Author Archives: danijel

Truth

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I recently saw a video by Jordan Peterson, in which he urges people to always to tell the truth, or at least not to lie. It made me think, because that’s an advice I would always give, and also something I personally can’t really do.

Tell the truth? Sure. Tell the greatest truth I know? That God is the ultimate reality, and this world is an elaborate, persistent illusion? That life and death don’t matter, and your relationship with God is the only thing to consider, always? When exactly should I tell those truths? When the owner of the restaurant asks me how I liked the lunch? When the neighbour asks me what’s up? When the cashier at the store asks “would that be all?”

It reminds me of a Bosnian joke where Mujo managed to burn out the latest AI supercomputer by asking him “šta ima?”, or “what’s up?” in rough translation. The computer of course took it literally and started selecting all things that are up. The answer everybody expects is something along the lines of “oh, nice to see you too man, how’s things?”, which is a trivial social phrase that means nothing, really, and is there merely to keep the pretence of a conversation when there’s nothing to say, and a way to be polite about it. In most cases, truth is neither sought nor required.

So, yes, that’s the way I go about things – answer with polite phrases, go through life providing non-responses to non-questions, because it would be awqward to do otherwise, but the fact remains that by doing so I am living a lie.

Computer issues

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I had quite a bit of computer issues lately, and mostly with my main desktop PC (a Ryzen 5900x/Nvidia 1080ti gaming/workstation system): most of them were stupid things, like something misconfigured in UEFI/BIOS after an update that made the PC wake from sleep randomly, or Windows “fast startup” not allowing the computer to sleep, but the worst are the stability issues – random crashes and BSOD, and I’m afraid all points to the CPU, which is either overheating, or shows stability issues due to heat damage. The root cause of this seems to be an AIO watercooling unit that has a nasty habit of leaving a coin-sized spot on the middle of the CPU contact-free, probably because something deforms when the pump is screwed onto the CPU too tightly or something of the sort. In any case, the computer randomly crashes from once in a few days to several times in a day, and this basically makes the computer just unreliable enough for me not to be able to use it for anything serious. Also, the fact that Windows 11 looks more like a perpetually self-updating machine than anything else, also contributed to my annoyance, and the machine is so power-inefficient that it significantly heats the room in summer, forcing the AC to work harder and thus waste even more power.

While this machine will eventually get fixed when the parts arrive, I decided to do a side-grade (a word for something that’s neither an upgrade nor a downgrade, but replacement with something different but equally powerful) and replace it in the function of my main computer by a Mac Studio.

I was quite busy with the transition – first I tried to unsuccessfully resolve the Windows machine’s stability issues by formatting and reinstalling the OS and all the apps, then had more stupid Windows issues when I tried to move the NVMe from one socket to another and the Windows refused to boot after that, so I had to fix the issue from the recovery console and in the most obscure ways possible, then the Mac arrived and I eventually had to do a clean install because Lightroom didn’t want to work when I did a recovery from another computer’s backup drive, then all kind of obscure things had to be installed, and I basically spent several weeks dealing with computers and the pointless issues they caused. For instance, there is a bug in the Apple Mail application on the Mac OS Ventura and it is widely reported on the web, but nobody in Cupertino seems to be working on it, probably because they don’t think it exists, because it doesn’t show if you upgraded from an earlier OS version, however when you do a clean install, as I did, the junk mail controls and custom filters don’t get saved and are lost on app restart. I fixed the problem by copying 3 files from my laptop:

~/Library/Mail/V10/MailData/RulesActiveState.plist
./SyncedRules.plist
./UnsyncedRules.plist

This is a trivial issue, but each such thing takes an hour or two to diagnose and fix, and I feel as if I’ve been reduced to fixing pointless computer shit and doing very little productive work the computers are meant to do, and I also need to maintain quite a bit of IT skill just to keep everything running, and moving to a Mac might reduce at least some of this pointless hassle, because I don’t think it can be outright removed without abandoning the whole thing.

