muddi [he/him]

There is so much internal politics, especially in larger companies.

I'm on the team that manages the core functionality of the product, but every other team twists our arms and escalates things all the way to the top-levels just so they can do things in the way they are used to or they just prefer. Apparently the other managers are aiming for promotions so it's a power grab. Meanwhile, the product turns to shit, my team gets blamed, we lose money, people like me who do the actual work get laid off (thankfully I haven't yet but idk)

Smaller companies are nicer, but they still have politics. Honestly I've been in cooperatives too and there is still some politics. I guess it's just the capitalist alienation between workers

Any biography about some liberal political leader, like that Obama one. I think people buy them just because they trend on the top 10 books to read list. But everyone I've met who has it just keeps it on their coffee table to make it seem like they're into reading now. The only one I know who finishes those biographies is my grandpa who is a little senile and bored now.

Marx didn't consider human nature so he's totally wrong

Tolkien was just retelling legends, folktales, fairy tales, children's bedtime stories etc. He did piece them together to create extended connected lore, but not everything gets cleanly explained away in this kind of worldbuilding technique.

So really imo Tom Bombadil is just some contrivance of Tolkien to make the story feel more like some old fairy tale.

I think of it in terms of levels building on top of each other, or circles enveloping each other; also how I evaluate interviewees and new hires:

1. Finishes the task, but needs handholding
2. Finishes the task, figuring it out from docs, guides, and internet
3. Finishes the task, proactively trying to make sure it doesn't return again as a bug or failing QA
4. Finishes the task, designing things in a way so that devs don't need to put in extra effort in the future

In short, learning how to do something right, but also alternative strategies, how to pick the best option, and finally make sure you always end up with the right choice, or automatically do so, by design.

It's at core a matter of experience, but taking on new opportunities and reading up helps to accelerate that.

I wonder if it's all those variables named with single letter and abbreviations, so annoying to code review

I have met people who are able to do this, and believe that everyone can, already or eventually. Unfortunately though their willingness to do it with me never aligns, so I don't get to do this much.

Deep engagement in a conversation and a deep conversation are different things I'd say.

Deep engagement to me is when someone starts thinking about your position as their own. One time I asked a store clerk where I can get a shovel in the store. They didn't have any, but he kept brainstorming with me what I can use as a makeshift shovel or where else I can go to shop for one. It was very engaging and nice to be part of.

One way I can describe a deep conversation is a topic that, when someone starts getting into it, the socialized knee-jerk reaction is to insult them to shut them up (unless you happen to be impassioned about it as well). Think sitcom: some quirky character waxes poetic and the others tell them to can it because the plot must go on.

I guess a deep conversation can be a personal one, although I would maybe categorize that as an intimate conversation rather than deep. Both are conversations that people usually just to ignore, avoid, or tell others to stop because they want to get on with their own lives. Usually deep conversation topics are larger-than-daily-life topics, so that's probably why

Lucifer's Hebrew name is Helel!

I guess if getting new data is not allowed, then interpolation or extrapolation would be the next best option. Interpolation would be connecting existing thoughts to form or find new ones in between. Extrapolation would be following a train of thought to its ultimate end. This could be done in either the diffused or focused mental states. I like to draw up diagrams for this so I can see the blank spots to fill or direction things seem to be going.

There is also the semantics of the question. It's actually quite an ancient topic, where our thoughts come from. What does "original" mean? The thought originating in our mind, or from some higher realm? I won't go too deep into this, just bringing it up to think about it. The only thing I wanted to say is that maybe our mind is not entirely free and agentive, but actually there is a "darkness that comes before" to reference The Second Apocalypse which we can't conquer, but are conquered by.

On a lighter note, and from my own experience, it is definitely possible to generate new thoughts outside of that diffuse cloud of repeated thoughts formed on the storehouse of experience accumulated so far in our lives. Following practices of mindfulness, we can learn to recognize the noise of our mind and separate those "thoughts" from what we might call more agentive thoughts that we can control over, wherever they come from. I do meditations in these styles and achieve a mental state beyond the diffuse and focused, kind of inverse to dreaming (cf. turiya for this kind of formulation of a fourth state of mind). In this state, you can come to understand things which you could probably never do in the other mental states. Those thoughts feel "cleaner" as if coming from a true origin rather than bounced around a cloud of repeated thoughts like you mention.

But I feel like maybe these thoughts are not exactly the ones you are looking for. They are removed from our everyday sense of living, and not really invested in disciplines we have come up with socially as humans. It would be like asking if a caveman 500,000 years ago would have come up with the solution to how to fix a bug in the code I just wrote. It would have been an original thought for him sure, but kind of besides the point.

Edit: as an example for the interpolation/extrapolation, consider sentences like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" or actual usages of this sort of thing in literature:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kir%C4%81t%C4%81rjun%C4%ABya#Linguistic_ingenuity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

The interesting part is that constrained thinking is what produces this

Sounds like you might enjoy people being honest to you rather than enjoying compliments or criticism. Criticism is more blunt when said to someone's face, but compliments can seem disingenuous, so maybe you don't believe the compliments subconsciously

If you are out somewhere dark enough and look up long enough, you usually see several shooting stars.

