned, Brave is indisputably the best out-of-the-box general-purpose browser out there. There are other okay browsers, and I'll mention things about Brave I don't like, but Brave is especially good because it comes with all of these sensible features out of the box (you don't have to go install an ad-blocker), so this makes it very good for installing it on your grandma's computer. The anti-fingerprinting abilities are even unique among power-user browsers.

Despite that, there is a loud clique of anti-Brave agitators and Brave skeptics. Whenever I do a video on Brave, I can expect at least 20% dislikes and a torrent of comments from people with anime avatars calling me a "shill" for “recommending” this browser.

This, I suspect, is because Brave has an optional extra feature: Brave Rewards, which is "too good to be true."

Brave Rewards

By default, Brave blocks all ads, but users can turn on "Brave Rewards" to voluntarily view occasional ads and will receive a small amount of Basic Attention Token (BAT), Brave's cryptocurrency. The ads don't mess up webpages by appearing in them, but appear in their computer's notification system.

Brave's entire motivation is to replace traditional ads that fill up webpages with these kind of ads that share revenue directly with the web page owners and the people browsing the sites themselves. Ad companies disappear, the internet debloats and users and actual sites get a direct cut.

This ad feature is not just optional, but is disabled by default.

The Archetypical Brainlet Brave Skeptic

“The fact that brave has exploded on the scene so quickly make me suspicious. There's money involved somewhere.” -Comment on a YouTube video of mine

Yes. Because Brave users literally get money to browse with it. Duh.

So there is no conspiracy theory about this. Brave just does everything right as a browser and they give you free money. In the Basic Attention Token system, companies buy ads and the revenue is shared directly by the owners of sites and the people who view the ads. This cuts out the middleman ad-companies from the internet. It removes and disincentivizes bloat in webpages. This is a drastically more effective and bloatfree way to monetize the internet than old-school ads. Or, you can just keep the default functionality where there are no ads.

I literally have people post on my videos constantly about how Brave is a big scheme and "you'll never see a cent of that money." Meanwhile, literally every Brave user, including me, gets a monthly payout. You can even receive your payout directly in US dollars if you want! Even if the Basic Attention Token framework totally flops, it's not like you're putting any money into it. The worst that can happen is you saying, "Oh no, all I have left is the browser with the best out-of-the-box functionality!"

It reminds me of the joke of two economists walking down the street. One says, "Hey look, there's a $100 bill on the sidewalk!" The other one replies, "That's not possible, if there were, someone would've picked it up already."

The anti-Brave crowd's argument is always some form of "it's too good to be true." In reality, you don't realize how inefficient and wasteful the previous way of internet ads was. Why pay an ad agency with employees to pay website developers to put ads into the actual code of websites, contorting it all into a mess? The BAT system and Brave just cuts out the middle man and keeps webpages clean by allowing ads to only be shown when wanted in the user's already existing notification system. The goal of the BAT project is to universalize Brave and perhaps similar browsers which block ads and trackers by default, thus cutting off the very lifeblood of that inefficient and anti-social system.

If you still don't trust the BAT project or think it's gimmicky, great. By default, the "Brave Rewards" system is off. Complaining about Brave because it has an optional feature to make money is like complaining about another browser because it has an add-on you don't plan on using.

Tactical Ignorance

“I use to love brave. NOT anymore.. I'm sure that they are fingerprinting and using my browsing habits and even search queries and shows relevant ads. It is not like they are showing some random pop up for ads. I get ads for NordVPN if I search for best vpn 2020. I instantly get pop up for lenovo laptops as soon as I search for laptop. Obviously, with all the utm source and other tracking stuff. I am making around 15 BAT/month. I don't need those pennies. Back to Firefox with Ublock Origin and Privacy Badger.” -Comment on a YouTube video of mine

This guy is literally talking as if how Brave works is some kind of mystery, as if its entire code base isn't openly auditable. No, Brave doesn't take or "fingerprint" your browsing habits, instead, if you are enrolled in Brave Rewards, you browser pulls the entire list of adds from the system, then locally decides on your own computer what ads to serve.

On Brave's FAQ:

“Only the browser, after HTTPS terminates and secure pages are decrypted, has all of your private data needed to analyze user intent. Our auditable open source browser code protects this intent data on the client device. Our server side has no access to this data in the clear, nor does it have decryption keys. We do not run a MitM proxy or VPN service. We provide signals to the browser to help it make good decisions about what preferences and intent signals to expose to maximize user, publisher and advertiser value. Each ad request is anonymous, and exposes only a small subset of the user’s preferences and intent signals to prevent “fingerprinting” the user by a possibly unique set of tags.”

Is Brave bad for privacy?

A popularly linked Neocities site Spyware Watchdog ranks Brave as having a rank of "High" spyware. The information on the site is generally good, but a little context-less: if you compare their Brave article to their articles on other browsers, this bad ranking for Brave is utterly out of place.

Many people who read things and lack basic critical thinking skills wanted me to either admit or refute this page. Again, the website's information is good, but there is that same implicitly more skeptical standard held to Brave than other browsers.

As a point of comparison, take the browser Pale Moon. On their site, the Spyware Watchdog classifies Pale Moon as being "Top Tier" in privacy, while Brave is "Low Tier." But if you look at their own analysis, on nearly every point, Brave is superior to Pale Moon.

On pretty much all of these points, when Brave is lacking, Pale Moon is much worse (that isn't to say that Pale Moon is a bad browser either). So it doesn't really make sense to me why Brave, which also comes with additional privacy features like fingerprint-blocking, should be classified as lower than Pale Meme. That site also claims that Brave uses the Google search engine as default. If that was ever true, it isn't now, or at least not on any version of Brave I've used. Brave asks the user on the first start up which search engine he would like to use as default. Google is among the choices though.

Note that in their articles they admit that Pale Moon has "auto-updates," but complain that Brave has "shitty auto-updates." Okay. I wonder what the difference is aside from personal emotion. In the last paragraph or so, they do mention, if not skirt around all the actual features of Brave:

“and the fingerprinting protection I don't think is found in any other browser (but I didn't confirm if it actually works).”

It does (of course it's an arms-race). But this is an acknowledgment that Brave is fighting on a level that no other browser is. While other honorable browsers like Ice Cat are committed to free software, Brave is also committed to an internet free from ads enmeshed in web pages and the people who simp for them.

Brave for normies

Aside from nit-picking different browsers, if you want to install a browser on a computer for a normie relative or friend, there is no debate that Brave is the best. Again, Brave is built with ad and tracker blocking. Browsers like Pale Moon or Firefox are bad browsers that can become okay browsers after you manually disable their junk features and download a bunch of add-ons, but Brave comes as it should be. Even Brave's token feature of viewing ads to get paid is not on by default. As it ships, Brave is just a good browser.

This is why I have Brave ship with LARBS: it's a pain to hosts a repository and edit browser settings via dotfiles, while I can just have Brave installed and that gives a passable, ad-free experience for users.

So if you want to make a normie's life easier, install Brave. They will be able to do everything they could do on Chrome, but now they have decreased their Google liability and no longer have to put up with ads.

Grasping at Straws...

Chromium based

When you corner an anti-Brave aggitant, they usually mumble something about how Brave is bad because it's "Chromium-based." I've never seen people use this argument about, say, qutebrowser or other minor Chromium-based browsers, but I think it's just become "that reason" for Brave. I honestly, really can't get worked up against a free and open source software project just because it's been spearheaded by Google. The ability to fork it always remains if the code goes south or if it does degenerate stuff.

I think it's especially absurd to place your trust in Mozilla FurryFox and their team of stereotypical SJWs and soydevs as a functioning alternative. Remember Mozilla spends its money developing fun add-ons like this to "protect" people emotionally from scary "conspiracy theories" and "alt-right content" on YouTube. I consider Google just as insane and dangerous, but not necessarily so much more insane so that I for some reason trust the judgment of Mozilla developers over Google ones.

EDIT: Here's another one from Mozilla FurryFox: "We need more than deplatforming" Moreso than Google, Mozilla's openly stated goal is an internet totally controlled by stereotypical dyed-hair SJWs with bad physiognomy.

What I mean by this is, sure, I'd like some browser with an independent engine. Pale Moon does sort of has that. That's cool. But that is not enough to make a difference for actual usage. Again, look at the list of benefits of Brave at the top of this article, all of those are hard to replicate or find in other browsers. I could go into it elsewhere, but there are a million little reasons why I don't use Pale Moon (but you might like it).

Affiliate links

Twitter users/Redditors went apoplectic several months ago when they realized Brave had included affiliate links to some sites whose names are filled in in the url bar. I have already written on this. It's literally nothing. As I say there, this is what affiliate links are for. I've never heard the same crowd through a fit that DuckDuckGo does exactly the same thing. You could even actually see the Brave affiliate links fill in, which is not the case when clicking on a DuckDuckGo affiliate site link. Still took these guys months to even notice... This is only something "controversial" to people who are trying their damnedest to find something to not like about Brave.

Actual good complaints about Brave and BAT

Since most visceral anti-Brave agitators just have a kind of general ax to grind, I want to take this time to voice my actually annoyances with Brave and the BAT project. I consider all of these ultimata: I only use Brave with the expectation that these issues will be fixed in the future.

Get rid of Uphold!

Actually, let me say that in <h1>...

Get rid of Uphold!

So you can get BAT from viewing ads, and people with websites and YouTube channels can receive donations, great. The annoying thing however is that you can't just get payouts to a random Ethereum wallet, instead, you have to use the company Uphold. This is probably because of legal issues and because I'm sure they have some financial arrangement, but the BAT project cannot be considered to be a universal and private solution if users are funneled into some site that requires a real-world identity.

Legally or technologically difficult to do otherwise? Maybe. But that is one of the goals of cryptocurrencies anyway and it should be met. Build the technology so that it's impossible to legally constrain. Most blockchain technology is already like that.

Users should just be able to give a public Ethereum/Token address and receive BAT there. That should be it. If you want to offer a normie-friendly partner service like Uphold, fine, but that should not be either the default or required. Uphold, I should say, is definitely not normie-friendly anyway. Since they did a redesign late September/early Ocotober, I admit I literally cannot figure the site out and how to transfer my BAT out efficiently.

I should say, in development Brave has had some suboptimal or non-private features in the past before better solutions were devised. I mentioned the fact that Brave pulls a non-personalized ad list, but that wasn't always the case to my understanding: when Brave was starting out, the browser did request specific ads, giving the central service some information about user browsing habits. So that at least indicates that Brave is open to reevaluating methods that are exploitable.

BAT as a 💩coin

Let me state it again though, if the BAT system requires Uphold for basic functionality, it is not a serious long-term service. That's it. I only use and recommend the BAT system under the expectation that this is a temporary situation that they are actively seeking to remedy. If anti-Brave shills want to shill about something that actually matters, this should be it!

Like most 💩coins, BAT is not decentralized in any meaningful sense. It’s KYCed into oblivion and relies on a significant number of platforms in bottleneck positions, including in particular the BAT Project itself. I wouldn’t say I even support the BAT Project itself for this reason, I just don’t mind using Brave since you can dip your fingers into it without getting KYCed.

Auto-updates and integrations

I agree strongly with the argument from the Spyware Watchdog site above that Brave should not make any unsolicited requests to sites, especially auto-updates, and if it has a reason to, it should have some menu option to disable it. Any connections a browser makes in the background for these purposes or for analytics should be disabled by default too.

The Browser should be neutral and decentralized.