In the meantime, the Mac is silent, blows out cool air under load, doesn’t use almost any electricity in normal work, updates much less often than the Windows box, and is as blazing fast as that 12-core Ryzen monstrosity with water cooling. Also, the DAC on its headphone jack is absolutely stellar, audibly better than the Schiit Modi 3 I’ve been using to connect the Windows box to the NAD. The second great thing about the Mac are the ports – there are lots of them, and they are high speed, which kind of matters, because the Windows machine only had one USB A 3.1 Gen 2 port, and one USB C connector of the same speed; all the other ports are slower. On the Mac, the slowest USB ports are USB 3.1 Gen 2, it has both USB A and C varieties, and the fast ports are Thunderbolt 4, allowing me to connect external NVMe drives at speeds equivalent to the internal drive. I already have a 4TB NVMe and the enclosure for it in the mail, and that’s going to be the storage drive for Lightroom. The drawback is that all the upgrades are necessarily external, because it doesn’t have any internal upgrade ability. I would expect to be able to at least change/add NVMe drives and RAM, but no, this thing is as upgradable as an iPhone. That’s a real shame and a continuation in a long line of steps backwards Apple was taking, from fully upgradable machines where you could replace hard drives and RAM modules, to this. However, to be honest, the thing with the computer industry is that upgrades are no longer much of a concern these days, and you can take a five or even ten year old computer and it will run fine. Just remember that ten years ago it was 2013, and the computer of the day was this. I have a mid-2015 version of that, and it’s noticeably slower than the modern hardware, but still runs everything I throw at it just fine. Basically, I replaced it long before it became defunct, and that’s the thing – you can take a 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD machine from ten years ago, and it will still run a modern OS, run modern apps, and upgrading the storage and RAM won’t really solve the main reasons why you might want to replace it. There were times when you had to constantly upgrade your machine just to keep up, and the upgrades were truly huge and relevant every six months or so. This is no longer the case, and a modern high-end machine might actually not need internal upgrades in its expected life cycle of five years.

Whether this civilisation will last that long, is a much more important question.

Misunderstandings

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I was just thinking about one possible misunderstanding that might occur due to my style of writing and speech. You see, I essentially never make outright commandments or prohibitions. I mostly just give my reasoning as to why something is a bad idea, or might have bad consequences, or why something is a good idea.

There are several reasons for this. First, it’s a matter of your free will to do whatever you personally feel you need or want to do. I will just state my opinion, which you might accept or ignore. Second, bad things can be useful. For instance, I read many books that were bad, or outright wrong, but reading them helped me understand how people who are under this or that misapprehension think and feel. Not only that – I occasionally do things that are not wise or recommended, just to test whether my understanding of the principles applies. Of course, there are things that are so outright harmful that trying them causes irreversible harm, and those are always to be avoided; for instance, ingesting chemicals or doing other things that cause brain damage, permanent injury or death. You don’t want to hang yourself or inject yourself with heroin just to see how it feels, for instance. However, it is my experience that all kinds of evil or bad things can be turned around and used to create the kind of wisdom that would otherwise be hard to attain. Basically, doing wrong things and getting wrecked because of it can teach you very valuable lessons about why certain things are bad, or why certain paths don’t work. The reason why I have such a good understanding of things is because I tried many things that didn’t work, and not always intentionally; basically, I learned some things by fucking up so badly I barely survived. The formulation I usually make, saying that something is not recommended, or that it is dangerous, can therefore mean that it is likely to destroy you, but if you survive, you might gain extremely valuable insight, and it’s up to you whether you want to take those chances or not – after all, it’s your life to waste or destroy if you so choose.

I guess this relativistic attitude towards things that others might judge as fatal is a result of my prolonged practice of detachment; you can call it vipassana if you will. I see it all as energy behind this or that vector, and everything can be powered and un-powered, redirected and powered again to test something. “Ah, this is evil, so I know what evil feels like. Now, power off. Wind down. Change direction, slowly add energy. This is good, so this is how it feels.“ Tantra would call this “game” a dance on the edge of a sword, and the sword is indeed sharp.

