Denote is based on the idea that files should follow a predictable and descriptive file-naming scheme. The file name must offer a clear indication of what the contents are about, without reference to any other metadata. Denote basically streamlines the creation of such files or file names while providing facilities to link between them (where those files are editable).

Denote’s file-naming scheme is not limited to “notes”. It can be used for all types of file, including those that are not editable in Emacs, such as videos. Naming files in a constistent way makes their filtering and retrieval considerably easier. Denote provides relevant facilities to rename files, regardless of file type.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): denote
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-changelog
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/denote
• Video demo: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2022-06-18-denote-demo/
• Backronyms: Denote Everything Neatly; Omit The Excesses. Don’t Ever Note Only The Epiphenomenal.

Below are the release notes.

Version 4.2.0 on 2026-05-20

This version brings several improvements to the core denote package as well as all the Denote extensions I maintain. The core package is stable, its feature set is rich, and the wider ecosystem of extensions is growing.

Most of the changes documented herein are of interest to experienced users who may be looking for ways to refine their workflow. I recommend that new users start with the basics, as I explained them in the original video demonstration of Denote or as they are documented in the manual’s section for newcomers:

• Webpage: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote#h:c54bedb4-5377-4dbd-853c-5870ace6eb33.
• Info manual: With the latest denote package installed, evaluate (info "(denote) Getting started with Denote").

Remember that the release notes are true only at the time of publication. The single source of truth is the official manual.

Core Denote

Overview of the new features

• The command denote-dired-focus will filter the results of an existing denote-dired buffer. Use this to narrow down the results.

• In Org files, the denote: link type can now be previewed using the built-in org-link-preview command, starting with Org version 9.8.0.

• The command denote-link-or-create-with-command extends the existing convenience functions of the “do or create note” kind.

• The denote-file-prompt uses completion metadata to sort by most recently accessed, group by directory or file extension, and cover packages that display cosmetic icons alongside completion candidates.

• Denote now enforces a controlled vocabulary for keywords when denote-infer-keywords is set to nil, such that only the denote-known-keywords are provided as an option at the relevant prompts.

• The mechanism for integrating Denote with org-capture now supports prompting for an signature via denote-org-capture-with-prompts (the signature is an optional, free-form component of the Denote file-naming scheme).

• Several packages that extend Denote are documented in the manual. If you have a package for Denote, let me know and I will write a section about it.

Focus a denote-dired buffer with denote-dired-focus

The command denote-dired produces a Dired listing of file names that match the given regular expressions. Users can benefit from the Denote file-naming scheme to, for example, include all files that have the keyword _emacs. In the resulting Dired buffer, the new command denote-dired-focus can then be invoked to further narrow down the results, such as to only show files that have 2026 in their file (with default settings, the date is part of the Denote identifier).

I implemented this feature in response to issue 693 by 82Kang: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/issues/693.

Improvements to the file prompt

Various Denote commands prompt for a file name: for instance, denote-link asks which file to link to. This file prompt is now augmented with completion metadata that transform how files look and how the information is organised.

Before, the prompt presented full file names like:

20220610T043241--initial-thoughts-on-the-zettelkasten-method__notetaking.org
20220610T062201--define-custom-org-hyperlink-type__denote_emacs_package.md
20220610T162327--on-hierarchy-and-taxis__notetaking_philosophy.txt

Those same file names are now transformed to look like this:

2022-06-10  initial-thoughts-on-the-zettelkasten-method  notetaking
2022-06-10  define-custom-org-hyperlink-type  denote_emacs_package
2022-06-10  on-hierarchy-and-taxis  notetaking_philosophy

The files will be grouped by file extension or directory (if they are in a subdirectory of the denote-directory). Furthermore, they will be sorted by most recently accessed.

The underlying file names are still available except that their presentation is modified. This means that input at the minibuffer prompt will still match everything they contain.

This completion metadata extends to the packages all-the-icons and nerd-icons, which are now instructed to add the correct file icons to the completion candidates: an Org file will have the unicorn icon beside it, for example.

Users who do not like the new style can revert to the plain presentation by setting denote-file-prompt-extra-metadata to nil.

Advanced users who wish to set up the completion-category-overrides may target the denote-file completion category or, anyhow, modify the denote-file-prompt-extra-metadata.

Link to a file or create a new note using a specific command

Denote provides many “convenience wrapper” commands that do something quickly which can also be achieved with minimal configuration. For example, the denote command may be modified to also prompt for a file type and so the denote-type command is like denote with the addition of the file type prompt. Users can look at the source code of denote-type to write their own small variations (the manual provides several examples as well).

The denote-open-or-create-with-command may then use those to implement its specified behaviour of “open an existing file or create it using a convenience wrapper command”.

Same principle for the new denote-link-or-create-with-command: it makes possible the workflow of “link to an existing file or create a new note with the given command”.

Convenience wrappers are listed in the value of the user option denote-commands-for-new-notes.

Thanks to Matthew Batson for building on top of existing functionality to contribute denote-link-or-create-with-command in pull request 674: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/pull/674. Matthew has assigned copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

Preview denote: links in Org files

Starting with Org version 9.8.0 custom link types such as denote: can implement their own preview mechanism. In practice, this means that denote: links pointing to image files will now work as expected with org-link-preview (remember that the Denote file-naming scheme can be applied to any file and is in no way specific to note-taking—I use it for documents and videos, for example).

Thanks to Samuel W. Flint for the original contribution in pull request 683: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/pull/683, with further changes by me. The original contribution is small, meaning that Samuel does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

Signature support in Org capture

The denote-org-capture-with-prompts function now supports the signature file name component as an additional parameter. This function is meant to be used in tandem with the org-capture mechanism, as shown in the manual.

Thanks to Tobias Lidman-Strauss for the contribution in merge request 2 on the GitLab mirror: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/denote/-/merge_requests/2. The change is small, meaning that Tobias does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

The denote-fontify-links-mode is only relevant for .txt files

The denote: links are automatically highlighted as links in Org and Markdown bufers. Users who prefer to write notes in plain .txt files must enable the denote-fontify-links-mode to get the same effect.

I have revised denote-fontify-links-mode to only work with .txt as its other users were not necessary. In the process, I have deprecated the denote-fontify-links-mode-maybe function: just use the denote-fonftify-links-mode.

The keys RET and C-c C-o open the link (same keys used by Org and Markdown modes).

Growing ecosystem of Denote packages

In the Denote manual I mention packages that build on top of Denote. There is one section for each package. The manual now includes the following:

• denote-agenda (by Samuel W. Flint): Use Denote notes as Org agenda files.
• denote-journal-capture (by Samuel W. Flint): Enhanced journaling workflows.
• denote-lint (Peter Smith): Checks for inconsistencies in Denote file names and front matter.
• denote-project-notes (by Samuel W. Flint): Integrate Denote with Emacs’ built-in project support.
• denote-regexp (by Samuel W. Flint): Search and link notes using regular expressions.
• denote-review (by Matto Fransen): A package for reviewing notes over time.
• denote-sections (by Samuel W. Flint): Manage sections within Denote notes.
• denote-wordcloud (by Alexander Kuzmin): Generate word clouds from Denote notes.

Miscellaneous

• The command denote-dired (alias denote-sort-dired) is refactored to work as intended in all cases. Thanks to kilesduli for the contribution in pull request 666: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/pull/666. Further changes by me, including the option to maintain many separate denote-dired buffers, which I did in response to issue 693 by 82Kang: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/issues/693.

• I have revised the denote-grep mechanism and all of its ancillary functions and variables are revised in the interest of consistency and maintainability. Thanks to gnuhack for contributing a macro that was meant to streamline some commands. This was done in pull request 697: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/pull/697. I eventually changed lots of things so that the macro was not relevant anymore, though mine was a change with a wider scope.

• The Org link storage mechanism (denote-link-ol-store) now works correctly within org-capture buffers, allowing for more flexible linking workflows.

• Following non-Denote Markdown links no longer result in an error under certain circumstances. Thanks to bplubell for the contribution in pull request 685: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/pull/685. The change is small, meaning that its author does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

• Retrieving front matter is now more reliable, even when the buffer is unsaved. Thanks to kilesduli for the contribution in pull request 672: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/pull/672. Also thanks to Jean-Philippe Gagné Guay for reviewing the change and for reporting a problem with an earlier version of the code in issue 670: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/issues/670. Further changes by me.

• The various Denote rename commands that affect the front matter in files no longer change existing spacing. I did this to address the comment posted by Morten Kjeldgaard in issue 703: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/issues/703.

• Updated the documentation to explain how to automatically encrypt new notes when using a custom file type.

• Refined the internal helper functions for directory management and identifier validation.

• Thanks to nescias for fixing three typos in the manual. This was sent to me as a patch, which I installed as commit c772378.

Changes to the extensions of Denote I maintain

This is about packages I maintain. Some of them were originally part of the denote.git repository, but I moved them out into their own packages to make everything easier to reason about.

consult-denote version 0.5.0

• Package name (GNU ELPA): consult-denote
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/consult-denote
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/consult-denote-changelog
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/consult-denote

• Backronym: Consult-Orchestrated Navigation and Selection of Unambiguous Targets…denote.

• References to the long-obsolete “denote-silo-extras-” prefix are replaced by “denote-silo-”. Thanks to IT Ascalium for the contribution in pull request 20: https://github.com/protesilaos/consult-denote/pull/20. The change is small, so its author does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

• The consult-denote-file-prompt correctly handles relative file paths when denote-directory is set to a list of directories. This is what the underlying denote-file-prompt does (which I mentioned above about its metadata). Thanks to Kai von Fintel for the contribution in pull request 24: https://github.com/protesilaos/consult-denote/pull/24. The change does not require copyright assignment.

denote-merge version 0.1.0

• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-merge
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-merge
• Backronym: Denote… Merging Eventually Reformats the Given Entries.

This is an optional extension to the denote package. It provides commands and relevant user options to streamline the work of merging contents from one Denote file to another. This is for users who periodically review their notes to add, remove, or otherwise consolidate their accumulated knowledge.

denote-journal version 0.3.0

• Package name (GNU ELPA): denote-journal
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-journal
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-journal

• Backronym: Denote… Journaling Obviously Utilises Reasonableness Notwithstanding Affectionate Longing.

• The user option denote-journal-keyword now supports a nil value, allowing users to create journal entries without a specific keyword. Thanks to nescias for sending me the patch via email, which I installed as commit d4cc501 in denote-journal.git. The change does not require copyright assignment.

• Fixed an issue about how the function denote-directory-files was used. Thanks to Donald Brady for reporting the bug in issue 656 on the main Denote repository and to kamchy for confirming the problem: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/issues/656. The approach was utlimately revised in denote.git courtesy of a change by Jean-Philippe Gagné Guay in pull request 661: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/pull/661.

denote-markdown version 0.3.0

• Package name (GNU ELPA): denote-markdown
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-markdown
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-markdown

• Backronyms: Denote… Markdown’s Ambitious Reimplimentations Knowingly Dilute Obvious Widespread Norms; Denote… Markup Agnosticism Requires Knowhow to Do Only What’s Necessary.

• The package defines a markdown-obsidian file type which can be used by relevant note-creating commands, such as denote or the convenience wrapper denote-type. This file type is updated to be more robust, in accordance with some changes in core Denote (I am not even documenting those, as they are not intended for users).

denote-org version 0.3.0

• Package name (GNU ELPA): denote-org
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-org
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-org

• Backronym: Denote… Ordinarily Restricts Gyrations.

• The command denote-org-link-to-heading now supports linking to the current file when called with a prefix argument. This way, a file can have links between its headings. Thanks to Tonus for pointing out that it was impossible to create a link inside the current file. This was done in issue 17: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-org/issues/17.

• A helper function for retrieving the backlinks of a heading is updated to return full file paths. Thanks to Vedang Manerikar for the contribution in pull request 20: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-org/pull/20. Vedang has assigned copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

• Another helper function is updated to conform with changes to core Denote with regard to how the denote-link-description-format is handled. Thanks to Jung Han for reporting the bug in issue 21: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-org/issues/21.

denote-silo version 0.3.0

• Package name (GNU ELPA): denote-silo
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-silo
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-silo
• Backronym: Denote… Silos Insulate Localised Objects.

The minibuffer prompt for silo directories uses the corrent completion category (consistent with what I mentioned above about completion metadata). Thanks to Wilf-bog for reporting an error with the completion prompt in issue 1: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-silo/issues/1.

denote-sequence version 0.3.0

• Package name (GNU ELPA): denote-sequence
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-sequence
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-sequence
• Backronym: Denote… Sequences Efficiently Queue Unsorted Entries Notwithstanding Curation Efforts.

This package deserved its own release notes, as I did a lot of work on it. But as this file is already long, I will focus on the essentials:

• The denote-sequence-scheme used to support a numeric and alphanumeric option. There now is a third one called alphanumeric-delimited. It combines features from the other two and may be better suited for especially long/intricate sequences.

• The denote-sequence-reparent command now works recursively to produce the desired consequences to all descendants of a given sequence note. Thanks to Peter Prevos for the contribution in pull request 13, which further changes by me: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-sequence/pull/13.

• The command denote-sequence-view-hierarchy produces a bespoke buffer with all the sequence notes that form a hierarchy. The buffer displays file titles, the concomitant sequence, and file keywords. Each level of depth is expressed by a number of spaces, controlled by the user option denote-sequence-hierarchy-indentation. In the hierarchy buffer, there are commands that move to the next/previous item, or forward/backward at the same level of depth. RET opens the file at point, TAB folds/unfolds the tree. The user option denote-sequence-hierarchy-move-and-open controls whether motion commands should automatically open the file, which by default happens in the other window (users who modify the variable denote-open-link-function will get the specified behaviour in this context as well). The denote-sequence-view-hierarchy can be called with one or two prefix arguments to limit to a given sequence prefix and/or level of depth (something that denote-sequence-dired also supports). In short, this is a way to visualise your sequence notes in a buffer that has a different presentation than Dired.

• Thanks to alan-w-255 for renaming and refining a prompt that is also used in the hierarchy feature. This was done in pull request 15: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-sequence/pull/15. The change is small, meaning that its author does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation. Further refinements by me.

• Thanks to Nicolas Semrau for binding q to quit-window in the denote-sequence-hierarchy-mode-map. This was done in pull request 20: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-sequence/pull/20. The change is small, meaning that Nicolas does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

• The denote-sequence-file-prompt-extra-metadata is the functional equivalent of the aforementioned denote-file-prompt-extra-metadata.

• Thanks to liyingzhi for pointing out an inaccurate comment in the docstring of denote-sequence-scheme. This was done in issue 18: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-sequence/issues/18.

• The denote-sequence-dired is updated to align with the modalities of denote-dired, as noted above. Thanks to juh for reminding me about the need for changes in issue 14: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-sequence/issues/14.

• Thanks to Stefan Monnier for pointing out a stylistic mistake in an older version of denote-sequence-dired. This was done on the emacs-devel mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2025-11/msg01119.html. Also thanks to Stefan for telling me about some other compiler warnings: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2025-11/msg01119.html.

Git commits

~/Git/Projects/denote $ git shortlog 4.1.0..4.2.0 --summary --numbered
   184	Protesilaos
     4	duli
     3	Jean-Philippe Gagné Guay
     3	Matthew Batson
     2	alvmts
     2	gnuhack
     1	Alvin Hsu
     1	Matto Fransen
     1	Samuel W. Flint
     1	Tobias Lidman-Strauss
     1	bplubell
     1	gvalson
     1	nescias

The thrust of the critique is that (i) free software ideology is rooted in anarchism which itself is beholden to capitalist categories and (ii) free software is not fighting commodification of software in an effective way because it is ideologically incapable of opposing commodification as such.

In the ~15.000-word essay, the author makes references to colonialism, Australian Aboriginals, Tsarist Russia, Proudhon’s and Marx’s comments on property, the bourgeoisie, and many other familiar talking points that will amuse the Marxist faithful. What the author fails to do is give us a concrete idea of what their alternative is. By that, I do not mean that we should convert to Marxism. Rather, to give us a proof of what they have right now and a step-by-step proposal on how to proceed. To put it in software development terms, share the code and send us the patch.

But there is no such thing. The catch-22 with Marxism is that the world it promises does not truly exist unless everything is Marxist. So we have to contend with lengthy and dense diatribes instead. To this end, the article concludes with the following pompous yet ultimately uninspiring remarks:

For the FSM [Free Software Movement] to grow its strength and existence, it is imperative to reinvigorate its fight against the OSM [Open Source Movement], and the spirit to defeat monopolistic corporate control of software; the resistance to commercialization of software needs to be pursued politically more explicitly and not implicitly in an ‘economist’ fashion by focussing on the production and distribution process. Moreover, without a general opposition to the capitalist system and capitalist mode of production, and with mere opposition to the symptoms of monopoly capitalism and big capital in general, the movement is bound to be circumscribed by the basic logic of capitalism, as we have already seen. It must depart from the incorrect political and philosophical positions that it has assumed, in order to be able to develop a really revolutionary and subversive character.

After this ebb, the true fillip to the FSM is possible now only with the rise of the larger working-class movement, that aims to destroy private property not only in software (impossible anyway!), but in general.

What exactly should we be doing to carve this “revolutionary and subversive character” out of what we have? Nothing! These are just words.

What I make of the article is that the author has either not done anything practical in their life or has yet to develop such a habit. I find it ironic that countless hours are spent on criticising the bourgeoisie as if those critics lead some pagan-style life in the countryside where they toil all day under the beating sun with nothing but a pickax.

In my experience, the average Marxist intellectual is not agrarian (starting with Marx and Engels, of course), lives in a city, typically has an office job like in the academia, yet will pontificate about the frailties of the bourgeois world and the virtues of working peoples.

Everyone can share their opinion on what Richard Stallman and friends got right or wrong. What matters is that Richard et al. actually did—and still do—something that had/has material implications for lots of people over the course of decades.

The best kind of criticism is an alternative implementation and/or a lifestyle that embodies the virtues one purports to uphold. To put it in software terms once again, fork it and share your findings. Abhijit A.M. has not demonstrated anything of the sort.

The free software movement does not fall into the aforementioned catch-22 trap because it understands that one cannot change everything in order to change something. Richard Stallman is a person who knows how to turn an idea into an application. This is a quality that contributors to free software have and are thus empowered to make changes to their individual and collective experience.

If I need to abolish capitalism to write an extension for GNU Emacs (of which I have tens), then I am simply not writing an extension for Emacs. If that same constraint applies, then Emacs does not exist to begin with. But because Richard and friends share their work in the form of code and documentation, anyone can in principle learn and then give something back as well.

I got into free software without any technical background and put in the effort to learn. Me and everyone involved are sharing knowledge and programs, which improve parts of our life.

Yes, this is freedom in principle because it assumes that someone has access to the computer, the Internet, et cetera. Can the world be a better place? Sure, though we have to start somewhere. Something is better than nothing—and we get “something” by acting accordingly, often at the individual level.

If I have to put my faith in some wider working-class movement to make things happen, I am effectively hoping that actually heterogeneous and heteroclite people, most of whom have no relevant technical acumen and insights into the particularities of my computing needs will somehow contribute to what I need. Do we have any results of this kind that would give us hope? Has the wider working class as such done something that we can point to in order to switch away from free software? I think not. So what I do instead is proceed by initiative and benefit from the initiatives of others like me (in the free software community and more broadly).

The working class is a useful descriptor for some shared qualities. Though it is necessarily a simplistic construct. It does not account for the peculiarities of locality and culture nor is it sensitive to the relevance of its constituent individuals to any given area of interest or field of endeavour.

If I want to discuss poetry, for example, I can only do so in the presence of artists or artistically inclined folk. Those without such disposition will not be keen interlocutors or, worse, will have some bigoted comment to make about men who enjoy poetry (on several occasions I have been told by such working class people how classical music, painting, and poetry, among others, are “gay”—so fragile is their vaunted alpha masculinity that it cannot tolerate a violin).

My suggestion to Abhijit A.M. and anyone who has ideas about the world is to show us results instead of merely telling us what is wrong with the status quo. If you are not showing, but are merely telling, then you are doing it wrong.

We started with a review of the latest changes to the ffs package that Amin has been developing. We had looked into it before and wanted to check on its current state.

Amin then asked me about the display-buffer-alist, which I had mentioned before. To me, this is the single most important variable for making Emacs feel more like your own. The reason is that it allows you to control the placement of buffers to match your expectations. I demonstrated some of the main ideas.

Another nice little feature is the built-in isearch. I explained how it is especially helpful while recording keyboard macros. Though it is nice to use in general. One tweak for it is to display a counter with its matches. Another is to change how it treats spaces, so that it can match any character in-between. This is not as flexible as, say, consult-line (from the consult package) when combined with vertico and orderless. Though it still has its uses.

[ I have lots of little extras for isearch, but those should be good for most users. ]

Amin told me about rediscovering the value of Org in the context of statically generating his website. He showed me the custom Org HTML export backend he has been working on. Org has so many nice features which can be used independent of each other. In this light, we also discussed the diary compared to the Org agenda.

Find all of Amin’s publications on his website: https://kelar.org/~bandali/.

Phantes did not meet this mysterious figure. All the information he has comes from a letter he found once he woke up from his slumber. He keeps the letter in his pocket at all times. He still reads it from time to time, hoping to discover some hidden meaning.

I found you unconscious in the woods and brought you here. You have been sleeping this whole time. Three months have passed already. Somehow you are still breathing.

Where did you come from, lad? I cannot tell.

I named you Phantes: he who reveals. I hope you like it.

I am writing this message because I must serve a higher cause. The hour of my summoning draws near.

My house is yours. The garden outside will supply you with all the vegetables you need. There is more food in the forest. Use my tools to survive. I shall be watching from afar.

Whatever you do, remember that sometimes your only option is to destroy who you are.

Phantes does not remember anything about his past. He has been a gardener since his awakening. Every day he follows the same routine: tend to the plants in the morning, walk around the woods in the afternoon, and sleep early at night. Phantes has not seen another part of the world. He has not met anybody else either.

Walks are his only form of adventure. In a nearby cave, Phantes discovers intricate drawings of human figures. He compares his looks to them. His self-image comes from the mirror he has back home. The figures are forming a circle around a person whose face emits light. Phantes does not know what it feels like to be with others nor can he comprehend the event on display.

There are many such paintings. Each depicts a social activity of some kind. Among them are a few that trigger in him a sense of dread. Others bring inner peace. “IN MUTUAL RECOGNITION”, reads an inscription, “SHALL YOU SHARE SOMETHING IN EARNEST”. Below those words are six people and four dogs having a meal together. Phantes does not understand the full extent of those words. His has been a solitary existence.

“Where can I find others?” he asks in desperation. The entire forest stops moving all of a sudden. All eyes are set on Phantes. “Why can I not be seen by some other person?” he wonders as he bursts into tears.

The night is upon him. Phantes is still crying. “Please, help me!” he begs on his knees while facing down. A voice from the sky breaks the silence.

Easy now, young one. Everybody wants to be seen. You are no different. Even when others are not around, I am still there for you. I see your every move and feel your every emotion.

Phantes hears speech for the first time. He is confused. No-one is there. “Show yourself!” he demands.

You have no power to issue orders, boy. Now listen carefully to what I will tell you. Appreciate all you have. It is not yours to keep. What you wish for may not be the blessing you imagine. Go now. Get some rest. Continue what you have been doing. Everything is going to be alright.

Phantes is not satisfied. “Wait, I have so many questions!”… The voice is not responding. Phantes is left to his usual solitude. Though something has changed inside of him. He no longer desires to go home and relive the same moments. A newly felt sense of indignation is moving him now.

He remembers an underground passage behind the waterfall. It leads to an ancient tomb. At the entrance are three phrases, engraved in red, forming an arc from left to right. “ALL NOTICE THE MASK”, informs the one, “IT IS WHAT THEY LOVE” states the other, “NONE ESCAPES” writes the third.

Phantes is hopeful that this mask can help him find the others. Whatever ominous warnings must be exaggerations. His thinking is that he can use the mask to lure people into noticing him. Then he can take it off and seek to become friends with them.

As he walks into the tomb, he sees the mask hovering over a skeleton. It glows in a bright green light. Phantes cannot contain his excitement. He cannot get his eyes off the mask. “It is so beautiful!” he exclaims. He knows this is his chance to change his life forever.

The mask laughs for a few seconds. It then starts moving erratically around the room, only to stop in front of his nose. It then quickly attaches to his face. Phantes shouts at the top of his lungs. He experiences an overwhelming force coursing through his body that knocks him off balance. He gets up and ventures back to the surface.

Upon exiting he runs into people for the first time. A jubilant crowd cheers at him from a few steps away. He cannot discern any faces just yet. This is too much for Phantes. Amid the noise he catches phrases of admiration. All are about his radiant beauty.