Somewhat related to the above, if Brave is actually serious about becoming the commonly used system not just for browsing, but for internet monetization, it has to be as neutral and decentralized as possible. Brave has added a lot of optional features for different services and other little annoyances. Obviously, you can immediately disable them, but if you want to have a personalizable and universal browsing experience, Brave should be absolutely blank when you pull it up on a fresh install.

General little features

• The ability to not keep track of history but to still keep cookies. All Chromium browsers lack this menu feature which exists in Firefox. I'm not sure why this isn't an option because it has always seemed to me the most sensible way to browse. I don't want sites I've already seen filling in my url bar!

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hating-brave-is-cool/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/hating-brave-is-cool/

Learn Chinese

Chinese is the hardest language to learn according to normies who have never tried to learn it.

In reality, Chinese is really easy. It has literally no complex morphology: no tense, plurals, gender. It doesn't have irregular verbs or nouns because it has no verb and noun endings whatsoever. It's almost difficult to explain how easy Chinese is.

The only different thing is the writing system which is I hesitate to say anachronistic. The Chinese character system is more structurally similar to Sumerian cuneiform than to English morphophonemic writing. That presents a unique hurdle, but one if properly tackled is not too difficult and also edifying. It's important to realize in any case that learning a language and learning its writing system are two separate things.

Knowing this is important for mastering or even beginning Chinese.

These are the best Chinese Books

The Yale series by John DeFrancis is not just the absolute best for learning Chinese, but they are an eternal exemplar of basically the best you can do for any language. The books all have generic names and they're linked below with audio. The books are massive. Even if you just get "Beginning Chinese" and "Beginning Chinese Reader, Part 1," you'll know around 4 semesters worth of Chinese compared to your average university course. They have free audio too. Remember that if you get nervous about their price tags, which might be as high as $50. These books are severely worth it though.

There are actually two parallel book series in the DeFrancis/Yale series: the green books, which cover the spoken language (in Romanization) and the red books (the readers) that cover characters. It might sound strange to cover the language itself and the characters separately, but it is massively superior.

The Green Books (for the language)

The great thing about the main series is that they come with many, many exercises and drills which are actually good for individual use. Books that expect you to read something once and internalize it are irreparable.

Links are to the official Yale site. Probably better to buy on eBay or something though. Worth the money even when they are expensive.

• Beginning Chinese (audio)
• Intermediate Chinese (audio)
• Advanced Chinese (audio)

You can get .pdfs of all these books on Library Genesis. I have physical copies, except some an ex-girlfriend borrowed and never gave back. If you read this, you better send them back!

Note that I've also linked audio that was recorded for these books, which is great. They used to cost a lot too, but now they're free!

The Red Books (for characters)

The reason the language in transliteration and the characters are in two books is because learning them is really two different processes. The green books are more typical language learning books. The red books/readers are different.

Every chapter, they teach you 10 characters, but with those 10 characters, you might learn to combine them into 50 new words based on them. The pacing here is for only learning the essential and most used characters as simply as possible as you advance. The readers do not explain grammar and expect you to be advancing in the green books to understand grammatical things.

• Beginning Chinese Reader, Part 1 (audio for parts 1 and 2)
• Beginning Chinese Reader, Part 2
• Intermediate Chinese Reader, Part 1 (audio for parts 1 and 2)
• Intermediate Chinese Reader, Part 2
• Advanced Chinese Reader (audio)

The Blue Books?

I won't link them because they sort of the defeat the point, and I don't have them, but there is also a blue series which is just the green series but with the language in characters. I think it's intended more for classes that can't do the DeFrancis method due to bureaucratic constraints. If it has the exercises of the green books, that's good and all, but really the value of the system is the fact that when you do the spoken language in the green books, you don't have to worry about unknown characters and when you do the characters in the red book, that's all you need to pay attention to.

I'm not dismissing the blue books, because the quality of the Yale/DeFrancis series is still light-years ahead of all other series, but I'd stick with the classics here.

Notes about Chinese

The tone cope

I remember having normalfriends in my Chinese class (which was a waste of time, just get the DeFrancis books) who would say that Chinese wasn't too hard "except for the tones." Mandarin Chinese has four tones that distinguish words. If you've sat through your first day in Chinese class or even seen a YouTube video on Chinese, you know this.

Normies see this alien concept of having tones and they turn their brains off. There were kids in my class who said they'd "just not learn" the tones. Which is sort of like saying you're going to learn English, but not the vowels "because they're too hard."

Actually around half of the world's languages have tones. They are not bizarre or highly "marked" in an objective sense. They are much more common that the "th" sound in English. You can bear it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-chinese/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-chinese/

Learn Latin

Latin was the first language I learned and has probably been the most useful. Here I'll talk about some of the things it's gotten me and some recommendations for how to learn it well.

What I've gotten out of learning Latin

You get multiple languages for one.

Latin, as you probably know is the ancestor of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc. Once you know Latin, it is quite literally downhill learning any of these. In college, I decided to take Spanish for a degree specialization (I was doing an international business thing and required a foreign language). Merely based on my knowledge of Latin, I just tested into fifth-level Spanish and figured it out from there. I don't even remember learning Spanish, but I can speak it and still do every once in a while.

In grad school I took classes taught in Spanish and French. I can basically read all Romance languages. I even read Rhaeto-Romance poetry for fun (the languages of Switzerland). All of this is nearly free stuff when you learn Latin.

Latin will unironically red-pill you on many subjects.

Looking to other cultures in the world might change your view of things in some superficial way, but looking into the past will revolutionize how you see it. A recurring point I make in many contexts is that the past is literally an alien civilization. Most of what people pretend they know about it is repeatedly cited modern rumors about it. Seeing it in its own words is very different.

It's insane the amount of writing done in Latin in the medieval period and antiquity, so much of which isn't even on the mind of translators. A lot of historians just cite modern historians. Theologians cite modern theologians. Scientists cite modern scientists. Once you crack open a traditional book on any of these subjects you realize the provinciality and oblviousness of modern "frameworks."

In generative linguistics, people who have never read anything written before 1950 pat themselves on the back for all the "problems" they've solved not knowing they are only retreading paths long established by Stoics, Modistae and early Indo-Europeanists. There are a lot of theologians and philosophers who are trapped in modern citation circles because they don't have the power of Latin that can bring them in touch directly with Aquinas or Augustine or other philosophers of the early periods.

Knowing Latin is like an academic superpower and supposed intellectuals will fear you. Latin used to be the bare minimum of a respectable intellectual... actually... you know what, it still is. Now is your chance to have an actual one up over more pompous people whose only function is writing lit reviews with a disability to read original sources. Being privy to an original and long-neglected source will be a continuous content mill which will unironically be the envy of others in academia.

Knowing Latin is better academically than an undergraduate degree in linguistics.

The process of learning Latin and the lore around you will equip you with all the terminology and principles to make you superior to someone who just studies "linguistics" without any actual application. I really mean this. When I was a grad student in linguistics, all the brightest undergrads had one thing in common: Latin. I actually came to judge people based on how they first got interested in linguistics. The smartest ones always started with Latin, the biggest plebs always started because they liked some Steven Pinker book (sorry Pinkucks! Those are the honest facts!)

How to Learn Latin

What I used

When I learned Latin, all I had was a copy of this book: Collar & Daniell's Beginner's Latin Book. The truth is that most old Latin books are good (old being at least 70 to 100 years old). After language learning became commercialized, it all became dismissable. You can see a list of downloadable Latin textbooks and other materials here here.

The only other source I used in the past to learn and read Latin in a biglottic Latin/Greek New Testament (i.e. Greek on the left and Latin on the right). This is probably actually the single most significant book I own, now that I think about it. I learned Greek from it too and I've had it for around 15 years now.

Lingua Latina per se Illustrata

Although I didn't know about until later, there is another very unique and excellently made Latin series called Lingua Latina per se Illustrata "The Latin Language Illustrated by Itself" by Hans Orberg. You can see an English publisher here, but you can also find them on eBay or pdfs on Library Genesis or Pirate Bay (along with audio for the books).

LLPSI is unique and really stands out. The entire book, including explanations is in Latin. Latin words and grammatical concepts are explained by illustration and example. This sounds absurd frankly: how are you supposed to learn a language from a book written in that language? But the design is so perfect that it works.

I recommend to get LLPSI and some classical grammar primer like Collar & Daniell's because I think especially for newbs, it might be necessary to have explicit instruction about grammar points in English.

Read this

Read this article: "Latin by the Dowling Method." It's back from the early internet and its recommendations have stood the test of time and I agree with them.

Latin links

You may've known about these already, but they're worth noting.

• The Latin Library – Massive collection of classical and medieval Latin works
• Textkit – Greek and Latin resources and forum

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-latin/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-latin/

Learning European Languages (Michel Thomas)

I've said on a couple livestreams that the ideal way for an English speaker to begin learning or excel in learning other major European languages (Spanish, French, Italian and German) is to use Michel Thomas's audiotapes. They can be found for free on Pirate Bay and other sites, but you can also buy them on his official site.

This style of audiotapes is so far above any other, it's hard to even put it in words. They make really exceptional promises: "learn a language in 8 hours" and in some sense I'm inclined to agree.

They certainly give a reflexive foundation that makes learning anything else about a language very easy. There are multiple courses and they're worth listening to multiple times until it's a totally internalized.

Explanation of the Method

The tapes all have Thomas locked in a room with two people who don't know the language, one male, one female. Thomas simply teaches and illicit basic responses from the two students, teaching them as they go. As the listener, your part is to say the proper responses to yourself before the example students. At all points in time, the students are creating novel sentences, combining basic concepts.

Lack of vocabulary

Probably the most important part of the tapes is the lack of vocabulary taught. You don't get 20 irrelevant nouns with each lesson to memorize that you don't even now how to use. What new words you "learn" are mostly shared in common with English. The goal is to make you fluent before you have to memorize words.

Thomas, instead, actually teaches the language and how to be constructive in it: the verbs, the verb inflections, how to combine them, basic pronouns and the like. Only once the students understand them does he move on to the words for real-world objects. Thomas will sometimes explain why he does this in the course, but it amounts to what I've said in other places: you can guess or figure out nouns or talk around them, but if you don't know how to put verbs together, you just don't know the language and you can't even fake it. It is much easier to learn nouns after you actually learn the structure of the language and can actually use them.

Lack of "comprehension"

You're never told to "listen to this passage and think about what it means" in the Thomas method. The Thomas method is entirely productive: you make the sentences and you have to put yourself in the mindset of how the language works.

A lot of other audiotapes, say Pimsleur, have you sit and listen to text and implicitly ask you to "translate" it. This in essense, keeps you thinking in English, or thinking in translating mode. The also keep you chained to canned responses in a single dialog. When people do this, they ignore the actual structure/grammar of the language, listen for big noticable nouns, and then piece together what the sentence means. This is always a bad idea.

Michel Thomas actually just knows what he's doing.

It's honestly rare that you even ever see a "good teacher." By that I mean someone who can easily keep track of what his students know and can devise questions perfect to pry their knowledge. Thomas is just honestly good at this and it goes a long way. In the tapes, if he notices that a student repeatedly messing something up, he knows how to elicit better responses and remind them of what they need. This is 99% of teaching, despite the fact that it's a really rare skill.

Don't bother getting the tapes without Michel Thomas

After Michel Thomas's death (or perhaps a little before) the company running his website above put out tapes for many other languages: Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, etc. under his name. They are done "in his method" theoretically, but they are no good. They do weird things like have two different teachers: one who instructs the students and one who is a native speaker of the language to say the sentences in it. I think the idea behind it was to make sure you hear a "perfect" accent, but it's a total waste and the sponteneity required for actual teaching is lost because you have these two different people trying organize among themselves. I think the teachers lack the introspective skill to keep tabs on the students' learning that I mentioned above, so all-in-all, I think they're awkward and fake.