Non-yogis live in a different world, where they believe that “their nature” compels them to do something, and choices can’t be undone, they need to be punished for the bad things and so on. I live in a world where bad things need to be decoupled from energy and powered down. Where non-yogis think of themselves as victims of things that happen to them, I see myself as someone who can kill processes, create new ones, change priorities and the percentage of CPU power behind each, and so on. Also, I’m not afraid of failure, pain, misery or death, and I see them as merely “things you might want to avoid”, and if you expect stronger wording, you might misunderstand. After all, failure, pain, misery and death can accompany one on their way to God, while another might succeed in things all the way to utter doom.

Ukraine war status

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The Ukrainian “offensive” went about as well as I predicted; after a month of hard work and losing a big percentage of their men and equipment, they are still in the minefield zone in front of the first Russian defensive line, which they haven’t even reached.

Also, there is a NATO summit in Vilnius July 11-12, and Ukraine is acting as if it desperately needs to show some progress before then, because they have probably been told that if they don’t demonstrate the ability to take back “their” territory by then, they will be faced with the very real possibility of having to negotiate a settlement with Russia whereby they would have to cede territory in exchange for survival.

As a result, they have been preparing the public for an attack on the Zaporozhye NPP, which of course they will blame on the Russians, and they are making up stories about having destroyed all kinds of Russian equipment (which is very easy to fake by just taking pictures of their own destroyed stuff or just making stuff up like they usually do) .

The Russians, on the other hand, had very strange developments with Wagner, which is still too weird for me to make sense of; the obvious explanation is that Prigozhin got greedy and lost, but it is still possible that it was all a ruse of some kind I don’t understand. Also, the weather is now ideal for the Russians to go in with full force.

Essentially, heads up.

Safety third

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One of the things I despise about the current Western civilization is the “safety first” attitude.

I know where it comes from – basically, the ideology of human rights, where right to life is the most fundamental right everything else is derived from; can’t have property if you’re dead, can’t have any other rights if you’re dead, can’t have any freedoms if you’re dead. Let’s ignore the slightly inconvenient issue of the abortion rights which negate right-to-life for the sake of a normally inferior freedom of choice, but otherwise, it’s logical that safety would be the first priority because if you get killed or you’re gravely injured, this would make any possible gains moot.

The implicit assumption is that nothing could possibly be worth more than your life; thus, logically, safety comes first, and everything else second.

However, that’s not how I prioritise things. To me, it’s mission first. The reason why I’m here has precedence – that’s, basically, what my life is for. Using it up in order to achieve the goal is the point. What else would I be doing here? Taking pictures of nature? Sure, there’s a place for safety. If I get killed or badly hurt prior to accomplishing my goals, this compromises my ability to accomplish said goals, and this is not good. If I get too poor and thus unable to function in the world in ways that allow me to accomplish my goals, that would also be bad. This makes safety and prosperity valid secondary goals, but it’s always in the context of “mission first”. Never earn money in ways that would compromise the mission. Never try to be safe and survive if that compromises the mission.

The mission, of course, is stay focused on God, do whatever needs to be done, and return to God in at least as pure and powerful a condition as when I came here, but hopefully improve.

Of course I’m not evaluating daily things, such as buying bread and coffee, in this manner – how does this exact brand of instant coffee help me attain my goals? That would be idiocy worthy of Socrates. I don’t feel the need to constantly prove that something is good, true and useful; however, when I really find myself between a hammer and an anvil, remembering that I’m not really trying to survive or to enjoy myself, but I’m here on a mission, and the only thing I need to know is whether I’m still accomplishing it or not. If my death accomplishes it, and prolonged life doesn’t, death is preferable. If suffering accomplishes it and pleasure doesn’t, suffering is preferable.