“I will have so many friends now”, he thinks to himself, “they love me already”. Something is amiss. He notices that no-one is getting close to him. The crowd keeps a safe distance. “Hey, why do you not come here?” he asks as he waves his hands at them. A voice is heard from the back “oh, no, your looks are so captivating that I will lose my control”.

Phantes makes a step in their direction. Panic grips them. They scatter as fast as they can. He does not give chase. They will probably keep fleeing, after all. He wonders whether people are always acting strange like this.

A few minutes later, another large group shows up. They too are elated to encounter Phantes. “What a heavenly face!” says someone as others celebrate what they are witnessing. “Blessed are we, to meet such a beauty!” remarks another person, with others making affirmative sounds. Phantes tries to establish contact with those people. They also run away in fear as soon as he approaches them.

Everywhere he now goes, there are folks waiting for him, eager to comment on his appearance. He finds it strange how he had not met a single person before and suddenly there are hundreds of them at every turn. Phantes is concerned that he is doing something wrong. He does not understand why would such enthusiastic admirers not try to befriend him.

He reaches his house. Another gathering of fans is already there. They have been tearing the building apart. “Hey, what is wrong with you?” he asks in shock. “We want a piece of your belongings, beautiful, to bring us good fortune” says one of the pillagers. Phantes is too late to prevent the damage. The house has been reduced to an outline on the ground. The walls are gone, as is all of the furniture. Each individual took something and fled to safety.

Phantes needs a place to rest, but everywhere he goes there are exuberant people observing his every motion, while constantly making disturbing noises. He tries to remove the mask, in the hope of not attracting any more attention. The mask will not move, however. It is firmly planted on his face. It has a will of its own and he has no power over it. After struggling for a while, he surrenders to his new fate.

“They do not care about me”, he realises, “all they want is to be close to what I project through this mask”. Phantes understands how he is not treated as a person anymore. “I have been reduced to a singular dimension, to looks alone, as if I have no interests or wants, no sensitivities or passions”.

The mask is an ancient artefact. It picks those who desire more attention than necessary. Some of them are innocent and naive. Others have nefarious goals. It does not matter though. Whoever wears the mask becomes the centre of all social activity at the expense of their original individuality.

The mask needs time to take over completely. In the meantime, Phantes can still make decisions. He understands that he got more than what he needed. The burden is too heavy and will only get heavier. He thinks back to all the warnings and peculiar hints he had discerned.

He then remembers the final words of the letter he found when he woke up for the first time in this distant land. There may still be something for him, after all. The curse can be lifted. Such is his renewed faith. It is all he has left. Without fear in his heart, he runs to the closest clearing and jumps off a cliff, never to be seen again.

The crowds disperse. The natural rhythms are restored. Phantes wanted to be seen. What he did not anticipate is that very few souls only ever take their attention off the mask that once captured their imagination.

I helped him learn. For certain topics, there is no other way to teach people. They have to live in the world they wish for. Only then may they realise that they are not in control.

[…] Unlike Russia, Iran is not a nuclear power, and on conventional forces alone the US surely has the military capability to theoretically defeat the regime. Whatever we might think about what is good or bad, right or wrong, it would therefore make sense for Trump to resume the war, and even to put boots on the ground if that is what’s required. It is what the logic of war dictates.

Wolfgang’s position is coherent yet lacks lateral thinking of the sort necessary in matters of strategy. In absolute terms the USA has more resources than Iran and will thus prevail in an all-out war. Though this is a simplistic representation of the case. What is pertinent is the spacetime of war, the trade-offs inherent to each decision, and the status quo ex post for the winning side.

Even a superpower has to think in terms of the economy of choices within fixed time frames and even a superpower can be a loser long-term after winning a war in the short run. Every war is costly in tangible and intangible ways. It is not enough to calculate how one can win on a single front. They must rather consider whether they can retain their position in international affairs altogether. 20th century history is enough to teach us that mighty empires, like the British and the French, can still be swept into the dustbin of history shortly after prevailing in a major war.

For America to muster the forces necessary for a ground invasion in Iran, it not only needs months of preparation, but also to shift its attention away from other parts of the planet. For example, military assets in East Asia will have to be moved to the Middle East. A power vacuum is created in the process. Other actors, such as China, may then find an opening to create a fait accompli that strengthens their position thenceforth.

US forces moving away from places like South Korea then raises questions about the credibility of American security guarantees as well as the political commitment behind them. Given the isolationist mood in the States and the fact that President Trump was elected on an unequivocal anti-war platform (well, at least rhetorically), affected countries will conclude that Americans are jaded and unwilling to fight on all fronts.

It does not stop there. A full-scale war in Iran creates new realities on the demand for military hardware. The war effort will absorb as much as necessary, while there will still be a need to maintain inventories at satisfactory levels for the ongoing promotion of American/Western interests. One immediate knock-on effect is that it will no longer be viable to send arms to Ukraine, Israel, or elsewhere, with whatever implications that has for those countries.

Governments that are supportive of Iran will be prudent to maximise the costs for the Americans. Russia and China can provide arms and intelligence, much in the same way that the entirety of NATO is involved in the Ukraine war.

The Europeans lack the capacity to bolster arms production over the short-term. Plus, they are focused on their proxy war with Russia. Public opinion in Europe would not support sending troops to the Middle East and would likely not even have the appetite to continue the war effort vis-à-vis the Russians in the face of mounting economic pressures.

As the debacle of the UK’s Labour party in the recent local elections has demonstrated, Western governing parties can quickly lose their grip on power if they do not perform well on domestic affairs. Political elites think they can play chess on the world stage, when in reality they have to pay attention to what is happening at home.

Economic hardship has been the reality for a long time and will only worsen over the medium-term. There is little chance that people will support open-ended military campaigns under the vague promise of better things to come in some indeterminate future. That can, in principle, lead to radical changes domestically (e.g. a far-right president in France) which would be the death knell of the liberal world order.

And I have not even considered the practicalities of a ground war in Iran. What kind of forces does that unleash? The Iranians will be fighting for the honour of their homeland, while the invaders will be operating under the eternal shame of imperialistic arrogance. With Iran cornered, who is to say that they will not retaliate by destroying desalination plants in their neighbouring countries? An ill-considered war will then quickly turn into a humanitarian catastrophe for the wider region.

Are Europeans prepared to deal with the indubitably massive refugee crisis that will be hitting them? If the waves of refugees from Syria provided the impetus for the recrudescence of the far-right across the continent, I prefer not to think what an even bigger influx of refugees would bring about. It will not be pretty. Rising xenophobia, which would be indistinguishable from Islamophobia, could then trigger fanaticism on the side of radical Islamist groups across Europe. An all-out war in Iran then entails the non-trivial risk of asymmetric threats throughout the Western world.

In short, it is easy to argue which contestant wins in a hypothetical cage fight. However, politics are not reducible to a melee encounter. The world is a complex place. It is incredibly hard to be a responsible statesman. President Trump continues with his questionable antics on social media, though one can only hope that he understands the disastrous consequences of recklessness.

The multipolar international order is the new normal. What remains to be determined is whether the Westerners have gotten the memo or continue to throw good money after bad.

Amin asked me to record the meeting and then publish it, which I happily agreed to. You can watch it on Amin’s website: https://kelar.org/~bandali/gnu/emacs/ffs-code-review-prot.html.

[ NOTE: I normally do not share anything about my meetings with people. Not who they are nor what we talk about. ]

Thanks to Amin for making this happen! I am looking forward to new developments.

By the way, I learnt about the function x-export-frames from a mention in Amin’s ffs package, which led me to write buffer-to-pdf: https://github.com/protesilaos/buffer-to-pdf.

Yanis was at the heart of Europe’s post-2008 financial and sovereign debt crisis, first as a commentator from the sidelines of the academia and then as the Greek finance minister. Throughout the show Yanis comments on past events. I am not interested in relitigating those controversies but in drawing lessons for the present.

Yanis is a freethinker extraordinaire. This necessarily makes him a misfit in the world of politics. To me, this is honourable. Where I think Yanis failed as a policy-maker is in his ambiguity on the notorious theme of “Grexit” (the exit of Greece from the Euro Area). Back when Yanis was the Greek finance minister there was a decent chance that Greece would discontinue using the euro. He never told us what he wanted from the negotiations he was engaging in at the time: to keep the euro, to switch back to the drachma, to have some kind of dual currency arrangement, or something else entirely.

In the podcast he employs the analogy of not taking on a credit card to pay off a debt while you are bankrupt. It is common sense. Then what is the policy proposal or at least the big picture view? I never heard it.

The exact answer does not matter. What is of interest is the absence of clarity, for it is indicative of the wider political left’s problem with European Union affairs altogether: there is no clear vision, no compelling story. Yanis is intellectually honest, mind you, yet he too is beholden rhetorically to a movement that considers certain opinions unacceptable.

Leftists at-large have no persuasive plan for the European Union. Not for “Europe” in some abstract sense, as that can easily be construed along the lines of international peace. I am specifically focused on the existing legal-institutional architecture which enshrines in treaties what effectively is anathema to progressives. Austerity is not the ephemeral policy of some elected government, such that it can be discontinued at the next election. No! It is the very essence of the primary law that underpins Europe’s economic governance.

The left cannot make bold pronouncements on the EU as such. If it accepts the status quo, then it necessarily agrees to live under a system that practically no democratic process can reform. Yanis learnt this firsthand: he had to resign from his post as finance minister because a resounding “no” at the referendum meant nothing whatsoever in substantive terms.

As things have stood since the early 1990s with the Treaty of Maastricht, the EU is caught in a situation where it has no natural unit of democracy. This used to be the nation-state back when there was a direct link between the legitimation of decision-makers and their attendant accountability. Decisions were adopted domestically and were, in principle, scrutinised there. The European Economic Community of the pre-Maastricht era was a free trade area with limited authority over national affairs.

The crowning achievement of the Treaty of Maastricht is the euro. Monetary policy has since been transferred to the European Central Bank. Fiscal policy is similarly conferred to the supranational level in a process that largely unfolded at the height of the 2008+ economic crisis. Without financial autonomy, the remaining areas of policy are severally constrained in advance, notwithstanding other European regulations. Recent developments in the proxy war with Russia are showing that the EU is eager to concentrate ever more power on matters of foreign policy and defence, and even meddle in the outcome of national elections under the pretext of combating “disinformation” campaigns carried out by the usual villains.

Meanwhile, the EU as a whole is not a democracy. The Commission is a bureaucratic apparatus. The European Council is a collection of governments, each of which has partialised sovereignty, elected on a national platform to pursue national interests yet supposed to make decisions in the name of Europeanness. In other words, we experience a mismatch of sovereignty: rules for the system as a whole without the commensurate cycle of legitimation and accountability.

Against this backdrop, Europe faces the same predicament it did in the 2010s. Namely, it operates in a grey area that is neither national nor supranational democracy. One path forward is that of federalism which sees the EU turn into a fully fledged federal republic. The other is a reconstitution of national sovereignty, which effectively means the disintegration of the Union as we know it.

For leftists this is an awkward historical turn:

• To side with the federalists is to accept that for the indeterminate future they will say nothing about the hardcoded neoliberal character of the EU’s economics. Or, worse, they will join the pro-EU camp anyway while rhetorically disagreeing with the most inflexible policies of the block.

• Dismissing the EU has far-reaching implications which lead to the formation of a programme that is nationalistic at heart: exit the euro, leave the Union, restore national sovereignty, pursue good relations with countries beyond Europe, et cetera. Regaining sovereignty will also affect immigration policy, not least in order to impose capital controls during the potentially long period of transition back to a national currency.

Yanis has had no answer to this conundrum. My view is that one has to decide what their priorities are and proceed accordingly. I have in the past leaned on the federalist side and still think it is worth the trouble if—and only if—it establishes a republic. Though I have long lost faith in the capacity of the EU to be refashioned into something other than the bureaucratic confederation it is.

Each system comes with its own potential owning to the relative power of its constituent factors and the particularities of their interplay. How can we get a European treasury, for instance, when the moment we try to pool national debts we encounter the toxic issue of the Dutch assuming part of the national debt of the Italians, the Germans doing the same with the French, and so on.

The nations still exist as do their cultures and historical biases. This is the fact of the matter. Federalism is an intellectual project that sounds nice in theory while it downplays or completely ignores the inescapable conflicts of interest among the member states of the Union. Considered holistically, to change the EU requires concerted action of the sort that is akin to planetary alignment.

Perhaps, then, intellectual honesty leads us to a nationalist turn; nationalist in the sense of restoring sovereignty at home and then working towards its democratisation; nationalist in order to develop the capacities for an internationalist outlook. This too is difficult, for sure, though each country can do it without depending on all the rest to reach consensus in practically every area of policy.

Even if the planet is awash with natural resources that can, in principle, render Middle Eastern oil surplus to requirements, the damage has already happened (and continues to worsen). It takes time to reorganise supply chains to whatever new normal. The transition cannot be pain-free.

President Trump keeps boasting about America’s prowess on the battlefield in what starts to look like theatrics for saving face rather than responsible statesmanship. America has not only failed in toppling the Iranian regime and in acquiring the enriched uranium, it has also managed to create an intractable situation with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz—a vital artery of the global energy markets which was, by the by, open prior to this unnecessary war. In the process, Trump appears beholden to his paymaster lobbyists and thus cannot be trusted to pursue policies that are in the well-meaning interest of his own people, let alone the international community.

In my part of the world, the European Union, political elites are behaving in the same way as their predecessors circa 2010. Then too, as today, woefully unprepared policy-makers were too slow to respond to rapidly evolving phenomena. Their complacency, continuous delays, indecision, and overall lack of ambition, deepened and lengthened the economic downturn. They effectively had no better solution than to condemn the continent to an economic outlook of permanent austerity on the fiscal front combined with hyperinflationary monetary policy.

The devastating outcome of their decision-making remains with us to this day. The money printing bonanza evolved into the ever egregious concentration of property in the upper parts of the income distribution. Same principle for the bailouts that favoured big business over everybody else.

EU apparatchiks are focused on their endless proxy war with Russia, which is a boon for the military-industrial-financial complex on every side of the conflict, but of negative value to affected countries at-large. Effective leadership in such circumstances would be concerned with creating the conditions for the economic resilience of Europe through what used to work well, namely, sincere trade. Diverse alliances and strong commercial ties with the rest of the world, couched in terms of mutual respect, are essential. Once greed becomes doctrine and guile turns into policy, war is inevitable.

Part of such a realignment involves closer ties with China, a recognition that the Middle East belongs to all of its peoples and that cooperation with them is the sole path to sustainability, a rapprochement with the Russians, pressure on the Ukrainian government to finally accept a peace deal, and gradual reduction in the currently strong dependency on American energy imports.

What we get instead is further dependence over the short-to-medium term on the increasingly unreliable Americans, mindless Sinophobia and Russophobia, jingoism in Eastern Europe, and neocolonial smugness towards the predominantly Islamic Western Asian countries.

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence could, in theory, mitigate the chilling effects of the looming recession and even reverse the trend altogether. Though one need only consider the ownership model of the relevant industries to understand that whatever gains will not be widely shared. Those who brought us to this situation will be laughing all the way to the bank, while we will be counting pennies to buy a loaf of bread or, worse, paying with our blood in some war we never believed in.

There is still some time to arrest the downfall and pivot away from the path to collective folly. Though it requires a sense of urgency. I am afraid that at least in the Europe Union apparatus there is no such quality of character to be found. Not in Berlin, not in Paris, and certainly not in Brussels.

I am looking forward to it!

As I understand, you’re using the regular keybindings in emacs. I’m trying to transition away from the vim way of editing text and was wondering if you’re using a more ergonomic approach for your text editing needs. I remember you were using some ergo split keyboards for that?

Indeed, I have a split mechanical keyboard (a gift from a person who identifies as “Andreas”). It is the Iris revision 8 by Keebio. I also have a regular full-sized keyboard (a gift from Arialdo Martini), which is the Keychron K5.

[ Keyboard-related articles of mine: https://protesilaos.com/keeb/. ]

The split keyboard is nice, though it is not a magical solution. Even with a regular form factor keyboard, I can work with the standard Emacs keys without any problem. What helps me the most is to configure one-shot modifiers. This means that I can tap (press once, then release) a modifier key, then tap a regular key to register it as a modifier+key event. For example, C-x is this: tap Ctrl, then tap x. Shift tapping is especially nice for prose, by the way, and eases the pressure on the otherwise weak pinky. The time window for registering a one-shot modifier is configurable.

The other useful tweak for a regular keyboard is to rearrange the layout of the modifiers. I prefer this order:

Super Alt Ctrl Space Ctrl Alt Super

[ If there is a Menu key, move it to the right corner and consider assigning it to the Compose key if you are on Linux. ]

Now Ctrl is under the thumb, which is especially nice for Emacs. Alt and Super can be swapped, if you use Super more heavily (e.g. with a tiling window manager). But the important part is to keep Ctrl close to the Space key.

Whatever you do though, remember to use both sets of modifiers. For example, C-x involves the right hand for Ctrl and the left hand for x. C-p needs the left hand for Ctrl and the right hand for p. This way you distribute the burden so no one side is overworked (and, of course, you take regular breaks from typing altogether).

Lots of Emacs users will rebind Caps Lock to Ctrl. While this is fine in its own right, it tends to embed bad habits, such as with using only the left hand to register the very common C-a, C-e, C-d, C-f, C-s, C-r, C-w, C-g, C-z, C-x, C-c, C-v. Exclusive left-handed use involves awkward twisting of the muscles which will probably hurt you over time. Plus, the left pinky is forced to press and hold a key while being stretched—looks bad. Again, distribute the load.

The final part that makes everything easier is to configure a “layer” key. When you press and hold this key, other keys register a different input than normal. For example, Caps Lock can be the layer key, which then makes h, j, k, l act as arrow keys. Same idea for mapping Home, PgDn, PgUp, End someplace that makes sense (mine are on y, u, i, o). I prefer to have Space as that layer key: it only is a layer when I press and hold it, otherwise it performs the ordinary function of the Space key.

It is okay to press and hold Space because you do it with your relatively strong thumbs. Better have it this way than pressing and holding with the pinkies.

All this can be achieved with software such as kanata. A custom keyboard with QMK firmware can get the same configuration embedded directly in the keyboard (so it works without any special program running on the computer). Kanata will be the cheaper solution and is probably better overall if you consider that it can apply to a laptop’s keyboard.

A mistake in all this is to think that an expensive keyboard is inherently more ergonomic. If you keep curling, overextending, or anyhow stressing your muscles the injuries will occur regardless. A new keyboard can help if you use it as an opportunity to retrain your muscle memory.

Custom keyboards have potential advantages in terms of comfort because you can change the switches and keycaps that they use. For example, you can pick a lighter or heavier switch to match your typing technique. Then you can combine it with a shallower or steeper keycap profile to get the most out of that setup. There is no right or wrong here. It is a matter of optimising on top of the strong fundamentals that I outlined above.

As for evil-mode in Emacs, I think it is a good solution overall. You do, however, need to install the evil-collection package and probably also configure lots of other key bindings to get exactly what you want. There are other packages that give you modal editing, though I have only ever used evil-mode in earnest: it is fine.

That granted, I find that I do not like modal editing in general. It is especially inconvenient for me when I write at length (which I do a lot) because I tend to produce a wall of text in one go. Having a modal interface gives me no advantage in this common scenario. I also doubt it ever gave me the edge while programming. The bottleneck is how quickly and clearly I can think, not how fast I can edit lines of text (though, yes, Vim’s paradigm is powerful).

Consider then the overall comfort of your setup. Both in terms of the ergonomics of hardware but also how much effort it takes to maintain your Emacs configuration. The standard approach to key bindings gives you something that “just works” with practically every package you install. It may feel awkward in the beginning if you are coming from the Vim keys, but will be the most robust solution long-term from the perspective of maintainability.

UPDATE 2026-05-01 08:24 +0300: Added a missing :config to the bookmark block.

UPDATE 2026-05-02 22:33 +0300: Replaced duplicate variable-pitch with the intended fixed-pitch.

;;; Sensible defaults that are not too intrusive and focus on common use-cases.  By Protesilaos on 2026-04-30.

;; These are not all of my favourite options.  I am not even including
;; any of my packages.  They are just some basics that I consider
;; useful, given what I have learnt from my exchange with other people
;; of all skill levels.


;; Persist all customisations in a separate file called "custom.el".
;; It is in the same directory as the "init.el".
;;
;; Without the `custom-file', Emacs writes directly to the "init.el",
;; which can be confusing.
(setq custom-file (locate-user-emacs-file "custom.el"))
(load custom-file :no-error-if-file-is-missing)

(use-package package
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; I am not using `add-to-list' here because the default "gnu" is
  ;; confusing to people, given that "elpa" is the better known name
  ;; for it.
  (setq package-archives
        '(("gnu-elpa" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
          ("nongnu" . "https://elpa.nongnu.org/nongnu/")
          ("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")))
  ;; Prefer GNU ELPA but accept the reality of MELPA's utility to the
  ;; wider community.
  (setq package-archive-priorities
        '(("gnu-elpa" . 3)
          ("nongnu" . 2)
          ("melpa" . 1))))

;;;; General options
(use-package emacs
  :ensure nil
  :demand t
  :init
  (defun prot/keyboard-quit-dwim ()
    "Do-What-I-Mean behaviour for a general `keyboard-quit'.

The generic `keyboard-quit' does not do the expected thing when
the minibuffer is open.  Whereas we want it to close the
minibuffer, even without explicitly focusing it.