Donovan Nagel (you may know him from his YouTube channel on BSD) gave Michel Thomas a negative review after using the "Michel Thomas" Arabic tapes. I listened to part of the Chinese tapes and they were not worth it (if you want to learn Chinese I've written about what I recommend).

But the real Michel Thomas tapes: Spanish, French, Italian, German, done by the man himself, are the best for all their respective languages.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learning-european-languages-michel-thomas/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learning-european-languages-michel-thomas/

Only Use Old Computers!

If there is a single point of advice I can offer novice computer users, it is stop using modern computers.

If you look at "technology YouTube," by which I mean the massive multi-million subscriber channels, nearly all of it is devoted to constantly reviewing and comparing every new computer, processor, graphics card and product. There's big money in it because obviously all of these companies put money in it, but also if you're a normal person, you automatically assume you need the "best" technology.

Do you need a modern computer?

Absolutely not. More than 95% of people could be using a computer from 2008 or before without any problems. Needing a recent machine is limited to people who:

1. Do extreme, professional, processor-intensive video-rendering.
2. Compile massive programs and operating systems with severe time constraints.
3. Play recent triple AAA video-games on high settings.
4. Use many massive Electron apps and other inexcusably bad software written by soydevs and other people who shouldn't be writing software.

The last two reasons aren't really real reasons at all because they are totally unnecessary and avoidable things.

But to the point, watching YouTube videos and using a word processor does not require last month's new release.

Every video I upload, I transcode for settings optimal for YouTube, meaning I render each video I record. On my computer from a decade ago, that still takes only a couple minutes. A fancy $5000 computer might be able to do it in less than one, but it is honestly not worth the pain associated with modern computers.

How much should a computer cost a normal person?

Either nothing or just around $200, I say. I use a ThinkPad X220 I got for $90 on eBay. Before that, I used another ThinkPad X220 I also got for $90. Like anything else, if you are buying things on Amazon, you're doing it wrong.

The Pain of Modern Computers

Modern computers are more breakable

As computing has become more and more popular, companies have started to realize that a consumer's first reaction on having their $5 wifi card die is immediately buy a whole new computer. This means two things: (1) they don't bother to make computers easy to repair, in fact, they make it more difficult and (2) there is absolutely no need to make computers durable at all. In fact, it's probably better to let computers break so you'll get yet another sale.

Apple is by far the most anti-social computing company because of this. I'll let the larger tech channels show you the specifics, but every Apple product is brilliantly designed to make it difficult to fix very basic and otherwise fixable problems. They have quite a racket licensing out the ability and tools to companies that want to fix their terrible hardware. Apple even used pentalobe screws just so normal people couldn't open their computers up with a typical screwdriver. Of course nowadays every other computer manufacturer imitates the Apple style where apparent "sleekness" is supposed to be a signal of high quality.

Modern computers are increasingly monitoring devices and come with proprietary junk.

The Management Engine

You might've heard that all Intel i3/i5/i7 processors (that is, after the Intel Core 2 Duo) have an onboard alternate processor that is meant to function as spyware. This is called the Intel Management Engine. It can view your memory and connect to the internet: basically all modern computers have this permanent back door. In older computers, say the ThinkPad X200, you can, with a little hardware action, remove the other processor and replace the proprietary BIOS with Libreboot or Coreboot, but that is not possible on more modern computers (you can install Coreboot on a more modern machine, but not all of the components of the Management Engine are removed).

More recent computers, however are non-removable spyware by design and, yes, the NSA can monitor any machine with a Management Engine. There are actually even rumors that one of the taps that the FBI under the Obama administration put on Trump during his campaign was a Management Engine bug.

Note that AMD (Ryzen) processors have what they call a "Platform Security Processor" that is equivalent to the Intel Management Engine, so you're not escaping the issue by using one of them.

NVIDIA

Again, unless you play modern videos alone all day, you literally have no reason to have a modern computer, especially one with an expensive graphics card. NVIDIA is a great example because they make graphics cards and develop proprietary drivers for them to make it harder and harder to use them on machines that aren't running whatever the most recent spyware variant of Windows 10 is. Linux works perfectly on all computers ancient and modern, but if you plug some NVIDIA thing up to it, you might lose your screen or not be able to boot. A lot of gaymers whine about their NVIDIA products "not working" on Linux without realizing that is by design. NVIDIA and other companies and all CPU designers go out of their way to keep their source code and standards private which makes their products tangibly worse because it is harder for other parties to write drivers for them. Why? Because most of them have partnerships with Microsoft.

The Problem of Windows

How many times have you heard a normie explain to you that their computer is slow because it's "really old" and they bought it "way back in 2015?" It's an absurd statement of course. Computers don't just get magically slow... ...unless they've been running Windows.

In the future, once even Microsoft has switched over to a purely Unix-based backend for their operating system, we're all going to have a good laugh about how Microsoft Windows, literally the worst and least functioning operating system ever devised, was the largest consumer market share for decades.

I might go into how Windows is poorly designed in another page or video, but I want to be clear that there is no such loss of speed on any Linux distribution, which is what you should be using. I am one of the first to complain about the feature bloat of the Linux kernel and Linux software, but compared to Windows, it's no contest: Linux runs fast on old hardware. You'll know from some of my videos, however, that I'm not big into "Linux Evangelism," mostly because it's sort of strident and doesn't really work with a high success rate. Using Linux is just something that normies have been immunized against (mostly because "It's what smart people do"), but I always find myself in a position where someone's Window installation has permanently crashed and they're at the awkward decision of having to buy a license to reinstall the dysfunctional and slow operating system they've grown to hate.

There is quite literally no problem that normal people have with computers that is not immediately alleviated by installing Linux.

Why do people use ThinkPads?

As I said above, I use a X220 ThinkPad. Older ThinkPads are fairly popular among people who think and care about doing things effectively and economically on a computer. Why is this?

ThinkPads were always designed for enterprise environments, meaning the financial incentives for the manufacturer are not always planned obsolesce, but a long-standing reputation among large companies of having durable, fixable and expandable machines.

To replace a hard drive on the X200 requires unscrewing just a single screw. Same to replace the memory. To replace a spoiled keyboard is no more than three screws. Modern laptops, including the degraded modern ThinkPad have abandoned this simplicity and opt for the Apple-Mac/cell phone design technique of making batteries, memory and the rest functionally soldered and irremovable.

How far can $500 go?

Over the years, I’ve had many things break on my laptops, but since I’ve been using ThinkPads, it is incredibly easy to keep a working computer even after rough use. I estimate that I have never spent more than a combined total of $500 on computers, which is usually a bare minimum for what someone can buy a “modern” laptop for nowadays.

When the keyboard on my ThinkPad breaks, I can just buy a replacement keyboard for $30 or $40 and replace the old one much easier than any other model. That’s the modularity of these computers.

Even in the worst case scenario when something on the motherboard makes the computer unbootable, I still get to keep my “broken” ThinkPad and repurpose the memory, wifi card, keyboard and everything else. I still have some parts of every laptop I’ve had just because they do come in a lot of use. The other month, a friend’s wifi on his desktop went out and I could replace it with one of my old ThinkPad modules.

This is the kind of thing you lose with modern computers. This is purposeful on the part of manufacturers, and it’s important not to pay them huge amounts of money to incentivize this behavior. It’s very easy to live off of 10 year old computers nowadays. The eBay-and-etc resale market is massive even thought many of us have gotten wise to the value of these old computers.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/only-use-old-computers/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/only-use-old-computers/

Science vs. Soyence

There's nothing necessarily wrong with science, reason, knowledge etc. To some degree, they're fundamental for survival in this world in one way or another. But one of the more worrisome problems which have arisen since the Enlightenment, and especially in the past several years, is the fact that whenever scientific knowledge has increased, human arrogance has accelerated even faster. This isn't a metaphysical, moral arrogance; it's one that is more and more jeopardizing the human cosmos.

We live in a pop-scientific and pop-technological world. Because common people are constantly weighing themselves down with new gadgets and state-of-the-art genetically engineered food, there's a tendency to want to pay homage to the amorphous blob of "knowledge." Of course, much like the Greek Gods, we cannot seem to speak to "knowledge" directly, or to mentally murky academics, but only to official mediators: journalists and "science communicators" and the like.

The religious metaphor is intentional. Of course the actual view of Popperian science is that scientific "advancement" is less of an increase in knowledge than a decrease in falsity. We can never be sure of what is true, but we can gradually establish what is false and contradictory; science does exclusively the latter. Real scientific work refutes and calls into question established fact and is in a constant self-regeneration. Facts mean nothing in themselves.

And scientific models, from our models of the atom, to models of the Earth's weather and climate, to models of our body are highly circumstantial, and as a rule, will nearly all inevitably be proven false. Theories are the narratives we cast over facts which have not yet been ruled false. We know nearly nothing of how the brain works. Sure, we know there are synapses, and we know what brains end up doing in some circumstances, but we haven't begun to scratch the surface of how a brain is actually engineered (computational models be damned). The same is true of the human body and is especially true of human society.

Now Neil deGrasse Tyson has the annoying mantra that he repeats at every possible opportunity, which goes something like: "the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." First off, I don't know what's good about that; it'd be pretty damn convenient to live in a world where we could imagine away gravity or CO2 or cancer, but aside from this, science, actual science as a critical methodology is manifestly not true and is not the truth. Science is a way of marginally approaching truth by discovering falsity, and in most endeavors, this approachment is so marginal as to be inert in all our daily lives. There is nothing to "believe in" in science anyway, because it's an exposer of non-truth.

But in pop-science, Science^® is "knowledge" and deviation from the scientific catechism is "irrational." It's not just irrational to dispute consensus, but irrational to fail to implement it in your personal life.

In Practice

The greatest danger of pop-science is the unquestioned assumption that life should be led "scientifically." That we should "look for evidence," "question everything," and universally "challenge authority" (unless that authority is a professor). The problem should be blatantly obvious in hindsight.

An obvious example: in the 20th century, Western societies had to deal with the very real problem of a bizarre increase in lung cancer rates. We "know" now that smoking tobacco and other substances apparently cause drastically higher lung cancer rates, but this was lost on the people at the time.

The relationship between smoking and cancer was highly circumstantial; there were some statistical correlations established, but as any pop-science guru will tell us "correlation is not causation!" For decades, scientifically minded people looked for evidence while millions more died. Smoking companies took refuge in the fact that there was no mechanism understood behind how smoking could cause lung cancer. With all scientific rigor, they insisted for decades that the increase in lung cancer was due to something else, or merely an increase in diagnosis capacity. And they were on the side of scientific skepticism!

Only now that there is some understanding of how carcinogens in smoke can damage the lungs can we say that the "scientific consensus" is that smoking causes lung cancer. Cute, but if people had been "irrationally" cautious, the human tragedy would've been substantially mitigated.

The problem is that "looking for evidence" before acting or non-acting is personally and socially dangerous. In nearly all circumstances, our intuition (crafted by millions of years of evolution) or social norms (which keep us to established safe routes) are much better guides to life than the scientific consensus, despite them being "irrational" (and sorry, religion is part of this too). When someone guzzles down some newly fabricated energy drink or gallons of soda, they're nearly certainly damaging their bodies in ways science does not yet understand. Don't wait 40 years for some longitudinal peer-reviewed study to prove that eating plastic is bad for you. Trust your instincts before you give credence to some YouTuber who says inane things like "There's no evidence that..."