Also interesting: some cultures recognize images in nebulae and dark spots in the sky instead of or alongside constellations (eg. Australian indigenous Emu in the Sky)

There is a lockdown mode or something in the power menu that should disable biometrics until the next unlock with pin/passcode

Not defending the companies, just something to be aware of if you see a cop coming towards you in the distance

Oh man this is stirring up some memories from early grade school about an English version of this that we used to sing about a boy with a long name and his younger brother.

I always wondered if that was just the moral of the story: don't give your children long names. Which my parents did to me 😡

The series is good, idk about the first few books in themselves though

Fair point but I think then it just expands the consideration from linguistic (which is already more than spoken or written, it also covers signed, whistled, drummed, danced, in one case I heard about -- eye movement) to semiotic.

Fellow conlanger!

Think of it dialectically, not in a polar way. So called "good" and "bad" have to come together in one for one to be able to surpass the apparent duality. Any enlightenment, individual or social, should come from the stage after good/bad

This is what the sages will say, on the individual level: it's not so much good vs bad as useful or not useful (to some end). We need to understand and maybe learn to control what this "end" is. Similar thing with socialism: it's not class war for the sake of one class winning, but rather abolishing class as a system altogether

Nitpicking can be automated by a linter, then reviews can actually sit back and review more important things like high-level design and scalability

as if peer reviews could actually spot bugs that tests can't catch

There can't be bugs if there are no tests to catch them! Ofc you can also automate test coverage standards. But PRs are sometimes the only way to catch bugs, even and especially with senior devs in my experience bc they are lazy and will skip writing tests, or write useless or bare minimum tests just to check off code standards and merge on ahead

There is a baggage associated with the word "cult" now.

It used to mean pretty much a specific practice of a religion. For example, in a polytheistic religion, you can choose a favorite god and perhaps even worship that figure exclusively, even while believing in all the others eg. later Hindu ishtadevata practices

This kind of cult evolved into those around mysteries or mysterious figures (eg. Eleusinia, Mithraism) and real-world figures like monarchs like the Roman emperor. Eventually you have the death cults of the last few decades which cemented the pejorative sense of "cult" and also inspired the sociology around the same. I should also mention, there is a chauvinism in this as well eg. cargo cults

To answer your question, there is this historical context to it. But also the perspective: one can look back through history or across the world to identify "cults" but not recognize that one lives in a culture or participates in cultish behavior themselves

Same , but in my experience this can backfire even worse because the other person thinks you are trying to show off as well as make them look bad. But the problem is less with you and me, and more with this type of person

The circular reasoning I got after proposing to use a code formatter:

• Why are you nitpicking on PRs? Let's use a linter instead
• Yes we already have a linter for compliance sake
• Oh it's turned off though. I don't like it.
• No we can't use it actually, it's a third party one and it's not compliant.
• We can't use the first party one. It's not extensive enough.
• No we shouldn't extend it with our own custom rules. It's too much maintenance.
• I refuse to use any IDE formatting shortcuts or plugins, and will commit my code as I feel. The problem is not how I write my code.
• Why are you still discussing this? Didn't you figure out how to use a linter yet?

We're still at square one with this after a year or so

I think that is a linguistic question ultimately. You could take potentially utter a new sentence never before uttered even with the top 10 most used words in a language.

That is one of the most significant things about the human being. Actually I am quite surprised when people come with definitions for human nature eg. fundamentally good, fundamentally evil, homo sapiens, homo faber, etc. that the linguistic potential to turn a small set of things into infinity is often ignored. No other animal can think and speak like we do.

I'm reading the Kathasaritsagara now! Reading those kind of collections of tales makes me feel like I'm living among the ancient/medieval villagers of India, an interesting perspective shift to say the least

I'll check it out! Thanks for the rec

And about the Indian stories, I think you'll find a rhythmic pattern. Maybe the translations can ruin it, I can't confirm or deny this.

I think you're right, I'm probably missing out on certain contexts and linguistic play reading the English translations. It adds to the melancholy in a way though, knowing there's more beneath the surface of the words I can only barely grasp

Ah yep that triggered the full memory for me...it was a book called Tikki Tikki Tempo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikki_Tikki_Tembo

There are automations. You can even add git hooks iirc. Mostly I find the lint and other code quality integrations nice to have in the IDE, since the inline results allow me to navigate directly to the code

Diffing is a lot easier too

Yeah there are those machines that like instantly cool your soda can or make ice cream instantly supposedly. They just bathe it in ice and salt water for some time basically

I once tripped hard and believed I died. When I came out from the trip, I still had no evidence I hadn't finished tripping, and am actually still dying as my mind fires its dying circuits in my deathbed.

But that doubt interferes with my ability to live a normal live which I am used to and strive for, so I ignore the doubt, mostly. I check myself with little tests now and then.

Same with other existential doubts in general. If you want some official names of philosophies, Nagel's absurdism, Buddhism, Vedanta, and maybe pragmatism would be applicable. Basically: don't kill yourself with doubt, keep on living with some sensibility in your senses, though keep a curious mind to keep yourself in check now and then.

Others have mentioned, everything is moving away from each other, like the surface of an expanding balloon. But that is what we observe, and there is more beyond the observable universe.

There is an idea that our universe might actually be in a black hole in a higher universe. To expand on the balloon simile (pun intended), this would be like a balloon expanding uniformly except in a spot, a bubble appears and expands faster. A bubble within a bubble. Kind of a tumor, an outgrowth universe. Hope I've been illustrative enough.

It's not exactly what you asked, but a higher level black hole is kind of something pulling all matter in our universe instead of pushing.