The DWIM behaviour of this command is as follows:

- When the region is active, disable it.
- When a minibuffer is open, but not focused, close the minibuffer.
- When the Completions buffer is selected, close it.
- In every other case use the regular `keyboard-quit'."
    (interactive)
    (cond
     ((region-active-p)
      (keyboard-quit))
     ((derived-mode-p 'completion-list-mode)
      (delete-completion-window))
     ((> (minibuffer-depth) 0)
      (abort-recursive-edit))
     (t
      (keyboard-quit))))
  :bind
  ("C-g" . prot/keyboard-quit-dwim)
  :config
  ;; Set your favourite font family and height here.  The :height is
  ;; 10x the point size you most commonly find on other applications.
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil :family "Aporetic Sans Mono" :height 160)
  ;; Set your favourite font for elements that are designed to always
  ;; be monospaced.  The height SHOULD BE a floating point, which is
  ;; interpreted as relative to the `default'.
  (set-face-attribute 'fixed-pitch nil :family "Aporetic Serif Mono" :height 1.0)
  ;; Same as above for proportionately spaced elements.  Make any
  ;; buffer proportionately spaced by enabling the `variable-pitch-mode'.
  ;;
  ;; [ NOTE: If you use the Modus themes or derivatives, set
  ;;   `modus-themes-mixed-fonts', load the theme for the option to
  ;;   take effect, and then enable `variable-pitch-mode':
  ;;   spacing-sensitive elements like Org tables and code blocks will
  ;;   remain monospaced. ]
  (set-face-attribute 'variable-pitch nil :family "Aporetic Sans" :height 1.0)

  ;; I have never seen a user say "no" to loading a theme they have
  ;; downloaded.  Technically, any Elisp file can run arbitrary code,
  ;; so this is not doing much on the security front.
  (setq custom-safe-themes t)
  (setq use-short-answers t)
  (setq read-answer-short t)
  (setq help-window-select t) ; also check `display-buffer-alist' below
  (setq help-window-keep-selected t) ; Emacs 29
  (setq find-library-include-other-files nil) ; Emacs 29
  (setq window-combination-resize t)
  (setq save-interprogram-paste-before-kill t)
  ;; Do not jump to the current line in `*occur*' buffers.  The reason
  ;; is that you are already on that line: you want to do `occur' to
  ;; get more than that (and, presumably, to do something with the
  ;; results such as to edit them with `occur-edit-mode').
  (setq list-matching-lines-jump-to-current-line nil)
  (setq completion-category-defaults nil))

;;;; Save minibuffer histories
(use-package savehist
  :ensure nil
  :config
  (savehist-mode 1))

;;;; Delete the selected text when inserting new text
(use-package delsel
  :ensure nil
  :config
  (delete-selection-mode 1))

;;;; Bookmarks
(use-package bookmark
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; Emacs 29 displays a bookmark icon on the fringe.  Many people
  ;; have asked me what that thing is.  I also think it is confusing.
  (setq bookmark-fringe-mark nil)
  ;; Write changes to the bookmark file as soon as 1 modification is
  ;; made (addition or deletion).  Otherwise Emacs will only save the
  ;; bookmarks when it closes, which may never happen properly
  ;; (e.g. power failure).
  (setq bookmark-save-flag 1))

;;;; Dired
(use-package dired
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; Most people I have talked to prefer a single Dired buffer.
  ;; Personally I like the many Dired buffers, but I understand why
  ;; this feels overwhelming.
  (setq dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer t)
  (setq dired-auto-revert-buffer #'dired-directory-changed-p) ; also see `dired-do-revert-buffer'
  (setq dired-clean-up-buffers-too t)
  (setq dired-clean-confirm-killing-deleted-buffers t)
  (setq dired-recursive-copies 'always)
  (setq dired-recursive-deletes 'always)
  (setq delete-by-moving-to-trash t)
  (setq dired-create-destination-dirs 'ask)
  (setq dired-create-destination-dirs-on-trailing-dirsep t) ; Emacs 29
  (setq wdired-create-parent-directories t))

;;;; Isearch
(use-package isearch
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; ;; Enable those to make "package install" match those words with
  ;; ;; anything in between.  I think this is the single best tweak I
  ;; ;; ever made.
  ;;
  ;; (setq search-whitespace-regexp ".*?")
  ;; (setq isearch-lax-whitespace t)
  ;; (setq isearch-regexp-lax-whitespace nil)
  (setq isearch-lazy-count t)
  (setq lazy-count-prefix-format "(%s/%s) ")
  (setq lazy-count-suffix-format nil))

;;;; Diff
(use-package diff
  :ensure
  :config
  ;; You cannot expect the syntax highlighting of themes to look
  ;; equally readabable against what typically are red and green
  ;; backgrounds.  This should be opt-in by default, not opt-out.
  (setq diff-font-lock-syntax nil))

;;;; Ediff
(use-package ediff
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; Ediff is virtually unusable without those.  Especially on tiling
  ;; window managers.  But even on a regular desktop environment it is
  ;; confusing and cumbersome to have the control panel in another
  ;; frame.
  (setq ediff-split-window-function 'split-window-horizontally)
  (setq ediff-window-setup-function 'ediff-setup-windows-plain))

;;;; SHR
(use-package shr
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; t is bad for accessibility and generally awkward for HTML email
  ;; (especially with dark themes).
  (setq shr-use-colors nil)
  ;; This option should not exist, given `variable-pitch-mode'.
  ;; Furthermore, its default value runs counter to almost everything
  ;; else in Emacs which just uses the `default' face.
  (setq shr-use-fonts nil))

;;;; Control the display of common ancillary windows

;; Always focus common ancillary windows.  Place them in a window
;; already occupied by their respective major mode or below the
;; current window.
(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '((or . ((derived-mode . occur-mode)
                      (derived-mode . grep-mode)
                      (derived-mode . Buffer-menu-mode)
                      (derived-mode . log-view-mode)
                      (derived-mode . help-mode)))
               (display-buffer-reuse-mode-window display-buffer-below-selected)
               (body-function . select-window)))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\`\\*\\(Org \\(Select\\|Note\\)\\|Agenda Commands\\)\\*\\'" ; the `org-capture' key selection, `org-add-log-note', and agenda dispatcher
               (display-buffer-in-side-window)
               (dedicated . t)
               (side . bottom)
               (slot . 0)
               (window-parameters . ((mode-line-format . none)))))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '((derived-mode . calendar-mode)
               (display-buffer-reuse-mode-window display-buffer-below-selected)
               (mode . (calendar-mode bookmark-edit-annotation-mode ert-results-mode))
               (inhibit-switch-frame . t)
               (dedicated . t)
               (window-height . fit-window-to-buffer)))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '((derived-mode . reb-mode) ; M-x re-builder
               (display-buffer-reuse-mode-window display-buffer-below-selected)
               (inhibit-switch-frame . t)
               (window-height . 4) ; note this is literal lines, not relative
               (dedicated . t)
               (preserve-size . (t . t))))

;;;; ESSENTIAL packages to install

(use-package vertico
  :ensure t
  :config
  (vertico-mode 1))

(use-package marginalia
  :ensure t
  :config
  (marginalia-mode 1))

;;;; VERY USEFUL but not essential packages
(use-package orderless
  :ensure t
  :config
  (setq completion-styles '(orderless basic)))

(use-package consult
  :ensure t
  ;; All commands have their utility, but those are commonly needed.
  :commands (consult-buffer consult-line consult-outline consult-find consult-grep))

(use-package embark
  :ensure t
  :bind
  ;; Embark is helpful in every context, though there are other ways
  ;; to do what it does.  Where it stands out is in its ability to
  ;; deal with all the minibuffer results.  The equivalent of those
  ;; two commands should be a core Emacs functionality.
  ( :map minibuffer-local-map
    ("C-c C-c" . embark-collect)
    ("C-c C-e" . embark-export))
  :config
  ;; Needed for correct exporting while using Embark with Consult commands.
  (use-package embark-consult
    :ensure t
    :after consult))

;; Useful when combined with `delete-by-moving-to-trash'.
(use-package trashed
  :ensure t)

Where aromatic rose
and blackthorn shrub
spring from shared soil
you find what you seek
once you realise
that the mountain-god
heeds my prayer
as the echo
of my steel

I wrote the poem in the context of this journal entry: Doing what I must.

The hours are shorter when you have no idle moments. I have not had the chance to write much because I am preoccupied with time-sensitive tasks around my land on top of everything I do on the computer. I was scheduled to have a video call in ~30 minutes but it got rescheduled, so I am finding the opportunity to write this note.

Spring is the time of the year to plant vegetables and prepare everything for the coming summer. Irrigation must be reliable and the land should be clear of anything that cannot be controlled. Tall grass represents a threat in two ways: (i) potentially venomous snakes may take cover in it and (ii) once it gets dry it is a fire hazard.

A design choice for my land is to not pave anything that is not essential. There is the foundation of my house, made out of concrete, a one metre buffer around my house consisting of the extension of that same concrete, and everything else is just soil with vegetation. The cost for this arrangement is maintenance work to keep the wilderness in check.

Controlling the grass is a time-consuming endeavour because it is a manual process. I choose not to uproot it and am against the use of chemicals for such a task. I carefully remove only what represents some kind of danger to my continued presence here. The rest I control and take care of.

Doing it carefully is important to spot new plants that take form. This morning I discovered several more blackthorn offshots while I was in the process of transplanting a few aromatic roses. They are less than ten centimetres tall right now, though they will quickly gain height. I will not be surprised if they even start bearing fruit in the summer of 2027.

Many of my roses will blossom soon. They look beautiful while their aroma makes me feel comfortable. I transplant them at the edges of my land to form a perimeter. I enjoy the aesthetics while I also do it for practical reasons. Plants keep the soil together.

Having the roots in the ground is among the best forms of insurance one can get against soil erosion. This is true for the most hunble blade of grade to the most imposing oak tree. Without plants, the soil is dispersed easily.

Many farmers here will blithely cut down or poison everything, only to say “god help us” when they get a heavily rainy season, such as the past winter, which washes away parts of their land. I do not share their outlook and feel nothing for their plight.

The mountain has its own logic. It answers no prayers. You cannot do whatever you desire. It is better to think of it as an organism in its own right, even though this may sound like mumbo jumbo to you. The shape of the land itself creates certain conditions you must be aware of, such as for the flow of rainwater and the direction of the strongest winds. Where plants grow and what sort of conditions does their growth create to the soil, to the presence of insects and birds. These are all factors that are there. They form the situation you must be aware of. You may choose to ignore them, but that does not make them irrelevant.

Thus while god may one day answer your calls, continue doing what you must, deliberately and decisively. Have forethought, understand the mechanics of the system you are a part of, and conduct yourself in a manner that respects, but does not fear, the greater magnitudes of this world.

A trap many philosophers fall into is that of seeking the abstract among the abstractions, while losing sight of the here-and-now of their quotidian experience. The human condition is such where our body imposes certain inescapable patterns of behaviour, while our mind retains the capacity to fathom that which is transcendent. The key is to find a balance, else we suffer.

I find that the notion of an abstract god is ultimately unhelpful as such. Not because the idea is not worthwhile, but merely owning to the fact that abstractions are necessarily not concrete. There must be narratives that have immediate utility in what we do everyday. It helps little, if at all, to pray to some deity in the heavens while you do not recognise anything greater than you in your immediate surroundings. The absence of an intermediate life form between humanity and divinity easily devolves into a rudderless mode of living. Even when that is couched in terms of ceremonial theism, of talking to your priest and attending the liturgy, it remains inherently atheistic in its day-by-day expression.

To picture the mountain, the sea, the forest, the earth at-large as intermediate mountain-god, sea-god, forest-god, earth-god is not to deny the possibility of that which is absolute, for there is a common in the multitude of all that is—the mind inevitably discerns those patterns in the cosmos. Think of what envelops, nourishes, and outlives you as greater than you. It is a recognition of how things are in our world, but also a means of keeping yourself in check, specifically by not mistaking your ego as the master of this world and the centre around which everything revolves.

I am here, not in the heavens. My condition demands that I have situational awareness in order to thrive. When I admit that I am not the most superior life form on this planet, for example, I account for what my environment renders viable. I “respect” the rain-god, for instance, by taking care of my land so that it is resilient and robust to the forces of erosion. When I cut down the tall grass, I “worship” the fire-god by acknowledging how easy it is to suffer irreparable damage from wildfires. And so on.

I refer to them as “gods” in an artistic way. This is a metaphor,a figment of the imagination, which helps me describe in a few words a complex system whose workings can both benefit and harm me. It is my responsibility to find what is benign by remaining alert, asking questions, and seeking knowledge.

This “respect” or “worship” is not symbolic. It is neither expressed through nor exhausted in rituals. There are no special garments I must wear or certain words I have to chant. There are no intermediaries of any sort; no hierophants who reveal mysteries to the initiates. It is all about a life of readiness, a life of determination, a life of unflinching resolve to do what is necessary. There is an immediate feedback loop between my deeds and their consequences, which I find invigorating. The outcomes keep me honest to my word, while they serve as a reminder of the limits as well as the potential my power has.

Against this backdrop, I continue labouring with the same enthusiasm I had in the beginning. Which now inspires me to write this poem:

The echo of my steel

Where aromatic rose
and blackthorn shrub
spring from shared soil
you find what you seek
once you realise
that the mountain-god
heeds my prayer
as the echo
of my steel

This is a spontaneous live stream. The stream starts in ~20 minutes. I will continue maintaining my packages. My plan is to start with Denote and then move to TMR. Depending on how I do, I will check some of my other packages as well.

Note that the event will be recorded.

Below are the lyrics, my translation of them, and further comments.

Μη με ρωτάς

Ερμηνεία:  Μάνος Λοΐζος
Στίχοι:    Λευτέρης Παπαδόπουλος
Μουσική:   Μάνος Λοΐζος


Τα πολυβόλα σωπάσαν
Οι πόλεις αδειάσαν και κλείσαν
Ένας βοριάς παγωμένος
σαρώνει την έρημη γη

Στρατιώτες έρχονται-πάνε
ρωτάνε γιατί πολεμήσαν
κι εσύ ησυχάζεις
το δάχτυλο βάζεις
να βρεις την πληγή

Μη με ρωτάς, δε θυμάμαι
Μη με ρωτάς, μη με ρωτάς, μη με ρωτάς
Μη με κοιτάς, σε φοβάμαι
μη με κοιτάς, μη με ρωτάς, μη με ρωτάς

Στην πολιτεία βραδιάζει
το χιόνι τις στέγες σκεπάζει
Ένα καμιόνι φορτώνει
και κόβει στα δυο τη σιγή

Περιπολία στους δρόμους
και κάποια φωνή που διατάζει
κι εσύ ησυχάζεις
το δάχτυλο βάζεις
να βρεις την πληγή

Do not ask me

Singer:  Manos Loizos
Lyrics:  Lefteris Papadopoulos
Music:   Manos Loisos


The machine guns have quietened
The towns have been evacuated and closed down
A frozen north wind
sweeps the desolate land

Soldiers come-go
Asking why they fought
and you turn silent
you place the finger
to find the wound

Do not ask me, I do not remember
Do not ask me, do not ask me, do not ask me
Do not look at me, I am afraid of you
Do not look at me, do not ask me, do not look at me

Night comes to the polity
The snow covers the rooftops
A truck loads up
and cuts the silence in two

Patrol on the streets
and a voice that issues orders
and you turn silent
you place the finger
to find the wound

Do not ask me describes some of the horrors of war. Deserted lands and broken people abound. The average soldier was recruited under the pretence of moral superiority, of fighting for some noble cause, only to question everything after the fact; after they have been treated as expendable.

The war apparatus relies on impressionable folk who have yet to form a coherent and questioning view of the world. By the time they figure out how things work, they have already been given as fodder to the cannons or their vitality has been snuffed out. Whatever shell of a person remains subsists in desperation, while decision-makers and their corporate cronies are enjoying their newfound wealth.

War is devastating at such a mind-boggling scale in part because those who decide in its favour are not directly involved in the fighting. It would have been different if the president was leading the charge in his threat to erase an entire civilisation. Would genocide be happening if the prime minister was on the front lines? Would forever wars be a thing if all decision-makers were to form the vanguard as a matter of principle? I doubt it.

As with private matters, corruption occurs when actions are decoupled from their consequences or, at least, when there is a good chance that the decoupling will occur. Once combined with the power to determine the fate of nations, such corruption becomes an inexhaustible capacity for inhumanity.

Plans are drawn by policy wonks behind closed doors. The same core message is disseminated on repeat under the guise of impartial journalism through a network of channels that are owned by the oligarchs (i.e. the beneficiaries of the regime; a regime which claims the moral high ground). The moneymen who pull the strings connive on how to maximise their gains while socialising the costs.

Against this backdrop, the titular plea to suspend all questions is the veteran’s coping mechanism in the face of torment as well as the realisation of deep-seated misanthropy among the elites. Some veterans know they were offered as blood sacrifice to the altars of greed, yet cannot muster the strength to argue anymore. Such is their broken heart that they even fear the poetic “you”, which is presented as a benevolent caregiver figure.

This second person shows compassion. They are not there to make probing questions. Their role is to provide much-needed relief from what has transpired. As such, they focus on treating the wounds. We find here the interpersonal spark that gives people hope, including those who are dead inside.

It is the genuine caring for another in times of strife and uncertainty: the solidarity that ordinary people show when placed under collective duress. It does not conform with the profiteer’s calculus. It comes without strings attached. There is no fine print and hidden fees. It manifests as a gentle touch; a reminder that there is beauty to be found in the little things even when all seems lost.

My surname is “Stavrou” (Stávrou, Σταύρου). It is the genitive case of the given name “Stavros” (Stávros, Σταύρος), which is related to the Greek word for “cross” (σταυρός). As is the norm among Greeks, this is the family name on my father’s side.

Stavros (or variants) is a common name mostly among males but also for females (Stavri, Stavriani, Stavroula). By contrast, Protesilaos is an extremely rare name of ancient origin. I do not know anyone who has it.

Because of the rarity or maybe uniqueness of my name, I never needed any qualifiers to specify who I am. People call me “Protesilaos” or one of its shortened variants (Protos, Proto, Prote, Prot). This also happens in places where others would normally be addressed by their surname. For example, public servants or bank clerks will spontaneously default to “Mr. Protesilaos” (κύριε Πρωτεσίλαε).

“Protos” means “first” while “laos” or “las” means “the people”. Several Greek names have laos/las as a constituent: Agisilaos, Charilaos, Menelaos, Nikolaos. “Protesilaos” is a posthumous title bestowed upon the legendary hero of the Trojan War Iolaos (again, “laos”), perhaps (i) to immortalise his initiative as the first among his people to proceed through self-sacrifice and also (ii) to exalt the belief in the primacy of the common good over personal gain.

I am no hero of legend. Mine is but an uneventful mountain life. I do nonetheless have a strong sense of contributing to the commons however I can. Everything I have published, for instance, is available for free and in freedom. These are my deeds, not my claims.

I am on good terms with everyone in my family. Though I do not feel any sense of belonging to them. We talk from time to time, have fun, and that is all. I otherwise know very little about their everyday affairs. Their actions do not define me.

I have been away from my homeland for two decades and do not show any particular interest in my Greek nationality. Even my accent in English does not sound like that of the average person from Greece. In Cyprus, where I have been living for many years already, I am not truly a local but not a real foreigner either. I have friendly relationships with everyone around me though, again, I am not connected to them in any special way.

I am not religious, meaning that I do not partake in the single most important expression of religiosity: communal events. This will not change, as I feel no attraction to religion. Not even towards the ethnic Greek religion which I like aesthetically and which I recognise as the closest to my way of living.

I do not participate in the commons in some other capacity, such as through politics. I am an outsider and do not have the enthusiasm to get involved. Sport would have been the exception, as I remain at the peak of my fitness, but there are no sporting events in my region: it is a sparsely populated area.

Omitting the surname is a recognition of my lived experience. There is no “my people” and no legacy to pass on. I just mind my business in this patch of earth. The rarity of my name turns out to be the rarity of my person or, perhaps, the rarity of my situation.

Below are the original lyrics, my faithful translation of them, and further comments on what all this is about.

Other entries I have written related to Alkinoos Ioannidis:

• Mirror (2022-06-28)
• Out of space and time (2022-09-03)

Ο κόσμος που αλλάζει

Ερμηνεία:  Αλκίνοος Ιωαννίδης
Στίχοι:    Αλκίνοος Ιωαννίδης
Μουσική:   Αλκίνοος Ιωαννίδης


Μεγάλο δέντρο ο στεναγμός
μεγάλη κι η σκιά του
απλώνει ρίζες στην ψυχή
στο σώμα τα κλαδιά του
Μα όπως ανοίγει ένα πουλί
φτερούγα στον αέρα
το δέντρο γίνεται γιορτή
και φτερουγίζει η μέρα

Πόσες φορές να σου το πω
πόσες να στο μηνύσω;
Να σου το πω ψιθυριστά
ή να στο τραγουδήσω;
Θα σου το πω ψιθυριστά
όπως μιλάει το βλέμμα
που κρύβει μες τη σιγαλιά
του κόσμου όλο το αίμα

Αυτός ο κόσμος που αλλάζει
πως σου μοιάζει, πως σου μοιάζει
Αυτός ο κόσμος που αλλάζει
με τρομάζει, με τρομάζει

Χαμένοι μοιάζουμε, λοιπόν
στο γύρο του θανάτου
στην παγωνιά του οριστικού
στον τρόμο του αοράτου
Μα οριστικά θα'χεις χαθεί
μονάχα αν το διαλέξεις
όπως διαλέγει η μουσική
τα λόγια και τις λέξεις

Αυτός ο κόσμος που αλλάζει
πως σου μοιάζει, πως σου μοιάζει
Αυτός ο κόσμος που αλλάζει
με τρομάζει, με τρομάζει

The world that changes

Singer:  Alkinoos Ioannidis
Lyrics:  Alkinoos Ioannidis
Music:   Alkinoos Ioannidis


Large tree is the sigh
also large is its shadow
spreads its roots to the soul
to the body [it spreads] its branches
Just as a bird spreads
its wings against the air
the tree becomes a feast
and the day flaps

How many times should I tell you
how many to convey it to you?
Shall I tell you in whispers
or shall I sing it to you?
I will tell you in whispers
the way the glance speaks
which hides in the silence
all of the world's blood

This world that changes
how it resembles you, how it resembles you
This world that changes
it scares me, it scares me

Losers we seem to be, then
at the tour of death
in the frost of the definitive
at the fear of the invisible
But you will forever be lost
only if you so choose
like how the music chooses
the expressions and the words

This world that changes
how it resembles you, how it resembles you
This world that changes
it scares me, it scares me

This is a song about a person who experiences stagnation and is now confronted with the prospect of change. Humans are animals of habit. We get accustomed even to situations that are not benign to us. This is how we end up with the concept of “the devil you know”. The prevailing conditions will bedevil us, yet we remain reluctant to introduce thoroughgoing changes out of fear that we might end up with something worse.

Stagnation, of the sort here considered, breeds pessimism. Every reform is treated as the harbinger of a greater evil. It is thus to be avoided at all costs. The person remains stuck. Grief takes hold. Its roots grow deep and get entangled everywhere. This situation normalises itself through the force of habit. Only then may the tree of disappointment be perceived as a feast. It becomes a celebration of itself, which is a metaphor for how a person will cling on to the devil they know, as if they were having fun the whole time.

Now why would the artist describe stagnation in terms of something as beautiful and peaceful as a tree and a bird? It is to emphasise how the logic of “the devil you know” works: it impresses in us the feeling that whatever prevailing conditions are not too bad after all—they may even be wonderful in some twisted way! This is the part where we find excuses to not make any changes and, thus, to conceal the attendant fear.

The poetic first person eventually musters the courage to speak about their dread. They decide to do so as discreetly as possible by whispering. Here the artist communicates a sense of emotional intensity: the whisper is likened to the silent yet decisively passionate glance. We know that stare, that moment when everything is said without words, when something pierces us and time stops for a little while. The blood in the second verse is a reference to passion. It is how we get all excited in those moments; a telltale sign of an emotionally charged experience.

Not all is lost though. Losers are those who declare themselves thus, who choose to quit without trying in earnest. They are the people who make the mistake of befriending their fears and making best buddies with their own inhibitions. When we choose to be losers, we condition our life accordingly. This is exactly how a given rhythm only enables certain lyrics, while precluding all others.

All consequential decisions delineate the horizon of possible subsequent actions. This is because we live with their consequences and, thus, operate within the confines of the state of affairs they engender. Choosing to fight is difficult for this exact reason: it needs longer-term commitment.

Whether one is a fighter or a loser is a matter of outlook. That can change. It is embedded as lifestyle through everyday affairs. To put the desk in order, for example, is a task that requires some relatively minor effort against inertia. Achieving that engenders the feeling that the immediate surroundings are controllable or, in other words, that our actions can indeed change our world one tiny bit at a time. By gradually increasing the intensity while widening the scope of our initiative, we can change our ways.

Fear, then, need not be interpreted as an evil. It simply is a mechanism which brings some reality to the foreground of our conscience. What matters is how we respond to it. This is about our attitude and the kind of resolve we show. To recognise one’s fear, and perhaps to share it with another, as does the poetic first person in this song, is the precondition for overcoming said fear.

Twenty minutes to midnight. I am back from the nightly hike. As always, I have my four dogs for company. Hoot… Hoot… Hoot… The owl is nearby. It is here to hunt and kill for its survival. There is no point in arguing whether this is right or wrong. Those are narrow categories that apply to a subset of human affairs. The owl simply acts. Even though there is some variability to its behaviour, it is framed by an overarching constraint that it cannot modify. To be a bird of prey is the predicament its nature makes unavoidable.

The same is true for human volition. Whatever manoeuvring space is available is ultimately delineated by a prior condition that the individual cannot escape from. Like the birds of prey, human has to kill in order to live; kill at all times. Whether this is meat or vegetables is secondary to the fact that some form of life has to be consumed.

For the cosmos as a whole, there is no loss. These are the workings of transfiguration. The same star dust continues to shape-shift, sometimes as a galaxy, at others as a puppy. What comes goes, only to come again. A circular motion that does not repeat itself in exact copies. An everlasting helix.

A dog with sufficient size, strength, and drive, such as any of my dogs, will attack and eliminate cats. Not out of hunger, but to preemptively reduce the number of competitors. It does not matter that I am the guarantor of food. They are still hardwired to treat “others” with extreme prejudice.

Plants are no different. It is only after I clearer the bramble from most of my land, and kept the space open, that almond trees and blackthorns, among others, started to grow. Some forms of vegetable life cooperate with each other, while others compete for land, water, air, and sunshine.

Everywhere I look, I find tension and release, attraction and repulsion, friendship and enmity, leadership and subservience. All nested towards infinity. None of this is specific to human beings. Yet many think they are above the rest. They fancy themselves are purely spiritual beings who occupy some higher moral ground when, in reality, we are all governed by the same forces that non even the sun can defy.

Our world, the small milieu of human affairs, is heading full speed towards a planet-wide conflagration. The Europeans are shifting to a militarised economy as they remain committed to their forever war against Russia. The Japanese are casting aside whatever nominal pacifism they were once committed to in their renewed ambition to control larger parts of east Asia while providing an antipode to the Chinese. China will eventually transmogrify into what Westerners think it already is. And so on.

It is understandable why we want to find someone to blame for all this. A person or group has to be responsible and there must be some grand plan behind it all. We cannot accept that we have no control over the framework we operate in. Even in our darkest hours, we search for a good story with unlikely heroes and shady characters. Whether it is the imperialists, the globalists, the nationalists, the militarists, the fundamentalists, the Zionists, the Jihadis, and more, each adds a layer of explanatory narrative on top of processes that are decisively beyond their reach.

Humans are compelled into action by powerful drives they cannot opt out of. To survive, which entails cooperation and competition. Instrumental are the forces that lead humans to pursue conquest, glory, and domination. Even the otherwise innocuous outlook of the explorer, be it in physical or mental space, bestows some kind of advantage vis-à-vis one’s competition; an advantage that can be exploited when necessary. Necessity guides us.