My favorite little "irrationality" that we all commit is of course, sleep. After millennia of trying to understand it, there is no established scientific reason or justification for why humans "need" sleep. Sure there are hypotheses (memory processing, repair, maybe even something Freudian), but none close to common currency. In the words of one of the world's most prominent sleep researchers, William Denent, "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy." Of course the absence of logical evidence to the necessity of sleep keeps no NdGT fan from wasting their time on the "Bronze-Age Myth" of the importance of sleep.

(Not) (Mis-)Understanding Complex Systems

The human body is a complex system in which every "system" is overlapping, somewhat redundant, all-affecting and fundamentally beyond linear analysis. Our scientific studies can find binary variables that correlate with a low p value, but that tells us nothings about what's actually going on and nothing about the underlying mechanisms. Again, the same is true of the human brain and the same is true of human society. Nothing is a simple input-output system.

What this means is that basically nothing from the world of pop-science can ever affect the basics of our lives because the interaction of our component parts are just non-amenable to any kind of generalizations that make intuitive sense to us. Everything we do affects our bodies in ways we can't predict so the proper strategy is always an "irrational" precaution and avoidance of novelty.

Things, of course, get especially touchy when talking about the "rational" management of society. Every good denizen of the post-Enlightenment world, even most of those on the "Right" have the idea that the economy and social relationships are simple one-to-one hydraulic systems that can be managed like a little steam engine. Now we've been rationally managed to hell and not back (and the solution is always more rational management).

The terrible truth is that traditional social norms are irrational and still do exist for a reason in the perennial gale of social evolution. Social change and social progress (note the lack of scare quotes) have always been happening, but only now do we have the naive idea that the units of society (people) have the competence to design and contribute to an otherwise unconscious evolution of social memes.

Anyway, I'll give the last word on this issue to Noam Chomsky, who somehow manages to say something clear and admirable on the subject:

“Science is a very strange activity. It only works for simple problems. Even in the hard sciences, when you move beyond the simplest structures, it becomes very descriptive. By the time you get to big molecules, for example, you are mostly describing things. The idea that deep scientific analysis tells you something about problems of human beings and our lives and our inter-relations with one another and so on is mostly pretense in my opinion-self-serving pretense which is itself a technique of domination and exploitation and should be avoided. Professionals certainly have the responsibility of not making people believe that they have some special knowledge that others can't attain without special means or special college education or whatever. If things are simple, they should be said simply; if there is something serious to say that is not simple, then, fine, that's good and interesting. We can perhaps find deep answers to certain questions that do bear directly on issues of human interest and concern, but that is rarely true.”

"'Science' 'Communicators'"

One of the worst aspects of all of this is that this understanding of pop-science encourages people to distrust what they know or can judge of the world in favor of the caricature of the consensus of institutionalized academics. People have this idea that there are these intellectual, peer-reviewed demigods in universities who discover the secrets to the universe and communicate them through their messengers stationed at BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post. Betraying their infinite wisdom would make you "irrational" or a "fundie." The reality is that these demigods really just went to graduate school because they were lazy and initiativeless, and even in the abstract, most of their real work has nothing to do with your life whatsoever. It's only the messengers that convince you of that because it stimulates their power trip.

Science journalists, much like journalists generally, are people too incompetent and emotional to work in the private sector, too dumb to be academics (and the standards are abysmally low these days), too full of themselves to work in charity and too bumbling, weak and arrogant to work in a blue collar or manual occupation. Journalism is an attractive career to many because it demands the least rigor and honor and promises the greatest power and influence.

Their self-ordained duty is to overwhelm the public with a confusion of "studies" that increasingly seem to micromanage a neurotic person's life. "Studies show that" classical music may help infant brain growth, or that gluten ravages the intestines, or that simply owning more books causes higher scholastic achievement, or that Vitamin C or antioxidants or kale or whatever health-food de jour solve all the world's problems.

At the end of the day, the worst part is that we talk about "science" as if it's some kind of anthropomophic creature with desires and feelings and a plan for us all. It's a uniquely modern flaw to say things like, "Science tells us that..." "Science is about.." "Science is against..." Does this not strike anyone else as creepy? The interpretation of science forced on the public is a scriptural one, where law to live life by are codified in "peer-reviewed" journals and communicated by intermediaries. 'Science's' purview is infinite and any failure to conform is some congenital failure or reason.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/science-vs-soyence/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/science-vs-soyence/

The Fragility of Physics

Physics has a reputation of being a uniquely "scientific" field. In other fields, you might hear of the concept of "Physics Envy" which is supposed to be a deep-seated desire of academics of other disciplines for the rigorousness and elegance of physics. Only physics, so the popular understanding goes, is truly able to abstract away from the messiness of detail and create truly beautiful and solvent models of their subject matters. Physics is thus the queen of the "hard sciences."

I object to the very idea of "hard vs. soft sciences" for reasons that will soon be clear, but I think it is most important to remember that for all its pretensions, physics is the most fragile science. That isn't necessarily bad, but it's true.

Why "fragile?"

Put simply, physics, partially due to its somewhat abstract nature, is exactly that domain where our interpretation of the universe is most likely to change radically in the event of any kind of theoretical sea change. That is, while in other more terrestrial sciences, the data is well-known and the theory is in debate, in physics, the opposite is arguably true. In astrophysics, quantum mechanics, the study of gravity or relativity, this should all be obvious.

Even without departing the cuddling embrace of mainstream physics, we can actually see this clearly. What is the ultimate fate of the universe to be? A continuous expansion of the universe until heat death? Perhaps gravity or some other force will pull everything back in a Big Crunch? The correct alternative is a statement of very specific and tendentious data which changes quite a great deal with any kind of new interpretations of what we see.

It's worth it to remember that for most of man's history, including the initial development of what we nowadays call physics, the "normal state" of the universe was assumed to be the state of affairs we're familiar with on the surface of the Earth: everything falls down to the ground and things propelled in space will slow down until they stop.

But modern physics now looks at the nature of our life on Earth as an exception to the general rule of frictionless and continuous movement in the vacuum of space. A valid question to ask is how much more that we take to be normal is a special case of reality? As we encounter more and more abberrant data, such as quantum mechanics, we might soon find ourself unifying seemingly disparate forces in the same was that Newton in a novel and seemingly absurd way the fact that objects fall to the ground with the apparent fact that the Earth orbits the Sun into one new concept: Gravity. Such a unification religates all our universals to a special case.

Does light really go the speed of light?

Physics is fragile because it is like a game of Jenga. Pull out or change one piece and the whole thing is either reordered or simply collapses.

As an example, say that within several years, we realize that the speed of light, for some known or unknown reason, doesn't function with the universality we assumed. Suppose that there is some kind of interaction of light and gravity such that light is faster in some parts of the universe. The reason isn't important. Or suppose we merely find out that in the past, there has been a systematic principle (similar to the Heisenberg Principle) that has miscalibrated all of our measurements of light.

Even if we have minutely mismeasured, the Jenga piece of light will radically alter everthing: our ideas of how old the universe is, our relationships with other planets, the solvency of general relativity, etc. You might say that there is a "concordance of evidence" that attests to our single known speed of light, but another way of putting that is that we have many other things tied into our interpretation of light that will have to change if we realize our models of it are flawed.

Poverty of data

Especially in the astronomical domain, it's worth remembering exactly how circumstantial our ideas of space are. We sometime speak of the traits of other solar systems' planets as if we've been there. But in reality, astrophysicists guess the chemical compositions of foreign planets based on their light frequencies and other fragile data. Any systematic error in observation over those thousands or millions of lightyears and we have been counting angels on pinheads the whole time.

People have the idea that because astrophysicists make extraordinary claims about planets, galaxies and time periods far beyond our mortal ken that they must have extraordinary evidence for them. That is frankly not the case. We have a piece-meal and jury-rigged set of circumstantial reasoning leading us to these claims. Seeing them computerized in full color in a science documentary doesn't make them more real. It just makes them look more official.

Physics vs. "soft sciences"

I remember talking to someone over the internet who accused me of having a low view of institutionalized science and being a dreaded epistemological anarchist because one of my degrees is in the "soft science" of linguistics. While I have a lot of bad things to say about the current state of linguistics, as a field, it is substantially more advanced and its findings are substantially more solid than physics. At that, formalizing ideas in math doesn't just make something a better or a more rigorous science anyway, which is the assumption of many people have.

While linguistics undergoes theoretical changes every several generations, the data, or really more importantly the phenomenology of linguistics is as secure as ever across all theoretical frameworks. That is, we know how language works. We can see abstract relationships between morphemes and syntactic structure. Even if we totally rewrite our narratives and theories about linguistic basics, there is no debate about the structure of language and how basic data relates to other data. This is absolutely the opposite of physics.

Physics is pretty solid on earth, and solid when you are running objects at each other in a vacuum, but once we broach the territory of astrophysics, relativity, gravity and more or less anything else that we as humans lack direct intuition of most of the "facts" of physics are theory-internal facts, and will fade away or be rendered obsolete when the next theoretical fad comes around.

My standard for theoretical frameworks

I think any serious scholar needs the ability to operate cognitively with multiple different theoretical frameworks in mind.

For example, (on linguistics) I don't really take Generative Grammar very seriously, in fact, despite it being on of the most well-funded dialects of linguistics nowadays, it's pretty inert. Despite that, I view it as very important for me to be able to process linguistic problems within Generative Grammar and word explanations within its ideas. It's nice to be able to say to someone "this alternation is accounted for if this DP occupies the spec of CP." I don't believe in CPs or specifiers as being psychologically real, but I can recognize the language as communicative.

A good theoretical framework is one that can produce facts and observations that can be recognized and explained outside of its framework as well.

That is, a framework should cue us in to finding utterly novel observations and thus a new phenomenology. This goes against the egocentric motivations of a lot of scientific frameworks whose practitioners are trying to edge out "the competition." Fields that spend most of their time trying to formalize previous observations within their own theoretical language are mostly a waste of time (this is Generative Grammar, frankly, although due to historical ignorance, many people in GG do not know they are re-treading steps).

One of the biggest issues of modern post-war institutionalized science is that the funding and peer-review mechanism is self-reinforcing: all fields converge to be "unipolar": only one methodology or framework is deemed "scientific." This creates a community of "scientists" who are more an more incestuous and generally oblivious not just to other possibilities of inquiry, but don't even have to be aware of their own priors or assumptions.

The blinders of positivism

As I've interacted with physicists more, I'm often surprised by how irrelevant they think even the most basic theoretical awareness is. That's "philosophy" for them. It's not uncommon to hear zingers like these:

1. "Science isn't about truth, it's about creating models."
2. "Physics is about fitting equations."
3. "We don't do philosophy."

Things like these are said as if they are some kind of statement of universal and well-consented-to truth, when in reality they are absurd Zen koans of the positivist religion. This was a loony opinion a hundred years ago and people saying these things now know that they are ludicrous. They have just become identifying marks of the social club.

Yep, science is about creating models... models that replicate reality, i.e. Truth.

A scientists who doesn't do philosophy isn't a scientist: he's a meter-reader. A philosopher who doesn't do science isn't a philosopher: he's just a stoner. The attempt to sever these two words from each other is part of the problem.

Physicists seem to be particularly touchy on this point. On one hand, they insist that philosophy is "not their thing" and "not related." On the other hand, they get incredibly angry when anyone else dares to either put the methodology of modern physics to any kind of philosophical tests or even to look into philosophical ramifications of their work.

