=================================
 Mill, Hume, handstand, blackout
=================================

The life proceeds as usual: more of reading and physical exercises, of
the locally unfolding disaster, and various other events.


Philosophy
==========

I finished reading OpenStax's "Introduction to Philosophy", which
looks like a fine textbook. Many ideas are crammed, only briefly
mentioned there, but it is an introductory book, and goes for breadth
rather than depth. Spotted quite a few typos and some inaccuracies,
but submitted those to the online errata, and apparently those are
going to be corrected.

Then I read John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". It advocates for the
freedoms of thought, speech, and related ones, diversity,
individualism. While the arguments look good to me, it is harder to
judge them when you mostly agree with the conclusions already, and
possibly I do agree with the conclusions because those are embedded
into the culture I grew up in. Apparently his views are more radical
than the currently prevailing ones though, extending those freedoms to
potentially harmful speech (such as encouragement of violence, medical
disinformation, some kinds of political propaganda), but observing how
an increasing number of topics is outlawed around here under that
guise, and simply based on the arguments for it, I am inclined to
agree with him. There are some arguable bits and examples, and a
certain religious standpoint is assumed, but overall it is a nice
essay.

Afterwards, David Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding":
on epistemology, focusing on empiricism, considering skepticism,
promoting compatibilism. Seems impressive for the 18th century,
without the modern neuroscience to lean on. Following the recent
spotting of more famous quotes in works that precede them, I noticed
the "Of miracles" chapter to be quite similar to "extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence" (Carl Sagan), while "Of a particular
providence and of a future state" reminded me of "the purpose of a
system is what it does" (Stafford Beer), although it is more about not
taking an arbitrary hypothesis for the reality. There are many
references to this book around, so it was somewhat familiar already;
as with Mill and quite a few others, the ideas seem to hang around,
making them hard to miss even without reading it.

Those reminded me of my old musings about making a game, some kind of
a quest, with different bits of evidence equally plausibly leading to
a few different conclusions. Supposedly a player would attempt to form
some picture (relying on coherentism), and likely would cling to the
evidence spotted earlier in the process, at which point the evidence
supporting different options may be added. Now I also wonder whether
there are some studies like that, attempting to measure how much
people would cling to the versions they form initially.


Physical exercises
==================

Between those philosophy books, I skimmed "Convict Conditioning" by
Paul Wade. It describes a calisthenics program consisting of six
exercises with their progressions and variations, and with minimal
equipment: a place to hang from (such as a horizontal bar), a bench or
something of a similar height, such as a bed, and a couple of objects
sized like basketball and baseball balls. It does not go into as much
detail or present as many exercise options as "Overcoming Gravity"
does, and only mentions stretching briefly, but includes the common
suggestions on exercises. The program is similar to what I do now,
though it does not include planks, and includes bridges
instead. Overall, it looks (to a beginner such as myself) like a
simple and practical program to follow.

Now I practice wall handstands: the kind where you kick yourself up,
rather than walk up, so the back is against the wall. Wanted to try
those for a while, but it seemed dangerous, so kept delaying it: only
attempted it twice before, and on the third attempt it worked, with
months separating the attempts. Holding those daily, for about 20
seconds, but probably will incorporate them into the workouts soon.

Incorporated bridges from "Convict Conditioning". Probably I try to do
too many exercises within a workout, but unsure if I should exclude
some, and/or do different ones on different days, in addition to
splitting them this summer into three workout days with strength
training, and four cardio routine or walking days. Speaking of walks,
I do not walk much these days: it is not muddy yet, but chilly, and
not as nice even in parks, which are about as gray as everything else.
Possibly it will be a little better with the snow, though it will be
muddy then.

Progressing a little with L-sit hold (up to 30 seconds on parallettes,
15 seconds on the floor), L-sit pull-ups (3 sets of 8). The "Convict
Conditioning" program replaces all those with hanging leg raises,
which I also do, but unsure whether I should abandon these other
exercises in that case. I rather enjoy those combined and slightly
more complex movements, like L-sit pull-ups, or L-sit hold on
parallettes transitioning into a tuck planche and back.


Blackout and work
=================

I have experienced an Internet blackout: for a day TCP connections to
large foreign subnets lasted for the first 16 or so KB, following
which the packets were dropped by TSPU. Learned that this was going on
for days by the time I was affected, that it happens in regions since
the summer, similar to the Internet blackouts affecting mobile network
operators alone. I have only found mentions of that on a blocked forum
dedicated to Internet censorship, while regular news websites, even
blocked ones, were silent, as if nobody noticed. Much seems to happen
like that: quite silently, even though it does seem significant to
some. That also was a reminder that such things are hard to plan for:
I expected that some censorship circumvention tools and resources will
work for a time after blocking of more prominent ones, and vaguely
planned for such a scenario, but this simply cut most things at once,
without targeting. Unclear whether it was intentional or not, and at
the time it was unknown whether it is temporary. Apart from that, RKN
reported 1.2 million resources blocked in the first 10 months of 2025,
and 258 VPN services, with the growing block rate. The background news
are matching: first prosecutions for certain online searches,
continued ones for "discrediting the army", suppression of Halloween
events ("offending religious feelings", as well as Satanism and LGBTQ
"extremist movements"); along with existing taxes rising, a new one is
introduced, on imported devices. And everything else keeps going on.