Even when there is no warfare, society at-large experiences the incessant transfiguration that creates some and annihilates others. From employment to unemployment, success to failure, enrichment to impoverishment. It flows, it comes, it goes. A macro view of history exposes the same patterns, of shifting political geographies, of alliances that evolve, of enemies that become friends before squabbling again, of intellectuals who believe they learn from the past as they boldly move ever closer to some supposed enlightenment only to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

There is no rest. No form of life stays in place. An individual person, which in actuality is a system of systems, also changes continuously: eating, moving, sleeping, ageing… The entropy of our entire reality is the precondition for its configuration anew. It does not come from nothing and will not go towards nothing. It simply is.

Yet I cannot help but recognise my emotions. I feel disappointed that we cannot rely on our common sense to manage our affairs. It is not “common”, alas! The distribution of character traits and talents is such. Some have a more pronounced rational side. Others are led by emotion. There is no right or wrong, no better or worse. This may even be the optimal arrangement if we think of it in terms of economising resources at scale: have few that are inventors and pioneers, and let the many be capable of replicating the results. An expensive computation, which amounts to some discovery, need only be performed once before it is reproduced much more cheaply through imitation.

I learnt how to program, for example. I merely follow in the footsteps of others who had to do all the hard work of inventing the relevant paradigms and clearing the path as it were. If so, I cannot bemoan the distribution of skills among our kind. It ultimately is what defines life as we experience it, both for the parts we cherish and those we loath.

Some will try to remake people in a certain image, such as through indoctrination, religious absolutism, or even eugenics and designer babies. This is the exploratory part, underpinned by the want for safety. The uniform or the homogeneous is that which can be predicted and, thus, that which can be measured and guarded against. Yet the explorer is at odds with the underlying motivation to find a totalising integrating force. They need sufficient openendedness to make excursions that others have not even fathomed.

Perhaps we can have different types of people with a distribution unlike what we are used to. It might even be viable. Though it may also reveal to those daring souls that they did not know what they were wishing for.

Who is to blame? Nobody. Every form of life does that which its condition renderes inescapable.

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

Today, the 13th of April 2026, at 15:00 Europe/Athens I will do a live stream in which I will develop the new modus-themes-exporter package for Emacs.

The idea for this package is based on an old experiment of mine: to get the palette of a Modus theme and “export” it to another file format for use in supported terminal emulators or, potentially, other applications.

My focus today will be on writing the core functionality and testing it with at least one target application.

Prior work of mine from my pre-Emacs days is the tempus-themes-generator, which was written in Bash: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/tempus-themes-generator.

Another productive Monday comes to an end. The days are getting warmer. Nights continue to be cold though. I spent most of the morning hours doing manual labour on my land. I prepared some raised garden beds and planted tomatoes. In the coming days I will do the same for zucchinis, onions, garlic, peppers, and lettuce. Having my own vegetables saves me some of the cost for groceries. The other day a kilo of tomatoes sold for ~6 EUR. These are extortionate prices—and the most chilling effects of the financial crunch have not even hit us yet!

In the 2010s I was working and studying. This in itself is an experience that many in the West cannot relate to: they fancy the student life as a time of prolonged parties. Mine was limited to work, home, and school. Those days the economy was mired in recession. There was uncertainty about the very foundations of the euro area. The powers that be were implementing policies that redistributed wealth upward. Those were presented with euphemisms, moralistic palaver, and obscurantist jargon such as “austerity”, “haircut”, “outright monetary transactions”, “longer-term refinancing operations”, “quantitative easing”… Apparatchiks are experts at spinning a monumental cash grab as heavenly grace.

I had to count cents to the euro to buy a loaf of bread. It was not fun. I managed though. Perhaps I was lucky enough to grow up without access to a cornucopia of comforts. Me and people in my community were raised in a world of few opportunities. Oftentimes we did not have a football to play with. Our games would involve some plastic bottle that we would fill up with stones and kick around until exhaustion.

Many of the kids I knew and was friends with found smoking at around age ten, then discovered weed, and eventually the harder substances. They ended up becoming drug addicts in their teenage years. Perhaps the grinding austerity was too much for them. Or they thought there was an easier path forward. They were seeking a way out. I cannot blame them. Some of them died. Others turned mad. This effectively is the road of no return in a country that is woefully underfunded, understaffed, and underequipped in this and many other areas.

I have not done enough soul-searching on this front. Maybe one of the reasons I have not revisited my homeland in twenty years is because I do not want to get a status update. It was not pretty then when there was no financial downturn being reported in the news. I shudder to think how bad the reality on the ground would be in the Greek milieu post 2008. Economic data may show growth, though this is driven by the sellout of the country’s resources to foreigners. The average person there is on an inexorable path to serfdom and immiseration.

What I have learnt in the process is to have dignity and self-respect. I set the highest standard for myself and make no discounts or exceptions to it. Part of that is a defence mechanism, to prevent others from finding reasons to put the blame on me. If, for example, I was lazy people would quickly attribute my financial woes on my laziness. At least now they have to think twice when they notice the sheer amount of work I do.

The first lecture I got as an adult on the topic of discipline and “real men” was when I remarked how it is not right that we are living in such a lopsided political order. The other guy who got all the riches from daddy went on a monologue about how real men do not complain like pussies and how they are gritty. He did not know anything about me. He was just in the business of virtue signalling. This is the precinct of the smartass who talks big without backing it up with deeds. They will judge you even though they know nothing about your life. And when you challenge them, they will take the easy way out by claiming that “these are the standards, but I am working on it”. Sure!

The smartass exists in every field of endeavour and represents every school of thought. On the topic of “real men” and their putative innate virtues, some of the most disciplined people I have ever met are women. You do not need a penis to be self-motivated and keep things in order. It is common for guys who are not insecure about their manhood to admit that their girlfriend/wife helped them become a better person in some ways.

Where the smartass is found in high numbers is in domains that have a strong moral component. Religion is one of them, as are political ideologies. They find the central elements of the creed and then go around telling everyone how they should live. Consider, for example, the activism in favour of Palestine. It is easy to tweet “Free Palestine 🇵🇸” and carry on with your life. Then you may get emboldened to go on the offensive and tell someone like me, who has not been vociferous about the topic, how I need to be mobilised and such. To which I ask: if you are so passionate about your cause, what are you sacrificing for it? Will you go fight on the front lines? Will you join the red cross/crescent? Will you give up your vacation and other perks of your lifestyle to send aid to the refugees? Tweeting and being obnoxious about it is trivial. The part where you live up to your own standard is when things get real.

To be clear: I do not mind if someone is posting something online. I do not check their thoughts and am not interested in their conduct. But if they are posting it and are trying to push me around because of it, then I will push back.

I got plenty of comments for the entries I published recently that cover Easter, among others:

• There goes another Easter (2026-04-11)
• Lunch without alcohol (2026-04-12)

My commentary is not about the substance of religion. I have nothing against it. If someone felt offended, that was not my intention. I never argue from a position of “my faith is more real than yours”. I do not appeal to any authority. And, above all, I do not claim to be a moral person. If I happen to be doing the right thing, that will be the product of my actions, not my words.

All I do, when others try to incorporate me in their programme, is apply the standard that they profess to live by on to their own deeds. In effect, I present them with a mirror. If you tell me how we ought to be doing this and that, while demanding that I conform to your exhortations, then I expect you to be leading by example.

I do not consume porngraphy, for instance. Its widespread usage is a common secret. I do not walk around telling everyone how they should live their life and what to do on their computing device. I have a strict diet and, again, I do not pressure others to eat this or that. I do not gamble, yet said nothing to those who organised gambling sessions in the square overlooking their church. There is no need to belabour this point: I leave others alone and demand the same treatment.

Every person is on their own path. If they ever need help, I am happy to support them if I can. What I will not do, however, is punch down and kiss up in pursuit of social points and to boost my ego.

The treatment I receive is not the same though, so I will not pretend to not notice. Easter is the period of peak virtue signalling among believers. I am merely describing what I am exposed to, not the articles of faith as such.

The other day I was walking back home, moving in a direction away from the nearest church close to the hour of the liturgy. A fellow in a luxury car who was driving towards the church stopped and asked in shock: “are you not attending the liturgy!?”. I did not even know who this person was. I replied negatively, adding that I had essential work to do. Without even considering the “why” I work every day without ever going on a vacation, this person went on to explain how important those pious days are, why we should praise the Lord, how I can be a better person myself, blah, blah, blah. As if I grew up on Mars and know nothing about what people believe in.

If God is all-knowing, then He knows my predicament. And if He is omnipotent, He does not need this zealot to force me into conformity. I remain calm. Such a character does not represent any cause. Theirs is an inconsiderate exposition that is meant to make them look good relative to another person. I do not compete with anyone and do not care what they do with their life. I said “okay, bye”. The problem, however, is that this is not an isolated event. The pressure is to be “good” on the outside for a few days and then you can go on and secretly indulge in everything you consider inappropriate. Why? Focus on yourself, embed in your everyday conduct what you believe is divine, and leave me alone.

To me, religion is not limited to a corpus of propositions. That is a reductive exercise that takes away from the interpersonal dynamics at play. Religion is a web of lived social experiences. I do not see the point of the argument that such and such historical source contradicts what people are actually doing. I care about the effective religiosity, not the one in the books. The prescribed one is not pertinent to what I am observing. I am commenting on phenomena as they unfold, not on some ideal world or, indeed, the substantive points of the precepts.

From time to time I get prompts about studying this or that material. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, but also secular thinkers. I am curious to learn more. Though buying books is a luxury in itself while I have more pressing issues to deal with, but that is beside the point. The gist is that I am not the target audience at this point in my life. I never asked for salvation. I did not express existential angst that needs to be addressed. I do not claim to be religious or particularly spiritual: I do not pray, I do not do yoga, I do not practice mindfulness meditation… I have not even said that I am a good person. I probably am not good in sense you imagine because I have many times before broken a bully and will do it again if I must.

As I write these final words, I hear the owl nearby. It makes that familiar vocalisation. This is the large variety. It is a bit smaller than the eagle: a mighty bird of prey in its own right. I find it nice to pay attention to my immediate environment. Earlier I spotted another almond tree offshoot as well as the first signs of what appears to be jasmine. Life forms all around me are in continuous motion. Tomorrow I have another day full of activities. I will commit to them to the best of my ability, with no tricks and no gimmicks.

On Sundays it is common for people here to prepare souvla (barbecued meat on a long skewer), if the weather is good enough. Other dishes are also available, so there is something for everyone. Though meat is the main serving. Winter in the mountains is usually too cold or rainy for souvla. But the other months provide ample opportunities.

Today was one such day. I was invited to attend a lunch not too far from my house. Nominally, it was about celebrating Easter. Though in practice we were all there for the food and the companionship. Few ever bring up religious topics on such occasions.

There were lots of people present, all of which I have met before in other gatherings. Last time I was there all the people around me consumed vast quantities of alcohol. Beer, wine, zivania, and whiskey. I abstain from alcohol, though I never tell anyone in person why. When somebody asks if I want some, I simply respond with something like “no, I quit long ago—thank you!”.

What helps my case is that the tone of my voice and body language communicate an unequivocal view. This is basically the opposite of how a shy person responds, where they say one thing while they invite others to tease out something else.

People are respectful when you draw clear boundaries. Those who are not qualify as bullies, which you can then deal with more forcefully. That I do with alacrity. But in the vast majority of cases everybody means well.

When someone appears pushy yet has no obvious bad intention, it is because they get mixed signals from you. They will nudge you to answer affirmatively, perhaps by appealing to your sense of camaraderie: “here, have a shot in the name of our newfound friendship”. And if you do not know how to respond firmly, you will eventually yield, thus positively reinforcing the original push.

I do not talk about my life choices. I am not interested in converting anyone to my views and the manner of my living. Why I abstain from alcohol is my own business: in short, I prioritise longer-term health over scoring meaningless points at the lunch table. Plus, I am perfectly sociable without pampers. If others choose to consume it, I respect their choices. I was a bartender for many years, after all.

The table today had all the usual offerings of alcoholic beverage. There were bottles of wine, cans of beer, a freezer packed with zivania, and plenty of ice cubes for those who wanted to blend whiskey with cola. Some folks who were sitting further away from me were drinking as usual. Though those around me chose to abstain for once. Someone remarked that “we are already having a good time, we do not need the drinks”. I nodded without saying a word.

My lifestyle can be summed up as “do, not tell” or, better, “master it first, teach it afterwards”.. If I believe in something, I embed it in my activities. And if it is benign, then I am the embodiment of its efficacy. I do not need to preach what is obvious. Others will notice the effects and try the same. And if they do not discern the pattern, then they are not ready for it, anyway. I find talk that is devoid of action to be disempowering. It inevitably devolves into a vicious cycle of overthinking and attendant restlessness.

There are no deep conversations at such gatherings. Topics range from political commentary, to one’s adventures at the hunt, to matters of farming, to some construction work that is being planned. Whatever lacunae are filled in by blanket generalisations. You learn to not take anything seriously. It is innocuous chit-chat. Its function is to strengthen the sense of trust among those present. Anyone who has a strong urge to be pedantic will suffer at such an event.

Even though I am on good terms with everyone here, I do not have any friends. Nobody knows exactly what my interests are and how much in-depth I am willing to go in any given exchange. They have a vague sense of what I do, but are otherwise not curious to learn more. I have long accepted that my interests lead me down the path of loneliness. It is virtually impossible to meet like-minded people in a sparsely populated region. This is partly why I spend more time hiking than mingling with the locals.

I am also dismayed to observe, time and again, that the local communities are dying of old age. There are no young people here and no prospect of there being any in the foreseeable future. The women I met an aeon ago gave me lectures about baby machines and the familiar talking points. To think of the greatest power of all, to birth a new form of life, in such demeaning terms… I remained silent and left.

Millenials in my part of the world grew up with the promise of the comfortable life, having been fed the tale of inexorably expanding economic prosperity. Well, except those of us who were already poor—we were earmarked for the meat-grinder. When the 2008+ financial crisis hit them, they joined the various Occupy/Indignados movements to announce to the world how angry they were for not getting what they thought was their birthright.

We are still reeling from that crisis. It was, at its core, a dismantling of the underlying value system and the expectations that went along with it. Many of those people never moved on. They were broken and defeated; a “lost generation” as the media was correctly portraying it.

I am a man of action. With severely limited means, yes, but with the attitude to fight until the bitter end. I like to make things happen and get bored when thinking leads to nowhere. In this case, however, I have no solution. Maybe I have not been daring or creative enough in my approach, in which case I shall change my ways and try anew.

The church bells were ringing in the distance. The first explosions echo in the valley. It is almost Easter in this part of the world. In about ten minutes there will be fireworks. I finished a long day’s work and then went for the nightly hike with my dogs. Walking with my canine friends is among my favourite activities.

The season is pleasant in secular terms. We are at the tail end of winter in the mountains. It is still cold during daytime, though it starts to get sunnier. The last heavy rainfall was on Thursday. Another is expected next week, as days become more dry. Flowers are popping up everywhere, while the grass reaches its maximum height at about half a metre tall. Most trees need a few more weeks to blossom. The oak trees take their turn fairly late at around May.

In religious terms, however, we are asked to go through induced grief. All around us there is life yet our mental state revolves around death. The week of Easter is about pretending to suffer along with Jesus. “Pretending” is the operative term. If you are actually suffering, you do not have to wait for this time of the year to go through the torment. And, conversely, if you are not suffering, then you likely have the luxury to put on a show.

Unlike Christmas, Easter has always had a more religious undertone in my experience. Christmas is practically not a religious period. There is the myth of the flying grandpa who brings gifts galore, trolls that seek to cut down the tree of life only to be lured away from their mischief by treats, and children going around the neighbourhood singing songs in exchange for pocket money. In short, it is whimsical and fun. I love it!

As for the religious story, it essentially is about a child being born. Every stable family considers that a gift from the heavens. Theodoros and all such variations (Diodoros, Diogenis, Herodotos, Apollodoros, etc.) are ancient names, after all, describing the newborn as a gift from a certain deity or the divine at-large. This goes back millennia. We do not need to search much further than the gratitude of the parents to appreciate the symbolism of baby Jesus.

By comparison, Easter is the reign of darkness. The social pressure to behave in certain ways is much more pronounced. It starts fourty days in advance and culminates on this day. There is increased church-going or, at least, exhortations to that effect, and the emphasis is on doctrine. There exists the Easter bunny and such lighthearted elements but their role is marginal. The focus is on propriety and the correctness of the creed.

It must be nice to be part of a group. To not push back and simply go with the rest. You always have friends and attend all the parties. I cannot be that person. I tried it once and it almost broke me. Part of my personality is to not give in to social pressure. If I do not feel a certain way, and if the matter affects me personally, I will not do it solely to please others.

Fundamentally, nobody has control over me. This goes back to when I was a child, though a more poignant example comes from my teenage years. All my friends and virtually every boy my age was a smoker. I did not try it once. Not even out of curiosity. My mates never attempted to pressure me into smoking because they knew it was a lost cause.

I am the same with the performative aspects of religiosity. I will not pretend to feel pain when I am not. I cannot act like I am suffering when I am feeling as energetic as ever. And, more importantly, I do not check the calendar to decide when to do what I consider right: I just do it without exceptions.

I am, nevertheless, considerate enough to not argue for the sake of arguing. Intellectual matters require a level of commitment to the topic that the vast majority of people do not have. For those cases, I remain silent, wish everybody all the best, and mind my business.

My attention is on the here-and-now. The temperatures will rise next week before dropping back to normal for the foreseeable future. I have lots of plans for my land and am confident that my hard work will be fruitful. The only pain I feel is the one I bring unto myself by committing many hours of my day to manual labour. I find it empowering to witness the compounding effects of my industry; to know that I can rely on the infrastructure I have set up and to continuously build on top of what I already did.

I have done so much already and am eager to continue with the same intensity. However, the rapidly deteriorating economic situation has hindered my house-related initiatives. I will not do anything here at least for another year or two. It is a pity, though I must wait for the next opportunity. Such is life. We deal with the circumstances as they evolve. Our duty, in the meantime, is to retain our vitality and be poised to act.

As for Easter, everybody will revert to business as usual within a few hours. We all know it is a shadow play of spirituality, yet find it expedient to act as if something grand is happening.

At 14:00 Europe/Athens I will hold a live stream about Emacs. Specifically, I will work on my modus-themes package.

The idea is to write more tests and refine the relevant functions along the way.

I am announcing this -45 minutes before I go live. I will keep the chat open in case there are any questions.

Below are the original lyrics, my faithful translation of them, and further commentary on my part.

Τα Ξωτικά

Ερμηνεία:  Σωκράτης Μάλαμας & Ιουλία Καραπατάκη
Στίχοι:    Σωκράτης Μάλαμας
Μουσική:   Σωκράτης Μάλαμας


Σε ποια σκιά τα μάτια σου θολώνουν
Μικρό πουλί σ'αγάπησα πολύ
Τα βήματα στα κύματα βουλιάζουν
Να'σουν εδώ να σε βρει η ανατολή

Μέσα στα ρούχα μου σε κρύβω σαν φωτιά
Να'χουν να λεν πως δε σε γνώρισα ποτέ
Όνειρο είναι η ιστορία μας καρδιά μου
Τα ξωτικά γυρνούν τις νύχτες συντροφιά μου

Δωσ'μου το φως κι ας κάνω πως δεν είδα
Δώσ'μου νερό να σβήσω τα βαριά
Ό,τι έχει μείνει μέχρι εδώ απ'το κερί μου
είναι τα μάτια σου που καίνε σαν φωτιά

Μέσα στα ρούχα μου σε κρύβω σαν φωτιά
Να'χουν να λεν πως δε σε γνώρισα ποτέ
Όνειρο είναι η ιστορία μας καρδιά μου
Τα ξωτικά γυρνούν τις νύχτες συντροφιά μου

The Elves

Singer:  Socratis Malamas & Ioulia Karapataki
Lyrics:  Socratis Malamas
Music:   Socratis Malamas


Under which shade do your eyes blur
Little bird I loved you so much
The steps sink in the waves
I wish you were here to be found by dawn

In my clothes I keep you like fire
So that they may say that I never met you
Our story is a dream my heart
The elves roam around with me at night

Give me the light although I pretend not to see
Give me water to erase the heavy parts
Whatever remains here of my candle
are your eyes that burn like fire

In my clothes I keep you like fire
So that they may say that I never met you
Our story is a dream my heart
The elves roam around with me at night

At the surface level, this sounds like yet another love song. It is how I used to think of The Elves for the longest time. Though now I am of the view that there is an alternative explanation, the hint for which we already get from the title.

Elves are a figment of humanity’s artistic genius. As with all myths, they are a metaphor for phenomena we bear witness to. This one, in particular, pertains to experiences that are at once relatable yet decisively alien. We can recognise in them patterns that the human psyche resonates with while realising that they cannot fit into the narrow confines of our quotidian affairs.

One does not encounter the elves at their 9-5 job. No. What we do for a living is typically a matter of need. It has a logic of its own as we have to suppress at least some of our individuality or altogether sacrifice a part of who we are to the altars of expedience and necessity.

The elves are exotic creatures. They are found well beyond the milieux most of us operate in and seldom escape from. They inhabit ancient forests and pristine lands. These we describe as “nature”. Nature is always close to where we live. A short trip is enough to take us to the nearest grove, mountain, or water element, for example. Proximity, however, does not necessarily imply a connection of any meaningful depth.

People can be physically close to “nature” yet clearly beyond reach of it. This happens because we need time to get accustomed to the new realities. Humans are products of their environment. They cannot just switch contexts without requiring a period of adjustment. Life outside the bustling human world unfolds at a slower pace than what we are conditioned to accept as the baseline of interpersonal relations. The stimuli we get in the great outdoors are much more subtle. There are sounds and musicality all around, though they are subdued enough for us to get the initial impression that the place is eerily quiet.

Furthermore, we fail to have situational awareness whenever we turn inward and forget to come back out. This is our default modus operandi. It reduces us to androids; cogs in a society-wide machine. Much of what we do is to just get by. It happens mindlessly as we sink into routines and thinking patterns that we eventually take for granted.

The elf as an artistic device, then, reminds us that the magic all around us is accessible to all of us provided we change our ways. It does not matter that something is close. What is of import is to develop the capacity to appreciate it. This requires that we free up resources from cognitively burdensome but ultimately needless preoccupations.

With those granted, we can understand the lyrics of The Elves as an appreciation of nuance: to discern that which hides in the open. This is not a typical love song because there is no lover involved. In the first verse, the poetic “I” figure wishes that some abstract “you” were present, while walking alone along the beach (where waves would wash away all the footprints on the sand).

In the refrain we learn how knowledge of this seemingly dreamy otherworldliness is kept within. It is not materialised as a person, as the partner to love, but as the impersonal fire that fuels one’s actions. Others will never notice because they did not get out of their own inward-looking routines. Had they done so, they would have encountered the elves themselves.

Tonight I will work on my denote package. There is a feature branch I implemented this morning and am now ready to continue refining the code. The immediate goals:

• Update unit tests that are still calling deprecated functions.
• Write new tests, starting with the denote-dired command and all its ancillary functions.
• Review all the commands that filter the query buffers (which are produced by commands such as denote-grep, denote-backlinks, denote-query-contents-link).
• Edit the manual accordingly.

I expect the stream to go on for 2-3 hours, but we will see.

I will keep the chat open in case there are any comments. I am happy to respond to them.

Our next meeting will be done live on the 16th of April 2026 at 10:30 America/Toronto, 17:30 Europe/Athens time: https://youtube.com/live/djE_pVlgDHg.

I will check with Sacha how she imagines doing this. Though I am the laissez faire type, so will adapt as we go.

[ Note that all my coaching sessions are private: I never share details of my meetings. This is an exception because Sacha asked me about it. ]

Sequence notes are created in relation to other notes, as parent, child, or sibling. denote-sequence communicates such relationships by writing a “sequence” to the file name, in accordance with the Denote file-naming scheme (technically, it uses the optional SIGNATURE component of the file name, which is defined as a free-form field for users to use as they see fit—so this is just one application of it).

The package supported two schemes before

The exact presentation of such sequences is subject to the user option denote-sequence-scheme. The package has hitherto supported two schemes, the numeric and alphanumeric.

In the numeric scheme, each level of depth is delimited by the equals sign. The sequence 1=2=3 thus has three levels of depth. It means “the third child of the second child of the first parent”.

By contrast, the alphanumeric scheme relies on the alternation between numbers and letters to communicate levels of depth. The above example is thus expressed as 1b3.

The new alphanumeric-delimited scheme

Many users have told me that the alphanumeric scheme looks cleaner. Though I think it is hard to read when sequences get really long, like 2a13c6d2a. To this end, the new sequence scheme augments the alphanumeric style with delimiters that are placed after the first level of depth and every third level of depth thereafter. Thus: 2=a13=c6d=2a.

Users may find this easier to work with.