In reality, modern scientists and positivists have their own metaphysics, it is just an implicit one that they advertently or inadvertently sneak into their theories. They can only do it because its clumsy sterile "materialism" is the background-radiation of the modern world.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-fragility-of-physics/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-fragility-of-physics/

The Parable of Alien Chess

A parable on the Logical Postivist "interpretation" of scientific models.

The Parable

Suppose an alien race comes to Earth and wants to observe our games. They are very interested in chess, despite the fact that they have eyes with properties that make it impossible to make out what actually happens on a chess board. (The whites and blacks and squares all blur together.)

They can still learn about chess experimentally, they know they can sit two players (a so-called "white" and "black" player) down to play it, and they can tell behaviorally who at the end wins.

After extensive experimentation, they realize this: 50% of the time, the white player wins and 50% of the time, the black player wins (we'll ignore draws and any first-move advantage for the example).

The "best" model

A logical positivist alien thus creates the ultimate, long-term model of chess as an iterated game: Chess amounts to just a drawn-out coin flip. Half of the time white wins, half of the time black wins, just as if they were tossing a quarter.

The aliens then decide to model chess as a coin flip, as a 50-50 game with no underlying principles. While this statistical technique might not be useful for predicting a single game, over the long run and over iterated games, it is the most efficient and parsimonious possible model.

"Inferior" models

Suppose, however that a "crank" scientist of the alien race posits that "God doesn't play dice" and that chess is a more complicated game, despite the fact that the aliens cannot observe it. Suppose even he asks around and determines from humans that there are actually pieces on the board with functions, and he even devises a machine that allows his alien eyes to see the first move of the game of chess.

Seeing this move allows him to create a new theory and model of the game, one that takes into account the first move made and he tries to generate a new set of probabilities of victory based on that move. The model he makes, is of course highly arbitrary, stipulated and ad hoc. In fact, this model is inferior on many inevitable accounts. For example:

1. It is less predictive over iterated games than the coin flip model.
2. It is not as parsimonious/minimal as the coin flip model.
3. It adds new variables to the theory (pieces) that are suspect.

Which model is "right?"

Which model is closer to truth?

Since we, unlike the aliens, are not prevented by defect from observing chess, we know that the second, "inferior" theory of chess is truer. Its theoretical categories, if apparently arbitrary in the eyes of the aliens, are getting at the actual underlying mechanics of chess. Even if the model is less effective, it is certainly righter.

Which will cause fruitful scientific inquiry?

The coin flip model is a scientific dead-end. Firstly, the coin flip model is constructed statistically, which presents the underlying mechanism to be randomness, and thus unworth of inquiry. This isn't statistics hoisted above random variation we know to exist, instead, it's utterly blind statistics that covers over whatever principles underlie it.

Secondly and more importantly, in order to actually improve that model, it has to lose empirical solvency: embracing the abstractions of pieces means introducing mess and deviating in some way from the empircal generalization that half of all chess games are won by white and half by black.

This is not an abnormal circumstance.

The parable here, really an example is not abnormal. In most affairs in science, whether that be physics or neuroscience or economics or chemistry, we are exactly like the partially-blind aliens.

"But science isn't about truth!"

Yeah, it is dude.

Even if you are pretending that science is about "models" or fitting equations and the like, again, the well-fit model is impossible to perfect, while the flawed, yet more true to reality model does have a potential over the long-term to be a superior one. After exhaustive inquiry, an alien race might not only discover the pieces and the full set of rules behind chess, they might be able to predict what moves are good or bad and predict individual chess games. Even on the standards of mere instrumentalism, the mindless positivistic theory is still actually inferior.

Local maxima

The plot

One of the ways I visualize science and models is that each model is really like an n-dimensional optimization plot. "Truth," or if you deny truth as metaphysics, "accuracy in data" or "well-fit equations" are upwards and the goal of science is to get further that way.

At the point you're at, you can tell which direction you can go to move upward, or, which little changes you can make to improve your model. That is what incremental science is, after all: don't change assumptions and just fine-tune your equations. The endless fine-tuning is sometimes thought of as "progress." Of course I don't think that this is bad, but it is a very minor and scientifically less important part of science as a whole.

The reality of incremental science is that once you're at a local maximum, once you've fine-tuned your equations about as perfectly as possible, it's over. Everything next to you looks like a disimprovement. It looks just like those inferior theories of alien chess that posit the existence of pieces. From that, you might erroneously conclude that you have found the global maximum, which due to the nature of the complexity of the universe and the multiplicity of possible answers and theories, you flatly haven't.

Logical positivism is kind of theoretical lobotomy that implicitly tells scientists that they should never, ever, ever change foundational assumptions: tweaking equations like an oblivious autist is Science^® and everything else is "philosophy" or "metaphysics" or "pseudoscience." This amounts to keeping each scientific field on whatever local maximum is closest, utterly unable to extricate themselves from it even when they see on the horizon abberant data. If you want to understand the stagnation of science or any other specific field, this is where it comes from.

Purposefully "bad" science

In Against Method, Paul Feyerabend, in what an unreflective mind might misinterpret as a "troll," says that it is important for science that people have biases, financial interests, interfering religious and political doctrines and the like in science. Looking at the plot, you might now see why. When we are stuck on a local maximum, every new data keeps our already-optimized model where it is no matter how low that maximum actually is. What you need to shake it up is an external shock that totally moves our theoretical position somewhere new on the plot where we can try to optimize at another point, and then compare.

Basic assumptions

A prudent person should be able to question, "Am I even on the right track or am I playing with some model that has a fundamental flaw?" I can guarantee you, optimizing for data and fitting math and equations is easy. All theoretical programs are wrong because they make incorrect core assumptions. This is very hard for the ego of scientists because it means:

1. Possibly illiterate dilettantes on the internet might see and bring to attention legitimate theoretical flaws.
2. All the years you spend in graduate school counting angels on pinheads in your respective theoretical framework is mostly a waste of time.
3. The borders of science are borders more of a sociological club than being the border of raw rigor.
4. Most of the scientific work is not meaningful outside of the theoretical framework that gave rise to it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/

The Parable of Alien Chess

A parable on the Logical Postivist "interpretation" of scientific models.

The Parable

Suppose an alien race comes to Earth and wants to observe our games. They are very interested in chess, despite the fact that they have eyes with properties that make it impossible to make out what actually happens on a chess board. (The whites and blacks and squares all blur together.)

They can still learn about chess experimentally, they know they can sit two players (a so-called "white" and "black" player) down to play it, and they can tell behaviorally who at the end wins.

After extensive experimentation, they realize this: 50% of the time, the white player wins and 50% of the time, the black player wins (we'll ignore draws and any first-move advantage for the example).

The "best" model

A logical positivist alien thus creates the ultimate, long-term model of chess as an iterated game: Chess amounts to just a drawn-out coin flip. Half of the time white wins, half of the time black wins, just as if they were tossing a quarter.

The aliens then decide to model chess as a coin flip, as a 50-50 game with no underlying principles. While this statistical technique might not be useful for predicting a single game, over the long run and over iterated games, it is the most efficient and parsimonious possible model.

"Inferior" models

Suppose, however that a "crank" scientist of the alien race posits that "God doesn't play dice" and that chess is a more complicated game, despite the fact that the aliens cannot observe it. Suppose even he asks around and determines from humans that there are actually pieces on the board with functions, and he even devises a machine that allows his alien eyes to see the first move of the game of chess.

Seeing this move allows him to create a new theory and model of the game, one that takes into account the first move made and he tries to generate a new set of probabilities of victory based on that move. The model he makes, is of course highly arbitrary, stipulated and ad hoc. In fact, this model is inferior on many inevitable accounts. For example:

1. It is less predictive over iterated games than the coin flip model.
2. It is not as parsimonious/minimal as the coin flip model.
3. It adds new variables to the theory (pieces) that are suspect.

Which model is "right?"

Which model is closer to truth?

Since we, unlike the aliens, are not prevented by defect from observing chess, we know that the second, "inferior" theory of chess is truer. Its theoretical categories, if apparently arbitrary in the eyes of the aliens, are getting at the actual underlying mechanics of chess. Even if the model is less effective, it is certainly righter.

Which will cause fruitful scientific inquiry?

The coin flip model is a scientific dead-end. Firstly, the coin flip model is constructed statistically, which presents the underlying mechanism to be randomness, and thus unworth of inquiry. This isn't statistics hoisted above random variation we know to exist, instead, it's utterly blind statistics that covers over whatever principles underlie it.

Secondly and more importantly, in order to actually improve that model, it has to lose empirical solvency: embracing the abstractions of pieces means introducing mess and deviating in some way from the empircal generalization that half of all chess games are won by white and half by black.

This is not an abnormal circumstance.

The parable here, really an example is not abnormal. In most affairs in science, whether that be physics or neuroscience or economics or chemistry, we are exactly like the partially-blind aliens.

"But science isn't about truth!"

Yeah, it is dude.

Even if you are pretending that science is about "models" or fitting equations and the like, again, the well-fit model is impossible to perfect, while the flawed, yet more true to reality model does have a potential over the long-term to be a superior one. After exhaustive inquiry, an alien race might not only discover the pieces and the full set of rules behind chess, they might be able to predict what moves are good or bad and predict individual chess games. Even on the standards of mere instrumentalism, the mindless positivistic theory is still actually inferior.

Local maxima

The plot

One of the ways I visualize science and models is that each model is really like an n-dimensional optimization plot. "Truth," or if you deny truth as metaphysics, "accuracy in data" or "well-fit equations" are upwards and the goal of science is to get further that way.

At the point you're at, you can tell which direction you can go to move upward, or, which little changes you can make to improve your model. That is what incremental science is, after all: don't change assumptions and just fine-tune your equations. The endless fine-tuning is sometimes thought of as "progress." Of course I don't think that this is bad, but it is a very minor and scientifically less important part of science as a whole.

The reality of incremental science is that once you're at a local maximum, once you've fine-tuned your equations about as perfectly as possible, it's over. Everything next to you looks like a disimprovement. It looks just like those inferior theories of alien chess that posit the existence of pieces. From that, you might erroneously conclude that you have found the global maximum, which due to the nature of the complexity of the universe and the multiplicity of possible answers and theories, you flatly haven't.

Logical positivism is kind of theoretical lobotomy that implicitly tells scientists that they should never, ever, ever change foundational assumptions: tweaking equations like an oblivious autist is Science^® and everything else is "philosophy" or "metaphysics" or "pseudoscience." This amounts to keeping each scientific field on whatever local maximum is closest, utterly unable to extricate themselves from it even when they see on the horizon abberant data. If you want to understand the stagnation of science or any other specific field, this is where it comes from.

Purposefully "bad" science

In Against Method, Paul Feyerabend, in what an unreflective mind might misinterpret as a "troll," says that it is important for science that people have biases, financial interests, interfering religious and political doctrines and the like in science. Looking at the plot, you might now see why. When we are stuck on a local maximum, every new data keeps our already-optimized model where it is no matter how low that maximum actually is. What you need to shake it up is an external shock that totally moves our theoretical position somewhere new on the plot where we can try to optimize at another point, and then compare.