At work, the security theater develops; proprietary VPN equipment is
going to be used to turn the system into a mostly-closed-circuit one,
while servers and workstations are required to have proprietary and
certified antivirus software. Unsure how I will connect to the main
server myself, apart from visiting the office each time when I need
to. Setting odd black boxes between components of the critical
infrastructure looks unwise, similarly to the TSPU black boxes, but so
does the rest of it. Then there is a proprietary graphical front end
to OpenSCAP, which is supposedly used for system attestation; I took
the OVAL database from it, and scanned a system with OpenSCAP itself,
but noticed that it only included vulnerable package versions with
CVEs from about 10 months ago or older. And there is the related
bureaucratic business (reading and editing a bunch of security
compliance documents; written in a weird language, full of repetition,
and describing silly "security" practices that look rather like
rituals), adding to the busy work. Although the usual work also
occasionally leads to unused or abandoned projects, or consists of
working around accidental complexity created by others, so it is not
that different.

I checked on my indeed.com account, even though the job openings I saw
so far were not encouraging. As with LinkedIn, found myself locked out
of the account, with a request for "verification" by providing and
confirming a phone number, but not a local one. Apparently I will have
to try direct applications, if I will attempt to look for a new job
more seriously and actively. Though the more I look at vacancies, read
others' stories on job search, and unsuccessfully attempt to use the
employment websites these days, the harder it seems to find a decent
job in IT (either programming or administration) abroad. The in-demand
technologies also keep looking awkward: the hyped ones of uncertain
utility (as LLMs currently, which are not even available for trying
out in the suggested--supposedly "actually good"--ways without
geoblock circumvention and payments, and with the international
payments not available without high markups and shady services;
similar issues arise with other online services, common "cloud" ones,
though those are also blocked locally), or simply the ones I do not
find quite useful and would not use by choice, especially for personal
and hobby projects.

On a less sad work-related subject, I had to adjust a legacy Python
project developed by others to run on a newer system. It turned out to
consist of seven services, using files, MongoDB, and RabbitMQ for
communication between them, as well as a bunch of other unnecessary
dependencies, while it is mostly a wrapper around a third-party
program, to access it via an HTTP-based API; pretty sure that MongoDB
is unnecessary, RabbitMQ and separate processes could be replaced with
a single process and function calls, persistent files can be replaced
with temporary ones. Simultaneously, advised a new Python programmer
against use of Kafka, ClickHouse, splitting of a program into multiple
processes to run on multiple servers, and a few more practices like
that for his project, which also appears rather small, and not to
require any of that. One may lament the tendency to overcomplicate
software, but the interest to try new technologies and approaches is
understandable and potentially useful; inefficiencies are present, but
compared to all the hurriedly implemented and unused or abandoned
projects, however simple and efficient, or to the security theater and
similar useless or harmful activities, mere inefficiency is not that
bad, especially if one learns something from it.


Other news
==========

- Tried nachos: store-bought tortilla chips, chili con carne (olive
  oil, onions, leek, ramiro peppers, eggplants, garlic, minced beef,
  kidney beans in chili sauce, tomatoes, toasted cumin and black
  pepper, salt, paprika, cayenne pepper, dried dill, cocoa powder,
  brown sugar), topped with grated cheddar cheese and finely diced
  ripe avocado. Chili is good on its own, but complete nachos are even
  better: messier, but more like a feast.

- Had a lit cigarette butt landing centimeters away from me, thrown
  out of an apartment building's window, overshadowing many daily
  instances of people being inconsiderate, including noisy (unmuffled)
  motorcycles, loud music from cars and cafes, many light electric
  vehicles on sidewalks, people rushing into train cars before letting
  others out. It is hard to believe that they do not see how it
  inconveniences or endangers others, although people can be quite
  oblivious. Those are insignificant, compared to crime or the
  inconveniences and dangers imposed by some governments, and maybe
  comparable to those coming from some corporations, yet it adds to
  the feeling that those are coming from too many directions. All the
  while virtually everyone contributes at least a little towards
  messing up the common environment, but it is hard to care about that
  as well.

- I went trick-or-treating in the Discworld MUD this Halloween,
  collected a few treats. Somehow many people in an online game are
  too busy with running game jobs or hunting, reluctant to engage in
  light roleplaying and fun activities like that, but it is nice when
  some do play along.

- Noticed that a hosting company unexpectedly increased the price for
  an active VPS almost thrice, as well as the minimal transfer
  sums. Continued using it though, since it is still quite cheap, the
  choice is rather limited at this time and place, and I already know
  that they do provide a service. If they did not, I certainly would
  not count on local customer protections to help, and transfers
  themselves may endanger the sender with prosecution these days,
  depending on where they end up.

- Noticed that I have collected too many household chores that have to
  be sorted out. Among those, in addition to the usual kinds of
  maintenance, there are unexpected annoyances such as small birds
  frequenting and damaging a mosquito net now.

- Proper sleep is challenging lately: spending quite a bit of time
  trying to fall asleep, then not sleeping enough, and having naps.


----

:Date: 2025-11-11