Remember the denote-sequence-convert command

This command has been part of the package since its inception. It can convert from one sequence scheme to the others.

denote-sequence-convert has a “do what I mean behaviour” with regard to which file or files it should operate on:

• When called from inside a file with a Denote sequence, it operates on the current file.

• When called from a Dired buffer, it operates on all the marked files.

• When there are no marked files in the Dired buffer, it operates on the file at point.

The target sequence scheme for the conversion is whatever is assigned to the user option denote-sequence-scheme. If, however, denote-sequence-convert is called with a prefix argument (C-u by default), then it will prompt for the target sequence scheme.

Coming in version 0.3.0

I just merged the code into trunk. Users who are building the package from source can try the new feature right away. Otherwise, it will be available in the next stable version of the package. I hope to have that ready some time in mid-April.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): denote-sequence
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-sequence
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote-sequence
• Backronym: Denote… Sequences Efficiently Queue Unsorted Entries Notwithstanding Curation Efforts.

Hjalmar is a viola player and composer who currently studies composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music. We start our discussion with me asking how it is to study music. I learn about Hjalmar’s experiences in that regard.

Hjalmar writes music in Emacs using a setup that involves Org, the Org Babel system, and the LilyPond music notation. Hjalmar describes in further detail how this process works.

I was curious how Hjalmar discovered Emacs to learn that it was a hobby that developed during the Covid pandemic. We discuss how even though Emacs is known as a programmer’s tool, it is equally capable for people who do not write code, such as musicians, academics, and journalists. A large part of that is Org and its wider ecosystem of extended functionality.

I ask about Hjalmar’s creative process. It is an iterative process of accumulating lots of pieces and then jumbling them to produce a result. Hjalmar will typically settle for the second version, given that it is an attempt to address all the mistakes of the first draft.

A large part of our exchange is about the process of artistic expression. Hjalmar is interested in creating playful interactions with the audience, to blur the lines between what is and what is not music, and to make everyone present a participant. I learn more about how this works and the relevant ideas that inform the approach.

The other big theme of our talk is the human experience in the context of digital technology and the Internet. This is about artistic stimuli as well as interpersonal affairs. We discuss the community aspect of art and how that relates to the feelings of connection and creativity. The gist is how we benefit from face-to-face interactions in ways that our technology cannot replicate.

Links from Hjalmar

• Personal website: https://hjalmarbjerner.com/
• YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@hjallis22

About “Prot Asks”

In this video series, I talk to anybody who is interested to have a video call with me (so do contact me if you want!). The topics cover anything related to Emacs, technology, and life in general. More here: https://protesilaos.com/prot-asks.

Another rainy day goes by. This is the first wet winter at the hut. The previous two were quite dry, foreshadowing the droughts that followed for the rest of the year. Last winter was especially harsh in this regard. It led to an extra dry spring and summer, which culminated in the devastating wildfires that affected a large part of the island.

Living here has made me more aware of my surroundings. This is because I tend to my land. Each day I walk around, to casually enjoy the little things but also to update my mental model of what is in my midst. I take note of changes to the environment. A new offshoot appears, grass grows more dense in an area that was once barren, or there are signs of water accumulating at some spot. This is the raw data that allows me to anticipate change and plan accordingly.

For example, soon after I got here I realised that the back side of my land was prone to flooding. The adjacent stream brings an unstoppable torrent of water after each heavy rainfall. I could tell that the risk of me getting hit was remote, but was eager to work towards mitigating the threat. Cutting the long story short, I laboured to redirect the flow of water, such that it does not touch my land at a steep angle. Flooding is practically impossible now.

I recognise that to be here I have to show respect to the forces around me. They have their own mechanisms, which I must discern and align my presence with. When you take matters into your own hands, it is dangerous to be frivolous and absent-minded. Or, to put it differently, you cannot afford to be such unless you are being taken care of.

The world is alive. It is not a mere backdrop to the show I am featuring in. Concepts such as “the environment” are mental shortcuts. If we want to be more accurate, we have to talk about systems of systems within which different forms of life are made manifest. To be aware of my surroundings, then, is another way of describing my continuous study of immanent life.

The more I observe, the better I understand that the cosmos is consistent. I can discern patterns in how the landscape develops over time which ultimately find application to human affairs. The flowing waters, for instance, have made poignant the notion that mountains are being flattened over time. The human lifespan is too short to measure up to such a process, though even within a few years we can appreciate how a tiny bit of mountain is moved by the weather.

I built some stairs out of soil by carving them on the side of the mountain. Within less than three years, they have been smoothed by the succession of sunshine and rainfall. A stepped configuration has turned into a near slide. It shows how continuous exposure can create smoothness, given a certain unit of time. This is not a descriptor that is limited to the soil though. It works equally well for our own experiences.

In everything we do, we are subject to this mechanism. It is neither good nor bad, or it is both good and bad, depending on the specifics of the case. Sometimes, the smoothing out is what makes us more effective at our role. We reduce the friction by removing the sharp edges. At other times, being more smooth means that we have declined: those edges are what gave us our comparative advantage.

It helps to be mindful of this phenomenon. It couches our outlook in terms of dynamism. Instead of treating any given state of affairs as static, we appreciate its potential for change; change that may be gradual yet inexorable insofar as creating conditions that undo the case we started out with. We often refrain from trying something in earnest because we overestimate the staying power of the initial friction. At the other end, we cling on to an arrangement of relationships and routines without realising that our role and its impact have been eroded.

I learn from the land by giving it my undivided attention. It ultimately is how I have developed most of my thoughts about life: be mindful and think things through. People will often ask “which books have you read”. The truth is that I have not read much. From now on I will start responding with “the real issue is how attentively you are observing, how carefully you are listening, and how deeply you are thinking”. Not to imply that books are useless, but that the book count or, indeed, the entries in one’s private library, are not a reliable predictor.

The consistency of the world means that we do not need to explore every corner of it to develop profound insights. A small portion will suffice. I have not seen all of the flowers, for instance. The ones that do grow in my vicinity are beautiful. Appreciating their beauty does not require knowledge of the totality of flowers. I do not have to fathom every possible flower. What I get is enough and I am thankful for it.

Minutes to eleven. Another rainy day comes to a close. I just came back from my nightly hike with the dogs. We walk around the mountains for several hours per day. This is basically paradise for dogs. It is equally benign for me as well. I remain as fit as ever. I always have energy to do what I like. My mental state is stable, my thoughts are clear, my presence focused. The mountains empower me. I forgot how it is to live with perennial stress. Everything is easier when you have a good connection with your environment and your inner world.

There is nothing grand happening. This note describes the present moment, though it also applies to what I was feeling yesterday, and the year before, and, probably what I will experience in the future. Stability sounds boring to someone who is used to trying new things all the time. Though it actually is not. Once you get used to this reality, you develop a finer appreciation of the phenomena. It is a little bit like conditioning yourself to eat unsalted salads: at first it is bland until it eventually becomes a combination of natural flavours that were once obscured by the salt.

I keep treading the same paths. Though I always notice something different. The environment is alive. Every form of life in it is in motion. It is working towards some end. The grass tries to be taller and wider, in order to maximise its exposure to the sun and access to soil plus water. The acorn proceeds towards becoming an oak tree over the course of centuries. Even the land itself is transforming. Every single rainfall takes some hard matter from the higher parts and moves it downstream. Where there was once solid ground one now finds signs of flowing water. In the geological time frame, the earth itself becomes something other than what it was.

I lack the depth of conscience to communicate with the earth the way I do with my dogs or other people. Though I can already sense that it is an organism. I discern the manifestations of life all around me. And I am aware that there are strata of emergence to each phenomenon. What I understand as myself, a unit of human, Protesilaos the one and only, is a system of systems. To describe even a single part of my body, I would need to spend a lifetime studying all the technicalities. I am ignorant about the full extent of knowledge that is embedded in the making of the eye, for example, or the interplay between the brain and the gut. Yet there is a sense in which I know myself. I operate at a certain stratum of emergence. What happens at the strata below or above is not at the centre of my conscious world, although it is a precondition for it.

The reason I am content with the little things is because I have understood that they are actually not insignificant. They are subtle, yes. It is as if they are hiding in plain sight, testing our capacity for mindfulness. Many of the world’s religions promise an escape from this world. I do not resonate with their teachings. I was listening to some monk the other day talk about how suffering is innate to the present experience and how we must not feel moved by what is around us. How so? I feel calm. To be moved is to be, for all presences are in motion. I keep finding reasons to smile: they are all around me.

What I did wish to escape from was the expectation of knowing it all. The idea that there has to be a beginning, middle, and end to this story, and that I should be aware of it. I do not feel entitled to know everything. I do not prey for the universe to conspire in my favour. I do not ask for an opt out clause, some derogation from the rules that govern the mechanics of the system of systems. I love what is and am thankful for what I have for as long as it is beside me on my path.

The gods offer hints but no explanations. We can only work with what we have. Even if they did tell us explicitly, we lack the means to definitively know: are they being truthful or trying to test us? If, for example, Jesus performed all those miracles and got resurrected, those all prove that he did perform these very miracles and did get resurrected. There is nothing in those events, in isolation or in combination, that necessarily proves everything else that Christians claim to know about God: agentic, triadic, benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, ubiquitous. The leap of faith is unavoidable.

We deal with what is germane to the human condition, recognising that it is an amalgamation of joy and sorrow, of enthusiasm and disappointment, of tension and release. We suffer when we are unable to connect with that which is immanent; that which is so close to us at all times; that which we underestimate, take for granted, or altogether ignore. Giving it a name, telling a story about it, is useful insofar as we do not forget that this is an artistic device. We do it for the fun of it, to have something to talk about with other people, and to contribute to the workings of our social reproduction.

God dies in the naming of god, in the framing of it as only one instead of the multitude and the monad, in the stories we take too seriously as we turn them into inflexible doctrines. God is lost once the dogma we impose on our psyche forbids us from reaching out to the source, to the singing spring whose waters always flow.

When I sense the cold rain on my face, as I close my eyes and turn skyward, I find peace in the knowledge that I am not special in my need for water and air. Just as I require them, so do the plants and other animals all around me. This is not merely about surviving, but feeling the connection with that which envelops and underpins me. From my constitutive subsystems to the supersystems I partake in, there is life ever-lasting, ever-transfiguring.

The rainy days will continue until the first third of April. I do not have someone to tell this to, so I am putting it in the present bottle and tossing it to the sea. Not having all the answers does not bother me. I am like that bottled note, moving wherever the current takes me. That there even is an ocean is astonishing. I cannot fathom the full extent of the factors whose interplay contributes to there being an ocean. Can we even draw clear delineations in the cosmic continuum? Is there an in vitro expression of anything to be studied in isolation from totality?

I will go to bed now. Tomorrow morning I will get the chance to continue with my projects around my house. Well, unless there is heavy rainfall. Every yard here contains hours of my labour. Though no matter how much sweat I spill, I can never make the land an extension of myself. It belongs to me just as it belongs to the grass and the insects below of it. We are all together. Admitting as much keeps things in perspective and makes everything simpler.

I maintain a strict privacy policy with everyone I meet. Specifically, I do not say anything about our meeting. But since Sacha has already published this information, I am happy to do this in the open.

What follows are some comments on her post.

Testing interactive functions

writing tests, especially for things that are more interactive

What helps here is to think of the interactive part as the way to get the arguments. If the interactivity is more involved, then you want to think how it can be broken down into smaller routines. Each routine should eventually be reduced to a function that can be called non-interactively with a certain argument. This way, your tests are easier to reason about.

Consider this example:

(defun my-greet-person (name)
  "Return Hello string to person with NAME."
  (format "Hello %s" name))

The substantive part of the test would be something like this:

(let ((name "Sacha"))
  (string= (my-greet-person name) "Hello Sacha"))

Now add interactivity to the function:

(defun my-greet-person (name)
  "Return Hello string to person with NAME.
When called interactively, prompt for NAME.  Else NAME is a string."
  (interactive (list (read-string "Whom to greet: ")))
  (format "Hello %s" name))

Even though this function can be called interactively, the test is the same because the interactive simply sets the value of name.

There will, of course, be more complex scenaria. We can think how best to approach them. Though this is the general idea.

Navigating Lisp code across many files

navigating code that might be scattered in literate config files or in Emacs Lisp files

What I find helpful:

• Use the Emacs bookmarking system. I add a bookmark for anything I visit frequently. Then I can find what I need with bookmark-jump or consult-buffer (from Daniel Mendler’s consult package).
• Have a single root for all your programming projects. In my case this is ~/Git/.
• In that directory, create subdirectories with areas of interest. One of them should be specific to the projects you maintain. For example, I have ~/Git/emacs-community/ and ~/Git/Projects/. The latter consists of everything I develop/maintain.
• With these directories in place, you can always rely on a recursive Grep to find what you need.
• Otherwise, we have xref-find-definitions as well as all the help functions like describe-function which normally link to the file where the definition is.

Sharing with others

If I get better at sharing what I’m working on, I might be able to connect with more people and bounce ideas around.

Getting better is nice. I think here the goal is to structure what you are sharing in a certain way. Then people can use it more easily. Once that happens, you will receive more feedback.

Also, accountability might help me nudge this over the threshold.

This is key. When we make a promise in earnest, we are motivated to deliver on it. The fact that you have published this adds to the effectiveness of it.

I’m curious about other people’s workflows for sharing. I like joining meetups, but I tend to share stuff only if no one else has anything planned, because I have my blog and my YouTube channel in case I want to share anything with a wider group of people. I just have to actually post things.

Each person is different and there is no one answer to rule them all. What I do, as someone who publishes on a number of topics, is to reach a point that is an honest representation of my current level. This point is not approaching perfection, as that is a trap. If it were about perfection, I would never publish anything!

Once I do what is within my current level, I am casual about it. In other words, I do not need to prove that I am worthy of it—I am already there and this is my current normal state. This makes the process of writing less emotionally challenging (well, not challenging at all). It also opens me to learn more. I am not defensive or argumentative because, fundamentally, I feel secure with what I have: I am not hiding something and do not worry about what others may think.

About your case, I get the impression that you are already improving your content. It starts by recognising that there is improvement to be had. Then, you write blog posts such as the one I am now commenting on, which show that you have put thought into your processes. In other words, you are mindful of your current state. Whatever I may point out during our meeting will thus be easier for you to incorporate in your thinking. Why? Because you already know the space, as it were, and so you will have a good intuition of where to put the new thing.

Getting used to streaming

Streaming: Still need to get the hang of talking to myself or having half-conversations with chat: can be worked around by scheduling a session with Prot and opening it to the public

I am happy to do this in public. Either as a coaching session or some collaborative live stream. We can discuss the details.

At any rate, “practice makes perfect”. The only way to get used to talking to the camera is to do it enough times. I can talk at length, though I still find it hard to laugh when I am by myself, so I look dead serious in all of my monologues. Whereas, say, in the “Prot Asks” series I often laugh. This is because I have a natural response towards someone. Talking to the selfie camera does not create in me the same friendly emotions.

Sharing code

renaming things when I want to move them to a library

Before finding a name, you need to have a clear vision for the package: what is it meant to do. Then try to think about words that describe either the goal or the workflow. Use phrases, like what you have with “speech input”. Those work fine.

Come up with placeholder names if you are not sure. Then, once you are ready to share the package, do a final round of thinking to check if you can think of a more suitable name. Otherwise just use some descriptive phrase.

This concerns the prefix for the entire package. Though your code may still consist of different areas of focus. For example, in my denote package there is a subset of functionality related to “rename” operations. All of those share a compound prefix of the name of the package plus the name of the area they are specialising in like this helper function: denote-rename-buffer--format. By the name alone, I can tell that it relates to the “rename” operation and, specifically, is ancillary to denote-rename-buffer.

I can provide concrete suggestions for your code.

duplicating small functions (ex: simplify string)

You may choose to put those in their own package. Though I personally do not mind a little bit of duplication/repetition when that is easier to maintain. The principle of not repeating yourself is good in general, though there are cases where trying to avoid it is not worth the effort.

figuring out how to make it possible for someone else to start using my stuff

For any non-trivial code you write, you want to treat it like its own “package”. In other words, it exists in a file of its own, it has all the require calls for its dependencies, defines defcustom variables if it must, uses autoload where relevant, and has a provide call at the end. Even if you never move it out of your configuration, you have already done the work of clearing up your thoughts/code. Others will already benefit from that, as they can now copy the file with greater confidence in its utility.

Questions for Prot

Meta: what are people finding useful for coaching and behaviour change, like learning new keyboard shortcuts or workflows?

Each person has their own goals. Some enjoy a pair programming session. Others like me to check on their progress and to provide feedback. Plus, there is more than the purely Emacs component: I make comments about matters of perspective, whether it is about some piece of code or life in general.

Those granted, I do not collect any data about the people I meet. I do not ask them for testimonials or feedback. I prefer not to do that because I do not wish to ever have to handle private information. I like my meetings to be nice and simple. Plus, I do not want to manipulate or influence the behaviour of people.

Your literate config exports to individual .el files. I could probably do something similar to separate my functions from my personal config in order to make it easier for people to reuse parts of my config. Is it worth doing so? Do people tell you that they use those private Emacs Lisp files by loading them, or do they mostly rely on your published packages?

Most rely on my packages. I design those to be as flexible as possible and maintain them accordingly.

The individual .el files of my configuration are helpful to me. I stay in the flow of designing my code in a package-ready way. If anybody needs to use it, then they already have something that is close to an actual package.

Do you have some tweaks to make it easier to jump to function definitions considering a literate configuration?

No, I have not had a need for this. When I choose to work on some part of my configuration, I navigate to the relevant heading (with something like consult-outline) and then use org-edit-special to edit the source block.

You will show me what you have been doing, which may give me some ideas.

What’s your general process for migrating things from your config to a repository or package?

It all starts with splitting the code into many .el files. Make sure one file is not entangled with other files. Or, at least, put in the effort to list every other file as a dependency and write the necessary require for it.

Have one such file for each area of focus. This way you can reason about what you have and what may be missing. A clear initial idea will determine the direction of the package long-term. The reason is that it establishes boundaries: what to do and what not to do.

From there, you can decide if some file is of value to other users. If you think it is, then start implementing defcustom variables for it, define the commands that users would want, and have autoload directives for them if they are meant as points of entry.

Strong cold winds this evening. Apparent temperatures are hovering slightly above zero degrees Celsius. The days remain cloudy. We have gotten plenty of rainfall, with much more to come. It has been an exceptionally dark five months since early November. Once October is over, the days get noticeably shorter until the winter solstice. After that we gain roughly a minute of sunlight each day. Though it does not feel that way until around the spring equinox because winter coincides with the rainy season.

Dark days and brights days are practically the same here. It is not like those busy places where people congregate some square to enjoy the sunshine. I live outside any built-up area. Though, generally, there are few residents in the Cypriot hinterlands. Three of them died recently of old age. Many more will follow soon. Nobody is taking their stead. The local communities are vanishing. I cannot remember the last time I met a local who is younger than me.

I am part of the problem. I do not have a family. Never got the chance. Nor do most of my relatives. Not even any of my friends back in Greece. Were it just me, I would blithely admit to my shortcomings. I do not have a fragile ego, anyway, and have no problem acknowledging that I am a loser. Such is the world. Not all can be winners. I am sure I could be doing things differently and trying to be an even better version of myself. Though I refuse to accept that everyone I know well is just defective. There are systemic issues at play.

The economic situation is the obvious explanation, though I find it wanting. The generations of my grandparents and their grandparents had 5+ children each. They were dirt pour, dealt with wars at home, while they had to work long hours for every sort of activity we now take for granted. Try to wash the clothes by hand, for example. Make your own bread for the family. Prepare sausages, cheese, pickles, jams, et cetera to understand how it is to not throw anything away. Carry the harvest with the donkeys under the beating sun. Work the fields with limited equipment while it is raining. Mend your shoes and patch your own clothes, as you will not get new ones. And so on. Every task was labour intensive and punishing. Their diet was strictly seasonal. They would eat whatever was available at the given time of the year. They could not afford to be picky: a life of austerity beats any capricious wants out of you.

Their communities were thriving though. There was vitality all around. The village closest to my house used to have a few thousand residents only a few decades ago. Most of them were young. Today there are only tens of them registered with the local authorities and none of them is brimming with zest. Nobody is curious to learn something new or try new experiences. Although they are still around, they have effectively checked out, waiting for their inevitable demise.

There is a trend among men to blame women for this state of affairs. I do not share that worldview, even though I acknowledge the excesses of toxic expressions of feminism. To me, what we are experiencing is a crisis of values; a crisis of perspective. We have forgotten how to make sacrifices. We have been conditioned by a brief period of relative affluence and its attendant technological arrangements to operate like children, as we demand immediate gratification in increasingly more areas of life. This is the era of the person who ages without growing mentally: the manchild or womanchild, else the adultchild.

Fundamentally, our culture has lost respect, indeed awareness, for magnitudes beyond one’s ego. The individual’s outlook is self-centred and self-aggrandising: to get what one desires instantly and in quantities that cannot possibly be exhausted, to prioritise one’s wants above everything else, and to treat personal feelings as the ironclad truth that the world must not assail.

From art to food, everything we experience as a stimulus is optimised to keep us hooked. There is no more watching a movie: you binge watch an entire series. You do not read the news, you doomscroll in search for the next ragebait or lewd material. What we eat is turbocharged in being salty, creamy, greasy, sugary, spicy, often most of those at once. Fine art is abandoning its finesse and subtlety in pursuit of intense colours and sharp sounds. Perhaps the want for gore is a matter of necessity to catch the attention of those whose baseline of stimulation is intensity as such.

This is a crisis of character. It cannot be addressed with a mere edict from the government. People need to change their ways to rediscover what always worked reasonably well. At the heart of such a pivot to sustainability is sacrifice. To give up something you want dearly. Sacrifice need not be bloody or, indeed, all that costly. It can consist of virtually inconsequential rituals and practices that introduce delayed gratification in everyday life. The goal is to depose the child within from the throne it should never be occupying. In other words, to train oneself to seek ever fewer of those easy-to-get-easy-to-lose rushes of excitement.

Thinking back to my grandparents, they knew how to incorporate sacrifice in their quotidian affairs. It empowered them to be patient throughout and to gracefully adapt to all the hardships. One ritual my grandmother, the matriarch of the family, would observe involved the slicing of the New Year’s cake. While everyone, including little boy me, was sitting at the table without making any noise, she would slowly create pieces out of the delicacy. Child me wanted the first piece and was being impatient. Grandma told me to remain silent and show respect. “The first piece belongs to God”, she said. “The second piece is for Jesus and the third for the Holy Spirit”. Then came all the relatives who were not with us and only then would we be assigned to a small piece of the cake.

Those two minutes of waiting were enough to teach me a valuable lesson for life. I could overcome my immediate urge to devour the dish. I had control over my self. I would do it for the common good. To recognise that there are others at the table who are also waiting patiently to be served. To further realise that I must extend my respect to potential participants, the relatives who were not present, and then the divine at-large. This was not a religious ceremony. My grandparents were secular people who held an amalgamation of beliefs drawing from the Greek religion, from Christianity, astrology, and all sorts of magic. Yet their routines were underpinned by wisdom, the kind of spirituality that one develops by dealing with the world, not by trying to escape from it.

Same principle for when I would ask my grandfather for a new toy. We would walk past a store and something flashy would capture my childish attention. Grandpa would calmly respond “sure, my child, I will buy it for you”, then he would pause for a second, “I will buy it on your birthday”. I knew that my birthday was months away and would protest. He taught me to wait and to measure my options. “A promise is a promise”, he pointed out. Ultimately, I learnt to know what I want, instead of falling for tricks and gimmicks. And I also developed the same attitude of treating my word as sacrosanct, which is why I do not talk big. When I state something, it is because I do it.

Those sacrifices were always small in scale. They did not constitute any kind of devastating loss. That cake was all ours in the end. We just had to go through that initial ritual. I now am at a point where I appreciate that dedicating the first pieces to the gods is of paramount importance. Not because the divine needs anything from us. No. Not even because I necessarily believe in it the way major religions preach. Again, no. God exists only when we act as if God exists. This is because the divine inspires us to pursue our highest as we think of the bigger picture. As such, our deeds will be of a better sort, to the extent possible. And, conversely, God does not exist when we behave as if God does not exist. For it is then that our affairs are defined by that which is most pernicious.

This is not a matter of religiosity. There are plenty of believers I have met who operate without respect for others or, indeed, themselves. Theirs is a godless modus operandi, in the aforementioned sense. It is religion in its tokenistic manifestation. Nothing but a series of rites without substance; idolatry in essence. Respect is towards all. It is inward and outward. And there are no exceptions to it: it happens at home, in the workplace, the temple, and the great outdoors. In short, it consists in recognising that there is a whole world out there that does not revolved around one’s volition.