Basic assumptions

A prudent person should be able to question, "Am I even on the right track or am I playing with some model that has a fundamental flaw?" I can guarantee you, optimizing for data and fitting math and equations is easy. All theoretical programs are wrong because they make incorrect core assumptions. This is very hard for the ego of scientists because it means:

1. Possibly illiterate dilettantes on the internet might see and bring to attention legitimate theoretical flaws.
2. All the years you spend in graduate school counting angels on pinheads in your respective theoretical framework is mostly a waste of time.
3. The borders of science are borders more of a sociological club than being the border of raw rigor.
4. Most of the scientific work is not meaningful outside of the theoretical framework that gave rise to it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/

Learn Latin

Latin was the first language I learned and has probably been the most useful. Here I'll talk about some of the things it's gotten me and some recommendations for how to learn it well.

What I've gotten out of learning Latin

You get multiple languages for one.

Latin, as you probably know is the ancestor of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc. Once you know Latin, it is quite literally downhill learning any of these. In college, I decided to take Spanish for a degree specialization (I was doing an international business thing and required a foreign language). Merely based on my knowledge of Latin, I just tested into fifth-level Spanish and figured it out from there. I don't even remember learning Spanish, but I can speak it and still do every once in a while.

In grad school I took classes taught in Spanish and French. I can basically read all Romance languages. I even read Rhaeto-Romance poetry for fun (the languages of Switzerland). All of this is nearly free stuff when you learn Latin.

Latin will unironically red-pill you on many subjects.

Looking to other cultures in the world might change your view of things in some superficial way, but looking into the past will revolutionize how you see it. A recurring point I make in many contexts is that the past is literally an alien civilization. Most of what people pretend they know about it is repeatedly cited modern rumors about it. Seeing it in its own words is very different.

It's insane the amount of writing done in Latin in the medieval period and antiquity, so much of which isn't even on the mind of translators. A lot of historians just cite modern historians. Theologians cite modern theologians. Scientists cite modern scientists. Once you crack open a traditional book on any of these subjects you realize the provinciality and oblviousness of modern "frameworks."

In generative linguistics, people who have never read anything written before 1950 pat themselves on the back for all the "problems" they've solved not knowing they are only retreading paths long established by Stoics, Modistae and early Indo-Europeanists. There are a lot of theologians and philosophers who are trapped in modern citation circles because they don't have the power of Latin that can bring them in touch directly with Aquinas or Augustine or other philosophers of the early periods.

Knowing Latin is like an academic superpower and supposed intellectuals will fear you. Latin used to be the bare minimum of a respectable intellectual... actually... you know what, it still is. Now is your chance to have an actual one up over more pompous people whose only function is writing lit reviews with a disability to read original sources. Being privy to an original and long-neglected source will be a continuous content mill which will unironically be the envy of others in academia.

Knowing Latin is better academically than an undergraduate degree in linguistics.

The process of learning Latin and the lore around you will equip you with all the terminology and principles to make you superior to someone who just studies "linguistics" without any actual application. I really mean this. When I was a grad student in linguistics, all the brightest undergrads had one thing in common: Latin. I actually came to judge people based on how they first got interested in linguistics. The smartest ones always started with Latin, the biggest plebs always started because they liked some Steven Pinker book (sorry Pinkucks! Those are the honest facts!)

How to Learn Latin

What I used

When I learned Latin, all I had was a copy of this book: Collar & Daniell's Beginner's Latin Book. The truth is that most old Latin books are good (old being at least 70 to 100 years old). After language learning became commercialized, it all became dismissable. You can see a list of downloadable Latin textbooks and other materials here here.

The only other source I used in the past to learn and read Latin in a biglottic Latin/Greek New Testament (i.e. Greek on the left and Latin on the right). This is probably actually the single most significant book I own, now that I think about it. I learned Greek from it too and I've had it for around 15 years now.

Lingua Latina per se Illustrata

Although I didn't know about until later, there is another very unique and excellently made Latin series called Lingua Latina per se Illustrata "The Latin Language Illustrated by Itself" by Hans Orberg. You can see an English publisher here, but you can also find them on eBay or pdfs on Library Genesis or Pirate Bay (along with audio for the books).

LLPSI is unique and really stands out. The entire book, including explanations is in Latin. Latin words and grammatical concepts are explained by illustration and example. This sounds absurd frankly: how are you supposed to learn a language from a book written in that language? But the design is so perfect that it works.

I recommend to get LLPSI and some classical grammar primer like Collar & Daniell's because I think especially for newbs, it might be necessary to have explicit instruction about grammar points in English.

Read this

Read this article: "Latin by the Dowling Method." It's back from the early internet and its recommendations have stood the test of time and I agree with them.

Latin links

You may've known about these already, but they're worth noting.

• The Latin Library – Massive collection of classical and medieval Latin works
• Textkit – Greek and Latin resources and forum

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-latin/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learn-latin/

Making Free Money off Credit Cards

While I've done a video on this topic before (PeerTube, YouTube), some people asked me for more information, so here it is.

Aren't you glad to be an AMERICAN?

In America, people are so notoriously dumb with credit and money that credit card companies can literally give out free money by the hundreds to attract new customers. For brainlets who don't bother to understand the basics of credit and debt and the fact that you apparently have to pay back the money you spend, this is like a fly trap. For non-retarded people it is what it is: free money.

Exploiting introductory offers: "Churning"

Many credit cards have introductory offers like this: "If you spend $500 on this card in the first 3 months, you'll get a free credit of $200." That would be a cool offer in the first place, but since there are so many cards that have offers like this, a pattern emerges:

1. Open a card with an introductory offer, for example: "Get a $200 credit when you spend $500 in 3 months."
2. Use it for your normal daily life until you spend that $500 which you would be spending anyway.
3. Get/redeem/spend the credit/cashback/points on that card. Literally free money.
4. Lock away the card and don't use it anymore unless it has some other extremely good offer or cashback perk.¹
5. Rinse and repeat, this time with a new card and new offer.

This cycle is often called "credit card churning" and some people like me don't mind living off of it.

Every year I go through a couple cards like this, making a couple hundred or a thousand dollars back. If you do the math, it can be like living with a permanent 20-25% off coupon that you use on literally everything. Individual cards will have even more perks to pump-and-dump for extra cash back.

I recommend especially young guys to try this out: it's a way of saving money, while improving your credit by paying off many lines of credit, and once you're done churning, you have a wide selection of credit cards to use for their various normal features.

Cards to churn

Here's a brief list of some cards whose introductory offers I've taken advantage of. This is just an example list, there are many more.

• Chase Freedom Flex
• Discover It
• American Express Blue Business Cash
• American Express Blue Business Plus

Links to more cards per company:

• Bank of America
• Wells Fargo
• Citi Bank

That's it! That's all you need to know, to take advantage of this, but the rest of this page is just details that people ask about. Read on for more!

How credit card companies try to mitigate this

As I said, introductory offers exist primarily to get dim-witted people who don't know how credit works into using cards unwisely or at least normal people into switching to a different company. They know that high-agency people can exploit this system, so there are some rules they put in place to mitigate the extent to witch you can take advantage of their offers.

Chase, for example, will not approve anyone for a credit card who has gotten five other cards in the past two years. Wells Fargo will not allow you too open cards with introductory offers without a 18 month gap in between. Those are the main ones; other banks like Bank of America don't bother preventing it at all, but it's possible that they will start something like this soon.

Cautionary note for credit brainlets

I suppose it goes without saying that credit cards are not magical money devices and everyone who has a credit card should only spend what they have the account that autopays their card or even better, do what I do and never let my head hit the pillow before paying off all debts. This might sound like a condescending thing to say, but obviously some people out there don't understand how credit cards work and are going into debt for no good reason. I know everyone who follows me is smart of course, but I say this rhetorically.

When I did a video on this I was surprised to learn that there are also people that resist and detest credit cards but still don't understand them. Some people have this strange idea that merely possessing a credit cards causes debt to occur in some cultic fashion outside of your control. And for people who can't know better, maybe it's better for them to think of credit cards as essentially magical objects if it means they aren't misusing them. For everyone else, credit cards are easy to use and exploit and benefit from.

Other advantages of having multiple cards

It's actually nice to have a number of rewards cards from different companies. I will occasionally check the bank or card's web interface and there will often be additional perks especially for points-based cards. It can often mean 10% in addition to everything else from buying from a hardware store or grocery store. There are many niche businesses and I don't recommend into getting roped into buying something you wouldn't be buying anyway, but I keep tabs on if there is anything familiar.

Similarly, it's nice to have "rotating category" cards that offer say, 5% on a certain type of buy for a period of several months. The Chase card I mentioned above, for example is giving 5% cash back on every purchase made on PayPal as I write this in Q4 of 2020 (it looks like they do PayPal every year or so). I've actually been deliberately making all purchases I would be making anyway over PayPal, just so I can maximize earnings. I'm even going to be paying bills in advance with PayPal so when they are actually due next year, they'll be paid, and I'll have the extra cash back.

Common questions about exploiting introductory offers

A lot of people hear this and think, "sounds too good to be true." Makes sense, but we live in a complex world which again is primarily targeted to the unwise. I've been doing this for years and have made back a lot of lot of money and even increased by credit score.

Let's talk about some of the concerns people new to credit card churning might have:

"But what about muh credit score?"

I'm not entirely sure why people think this, but there's this idea that somehow you're scamming or defrauding credit card companies by doing this. You aren't. You're just obeying their terms of service. You're certainly not neglecting payment or proving yourself a bad investment for a loan, which is what a credit score is actually about.

Opening new credit, including credit cards, will mean an inquiry on your account and for a time being, you'll be marked as "looking for credit." This will decrease your credit score by a small amount; it's normal. But over time, having lots of credit which you have paid off is good for your credit score. That's, like, what a credit score is. Having more credit cards and properly paid off is a great plus on your account.

"B...but that's unethical!"

You gotta be an extreme simp to see these companies massively ripping off retards and nickel-and-diming people and say something stupid like, "I mean is this really ethical?" You're an idiot. You don't deserve free money. Why use your principles to defend people who obviously don't share them?

A lot of these companies even charge people to have checking accounts. Just in case you don't know how banks work, they make money loaning out their reserves. They are already making money off of every account. Charging you extra so they can make money off you is just more icing on the cake for them. There are many banks who are less shills who simply don't do this because it's totally unnecessary.

People who think this, do you go to the grocery store and chide people who get free samples as unethical? It quite literally is the same thing except for the store never makes money off people who just take samples. A bank whose offer you exploit still might make a lot of money loaning out money you put in a checking account there or even on the credit card transaction fees they charge merchants. And if they didn't, who cares?

"Do I need a checking account?"

If you get a bonus from, let's say, a Chase credit card, do you need a Chase checking account to redeem your bonus or points? Usually not.

Every credit card company I've used allows you to set up automatic payments from another bank. So you shouldn't have to worry about remembering to paying your bills, although I usually pay everything manually anyway just to be careful.

If you get an account credit, that will appear as a negative number on your card and you will be able to spend it without paying it off. If you get points, it might be that you need a checking account to redeem it as cash, but you can also usually redeem previous purchases or sometimes receive your bonus in the form of a bunch of gift cards.

This is an important question because some companies like Chase or Bank of America will charge you several dollars a month to have a checking account open, which I find utterly ridiculous. In both cases, you can waive the fee if you have either direct deposit into the account or if you just have a certain amount of money in the account (I think it's $1,500 in the case of Chase). Either way, you can avoid this problem as having a checking account is not usually necessary.

Three important notes on Credit Cards

The psychology of spending

One aspect of human psychology is that people are more likely to be okay with spending or wasting money if they're using credit or debit cards rather than paper money. It makes sense. If you have to part with a physical object to spend something, it can hurt. It doesn't hurt as much to use a card.