Most things, understandably, fall into neither category. It’s for the most part completely irrelevant whether I run Windows, Mac OS or Linux on my computer; the articles I write are going to be the same. It doesn’t matter whether I shoot film or digital, or whether I shoot Canon or Sony; the pictures are going to feel the same. It does, however, matter whether I shoot pictures on a really poor camera, or on a really good one, because there is going to be that “thing” about good equipment that allows me to express my vision well, without technical issues standing in the way. Also, really bad equipment already caused visible issues – for instance, I edited the cover of my first book on a Windows 98 machine with insufficient RAM, and it kept freezing and crashing on me so I couldn’t finish resizing the big TIFF image properly, so the cover is somewhat “off”. The printers also messed up the colour calibration of at least one other book – the colours are several hundred kelvins too cool and saturation could be better, so yes, equipment can definitely cause issues. Fortunately, I never encountered a technological issue that would actually prevent me from writing a text, but it came close – MS Word on a very old laptop, for instance, lagged so badly, I had noticeable delay between what I typed and what showed on the screen, due to spelling checker doing its thing. Sure, I turned it off when I figured out the problem, but it’s never pleasant, so when someone asks why I buy expensive hardware, or, in general, why I pay so much attention to any particular thing, it’s because I probably had problems with that kind of a thing in the past, and I am trying to minimise the probability of it getting in my way in the future. I don’t want to have only one computer, because it will eventually update the OS for hours, or its hard drive will fail, or it will just die, and at that moment I won’t have a backup. It happened before, so now my backups have backups. I had situations where I couldn’t get my only computer on the Internet because the drivers for some essential piece of hardware were on the Internet. Having a second computer, or a second car, isn’t necessarily a matter of comfort – it’s a function of putting the mission first, and for that, everything has to work, and everything needs to have a backup in case it doesn’t. Sure, the car I drive is safe, but it’s safe because safety is useful if I want to accomplish my goals, not because it’s safety first.

Basically, if it’s safety first, it means your life doesn’t have a purpose, but is a purpose in itself, which makes it pretty much irrelevant. I see my life as a resource that is being spent in the process of achieving its purpose. Other things, such as money and physical resources, are spent on maintaining my life and abilities, so that I can achieve my goals here. It’s, basically, goal first, maintenance of ability to achieve goals second, and safety probably third, if even that. The third place is still high enough for me to hardly ever compromise safety, unless it’s actually essential for the mission. Comfort is also quite high on the list; probably four, because comfort includes good health, and comfort in general is quite important if you are trying to maintain prolonged focus on hard problems in order to solve them. This, however, means I’m quite willing to disregard comfort if it’s in any way useful for almost anything of any significance, but I still find it useful if I’m trying to work, and I will not intentionally seek discomfort for the sake of some kind of asceticism; also, if it can’t be helped, I’ll shrug it off, but if it can be helped, I will prefer comfortable and practical solutions. After comfort and practicality there are even lower priorities, such as aesthetics, which basically means that I will prefer something nicer if I have a choice and it doesn’t compromise anything more important. In reality, it means that if I have a pen and a notebook on my desk all the time, I prefer them to look nice, but a piece of paper and any pencil will do in a pinch. Even things as seemingly unimportant as status symbols have their place in the list of priorities – for instance, if it allows me to be more efficient in daily matters, I might want to present myself outwardly in certain ways that don’t create unnecessary obstacles; for instance, when doing business, it helps to look like someone who belongs there, and not have to go through several layers of “what’s wrong with you?”. Can I manage without those things? Sure. However, I’ll take all the help I can get, because what I do is hard enough as it is.

I have to repeat that I don’t actually go around and weigh every action against a list of priorities, and I would qualify a person who does as certifiably insane. It’s an unconscious, almost instinctive thing that I just bothered to put into words and made it sound much more formal than it actually is, but in reality it’s in the order of “try to make things look nice and clean if possible” and “get a car that isn’t obviously unsafe, is comfortable and fast enough, and passes the general social scrutiny that everybody instinctively does to evaluate business partners”, however it’s all goal-oriented – until goal is achieved, try to stay capable, in order to be capable stay alive, in order to stay alive stay safe, if possible stay comfortable, in order to increase comfort maintain a clean and pleasant environment, and so on.