Perhaps the most pernicious, albeit well-meaning, claim in the mainstream is how “God loves you the way you are”. While there is a kernel of hope there, it teaches us to be complacent, to indulge in our voracious wants, and then to maintain a transactional relationship with the cosmos. All because of how special and entitled we think we are.

In my world, the gods love nobody because they tend to the wellness of all. Theirs is a cosmic reach. There can be no exception therein, no special treatments, no shortcuts for the royalty, the parvenu middle class, and the modest workers. All are exposed to the vicissitudes that bring joy and grief. And all have to deal with the consequences of actions, whether it is their own or those of people in their milieu. There is no escape from the consequences, no matter how valuable you think you are, sweetheart.

As such, we have to persevere through the troubles and take what comes our way with grace. Only when we rediscover the spirit of sacrifice and its concomitant grit, will we start seeing vibrant communities again. Else we are moving towards our collective death. This is how nature gets rid of unsustainable arrangements, after all.

In the era of the adultchild, I am reminded of the Greek concept of «φυγοπονία» (feegoponia or feegopony), which literally means “flight from pain/hardship”. Feegopony is the defining quality of the adultchild and the midpoint of the modern society. It is up to each of us to put forward the best version of ourselves, to pursue excellence, and to do it with integrity. Maybe then we will remember how to appreciate the little things.

But I have no hope of this happening anytime soon. The mountains are being deserted because the adultchildren cannot tolerate the living conditions here. They have it all, yet complain about how much they are suffering. This is too cold, that is too dark, the other is too difficult, and so on. We get what we deserve. It saddens me to know that such an avoidable calamity seems inevitable.

I explain how we can appreciate the nuances by incorporating in our thinking the notion that there is no pure instantiation of good or evil. All that we are dealing with is in a state of admixture. What makes something “good” or “bad” is a matter of degree, relative to an inertial frame of reference.

Couched in those terms, I discuss the mechanics of conflict: it breaks a given status quo. As such, it has in it the potential to undo a given state of affairs which, in turn, may give way to something new.

By interpreting the world through its nuances, we move from the mode of judging to the mode of describing and of adapting accordingly. There is no opt-out from the things we do not like in this world.

As part of the presentation, I elaborate on why the Greeks think that the concept of “god of war” is appropriately descriptive. Though I also note that this is not a religious matter, but a view to how we make sense of phenomena.

Local time is 23:00. I spent a combined total of five hours today doing manual labour by the stream. Half of that was in the morning and the remainder early in the afternoon, with a meal and then some computer work in between and afterwards.

What I am doing outdoors these days is reinforcing my already robust flood-control infrastructure. This has been an especially rainy winter, coming off the back of two years of drought. As expected, soil erosion occurs everywhere. I see it in the flowing waters downstream at the base of the valley where I live: the waters are muddy and carry with them gravel.

I collect all the coarse earth I can find. From gravel to small stones and even large rocks that I can barely lift off the ground. Everything is useful to me. Wherever there is a slippery spot in my land, I apply gravel on top to improve traction. Depending on the specifics, I will even make small holes to place stones in and then add soil on top. In effect, I am making parts of the surface harder. Rocks are useful to stairs and to reinforce all the edge from where water could flow.

The idea is to have soft terrain everywhere that I plant vegetables and solid ground on all the pathways as well as the perimeter. Part of this is my commitment to not fill the place up with concrete or make it look like the walled garden of some mansion. I want it to remain natural, even though it clearly is a largely controlled environment.

There is no pressing reason to do all of this project now. I could wait for the rainy days to pass and commit to it during the summer. Though this is not how I operate. My principle is to not postpone things. If I can do something, I do it. When I say something, it is the law. There are no excuses. In the summer there will be something else to do or, maybe, I will just want to sunbathe and enjoy my day.

Maintaining projects long-term requires a certain level of enthusiasm. You have to enjoy what you are doing. I wake up every morning with the same zeal to carry out what I have committed to. I like that I have an impact on my immediate environment and that I experience the feedback loop between my actions and their consequences.

By discerning the results of my deeds, I have a better appreciation of my power as well as its limitations. I am powerful, in the sense of having the means to make certain things happen. Though I understand I am not omnipotent. Everything requires a considerable amount of physically taxing work. Those five hours today are barely noticeable in terms of changes to the surroundings. There is a little bit here and a little bit there. Nothing fancy.

Because I have been doing such work for long enough, I can estimate how many workhours some initiative will take. I do not feel the pressure to quit abruptly, as I never get frustrated with my progress. I also do not set lofty targets: whatever I commit to will be done when it is ready. The process is organic. If I need to stop, I do it without feeling guilty about it. Though, generally, I work for long hours. The point is that I do not turn myself into a servant of my own standards. I remain in control, since I interpret my rules mindfully. If the circumstances demand that I suspend their application, I do it without hesitation. Otherwise, I would be reckless.

The immediate feedback loop of what I do informs my situational awareness. I know what kind of initiative is viable and what is impractical. I have an intuitive understanding of the economics of my time. I will intentionally settle for a makeshift solution, if it buys me enough time to collect money in pursuit of an improved arrangement. Or, simply, if it allows me to prioritise another task in the meantime. I do not expect perfection, because I am aware of my limited resources. I love the little things, the nuances, those details that are otherwise easy to miss. I do not need much to feel happy.

People sometimes tell me something along the lines of “I like your life there and wish I could do the same”. It is one of those cases where the adage “be careful what you wish for” applies fully. What most fellas usually mean is that they would like to retain the life they have and combine it with the serenity of a rural setting. This is not how it is in my world though.

My life is one of austerity. Only a small part of that is my choice. There are inherent constraints to a life in a sparsely populated region that I cannot overcome. For example, I do not have any friends here. I know most of the locals, but we merely are on good terms. I do not have a deep connection with anybody. Nobody knows what I did today, whether I created something or not, if I have any intellectual pursuits… If I were to disappear tomorrow, nobody would lose anything. I am an individual in what effectively is an alien world.

When there are few people around, people who are considerably older than you, you do not get to choose who you spend your time with. Either you pick the one option for socialisation or you just spend your days alone. I do the latter. The good thing is that I can either work on my projects without interruptions or go for hikes with my dogs. So I am always doing something I enjoy. Though the point is that I can tolerate this state of affairs because I do not ask for much. Another person, especially someone who thinks that my life is cool but has never lived this way before, will probably not have the same tolerance for uneventfulness.

Against this backdrop, maintaining projects for years is a reliable way to remain focused and to not be disheartened. I tend to the work that requires my input. Its results benefit my life in a tangible way. I remain at the peak of my powers, as sharp and active as ever, largely because what I do does not take a toll on my state of mind. I will continue to quietly do my thing in this little corner. Nobody will notice, though I always take stock of the progress, which is all that matters.

It is time to go to bed now. The dogs have been sleeping for a couple of hours already. We will all be up at sunrise, ready to start our morning with the same decisiveness that defined this day.

Emacs has a package called emacspeak, which provides an audio interface to the computer. Arkadiusz explains how this is a powerful piece of technology because it benefits greatly from the introspectability and extensibility of Emacs. I get an idea of how emacspeak works and how it can augment the experience by giving feedback about the given context.

Another Emacs package that has context-aware functionality is hyperbole. Arkadiusz considers it an excellent addition to his workflow. With hyperbole Arkadiusz has developed the intuition to quickly act on so-called “implicit buttons”, which are portions of text that hyperbole can do something useful on. There also are “explicit buttons”, which Arkadiusz has designed himself to perform actions that streamline his workflow.

As we gradually move away from discussing Emacs, I ask Arkadiusz about his study of Chinese. He tells me the experience he had back in Poland, his native country, and how he was able to continue his studies in Italy. Part of this discussion covers Arkadiusz’s blindness and describes how he showed strength of character to not let a setback derail his life.

I then want to learn more about the connection between Chinese and Slavic cultures. Arkadiusz suggests that there are some shared values between the two cultures, even though politics may sometimes get in the way. I learn how people value virtues such as hard work and honesty. To this end, I comment that the ethos is essentially about not settling for mediocrity when you can have excellence.

Our discussion continues into accessibility beyond the computer. Arkadiusz tells me how it is to live as a blind person and how one depends on the infrastructure being accessible. To illustrate the point, Arkadiusz tells me that he could never live like me alone in the mountains, even if he likes to, because some of the essentials for him would not be available. Along those lines, Arkadiusz shares his thoughts about not overly protecting people, such as in the case of special schools, as that tends to have adverse long-term effects: people have to be exposed to society at-large and thus need to be able to cope with it.

As we continue talking, we eventually get to the point of Artificial Intelligence, which Arkadiusz correctly distinguishes from machine learning. I want to learn what Arkadiusz thinks about the present state of affairs. Arkadiusz explains his moral reservations about AI and how, fundamentally, it being controlled by a handful of corporations is harmful. We discuss several related issues along those lines, including matters of personal creativity.

Links from Arkadiusz

These pertain to a talk Arkadiusz gave at the Pragma 2025 conference about using the computer as a blind person.

1. Pragma video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry77etLCAfg.
2. Presentation repository: https://github.com/Nuno69/Pragma2025.

About “Prot Asks”

In this video series, I talk to anybody who is interested to have a video call with me (so do contact me if you want!). The topics cover anything related to Emacs, technology, and life in general. More here: https://protesilaos.com/prot-asks.

At 21:30 Europe/Athens time I will do a live stream (~30 minutes from this writing). The plan is to continue some of the work I am doing on my denote-sequence package for Emacs.

I do not have any work this evening, so I will do a live stream. My plan is to do some programming. I have a new idea for the denote-sequence package that I will try to implement.

If there are any questions from the chat, I will answer them. They can be about what I will be working on or any other topic.

Talk to you soon!

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.1.0 on 2026-03-23

This version introduces minor refinements to the underlying code as well as four new themes.

The new themes are as follows:

• doric-almond: A light theme that combines green and magenta colours. It evokes a feeling of early springtime, as the almond tree is among the first to bloom.

• doric-coral: A light theme with a warmer feel that combines red, orange, and cyan colours against a sandy backdrop.

• doric-magma: A dark theme with a dominant red and orange style. The combination of those intense hues with lighter greys creates the necessary balance.

• doric-walnut: A dark theme with an overall green style, drawing inspiration from the broad leaves of the walnut tree. The green colours are combined with shades of brown and grey to make for a pleasant presentation.

Enjoy!

The rainy days continue. Twice I went with the dogs for a walk while it was pouring, only to encounter heavy rainfall along the way. We could not afford to stay indoors any longer. The dogs need it and I enjoy my hikes as well. I have ran out of dry shoes to wear, though this is not a major problem: I can always walk barefoot, which I have done plenty of times. Granted, that is not my preferred mode of traversing the mountains, as it increases the risk of injury. Though I can tolerate it—and I am extra cautious.

This morning I discovered that the side of the slope opposite my land collapsed under the pressure. The stream below it is very strong right now, as are the showers coming from above. My side remains intact because of the flood-control projects I have been doing. I rely on natural means, such as grass/herbs/bushes for holding together the surface level and roots of trees to keep the underground in place. Though I have also added rocks and whatever odds and ends I could gather to function as barriers that shield the land from the running waters.

There are landslides in many parts around my area. Large boulders have rolled downhill. I expect more of the same for the next ~10 days. It is what happens after two years of drought. Though the human element cannot be underestimated.

Most farmers have this misbegotten notion that everything in and around their land should stay “clean”. They thus cut down everything, poison it, and burn it, leaving a near-naked landscape in their wake: neat and tidy, for sure. Then, when this kind of weather finally arrives, they can only marvel at what I may poetically describe as “the wrath of the gods”.

The gods are not interested in avenging anybody or in helping us fight for some cause. That sort of narrative gives us too much credit. What is happening here is a matter for people to use their common sense, take responsibility for their deeds, and stop blaming their lack of foresight on the putative whims of the divine.

Everything matters in the system. There is nothing that you can eliminate without incurring a cost. Everything you do has far-reaching implications, whose effects condition the subsequent workings of the system. You remove a so-called “useless” tree from the edges of your land, thus creating a vacuum. In its stead shall arise a new order, whose particularities you have not foreseen and no longer control for. It starts with a small slide until it turns into a deep fissure.

What happens in our natural milieu also applies to human affairs, even though we mistakenly fancy ourselves as occupying a special place in the natural order. For example, international relations exhibit the same pattern of a power vacuum being filled in by newer forces. There is no such thing as idleness or rest. The cultures which think they have done their part and can now “just chill” are those which will go extinct. But I digress.

The point is that it is irresponsible to be complacent about any given status quo. Perform rigorous inspections. Question how things are. If something stands the test of time, try to understand it instead of dismissing it as old and parochial: it probably encodes millennia of wisdom, whose finer points elude you. In other words, do not be smug and do not take what you have for granted. This can be about the land you are homesteading or the polity you are a member of. Everything can degenerate quickly if left unchecked.

Complacency is, at its core, a turn inward. It happens when the person or group no longer has situational awareness. They do not pay attention to their environment. Indeed, they think of their surroundings as inert “environment”, as that which merely envelops their subject, instead of a living organism with its own patterns of behaviour: a system of systems all the way up and down. To turn inward is to think of oneself as special, at least in the belief that one is immune to damage or decline.

Complacency is typically made manifest in views that tout humankind as exceptional in this world. “God loves you”, is an oft spoken claim. “You” in particular? How cute! Will the application of the rules be suspended just because of “you”, darling? Of course not. I think it is more appropriate, for the sake of artistic expression, to say that the gods do not tend to our wellness in particular, either individually or collectively, but to the cosmic balance at-large. The rest is your problem. If, for example, you do not account for the mechanics of the living universe that you are a part of, and if you thus proceed to destroy the elements of it whose functioning you do not understand, then no god will come to your rescue once calamity inevitably strikes.

When farmers here opt for the easy solution of spraying poison all over the place and setting the rest on fire, they think they have discovered some miraculous “science” that lets them get the job done in a few minutes instead of labouring at the farm all day. In other words, they fancy themselves as smart. What they do not consider are the externalities. There is a cost to keeping the place “clean”, only it is beyond the horizon of their short-term thinking.

All of this is an exercise in prescience and decisiveness; an exercise in assuming responsibility and taking the initiative. I knew that there would come a day where the severe droughts would be followed by intense precipitation. For several months since the early days I got here I laboured to secure my position. And I remain vigilant in case of an emergency.

Everything continues to flow. To live in this world, one has to be adaptable, poised to act when the situation demands it, while also ready to change their ways if the results are not as expected. Above all, though, one must show respect and self-awareness in recognising their limits. We all learn from mistakes. The key is to embed all teachings into our lifestyle, without thinking too highly of what we do.

I can hear the running waters from my room. I enjoy listening to them all day. This is a beautiful state of affairs. Whether it is so despite or because of its latent danger, I cannot tell. Perhaps both. Awe is, after all, the combination of admiration and fear. What I do get as part of the input is also a stark reminder that this world is not (i) revolving around me and (ii) conspiring in my favour. Underestimate the phenomena or overestimate your abilities and your life shall be forfeit.

22:45 local time. Heavy rainfall, strong winds, and low temperature. This is how the whole day unfolded. The forecast is for more rain until the end of the month, albeit at a lesser intensity.

The flood-control and anti-erosion projects I have been working on have held well. Today was the most demanding stress test. I started thinking of how to control floods at a time when there were barely any rainy days. I knew that I needed to be ready for that eventuality. But I do not rest on my laurels. My approach has been a success thus far, though the execution of it can always be improved.

This morning I inspected the parts bordering the nearby stream. They could benefit from some further reinforcements, namely, an extra layer of stone and gravel. I had already collected a large pile of gravel from the stream before it got flooded. It probably fills up three handcarts. I then walked by the nearby river to collect large rocks. Some of them I could barely lift off the ground. Little by little, I placed them in the handcart and placed them where they needed to be.

In the coming days, I will collect more stones. I need them to reinforce the stairs on the side of the hillock where the solar panels are. When I first did those, I merely carved them into the mountain. They are just soil. Continuous exposure to rainfall will turn any stepped surface into a slide. This is because of how the water accumulates until it eventually flows down, thus movign the soil with it and creating the slope. Adding stones on the top and the base of each stair ensures that rainwater cannot have this effect. I have successfully done this already in some other parts. Time to update the oldest staircase I built here almost three years ago.

Doing anything in the rain is not comfortable. At least not when you need to muster the willpower to start working. Past experience helps though, as you know that the initial discomfort quickly fades. The difficulty, then, consists in not losing your resolve within those first few seconds. Having a good reason to act is also helpful, if not essential: it compels you to move outside of your comfort zone and it makes you more invested in a positive outcome. If you do not believe in the cause, you will struggle to cope with the challenge. Belief is what grants a person the power to fight against all the odds.

What underpins my efforts is the longer-term understanding of my situation. I do not feel entitled to wellness. It was never easy out there, except when I was a baby being taken care of by my parents. I accept all the intermediate problems as part of the larger process that is my life. I have my land and am improving it as I go. It will eventually be a decent and safe place. This is how an acorn develops into a vulnerable sprout, then a flimsy little tree, until it eventually becomes a majestic oak tree.

I understand that I cannot rush things into existence. They can only happen organically, as the cumulative effect of deeds that occur at a smaller scale. Everything takes time. To move a few large rocks here I need a couple of hours. To then do something useful with them is another labour-intensive endeavour that will typically take up an entire morning.

When you are in the mode of doing, patience comes naturally. It would make no sense to become whinny, for example, about the fact that my original staircase is not perfect. I understood the trade-offs back then when I needed to have access to the hillock in order to install the solar panels and move on to the rest of the house. And I remain aware of the costs and benefits at each stage.

Conversely, when you operate exclusively at the level of aspirations and wishful thinking, you have no frame of reference, no sense of the economics of your limited resources, and thus no room for patience. Same principle for disconcerted, ill-thought initiatives: you have to know what you want and what your priorities are. Having electricity and a roof over my head was more important at that time than making sure the staircase would not be prone to erosion after a few years of continuous exposure to the elements.

It is fine to be demanding and to seek perfection. I want to be the best version of myself and continuously try to push the boundaries. Though perfectionism can easily lead to inaction when it develops into an intolerance towards intermediate—occasionally makeshift and outright unappealing—arrangements.

I know not to worry about marginal gains when I have bigger issues to focus on. The “good enough” or the “workable” is all I need at this point. The strategy is one of preserving my vitality, the core of my presence here, and then gradually expanding its reach. There are so many interesting things I can do in my land. It would be cool, for instance, to have a traditional oven somewhere outside. But this is an item for the wishlist. It cannot be done now or in the foreseeable future.

I am aware of my past and of how I ended up in this predicament. I understand the “why” I am putting myself through the rigours. And I have knowledge of the “what” I am working towards. The mind is clear. There are no distractions, no unattainable and ultimately wasteful wants. My thoughts will simply not set me up for failure. The body is thus empowered to be tenacious and relentless.

These days I am making raised garden beds for the coming spring. In them I will plant tomatoes, zucchinis, and onions. It is still too early to start with the vegetables, but I want the land to be ready as soon as the temperatures get a bit warmer.

I also continuously inspect every spot in my land to have an idea of how it is developing. This is a living system. It does not remain static. At one spot, I identified eleven new blackthorns. They are less than thirty centimetres in height, yet are growing fast. I had cleared the land there last year, which created a vacuum that those shrubs will soon fill in. At another location there are three new almond tree offshoots that have just popped out of the ground. Within six months they will be over a metre tall.

Whenever I clear some land, I do it with the intent of giving this living system that I participate in a certain direction. I do not destroy it, even when I cut something down or create a new opening. Many people will bring their notions for the living room to the outdoors. They want the fields to look “clean”, which is far more invasive of a project than whatever one does to their living room.

Sometimes I get questions from labourers heading to the mountains: “why did you leave the grass here?”, to which I respond “because it does no harm”. They are used to spraying chemicals everywhere. I walk past vineyards only to witness the grass in a yellow-red colour, a sign that it is rapidly decaying from poisoning. There is nothing there to hold the soil together. Once the land is dry and prone to erosion, those same people bring in diggers and tractors to fix the mess they created. But they never pause to consider that they could cooperate with the land instead of being in direct conflict with it.

To me, my presence here is not a zero-sum game. I am not dominating my area. I am shaping it, while giving other organisms the room to thrive. They benefit from my initiatives, while I enjoy the benign effect their life has on my stay here. I consider myself responsible for their wellness. Even though I plan to live in this place for the rest of my days, I see myself as a guest. I want to respect what I have found and leave it in a good condition for those who will come after I am gone.

Because of the severe droughts these past two years, I did not have success in my farming endeavours. None of the vegetables made it. While many of the trees I planted got burnt. Still, the side effects of my careful labour are tremendously positive. There are so many new trees and shrubs that are growing. Same for grapevines and aromatic rose bushes. I have lots of them now.

All the transplants I have done these past few months have been successful. I mostly focused on moving aromatic roses at the perimeter of my land. They look beautiful, which is always a plus. But they also perform the vital function of keeping the topmost layer of soil intact. In other words, they prevent soil erosion coming from direct rainfall. I combine those with rocks, to make the edges extra resilient, given how grass and stone quickly form virtually unbreakable bonds.

This winter has been especially rainy and there is forecast for yet more heavy rainfall in the days to come. I am glad that all my work is showing signs of progress, despite the setbacks with the droughts. I know that I am moving towards the right direction. I have a clear vision for my land and recognise that every form of life here has a role to play.

In about a month from now the oak trees will start blossoming. At the early stage they must be releasing some kind of sweet substance that the honeybees adore. Whenever I walk outside during those days I hear a constant buzz from what probably is millions of honeybees at work. It does not disturb me. I stand there in admiration. I find it remarkable how there is immanent reason throughout. One single insect embodies know-how whose full extent eludes us.

I have observed time and again how this living system adapts to my actions, in the same way I respond to the conditions it creates. I clear some spot of land only to find that new vegetation grows there. I plant some canes and then encounter doves take shelter among them. I refrain from pruning dead branches off of some of the older almond trees and each day am greeted to a crow or magpie sitting there. Birds pick those branches because they provide a clear vantage point.

When a crow or magpie sees me, it does its familiar noises while looking at me. I am confident that they know me. They must be recognising the patterns in my motions. All animals do so: it is a prerequisite for their survival to have situational awareness.

Plants are the same. They know, for example, that the spot is clear for them to make their move. They understand how there is better exposure to sunlight as well as improved access to air and, thus, rainwater and humidity. Similarly, a root that gets exposed to the air knows that it has to turn itself into an offshoot. It too is mindful.

I do not mean to suggest that other forms of life are human-like in their qualities, but that what we think of as peculiar to humanity is actually widespread.

Springtime is fast approaching. The more I understand my immediate surroundings, the less important I feel I am. It is wonderful to be aware of what is happening and to know that the world will carry on without me.

“What do you do in your life?” One is inclined to write about their career in the most favourable terms possible. I am content with “I create clearings”.

Table of Contents

1. This is a holistic introduction to Emacs
2. Emacs as a capable text editor
3. Support for Unicode
4. Include several fonts on the same page
5. Emacs can display graphics alongside text
6. Emacs is an extensible text editor
7. Extending Emacs creates a community
8. The extensibility of Emacs happens live
9. My view without the “presentation mode”
10. Emacs puts you in control of your computing
11. Your control extends to all workflows
12. For an integrated computing environment
13. Many apps do not combine nicely
14. Emacs makes your workflow consistent
15. Integrated computing in practice
16. Emacs makes integration easier
17. Integration gives you emergent properties
18. This is plain text that works like a slideshow
19. Consistency facilitates productivity
20. Consistency remove the cognitive burden
21. The consistency of Emacs in action
22. Use Emacs Lisp to configure everything
23. Learning Emacs Lisp improves the experience
24. Emacs embodies software freedom
25. The freedom of Emacs helps with learning
26. Emacs is not only for programmers
27. You benefit from all the Emacs extensions
28. Some powerful extensions are built-in
29. The documentation culture of Emacs
30. Most packages have high quality manuals
31. Emacs has a steep learning curve
32. Do not skip the manuals
33. Adjust your expectations
34. Why it is worth learning how to use Emacs
35. The initial effort pays off long-term
36. Good luck and have fun!

Hello everyone! My name is Protesilaos, also known as “Prot”.

This presentation is a modified version of the talk I gave last night at the FLOSS @ Oxford event: https://ox.ogeer.org/event/computing-in-freedom-with-gnu-emacs-protesilaos-stavrou.

It was an event organised by people from the University of Oxford. I thank them for giving me the opportunity to participate in their programme.

I want to have this modified version here for people who do not read my website. They may not be aware that I talked at this Oxford event.

Having the video on this platform means that everyone can benefit from it.

1 This is a holistic introduction to Emacs

In this presentation I will talk to you about GNU Emacs, or simply, “Emacs”. Emacs is a program you run on your computer. I am using it right now for this presentation.

Emacs is free or libre software. It allows you to read all of its source code, to modify it, and to share it with your customisations. Thus you contribute to—and benefit from—a community of welcoming Emacs users.