I find that the antidote to this is actually in introductory offers. If I get a card that gives me a bonus for spending $500 in 3 months, I treat that $500 as my absolute budget no matter what. Bills included if possible.

Additionally, I started pasting sticky slips on the back of my cards where I keep track of the exact amount of money I use on each card so I know when I hit the required amount for the bonus. Each time I spend, I deduct that amount from the original number. This actually serves the double purpose of making the money-spending more real to me. I'm not just swiping my card, but subtracting the amount and can feel what I'm spending.

Don't use cards with annual fees.

Or at least if you do, be smart about it.

None of the cards I recommended above have any annual fees. So you can get them and not worry about canceling them. You can logically exploit the offers of cards with annual fees and cancel them afterwards to avoid paying the fee, but I don't do this myself.

Firstly, annual-fee cards are usually targeted to big spenders: their offers will be something more like "spend $4000 in the first 3 months and get $750." If you're making a big purchase, that might be worth it, but I personally am the kind of guy who feels guilty for spending too close to $300 a month. I would definitely contemplate one of these if you know you're going to spend some massive amount of money though. Don't forget to cancel it later!

The bigger issue with annual-fee cards because they are used primarily for social engineering and corporate sponsorships. That might sound strange, for example, but some cards which cost several hundred dollars a year might give you a big free annual credit on their favorite airlines or on Uber or Lyft or Amazon or some other godless corporation. That makes them work for people who are loyal consooomers of their chosen affiliates, but for most people, getting the benefits of those cards requires you to use the products they want.

I've seen some cards that give you bonuses for using them 30 times a month or something else. Sure you can juke the system, but I feel like the incentives they put forth are too strong and will probably manipulate you into spending more than you usually do. The reason I recommend the other cards I do is because you can easily spend that much if you're an independent person without feeling like you have to spend more.

If you do want referral links to a couple annual fee cards I’ve used, look at these:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve
• American Express Blue Cash Preferred
• Hilton Honors Business Card

Only apply to them if you are sure you can utilize them profitably and without significant opportunity cost.

Minimizing Privacy Exposure

Now if you're someone principally concerned with privacy, there are ways for you to take advantage of these kinds of offers without exposing your daily purchases. Obviously opening a credit card does require some basic information, like who you are and where you live (other things your bank already knows). But you can minimize your exposure by using the money on the card for a single recurring payment credit.

For example, let's say you pay an electric bill every month. Many power companies/co-ops allow you to prepay or accumulate a credit, so if you open a spend-$1,000-get-$250 card, you can immediately prepay $1,000, wait for your free $250, then prepay that amount as well.

In that, you've got your free $250 (and you can forget about paying bills for a year or so) and the only new thing the credit card company knows is your power supplier (which they could probably guess anyway from where you live). You could do the same with other recurring payments.

A lot of people I've talked to plan on using these offers to by over-the-table cryptocurrencies. That works too.

Additionally if you make a large purchase like a car that is going to have to be registered with "the system" anyway, it might be a good time to get one (or maybe more) of these cards.

The most important thing, however, is that you are the one ripping them off and never the reverse. Do not spend more or waste more because you feel richer because you have something that feels like a free money card.

"Daily drivers"

When not pumping-and-dumping a credit card for an introductory offer, there are also generally good cards that you can keep to maximize idle cash back. Obviously the true red-pill is using cash, but if you'd rather get bonuses from cards, here are some options I use with links:

• 5% on gas and purchases on military bases (unfortunately USAA is very exclusive (you must have family in the military), but great for members)
• 5% on groceries (only for first year, but there are multiple cards that do this can can be cycled (or get your wife to get it next year))
• 5% on bills, specifically, you get 5% on rotating categories and home utilities is one of them.
• 3% at restaurants and on travel expenses
• 2% on everything else

It should also go without saying that you should have fixed costs/bills set to charge credit cards just for the free cash back. I mean if you have $250 dollars in bills a month and hook them up to a 2% cashback card, that's $60 back a year. It adds up over the years.

Again:

"The NEET will work harder than the wagie to stay out of a job." -Nullennial (YouTube comment)

"I'm Jewish and I find this video Jewisher" -shiran (response to my original video on this)

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/making-free-money-off-credit-cards/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/making-free-money-off-credit-cards/

The Fragility of Physics

Physics has a reputation of being a uniquely "scientific" field. In other fields, you might hear of the concept of "Physics Envy" which is supposed to be a deep-seated desire of academics of other disciplines for the rigorousness and elegance of physics. Only physics, so the popular understanding goes, is truly able to abstract away from the messiness of detail and create truly beautiful and solvent models of their subject matters. Physics is thus the queen of the "hard sciences."

I object to the very idea of "hard vs. soft sciences" for reasons that will soon be clear, but I think it is most important to remember that for all its pretensions, physics is the most fragile science. That isn't necessarily bad, but it's true.

Why "fragile?"

Put simply, physics, partially due to its somewhat abstract nature, is exactly that domain where our interpretation of the universe is most likely to change radically in the event of any kind of theoretical sea change. That is, while in other more terrestrial sciences, the data is well-known and the theory is in debate, in physics, the opposite is arguably true. In astrophysics, quantum mechanics, the study of gravity or relativity, this should all be obvious.

Even without departing the cuddling embrace of mainstream physics, we can actually see this clearly. What is the ultimate fate of the universe to be? A continuous expansion of the universe until heat death? Perhaps gravity or some other force will pull everything back in a Big Crunch? The correct alternative is a statement of very specific and tendentious data which changes quite a great deal with any kind of new interpretations of what we see.

It's worth it to remember that for most of man's history, including the initial development of what we nowadays call physics, the "normal state" of the universe was assumed to be the state of affairs we're familiar with on the surface of the Earth: everything falls down to the ground and things propelled in space will slow down until they stop.

But modern physics now looks at the nature of our life on Earth as an exception to the general rule of frictionless and continuous movement in the vacuum of space. A valid question to ask is how much more that we take to be normal is a special case of reality? As we encounter more and more abberrant data, such as quantum mechanics, we might soon find ourself unifying seemingly disparate forces in the same was that Newton in a novel and seemingly absurd way the fact that objects fall to the ground with the apparent fact that the Earth orbits the Sun into one new concept: Gravity. Such a unification religates all our universals to a special case.

Does light really go the speed of light?

Physics is fragile because it is like a game of Jenga. Pull out or change one piece and the whole thing is either reordered or simply collapses.

As an example, say that within several years, we realize that the speed of light, for some known or unknown reason, doesn't function with the universality we assumed. Suppose that there is some kind of interaction of light and gravity such that light is faster in some parts of the universe. The reason isn't important. Or suppose we merely find out that in the past, there has been a systematic principle (similar to the Heisenberg Principle) that has miscalibrated all of our measurements of light.

Even if we have minutely mismeasured, the Jenga piece of light will radically alter everthing: our ideas of how old the universe is, our relationships with other planets, the solvency of general relativity, etc. You might say that there is a "concordance of evidence" that attests to our single known speed of light, but another way of putting that is that we have many other things tied into our interpretation of light that will have to change if we realize our models of it are flawed.

Poverty of data

Especially in the astronomical domain, it's worth remembering exactly how circumstantial our ideas of space are. We sometime speak of the traits of other solar systems' planets as if we've been there. But in reality, astrophysicists guess the chemical compositions of foreign planets based on their light frequencies and other fragile data. Any systematic error in observation over those thousands or millions of lightyears and we have been counting angels on pinheads the whole time.

People have the idea that because astrophysicists make extraordinary claims about planets, galaxies and time periods far beyond our mortal ken that they must have extraordinary evidence for them. That is frankly not the case. We have a piece-meal and jury-rigged set of circumstantial reasoning leading us to these claims. Seeing them computerized in full color in a science documentary doesn't make them more real. It just makes them look more official.

Physics vs. "soft sciences"

I remember talking to someone over the internet who accused me of having a low view of institutionalized science and being a dreaded epistemological anarchist because one of my degrees is in the "soft science" of linguistics. While I have a lot of bad things to say about the current state of linguistics, as a field, it is substantially more advanced and its findings are substantially more solid than physics. At that, formalizing ideas in math doesn't just make something a better or a more rigorous science anyway, which is the assumption of many people have.

While linguistics undergoes theoretical changes every several generations, the data, or really more importantly the phenomenology of linguistics is as secure as ever across all theoretical frameworks. That is, we know how language works. We can see abstract relationships between morphemes and syntactic structure. Even if we totally rewrite our narratives and theories about linguistic basics, there is no debate about the structure of language and how basic data relates to other data. This is absolutely the opposite of physics.

Physics is pretty solid on earth, and solid when you are running objects at each other in a vacuum, but once we broach the territory of astrophysics, relativity, gravity and more or less anything else that we as humans lack direct intuition of most of the "facts" of physics are theory-internal facts, and will fade away or be rendered obsolete when the next theoretical fad comes around.

My standard for theoretical frameworks

I think any serious scholar needs the ability to operate cognitively with multiple different theoretical frameworks in mind.

For example, (on linguistics) I don't really take Generative Grammar very seriously, in fact, despite it being on of the most well-funded dialects of linguistics nowadays, it's pretty inert. Despite that, I view it as very important for me to be able to process linguistic problems within Generative Grammar and word explanations within its ideas. It's nice to be able to say to someone "this alternation is accounted for if this DP occupies the spec of CP." I don't believe in CPs or specifiers as being psychologically real, but I can recognize the language as communicative.

A good theoretical framework is one that can produce facts and observations that can be recognized and explained outside of its framework as well.

That is, a framework should cue us in to finding utterly novel observations and thus a new phenomenology. This goes against the egocentric motivations of a lot of scientific frameworks whose practitioners are trying to edge out "the competition." Fields that spend most of their time trying to formalize previous observations within their own theoretical language are mostly a waste of time (this is Generative Grammar, frankly, although due to historical ignorance, many people in GG do not know they are re-treading steps).

One of the biggest issues of modern post-war institutionalized science is that the funding and peer-review mechanism is self-reinforcing: all fields converge to be "unipolar": only one methodology or framework is deemed "scientific." This creates a community of "scientists" who are more an more incestuous and generally oblivious not just to other possibilities of inquiry, but don't even have to be aware of their own priors or assumptions.

The blinders of positivism

As I've interacted with physicists more, I'm often surprised by how irrelevant they think even the most basic theoretical awareness is. That's "philosophy" for them. It's not uncommon to hear zingers like these:

1. "Science isn't about truth, it's about creating models."
2. "Physics is about fitting equations."
3. "We don't do philosophy."

Things like these are said as if they are some kind of statement of universal and well-consented-to truth, when in reality they are absurd Zen koans of the positivist religion. This was a loony opinion a hundred years ago and people saying these things now know that they are ludicrous. They have just become identifying marks of the social club.

Yep, science is about creating models... models that replicate reality, i.e. Truth.

A scientists who doesn't do philosophy isn't a scientist: he's a meter-reader. A philosopher who doesn't do science isn't a philosopher: he's just a stoner. The attempt to sever these two words from each other is part of the problem.

Physicists seem to be particularly touchy on this point. On one hand, they insist that philosophy is "not their thing" and "not related." On the other hand, they get incredibly angry when anyone else dares to either put the methodology of modern physics to any kind of philosophical tests or even to look into philosophical ramifications of their work.

In reality, modern scientists and positivists have their own metaphysics, it is just an implicit one that they advertently or inadvertently sneak into their theories. They can only do it because its clumsy sterile "materialism" is the background-radiation of the modern world.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-fragility-of-physics/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-fragility-of-physics/

The Parable of Alien Chess

A parable on the Logical Positivist “interpretation” of scientific models.