I will tell you what all this means in practice and how you can improve your computing experience by switching to Emacs.

2 Emacs as a capable text editor

When you first start using Emacs, it feels like a regular text editor program.

You move the cursor around and edit text. Nothing obviously impressive out-of-the-box.

As a text editor, Emacs is highly capable. It has all sorts of keyboard shortcuts that let you efficiently operate on text.

You can control Emacs without relying on the mouse, if you want.

3 Support for Unicode

Emacs supports the Unicode standard, which is essential for inclusivity of peoples.

The world’s scripts can be expressed in Emacs. I am a native Greek speaker.

I can use functionality that is built into Emacs to switch to the Greek alphabet in order to write something, such as to say «καλησπέρα», which means “good evening”.

I can even spell out “Dao De Jing” (道德经), which is the title of a book from ancient China.

Plus emoji: 🦚🦬🐉.

4 Include several fonts on the same page

The multitude of scripts can be present in the same document.

This is an advantage for multilingual people like myself or those who do research that involves many natural languages.

Emacs can combine several fonts in the same page as well as different colours.

Each fonts can have its own attributes, such as for its relative size and typographic intensity.

Same idea for colours.

On my screen right now, I am already combining two different font styles: that of the heading and the body of the text.

5 Emacs can display graphics alongside text

Emacs does not limit you to a text-only interface. It can also display images and PDF documents. Below I have a link to an image file. I will now type a keyboard shortcut to reveal this image. And I will do it again to hide it.

This, by the way, is a spot somewhere in my mountains.

6 Emacs is an extensible text editor

Although you can benefit from using Emacs as a generic text editor, what really appeals to people like me is the option to extend Emacs.

“Extend” here means to introduce new functionality; functionality that is not available in the default program you install on your computer.

These extensions are written in the same programming language as most of Emacs. It is a programming language called “Emacs Lisp” or “Elisp”.

You can extend Emacs on your own, by writing some program in Elisp, or you can download an existing extension that the community has made available.

7 Extending Emacs creates a community

For example, when I create a new extension for Emacs, I publish it under the terms of a free software license—the same terms that Emacs uses.

Others can then download my extension and use it as they prefer. If they want, they can make their own modifications on top, which may introduce other extensions that I had not thought of in my original implementation.

And if those users follow my example, then I can also benefit from their additions once they publish them.

As such, there exists a community of enthusiastic users of Emacs who care about sharing their works with the rest of the world.

8 The extensibility of Emacs happens live

Users can extend Emacs by running some Emacs Lisp program. Such a program can be as short as a single line. Or it can be as long as it needs to be. It does not matter.

Users run the program and Emacs immediately does what the program renders possible.

For example, I am doing this presentation inside of Emacs. But Emacs does not have a “presentation mode” built into it. I thus developed my own extension which empowers me to do what I am doing right now.

Let me toggle off my presentation mode to show you what I mean.

9 My view without the “presentation mode”

Notice that the display has changed.My main font is monospaced now.

The headings are smaller than they were before: they are the same size as the rest of the text. There is no number next to the heading anymore.

Then, there is a bar at the bottom of my screen, with information about what I am working on. On the side, there are line numbers, indicating where my cursor is in this file. Plus, my current line is highlighted with a distinct background colour. Let me shift it up and down to illustrate this point.

All those elements are useful while I am programming. But they look distracting when I wish to focus on some portion of text. So, I just type the keyboard shortcut I have and—voilà!—I get the style I prefer.

10 Emacs puts you in control of your computing

You may wonder: why do I even need a customisable text editor?

The answer is about control. You are in charge of what you use and how you use it. You can piece together a workflow that works the way you prefer.

This presentation mode I toggled on and off earlier behaves exactly how I want. I decided which set of interface tweaks to apply. Another user may have a different preference in this regard.

For instance, they may like having line numbers on the side of the screen. There is no right or wrong answer. What matters is that Emacs gives us the means to do what makes sense to us.

11 Your control extends to all workflows

Now apply this principle to everything you can use Emacs for: this will generally be a text-centric project.

I run my agenda exclusively through Emacs.

I handle all my email correspondence with Emacs.

I do programming and I write prose, such as blog posts for my website and books or technical manuals.

For each of these, I know that Emacs will empower me to perform my tasks without arbitrary restrictions.

Emacs lets me use Elisp to modify how I do my emails, for instance, and how I present tasks in my custom agenda view.

12 For an integrated computing environment

Without Emacs, I would not be in a position to control my computing experience to the extent I do.

The reason is that I would be relying on many different applications. Each application has its own interface and design paradigms.

Each application is configured, if at all, in a way that is specific to it. Customisations in one application do not carry over to other applications.

And, if we consider the important implementation details, each application may configurable in its own programming language.

In other words, that is not an integrated computing experience.

13 Many apps do not combine nicely

To have the same degree of control that Emacs makes possible, I would have to hope that somehow all those disparate applications would conspire in my favour.

That is wishful thinking.

The reality is that piecing together many different applications is an exercise in frustration and the path to a life of ever-distracting context switching.

14 Emacs makes your workflow consistent

Having everything I need inside of Emacs ensures that things happen in a manner that is consistent.

All customisations are written in the same programming language, namely, Emacs Lisp.

What I define for one context, such as this “presentation mode”, can be used in another context.

For example, I can have this presentation style enabled when I read emails. Why?

Because it can make it more comfortable for me at a certain hour. And I can even automate this with conditional logic, so it happens on its own when I open a new email under certain circumstances.

15 Integrated computing in practice

When you work with many applications that do not play nicely together, you cannot do something that the developers have not envisaged.

For example, your email client likely does not have access to a “presentation mode”. Same for your other applications.

Similarly, your many applications will not necessarily know how to read and interpret the configurations you have in one application.

Suppose you define your favourite colour scheme for your email client. You take the time to consider the harmonies and use precise typography to your liking.

Now, you switch to your calendar application and none of that work carries over: you have to do it again, assuming it is even possible.

16 Emacs makes integration easier

Colours and styles may seem like relatively small issues. But they are indicative of something greater: disparate applications do not work together seamlessly.

Emacs does not have this problem. You define something for one context you have in mind and, eventually, it can be used in another context that initially you had not even thought of.

For example, in my Emacs I wrote a small function to quickly copy the “thing” at where the cursor is. This is useful when I do programming, as the “thing” can be an entire expression, like the definition of a function. But the “thing” may also be a link that I got in my email.

I had not thought of that use-case in advance. Yet it was trivial to have my function do what I need in this once unforeseen situation.

17 Integration gives you emergent properties

The integrated computing environment of Emacs is more than the sum of its parts.

This is because you can combine different pieces of functionality in ways that the original developer had not foresaw.

You do not simply have your writing, your email, your agenda, et cetera, in Emacs.

You have the functionality of one in tandem with the functionality of another. And you draw linkages between them as you see fit.

Consider once again this presentation I am now doing. What I have in front of me is the transcript of my talk. This is a plain text document, which I can edit live. Let me CAPITALISE THIS to illustrate the point.

18 This is plain text that works like a slideshow

I have made this file look a little bit like a series of slides.

Notice that if I scroll up and down, which I will do shortly, you only get the current section I am reading from: you do not have access to the rest of the document. I will scroll up and down now.

This is a feature known as “narrowing”. Let me “widen” the view and then try to scroll again. You will now be exposed to the rest of the text.

The original developer of this “narrowing” facility did not know how someone like me would make use of it.

I have it here for my presentation. Each heading becomes its own pseudo-slide. I have narrowing for my emails, when I want to read a portion of the text in a more focused way. It is all about how I choose to do my computing.

19 Consistency facilitates productivity

For many years before switching to Emacs, I did not enjoy using the computer.

I needed too much time to accomplish every single task.

I could never find any of my files in a timely fashion because there was no program that would enforce on my behalf a predictable file-naming scheme.

All my notes were eventually not retrievable. This made them useless. Data you save is only good if you can find what you are searching for.

My music collection was inconsistent because I needed special software to write the metadata… In short, I was not as productive as I would like to be.

And, above all, it was not fun.

20 Consistency remove the cognitive burden

Most of my work at the time was centred around the email client and a word processor.

The email client had its own subsystem for handling reminders for tasks. The format of those tasks was not interoperable with other programs.

I could not access the tasks with my favourite text editor. I thus had to use the clunky interface of the email client, which was never designed for task management—and was not configurable.

And then I had all the cognitively burdensome annoyances of my two applications looking quite different from each other.

My emails did not behave like my documents, which made it harder for me to flip between the two and continue writing. I would roll my eyes each time.

21 The consistency of Emacs in action

Emacs has elevated my computing experience.

I have been much more productive ever since I switched to it. Allow me to demonstrate a tiny bit of what I do each day.

I will temporarily exit the presentation mode in this window.

Then, in the bottom half of my screen, I will open my email client to read a message I got.

Once you follow my switch to the email client, I will hide the window that shows this presentation.

After that I will switch to my agenda to record a task and review what I have to do.

All this is done inside of Emacs. Time for action!

22 Use Emacs Lisp to configure everything

What I just demonstrated is a very small part of what I do every single day.

There is much more, though I cannot cover it all in this presentation.

The point, however, is the consistency of the experience; consistency throughout.

I have customised my email client by writing some Emacs Lisp code for it. I have done the same for the custom agenda I have. And much more.

Every time I work with Emacs Lisp, I acquire skills that are applicable outside the confines of the problem I am solving.

For example, by configuring email the way I want, I pick up programming skills that I can then apply to the design of my custom agenda.

23 Learning Emacs Lisp improves the experience

This is an investment that pays off more and more.

Emacs will adapt to match my evolving needs. Each new workflow I incorporate in my Emacs setup will thus benefit from all the knowledge and features I have accumulated.

I do not have to relearn everything because I am not switching to another application.

I do not have to throw away all the work I did all those years. It is here to stay.

I do not feel the pressure to try the new shiny app of the day. I did that many times and always regretted it. I lost my data and time in the process.

Because I am rooted in this stability of Emacs, I remain productive and efficient.

24 Emacs embodies software freedom

I mentioned earlier that Emacs is free or libre software. This means that you can read its source code, modify it, and share your changes with others.

Emacs has a license that gives users power. There is no corporation that can take Emacs away from us. It belongs to the community and we all tend to its wellness.

In the case of Emacs, software freedom is not just about the license. It informs how you use the program. Emacs makes such freedom an irriducible part of its functionality.

You can, at any moment, ask Emacs what does a keyboard shortcut actually do. What is the definition of a function. What is the value of a variable. And you may even access the source code to check for yourself.

I will demonstrate this right now.

25 The freedom of Emacs helps with learning

I actually learnt to program in Emacs Lisp by exercising this freedom.

I would tinker with Emacs and continuously check on its state. What does this do? Which function is called by that keyboard shortcut? How is a program able to determine if the file is not saved?

I wanted to learn how, for example, we move down a line. From there, I learnt that we can move down many lines at once.

I then figured that we can move down the lines and then also do something else, such as place the cursor at the end of the line and create a pulse effect to bring attention to it.

Not only did I learn how to configure Emacs, I even wrote tens of extensions for it. I have also authored a libre book titled “Emacs Lisp Elements”. This freedom is not theoretical. I did not have a background in programming, yet was empowered to act and to grow as a person.

26 Emacs is not only for programmers

Emacs is extended with Emacs Lisp. If you know how to program in that language, you can be extra opinionated and particular about the way Emacs facilitates your work.

But even without any expertise of this sort, you can still do much of what you like. Remember that I started using Emacs without a background in programming.

Emacs blurs the distinction between user and developer. Many of the developers actually start out as users like myself. They learn along the way and, eventually, they contribute to the development of Emacs.

I even have written code that is in core Emacs: my modus-themes as well as several other smaller patches.

27 You benefit from all the Emacs extensions

The Emacs community has developed a rich corpus of extensions. You do not need to invent anything right away in order to be productive.

We call these extensions “packages”, as they are distributed in a way that makes them easy to install and then use directly.

The Emacs program you will download on your computer ships with plenty of packages built-in.

Depending on your needs, you may not even have to install anything from what the community has to offer.

Though if you want a package, it is fairly easy to get it and run it on your system.

Emacs is not picky about how you should use it. You are empowered to be opinionated.

28 Some powerful extensions are built-in

For example, Emacs ships with a package called org or “Org mode”. At its core, this is a markup language. I am using it right now in this document.

Notice how lines that start with an asterisk function as headings. This is what the markup does.

Org lets you write documents, including books, handle your tasks, organise your agenda, and much more. It is a powerhouse.

There are so many things to discover in Emacs as well as the broader package ecosystem.

Emacs as a whole provides high quality documentation that explains everything.

29 The documentation culture of Emacs

When you install Emacs, you get with it plenty of technical manuals. There is also an interactive tutorial to help you make sense of the basics.

Furthermore, when you ask Emacs for help about the definition of a function or the value of a variable, you receive the documentation for the thing you are looking for.

The expectation for all contributions to the official Emacs program is that the code is well-documented and the manual is updated accordingly.

30 Most packages have high quality manuals

Core Emacs sets the standard of what good documentation looks like. Package developers follow this practice.

For example, my denote package has a manual that is over 7500 lines long. It exceeds 52000 words. In it users find detailed instructions as well as code snippets that they can copy and use outright. And this is not the exception. All my packages are like that, to the extent necessary. Most other developers do the same.

As a community, we have access to so much knowledge for free and in freedom. If we are committed enough, we can learn from others and thus become better ourselves. We do so in a spirit of sharing and caring. For me, specifically, all this was of great help. I am self-taught because I received all those great resources from the community. I consider it my duty to give back in kind.

31 Emacs has a steep learning curve

Because Emacs is extensible, there is practically no limit to what you can do with it. At least this is the case for all tasks that are text-heavy.

Emacs will just gracefully evolve to match your requirements, provided you can extend it on your own or with a relevant package.

The downside, however, is that it is not easy to become proficient in it. If you are committed, you can learn the basics within the first few days.

Though you will need to invest a few weeks or months to become skillful. It depends on how much effort you put into it, what sort of work you are doing, and what your background is.

I learnt the basics within a few days. I started writing my own Emacs Lisp within weeks. And within a year I had my modus-themes moved into core Emacs.

32 Do not skip the manuals

Several “starter kits” are available to help you get started. They set things up so that you do not need to discover everything at the outset.

The new version of Emacs (Emacs 31) will even come with a “newcomers theme”, which configures several settings in advance.

These can make the learning curve a bit smoother. For me, anything that improves the onboarding experiences is a plus.

Though I do not think that Emacs will ever become “plug and play”. This is due to its sheer depth and extensibility. It does so much that you still need to invest the time and effort into learning it.

However you start, the most reliable study involves the manuals. Those are written for the benefit of the user. Read them carefully.

33 Adjust your expectations

What I can say with confidence is that Emacs is not for tourists. You cannot switch to it with the expectation that you will have a good time right away.

No. That will not work. There simply is no shortcut to excellence.

I encourage you to take it one step at a time. Emacs will make you more productive, provided you are patient enough to unlock its virtually boundless potential.

Take it slow and be methodical. Rely on the official manual no matter your starting point. Read from it and gradually incorporate its insights into your workflow.

The community—myself included—has plenty of resources to complement that study. Blog posts, video tutorials, books… But do not skip the official manual. Learning it slowly means that you will become proficient faster than you otherwise would.

34 Why it is worth learning how to use Emacs

I already talked about the technical side of things with regard to the integrated computing environment. Now combine that with two facts:

1. Emacs is free software. This means that we as a community are its custodians.
2. GNU Emacs has been around since the 1980s. It will stay relevant for decades to come.

Emacs is not old, it is timeless. This is because it can be extended in a spirit of freedom.

Whatever new technology or idea we have as a collective, we can eventually bring it into Emacs.

This way, our integrated computing environment adapts with the times.

Thus Emacs remains ever-relevant.

35 The initial effort pays off long-term

Couched in those terms, the initial effort you will put into learning Emacs is actually not that much.

You have to maintain a longer-term view of this project.

If you are patient, Emacs will be one of the most reliable tools you will ever use throughout your life. And I say this as a handy man myself, someone who uses many tools for manual labour, having built the house I am in, among others.

I switched to Emacs in the summer of 2019. It is almost 7 years already. I see no reason not to use it for the next 7 years, if I can.

I will still want to write articles, do programming, maintain my agenda, and probably make presentations like this one.

36 Good luck and have fun!

Remember that you will not learn Emacs over the weekend. You are in it for the long-term. Take it slow and you will enjoy the experience.

This is all I have for you today folks. Thank you very much for your attention!

You can find this and everything else I publish on my website: https://protesilaos.com.

I had written the transcript ahead of time to make my presentation more accessible. The event was held live as a Jitsi call. There were questions from participants, which I answered. A recording of the event will be available before the end of this week. I will update this article to include a link to the video.

UPDATE 2026-03-16 07:49 +0200: The video is here: https://ogeer.org/ox/rec/emacs/.

Below is the text of my talk. It is titled “Computing in freedom with GNU Emacs”. Note that some parts of my presentation only make sense in the video format, though I tried to describe in the transcript what I was demonstrating.

Table of Contents

1. Emacs as a capable text editor
2. Emacs can display graphics alongside text
3. Emacs is an extensible text editor
4. The extensibility of Emacs happens live
5. Emacs puts you in control of your computing
6. The promise of an integrated computing environment
7. The integrated computing environment in practice
8. Integration gives you emergent properties
9. Consistency facilitates productivity
10. The consistency of Emacs in action
11. Use Emacs Lisp to configure everything
12. Emacs is the embodiment of software freedom
13. You do not need to be a programmer to use Emacs
14. The documentation culture of Emacs
15. Emacs has a steep learning curve
16. Why it is worth learning how to use Emacs
17. Good luck and have fun!

Hello everyone! My name is Protesilaos, also known as “Prot”. I am joining you from the mountains of Cyprus. Cyprus is an island in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

In this presentation I will talk to you about GNU Emacs, or simply, “Emacs”. Emacs is a program you run on your computer. I am using it right now for this presentation.

Emacs is free or libre software. It allows you to read all of its source code, to modify it, and to share it with your customisations. Thus you contribute to—and benefit from—a community of welcoming Emacs users.

I will tell you what all this means in practice and how you can improve your computing experience by switching to Emacs.

Emacs as a capable text editor

When you first start using Emacs, it feels like a regular text editor program. You move the cursor around and edit text. Nothing obviously impressive out-of-the-box. As a text editor, Emacs is highly capable. It has all sorts of keyboard shortcuts that let you efficiently operate on text. You can control Emacs without relying on the mouse, if you want.

Emacs supports the Unicode standard, which is essential for inclusivity of peoples. The world’s scripts can be expressed in Emacs. I am a native Greek speaker. I can use functionality that is built into Emacs to switch to the Greek alphabet in order to write something, such as to say «καλησπέρα», which means “good evening”. I can even spell out “Dao De Jing” (道德经), which is the title of a book from ancient China. Plus emoji: 🙃.

The multitude of scripts can be present in the same document. This is an advantage for multilingual people or those who do research that involves many natural languages.

Emacs can combine several fonts in the same page as well as different colours. Each fonts can have its own attributes, such as for its relative size and typographic intensity. Same idea for colours. On my screen right now, I am already combining two different font styles: that of the heading and the body of the text.

Emacs can display graphics alongside text

Emacs does not limit you to a text-only interface. It can also display images and PDF documents. Below I have a link to an image file. I will now type a keyboard shortcut to reveal this image. And I will do it again to hide it.

[Here is an image that I do not need to reproduce on my website: the specific image does not matter]

This, by the way, is a spot somewhere in my mountains.

Emacs is an extensible text editor

Although you can benefit from using Emacs as a generic text editor, what really appeals to people like me is the option to extend Emacs. “Extend” here means to introduce new functionality; functionality that is not available in the default program you install on your computer.

These extensions are written in the same programming language as most of Emacs. It is a programming language called “Emacs Lisp” or “Elisp”. You can extend Emacs on your own, by writing some program in Elisp, or you can download an existing extension that the community has made available.

For example, when I create a new extension for Emacs, I publish it under the terms of a free software license—the same terms that Emacs uses. Others can then download my extension and use it as they prefer. If they want, they can make their own modifications on top, which may introduce other extensions that I had not thought of in my original implementation. And if those users follow my example, then I can also benefit from their additions once they publish them.

As such, there exists a community of enthusiastic users of Emacs who care about sharing their works with the rest of the world.

The extensibility of Emacs happens live

Users can extend Emacs by running some Emacs Lisp program. Such a program can be as small as a single line. Or it can be as long as it needs to be. It does not matter. Users run the program and Emacs immediately does what the program renders possible.

For example, I am doing this presentation inside of Emacs. But Emacs does not have a “presentation mode” built into it. I thus developed my own extension which empowers me to do what I am doing right now. Let me toggle off my presentation mode to show you what I mean.

Notice that the display has changed. My main font is monospaced now. The headings are smaller than they were before: they are the same size as the rest of the text. There is no number next to the heading anymore. Then, there is a bar at the bottom of my screen, with information about what I am working on. On the side, there are line numbers, indicating where my cursor is in this file. Plus, my current line is highlighted with a distinct background colour. Let me shift it up and down to illustrate this point.

All those elements are useful while I am programming. But they look distracting when I wish to focus on some portion of text. So, I just type the keyboard shortcut I have and—voilà!—I get the style I prefer.

Emacs puts you in control of your computing

You may wonder: why do I even need a customisable text editor? The answer is about control. You are in charge of what you use and how you use it. You can piece together a workflow that works the way you prefer.

This presentation mode I toggled on and off earlier behaves exactly how I want. I decided which set of interface tweaks to apply. Another user may have a different preference in this regard. For instance, they may like having line numbers on the side of the screen. There is no right or wrong answer. What matters is that Emacs gives us the means to do what makes sense to us.

Now apply this principle to everything you can use Emacs for: this will generally be a text-centric project. I run my agenda exclusively through Emacs. I handle all my email correspondence with Emacs. I do programming and I write prose, such as blog posts for my website and books or technical manuals.

For each of these, I know that Emacs will empower me to perform my tasks without arbitrary restrictions. Emacs lets me use Elisp to modify how I do my emails, for instance, and how I present tasks in my custom agenda view.

The promise of an integrated computing environment

Without Emacs, I would not be in a position to control my computing experience to the extent I do. The reason is that I would be relying on many different applications. Each application has its own interface and design paradigms. Each application is configured, if at all, in a way that is specific to it. Customisations in one application do not carry over to other applications. And, if we consider the important implementation details, each application may configurable in its own programming language.

In other words, that is not an integrated computing experience. To have the same degree of control that Emacs makes possible, I would have to hope that somehow all those disparate applications would conspire in my favour. That is wishful thinking. The reality is that piecing together many different applications is an exercise in frustration and the path to a life of ever-distracting context switching.

Having everything I need inside of Emacs ensures that things happen in a manner that is consistent. All customisations are written in the same programming language, namely, Emacs Lisp. What I define for one context, such as this “presentation mode”, can be used in another context. For example, I can have this presentation style enabled when I read emails. Why? Because it can make it more comfortable for me at a certain hour. And I can even automate this, so it happens on its own when I open a new email.

The integrated computing environment in practice

When you work with many applications that do not play nicely together, you cannot do something that the developers have not envisaged. For example, your email client likely does not have access to a “presentation mode”. Same for your other applications.

Similarly, your many applications will not necessarily know how to read and interpret the configurations you have in one application. Suppose you define your favourite colour scheme for your email client. You take the time to consider the harmonies and use precise typography to your liking. Now, you switch to your calendar application and none of that work carries over: you have to do it again, assuming it is even possible.

Colours and styles may seem like relatively small issues. But they are indicative of something greater: disparate applications do not work together seamlessly.

Emacs does not have this problem. You define something for one context you have in mind and, eventually, it can be used in another context that initially you had not even thought of. For example, in my Emacs I wrote a small function to quickly copy the “thing” at where the cursor is. This is useful when I do programming, as the “thing” can be an entire expression, like the definition of a function. But the “thing” may also be a link that I got in my email. I had not thought of that use-case in advance.

Integration gives you emergent properties

The integrated computing environment of Emacs is more than the sum of its parts. This is because you can combine different pieces of functionality in ways that the original developer had not foresaw. You do not simply have your writing, your email, your agenda, et cetera, in Emacs. You have the functionality of one in tandem with the functionality of another. And you draw linkages between them as you see fit.

Consider once again this presentation I am now doing. What I have in front of me is the transcript of my talk. This is a plain text document, which I can edit live. Let me CAPITALISE THIS to illustrate the point. But I have made this file look a little bit like a series of slides. Notice that if I scroll up and down, which I will do now, you only get the current section I am reading from: you do not have access to the rest of the document. This is a feature known as “narrowing”. Let me “widen” the view and then try to scroll again. You will now be exposed to the rest of the text.