The Parable

Suppose an alien race comes to Earth and wants to observe our games. They are very interested in chess, despite the fact that they have eyes with properties that make it impossible to make out what actually happens on a chess board. (The whites and blacks of the squares and pieces all blur together.)

They can still learn about chess experimentally, they know they can sit two players (a so-called “white” and “black” player) down to play it, and they can tell behaviorally who at the end wins.

After extensive experimentation, they realize this: 50% of the time, the white player wins and 50% of the time, the black player wins (we’ll ignore draws and any first-move advantage for the example).

The “best” model

A logical positivist alien thus creates the ultimate, long-term model of chess as an iterated game: half of the time white wins and half of the time black wins, therefore we can model chess with a simple simple coin flip.

Obvious any coin flip doesn’t not necessarily necessarily predict an individual chess game, but over time and iteration, the coin-flip model of chess matches the data perfectly. While this statistical technique might not be useful for predicting a single game, over the long run and over iterated games, it is the most efficient and parsimonious possible model.

The model is so parsimonious it has no place or need for concepts like chess pieces or opening strategies (or strategies generally). It is as effective and simple as a model can be.

“Inferior” models

Suppose, however that a “crank” scientist of the alien race posits that “God doesn’t play dice” and that chess is a more complicated game, despite the fact that the aliens cannot observe it. Suppose even he asks around and determines from humans that there are actually pieces on the board with functions, and he even devises a machine that allows his alien eyes to see the first move of the game of chess.

Seeing this move allows him to create a new theory and model of the game, one that takes into account the first move made and he tries to generate a new set of probabilities of victory based on that move. The model he makes, is of course highly arbitrary, stipulated and ad hoc. In fact, this model is inferior on many inevitable accounts. For example:

1. It is less predictive over iterated games than the coin flip model.
2. It is not as parsimonious/minimal as the coin flip model.
3. It adds new variables to the theory (chess pieces) that are suspect.
4. There is no known causality behind how the moving of a piece has anything to do with victory in chess. Supposing that moving a piece somehow relates to the victory of a player is a novel kind of metaphysics, one that seems constantly disproven considering a certain first move does not always guarantee a loss or victory.

Which model is “right?”

Which model is closer to truth?

Unlike the aliens, we are not prevented by congenital defect from observing chess. We know that the second, “inferior” theory of chess is truer in the sense that it is aware of piece and understands that how a player moves a piece contributes to victory. We also know that the “better” model of iterated chess games: the coin-toss is only accidentally accurate and the statistics of a coin-toss has nothing whatsoever with how the victor of chess is determined.

The new model’s theoretical categories, such as the concept of chess pieces and moves, if apparently arbitrary in the eyes of the aliens, are getting at the actual underlying mechanics of chess. Even if the model is less effective, it is certainly righter.

Which will cause fruitful scientific inquiry?

The coin-flip model is a scientific dead-end. Firstly, the coin flip model is constructed statistically, which presents the underlying mechanism to be randomness, and thus unworthy of inquiry. This isn’t statistics hoisted above random variation we know to exist, instead, it’s utterly blind statistics that covers over whatever principles underlie it.

Secondly and more importantly, in order to actually improve that model, it has to lose or at least jeopardize empirical solvency and/or parsimony: embracing the abstractions of chess pieces means introducing mess and deviating in some way from the empirical generalization that half of all chess games are won by white and half by black.

This is not an abnormal circumstance.

The parable here, really an example, is not abnormal. In most affairs in science, whether that be physics or neuroscience or economics or chemistry, we are exactly like the partially-blind aliens.

This presents a very clear contrast between a simple and parsimonious theory that works and a radical theory that adds new and questionable content at the price of both effectiveness and simplicity, but is nonetheless closer to the truth.

“But science isn’t about truth!”

Yeah, it is dude.

Even if you are pretending that science is about “models” or just fitting equations and the like, again, the well-fit 50-50 statistical model of chess made by the aliens is impossible to perfect, while the flawed, yet more true to reality model does have a potential over the long-term to be a superior one as an alien researcher learns more.

After exhaustive inquiry, an alien race might not only discover the chess pieces and the full set of rules behind chess, they might be able to predict what moves are good or bad and predict individual chess games. Even on the standards of mere instrumentalism, the mindless positivistic theory is still actually inferior.

In this case, can the positivistic alien scientists bear to tolerate an alternate “metaphysical” theory until it gradually acquires the descriptive adequacy that the preexisting theory have?

Local maxima

The plot

One way helpful to think of scientific truth and model accuracy is to visualize an optimization plot-a three-dimensional surface peppered with various mountains and valleys of various heights and depths. “Truth,” is upwards and the goal of science is to get further that way-or if you deny truth as being “metaphysics,.” how about “accuracy in data” or “well-fit equations.”

At the point you’re at, you can tell which direction is “up,” you can tell which incremental changes to your theory or equations move you upward, or, which little changes you can make to improve your model. That is what incremental science is, after all: don’t change assumptions and just fine-tune your equations. The continued fine-tuning is sometimes thought of as “progress.” Of course I don't think that this is bad, but it is a very minor and scientifically less important part of science as a whole.

But the reality of incremental science is that once you’re at a local maximum, a peak on the plot-once you’ve fine-tuned your equations about as perfectly as possible, it’s over! Science is completed, but you might not actually be at the absolute maximum of truth, but you might be languishing on the peak of a local maximum, thinking nonetheless that you are the smartest guy in the universe.

Everything next to you looks like a disimprovement. It looks just like those inferior theories of alien chess that posit the existence of chess pieces. From that, you might erroneously conclude that you have found the global/absolute maximum, which due to the nature of the complexity of the universe and the multiplicity of possible answers and theories, you flatly haven't.

Logical positivism is kind of theoretical lobotomy that implicitly tells scientists that they should never, ever, ever change foundational assumptions: tweaking equations like an oblivious autist is Science^® and everything else is “philosophy” or “metaphysics” or “pseudoscience.” This amounts to keeping each scientific field on whatever local maximum is closest, utterly unable to extricate themselves from it even when they see on the horizon abberant data. If you want to understand the stagnation of science or any other specific field, this is where it comes from.

Purposefully “bad” science

In Against Method, Paul Feyerabend, in what an unreflective mind might misinterpret as a “troll,” says that it is important for science that people have biases, financial interests, interfering religious and political doctrines and the like in science. Looking at the plot, you might now see why. When we are stuck on a local maximum, every new data keeps our already-optimized model where it is no matter how low that maximum actually is. What you need to shake it up is an external shock that totally moves our theoretical position somewhere new on the plot where we can try to optimize at another point, and then compare.

Basic assumptions

A prudent person should be able to question, “Am I even on the right track or am I playing with some model that has a fundamental flaw?” I can guarantee you, optimizing for data and fitting math and equations is easy. All theoretical programs are wrong because they make incorrect core assumptions. This is very hard for the ego of scientists because it means:

1. Possibly illiterate dilettantes on the internet might see and bring to attention legitimate theoretical flaws.
2. All the years you spend in graduate school counting angels on pinheads in your respective theoretical framework is mostly a waste of time.
3. The borders of science are borders more of a sociological club than being the border of raw rigor.
4. Most of the scientific work is not meaningful outside of the theoretical framework that gave rise to it.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/the-parable-of-alien-chess/

Advice on Some Other Languages

This page is just for minor pointers on lesser studied languages that I don't have enough to have on their own pages.

Gothic

Gothic is a dead language and the only thing existing in it is a partially translated New Testament by Wulfila. It still is a very important language for the study of Germanic and Indo-Europeanism because it is the only language of "Eastern Germanic" so well attested. Eastern Germanic languages are distinct from other Germanic languages in their lack of umlaut and some other characteristically Germanic features, while Gothic still retains some earlier Indo-European inflectional categories.

I mention Gothic only because one of the best ever language learning books I've ever seen is written for it, and that is Thomas Lambdin's Introduction to the Gothic Language. I actually took a Gothic class flippantly in graduate school, but the book stuck out to me as being perfectly designed for the typical target audience of Gothic in historical linguistics.

The book has very well designed lessons and activities, but I think greatest is that in the back of the book, for each chapter there is a corresponding lesson on the historical grammar of the content learned. It goes through what conjugates of each word exist in English, Latin, Greek or Sanskrit or other Indo-European languages and provided comparative paradigms of noun and verb inflections. No word or concept is left without a real mneumonic device, not a fake one fake from some joke about the word, but one tied into the actual historical facts of the word.

I've said before that one of the reasons I never use things like Anki and "spaced repetition software" is that the real way to retain information is to understand how it fits within a wider web of information. In historical linguistics, you have an ideal of this because the more you learn, the easier it is to "remember:" remembering that the Gothic word for "field" is akrs is incredibly simple when you realize it's the same as Latin ager, Greek agrós, Sanskrit ájra and English acre.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is the crown jewel of Indo-European languages and there are very few resources for it. Luckily, there is Devavanipravesika by Goldman and Sutherland, which again is a star in terms of language books.

I do recommend you have some of these abilities before attempting Sanskrit:

1. Some grammatical knowledge of a classical inflected Indo-European language like Latin or Greek.
2. Knowledge of the Devanagari script which is used for Sanskrit nowadays (also the script of Hindi and many other modern Indian languages).

Sandhi

In English, if you say the sentence "What are you up to?" it usually comes out closer to "Whatchu up to?" This kind of phonological compression is a natural and systematic process in all languages. What is interesting is that when written language was younger, it was very common to express these phonological changes in the writing system itself. It looks slangish in modern English to write "whatchu," but it is more accurate after all.

Sanskrit overtly writes every alternation like this, including when words seem to combine together into a single prosodic word. The term for this is [Sandhi]{.dfn}.

The tricky thing that newbies to Sanskrit must understand is that knowing the principles of Sandhi are the first priority in knowing Sanskrit because it's impossible to even parse a basic sentence before you understand it. Phonemically, many Sanskrit words end in an -s, but one of the first rules of Sandhi is that words are not allowed to end in -s in most cases. So -s might show up as -h or -o or something else depending on the phonetic context.

I say this because before you get excited about diving into Sanskrit, you have to make sure you know the basics of Sandhi or it will all be a mess.

Classical/Koiné Greek

Greek, much like Spanish, I never really sat down to learn. Greek is close enough in form to Latin that I learned it from reading a biglottic Bible in both languages. Its grammar presents very few concepts alien to Latin, the only big hurdles probably being the novel uses of the article and if you want to learn classical Greek like a pro, the pitch accent system.

What I mean is that I only read very little of Greek grammar before I could pick up my Latin-Greek Bible and start reading the Greek with the aid of the parallel Latin. This was also a nice experience because you can see the similaries between the two languages, but also how the expressiveness of Greek is sometimes lost in translation.

Greek, for example, has such a complete and elegant paradigm of participles that many of them are unstranlatable in Latin. Latin has only passive perfect participles and active present participles, while Greek has participles for the whole spectrum of voice, tense and aspect. What that means is that Latin has to talk around some common Greek expressions, often utilizing Latin deponents (which can have perfect active participle) to get the meaning across.

https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/other-langs/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/other-langs/

Command Line Bibles

I've made a couple very useful command-line accessible Bibles for a quick and scriptable lookup of Bible verses and passages. They exist not only in English, but for Latin and Greek as well.

1. English King James Version (including Apocrypha) - Github, Gitlab
2. Latin Vulgate - Github, Gitlab
3. Greek Septuagint & New Testament - Github, Gitlab