The original developer of this “narrowing” facility did not know how someone like me would make use of it. I have it here for my presentation. Each heading becomes its own pseudo-slide. I have narrowing for my emails, when I want to read a portion of the text in a more focused way. It is all about how I choose to do my computing.

Consistency facilitates productivity

For many years before switching to Emacs, I did not enjoy using the computer. I needed too much time to accomplish every single task. I could never find any of my files in a timely fashion because there was no program that would enforce on my behalf a predictable file-naming scheme.

All my notes were eventually not retrievable. My music collection was inconsistent because I needed special software to write the metadata… In short, I was not as productive as I would like to be. And, above all, it was not fun.

Most of my work at the time was centred around the email client and a word processor. The email client had its own subsystem for handling reminders for tasks. The format of those tasks was not interoperable with other programs. I could not access it with my favourite text editor. I thus had to use the clunky interface of the email client, which was never designed for task management—and was not configurable.

And then I had all the cognitively burdensome annoyances of my two applications looking quite different from each other. My emails did not behave like my documents, which made it harder for me to flip between the two and continue writing.

The consistency of Emacs in action

Emacs has elevated my computing experience. I have been much more productive ever since I switched to it. Allow me to demonstrate a tiny bit of what I do each day. I will temporarily exit the presentation mode in this window. Then, in the bottom half of my screen, I will open my email client to read a message I got. After that I will switch to my agenda to record a task and review what I have to do. All this is done inside of Emacs. Time for action!

Use Emacs Lisp to configure everything

What I just demonstrated is a very small part of what I do every single day. There is much more, though I cannot cover it all in this presentation. The point, however, is the consistency of the experience; consistency throughout.

I have customised my email client by writing some Emacs Lisp code for it. I have done the same for the custom agenda I have. And much more.

Every time I work with Emacs Lisp, I acquire skills that are applicable outside the confines of the problem I am solving. For example, by configuring email the way I want, I pick up programming skills that I can then apply to the design of my custom agenda.

This is an investment that pays off more and more. Emacs will grow or shrink to match my evolving needs. Each new workflow I incorporate in my Emacs setup will thus benefit from all the knowledge and features I have accumulated.

I do not have to relearn everything. I do not have to throw away all the work I did. It is here to stay. I do not feel the pressure to try the new shiny app of the day. And, because I am rooted in this stability, I remain productive and efficient.

Emacs is the embodiment of software freedom

I mentioned earlier that Emacs is free or libre software. This means that you can read its source code, modify it, and share your changes with others. Emacs has a license that gives users power. There is no corporation that can take Emacs away from us. It belongs to the community and we all tend to its wellness.

Software freedom is not just about the license. Emacs makes such freedom an irriducible part of its functionality. You can, at any moment, ask Emacs what does a keyboard shortcut actually do. What is the definition of a function. What is the value of a variable. And you may even access the source code to check for yourself.

I actually learnt to program in Emacs Lisp by exercising this freedom. I would tinker with Emacs and continuously check on its state. I wanted to learn how, for example, we move down a line. From there, I learnt that we can move down many lines at once. I then figured that we can move down the lines and then also do something else, such as place the cursor at the end of the line and create a pulse effect to bring attention to it.

Not only did I learn how to configure Emacs, I even wrote tens of extensions for it. I have also authored a libre book titled “Emacs Lisp Elements”. This freedom is not theoretical. I did not have a background in programming, yet was empowered to act.

You do not need to be a programmer to use Emacs

Emacs is extended with Emacs Lisp. If you know how to program in that language, you can be extra opinionated and particular about the way Emacs facilitates your work.

But even without any expertise of this sort, you can still do much of what you like. This is because the Emacs community has developed a rich corpus of extensions. We call these extensions “packages”, as they are distributed in a way that makes them easy to install and then use directly.

The Emacs program you will download on your computer ships with plenty of packages built-in. Depending on your needs, you may not even have to install anything from what the community has to offer.

For example, Emacs ships with a package called org or “Org mode”. At its core, this is a markup language. I am using it right now in this document. Notice how lines that start with an asterisk function as headings. This is what the markup does. Org lets you write documents, including books, handle your tasks, organise your agenda, and much more. It is a powerhouse. There are so many things to discover. Emacs provides high quality documentation that explains everything.

The documentation culture of Emacs

When you install Emacs, you get with it plenty of technical manuals. There is also an interactive tutorial to help you make sense of the basics. Furthermore, when you ask Emacs for help about the definition of a function or the value of a variable, you receive the documentation for the thing you are looking for.

The expectation for all contributions to the official Emacs program is that the code is well-documented and the manual is updated accordingly.

This is true also for packages that the community develops. For example, my denote package has a manual that is over 7500 lines long. It exceeds 52000 words. In it users find detailed instructions as well as code snippets that they can copy and use outright. And this is not the exception. All my packages are like that, to the extent necessary. Most other developers do the same.

As a community, we have access to so much knowledge for free and in freedom. If we are committed enough, we can learn from others and thus become better ourselves. We do so in a spirit of sharing and caring. For me, specifically, all this was of great help. I am self-taught because I received all those great resources from the community. I consider it my duty to give back in kind.

Emacs has a steep learning curve

Because Emacs is extensible, there is practically no limit to what you can do with it. At least this is the case for all tasks that are text-heavy. Emacs will just gracefully evolve to match your requirements, provided you know how to extend it.

The downside, however, is that it is not easy to become proficient in it. If you are committed, you can learn the basics within the first few days. Though you will need to invest a few weeks or months to become skillful. It depends on how much effort you put into it.

What I can say with confidence is that Emacs is not for tourists. You cannot switch to it with the expectation that you will have a good time right away. No. That will not work. There simply is no shortcut to excellence.

I thus encourage you to adjust your expectations. Emacs will make you more productive, provided you are patient enough to unlock its virtually boundless potential. Take it slow and be methodical. Rely on the official manual. Read from it and gradually incorporate its insights into your workflow. The community has plenty of resources to complement that study. But do not skip the official manual. Learning it slowly means that you will become proficient faster than you otherwise would.

Why it is worth learning how to use Emacs

I already talked about the technical side of things with regard to the integrated computing environment. Now combine that with two facts:

1. Emacs is free software. This means that we as a community are its custodians.
2. GNU Emacs has been around since the 1980s. It will stay relevant for decades to come.

Emacs is not old, it is timeless. This is because it can be extended in a spirit of freedom. Whatever new technology or idea we have as a collective, we can eventually bring it into Emacs. This way, our integrated computing environment adapts with the times.

Couched in those terms, the initial effort you will put into learning Emacs is actually not that much. You have to maintain a longer-term view of this project. If are patient, Emacs will be one of the most reliable tools you will ever use throughout your life. And I say this as a handy man myself, having built the house I am in, among others.

I switched to Emacs in the summer of 2019. It is almost 7 years already. I see no reason not to use it for the next 7 years, if I can. I will still want to write articles, do programming, maintain my agenda, and probably make presentations like this one.

Good luck and have fun!

Remember that you will not learn Emacs over the weekend. You are in it for the long-term. Take it slow and you will enjoy the experience.

This is all I have for you today folks. Thank you very much for your attention!

The presentation will be about 40 minutes long. I will then answer any questions from the audience. Anyone can participate: no registration is required. The event will be recorded for future reference. The link for the video call and further details are available here: https://ox.ogeer.org/event/computing-in-freedom-with-gnu-emacs-protesilaos-stavrou.

I will prepare a transcript for my talk. This way people can learn about my presentation without having to access the video file.

Looking forward to it!

This is because of the prevailing economic conditions, which I suspect make it harder for prospective students to justify the old rate of 20 EUR per hour (was 15 EUR for college students).

I will inform current students who may not read this about the lowered price point.

I thank all those who have taken up my coaching offer. Take care!

• doric-almond (light)
• doric-coral (light)
• doric-magma (dark)
• doric-walnut (dark)

Each of them has its own character, while they all retain the minimalist Doric style. Below are some screenshots. Remember that these themes use few colours, relying on typography to establish a visual rhythm.

doric-almond

doric-coral

doric-magma

doric-walnut

Coming in version 1.1.0

All four themes are in development. I may still make some minor refinements to them, though I have already defined their overall appearance. If you like the minimalism of the doric-themes, I think you will appreciate these new additions.

Sources

The Doric themes use few colours and will appear monochromatic in many contexts. They are my most minimalist themes. Styles involve the careful use of typographic features and subtleties in colour gradients to establish a consistent rhythm.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

A few people have sent me a message asking how I am doing given the crisis in the Middle East. Cyprus is providing strategic depth to the Western forces. The military bases of the United Kingdom in Cyprus are assets of the war effort and, thus, prime targets for an attack. The rest of the island is not directly involved in the conflict, though it could be caught in the crossfires. The future is uncertain and we hope for the best.

I keep living my life as usual. When I have work on the computer, I am online. Otherwise, I am outdoors doing manual labour or hiking with my dogs. The place is quiet here and nothing happens beside what I just described. If I was not reading the news, I would not even know what is happening in the wider region.

Knowledge of the war does not change my outlook though. I stick to my routines because (i) I am content with them and (ii) I have no viable alternative. Worrying about all the possible vectors of attack does not change my material conditions. I have no means to enact reforms. My power to even change the opinion of one person is limited, let alone any attempt at stopping the military juggernauts of Iran, Israel, USA, and friends.

I am a peasant. Having access to the Internet does not change this fact. I mind my business in my small plot of land. My ambition only goes as far as growing vegetables for this season, while taking care of all the trees I have planted until they are strong enough to not rely on my care. In my little world, there is no calculus over how to control anybody else.

What I do here is inconsequential. If I were to stop doing it, nobody would even notice. The world will carry on. I like this state of affairs. I do not feel any pressure to live up to a certain standard nor to care about people whose lives I do not have under my aegis. The stakes are low, which makes me feel relaxed.

I do not think I am special or particularly good at anything. Anything I do, someone does it better. Everything I have ever achieved, someone has reached a greater height. All I have to show for is honest effort. It is cute, but nothing extraordinary.

I do not assign disproportionate value to myself of the sort “what will happen to others if I am gone?”. Others have to manage, anyway, so they will keep doing what they do. My dogs are the ones who would struggle, though I can only hope that their calm demeanour and the good manners I have taught them will allow them to find food in some built-up area. Beside that, I see no problem or, anyhow, nothing to worry about.

This morning I spent three hours working the land. Every part here embeds my efforts. I like that my sweat drops on the ground. It makes it feel real. I know that even though I am but a visitor in this world, I have for once made a connection with a place.

I never felt attached to a country or a community. Yes, I have had many friends and was always treated with kindness, but I could not ever claim to feel a part of something greater than me. My land gives me a different feeling. It is as if I am growing roots here. Like the oak trees, I affect my immediate environment, though not to dominate but to direct it with respect as well as with determination.

Nominally, I am Greek, Cypriot, European. What do those even mean? I have not been to Greece in two decades. I have spent more time abroad than in my birthplace. Whatever I take from the Greek tradition is available to anyone and not exclusive to individuals of a certain bloodline. Being European is a figment of law and then the imagination. I do not treat people of Europe any different than those of other continents. If someone wants to talk with me, I am happy to talk with them. Where they are from is irrelevant. As for the Cypriot part, it is mostly a description of the fact that I am collocated with a certain group of people. They are nice to me and I treat them with respect, though I still do not see any deep bond there.

I know that my mode of living is uncommon even though it used to be the norm for millennia. That is fine. Each person does what their condition renders unavoidable. My land and these mountains bring me peace. Every morning I am ready to start the day with enthusiasm. I am in a good mood at all times, ready to make jokes where appropriate and get some hard work done. Nothing disappoints me because I am not committed to specific outcomes. I take what comes my way and work with it. What I am committed to are my projects, which I pursue for as long as I can or until they are done.

There is a future in which me and my land are no longer together. It is all part of the process. How proximate or remote that eventuality is does not matter. I remain in the here-and-now. This article shows my ongoing ability to maintain focus, to continue with what I am working on, and to proceed one step at a time. I know that this ability, no matter how much I refine it, is not permanent. My volition will never have the power to withdraw it from the world of impermanence, to render it immune to the workings of the cosmos, and to forever make it a part of a transcendent me.

Wars will keep happening. Not because humans in particular have frailties of character. No. That gives us too much value. Nature all around us exhibits the capacity for conflict among forms of live. What we do is an expression of what is immanent, from bacteria competing with each other, to plants fighting for a place in the sun, to predators that kill their competitors. Same principle for solidarity. We can cooperate, like other forms of life do. An equilibrium is always established. I do not worry.

The first topic we cover is how to place constraints on yourself in order to avoid backsliding into bad habits. This ties in to the themes of discipline and productivity that we discuss in some further length.

Joshua asks me how I got into Emacs and how I started writing/maintaining packages for it. We talk about how Emacs provides for an integrated computing experience. Learning Emacs Lisp allows you to have better control of Emacs.

In this light we comment on Guix and how it is also configurable in a dialect of Lisp. Joshua is using Nix and I learn more about that experience.

Coming back to Emacs, we comment on its relationship to the Unix philosophy. I think Emacs is compatible with Unix. Though my main point is how Emacs empowers us to use the computer in a productive way. It augments the experience.

Simple living and financial independence is another topic we cover. Joshua wants to know how I approach this issue. I explain how it is a matter of controlling your wants. Figure out what the parts of your lifestyle that you would not sacrifice. Then you know how much money you need for that lifestyle.

Joshua makes a connection of the simple life to Emacs and Unix tools. I comment on that as well. Once you start using Emacs and friends, you learn to appreciate the essentials. This you can then apply to other parts of your life.

We move to note-taking, where I comment about Denote. I explain how it is a file-naming scheme, which can also be used to write notes. What matters is how well we can retrieve information. Joshua explains how pen and paper helps him express his thoughts.

Learning on your own is our next point. Being an autodidact myself, I comment how it empowers you. You are able to have initiative and be more independent.

We then explore how things have infinite depth. This is how everything in the world is connected. This also relates to the point about the simple living, since you can have relatively few things that you keep understanding in depth.

Joshua asks me about discipline. This is a capacity we can build up. I give some examples.

Next on our list are mechanical keyboards. Joshua and I are using a split keyboard.

Then we explore the theme of using tools the right way. One example is the Internet as a whole. Another is with LLMs. It helps to know “why am I doing this”, as then you can understand when you are meeting your goals and when you are moving away from them. We explore this in further depth.

I comment on a common mistake we make where we think that the complex must be sophisticated and profound. Whereas there is profundity in simplicity.

We connect the dots through all these as we wrap things up.

Thanks to Joshua Blais for this chat. I had a good time and wish him all the best!

My dogs understand all the verbal and non-verbal cues that signify “I am done with the computer for now”. I had a meeting until 21:00 this night. As soon as I said “goodbye”, the dogs raised their head and started stretching. They know that once I am done, I will spend time with them. Specifically, we will go out for a walk. The only exception is during midday, when it is relatively warm (or extra hot during the summer). The dogs will still want to be outdoors, but only to sunbathe for a few minutes before eventually moving to the shade. We did go for an hour-long walk and now I am back to write this entry before going to bed.

One quality I like in dogs is how consistently eager they are. If it is their time for a walk, they will want to go and they will be excited about it. With people it is more complex, as we sometimes do not feel like doing something even when the prevailing conditions are favourable. We may simply be bored.

Boredom and the mental fogginess it creates influences how we feel about our duties. Sometimes, boredom is a coping mechanism to make us suspend some intense work schedule we are committed to. This is benign and desirable, because we often lack the foresight to stop before overworking ourselves. Though boredom can also be detrimental to us. It is so when it keeps us inert in a situation that we would rather not be in for too long.

I think of boredom as a mechanism of short-term preservation. What it lacks is a view of the long-term, which we can only get through reason. When boredom qua preservation helps us safeguard our vitality from the potential harm of burnout, then it is good for us long-term. Let this be the “preservation of essence”, which inhibits what we would normally do. Though there is also the “preservation of momentum”, else the kind of boredom that makes us stay in the state we are in and inhibits actions that would undo it. This can be problematic for us long-term, such as when we get used to bad habits.

Boredom, then, is neither good nor bad, or it is both good and bad. We have to consider the specifics in light of our life’s trajectory. Only then can be tell if preserving what we have is going to contribute to our wellness. The longer-term view also means that we operate with sustainability in mind. It is not enough for something to be pleasant right now: it must also not be undermining our abilities for the moments after.

This is where my competitiveness comes into play. When it comes to my own decisions, I am a stern and demanding judge. If I think about the situation of me being asked by my dogs to join them on a long walk at night, I can come with a perfectly valid reason to declare how bored I am. It would be the same as admitting to fatigue, which is okay and I would indeed try to keep it short in such a case. Though I did not feel tired and thus would not allow myself the easy way out. Not only did I go for a walk, but it was also an intense one.

My competitiveness is not erga omnes. It is only directed towards me. This is because I only know how I feel and thus sense that a certain course of action is appropriate. The propriety of it does not exist in a vacuum though. It can only be right if the particularities make it possible. As such, I do not make prescriptions for others: they can do as they feel. So it makes no sense to issue a pronouncement along the lines of “go for a walk at night, no matter what”. That would be uninformed and presumptuous.

I keep describing those as “walks”, but they are hikes. We move up the valley. The slope is steep. This is not like going to the park. It requires more effort. The dogs love it, as do I. For them, it is an outlet for their energy and predatory instincts. Once they get back home, they are peaceful. I think the same is true for humans, though we are more complex in our behaviour and our wants.

Humans can express their desire for openness in physical as well as cognitive ways. For example, the hunter and the philosopher make manifest two modes of this same propensity. The hunter will be out there, determined to track the game or wait at the right spot. They will be excited when they find that which they are seeking. The philosopher is on a more abstract quest, albeit one that exhibits the same patterns. They search for the “open space”, which is to say that they cannot just take a claim as a given: they need to examine it, else to look around for what else is out there. And the philosopher will similarly be working towards something that can be acquired.

Openness, then, is not a descriptor for how contemplative one is. It marks a propensity that can be expressed through deeds and/or thoughts. This understanding helps me see the connections and be inspired by phenomena that are at once different than my immediate experience yet unmistakably familiar.

There is something in us which triggers a sense of excitement. Knowing what that is helps us muster the enthusiasm to push against the natural tendency for boredom as preservation of momentum. We need to do as much when we understand that the state-to-be-preserved is not benign for us long-term.

I do this consistently with my walks, but also by controlling my work time. I save myself from burnout by being honest with how I feel about things. Honesty, here, is how I maintain situational awareness with regard to my own condition. I do not mindlessly do something because I am supposed to. I check if it still makes sense in light of the circumstances. If, for example, I am not inspired to look into my Emacs packages for a day or two, then I do not pressure myself thus. I do something else instead, so I preserve my essence.

To know ourselves better helps us do small things each day that have a positive cumulative effect on our longevity. I am inspired by dogs and am also dog-like in this regard. Our walk tonight in the mountains under the moonlight was beautiful. I will welcome the coming day with the same zest and will continue to finds ways to stay as sharp as ever.

The conflagration in the Middle East threatens to pull Cyprus into the conflict. The Republic of Cyprus is not directly involved in the hostilities. Though the island has two “sovereign” military bases of the United Kingdom, at Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The bases can be used by the Americans and their allies and, thus, are prime targets of Iran the same way all such assets in the region are.

I monitor the news as I am expecting things to get worse over the short-term. But I do not lose my calm. If I need to act, I am ready for action. In the meantime, work continues as usual. I am working on an infrastructure project in my land to reinforce parts that might be exposed to soil erosion under intense rainfall. First, I need to collect a lot of soil, as well as plenty of stones. I will use the raw materials to raise and then flatten the area I am targeting. It is laborious though I enjoy the process.

Improving the conditions in and around my house reminds me that (i) I am sufficiently powerful though (ii) my ability to affect the world is limited. Whenever I have free time, I go out to do something. I never remain idle, bemoaning my fate or complaining about the prevailing conditions. I live by an ancient Greek saying that roughly translates as “the start is half of the whole” (η αρχή είναι το ήμισυ του παντός). If I can make a small improvement today, I do it and set things in motion for more work to-be-done. Then I rely on my consistency to bring the task to its completion: I do not start too many projects at once and then leave them hanging. I only do one or a few at a time.

This work has a short feedback loop. I do something and experience the results either immediately or after a few months. I thus am intimately aware of what is missing and what is already finalised. Though I also understand the limits of my industry. No matter how hard I try, I can only do relatively little. Just mining and then moving around a few hundred kilograms of soil all by hand requires several days of physically strenuous work.

I thus know not to be overly ambitious. I do not set arbitrary deadlines. Each project is done organically. I iterate on it continuously, though do not stress about any particular timeline. I find that adding a dimension of time-sensitivity to a task that is not inherently time-sensitive only creates confusion as to what is actually non-negotiable on any given day. I let the genuinely time-sensitive tasks, such as coaching sessions I have scheduled, determine when I need to be on the computer. And then I have time to commit to my house and land or the maintenance of my Emacs packages, depending on what I am working on in that moment.

My immediate reality informs my approach to the bigger issues of our times. I have the capacity to voice my opinion, though I know that it does not amount to much in the grand scheme of things. I am not in a position of authority, I have no influence whatsoever over policy-making, and I do not intend to become a politician. The ruling elites have made their choices, in terms of aligning Cyprus with the Western sphere of influence. The locals here are generally content with what they have. And since I live at the margins of their society, I suspect that my opinions will not share the sensitivities they have. So I better remain silent and accept the realities of my condition.

I cannot claim to be successful in any major way. My experience is about a few minor wins. The usual markers for success all point to me being a loser. Even if I personally do not internalise that thought and remain resilient, I am aware how the world works. Whatever I say can easily be dismissed by attacking my person, in the form of employing the twin sophistries of “coping” and “projecting”.

If you say something about how you do things different from the rest, then you are coping, meaning that you are just making an excuse for your failure to be like the others. And if you describe something happening out there, then you are projecting your own frailties of character. Coping and projecting are convenient tools. You do not need to think deeply about any of the stated points. Just filter the contents of your rival through the relevant tool and—voilà!—you are insightful now.

For political views, in particular, you are expected to have no nuanced opinion at all. Instead, you have to play the game of “this good, that evil”, as if you are a complete moron. It is how Cyprus submits to the suzerainty of the Western empire. Pointing this out does not mean that I have sympathy for the regime in Iran—screw them! Though I will not accept the one-sided narrative that the Iranians are “evil” when I know that the West is ruled by the Epstein class.

If war comes here, I will deal with it. And if it does not affect me directly, it will definitely hit me financially. Things are already tight in that regard. Economic crises are always felt early by those at the lower parts of the income distribution.

None of this matters right now. I focus on the present and continue working with the same intensity. Tomorrow I have to break down some more soil and then distribute it around my land. I will always try my best.

The inherent limitation of a rules-based international order is that there is no sovereign. Without a supreme authority that has the capacity to enforce the law, all norms remain inapplicable and are effectively non-binding. Any sufficiently capable regime can brazenly disregard them, violate the national sovereignty of other states, and grab any resources it deems worthwhile. The sole deterrent is the military might of its adversaries. By extension, rules are enforced when the balance of forces permits as much.

The United Nations architecture gives the impression that there is ironclad supranational law that guides all humanity. While this is the stated aim, any UN-led initiative that gets to be applied is so because it is aligned with the interests of great powers.

The Palestinian catastrophe demonstrates that the so-called “international community” is a figment of the imagination at worst, or a happy coincidence at best. The law is not designed to protect the weak no matter the circumstances. It all depends on power dynamics, where expedience is the deciding factor.

Israel has been gradually yet steadily assuming the same privilege of unaccountability in its ambition to become the region’s uncontested despot. There is no reason to believe that toppling the Iranian government will make the Israeli military any less assertive. If anything, a potential win in the war against Iran will galvanise those who aspire for a greater Israel that dominates the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Those on the sidelines have gotten the memo. Strategists in Turkiye, for instance, must be analysing events in light of the clear potential for a time of reckoning in the decades ahead.

The gist is that justice only exists among equals. For as long as the mighty do not think of themselves as being on the same footing as the rest they will exploit their advantageous position. This is true in the relations between states. It also is in effect at the interpersonal level: you only deter a bully by making the cost of bullying prohibitive, not by appealing to their sense of morality. Calls to justice are, in this regard, an admission of weakness.

Is this a pretty world? No, it is ugly and dangerous. Though it is sobering to recognise how things work. For only then can you cut through the platitudes and prepare for action.

Europeans, in particular, have long lived with a boutique view of politics, in which soft power can be decoupled from hard power. Hence their belief in the vaunted “European values”. In truth, soft power is effective when it has hard power as its backstop: they exist on a continuum. Europeans had that in the form of their vassalage to the USA. They might eventually develop their own capacity in the decades to come, if the European integration process continues apace towards military union, while the Americans get progressively weaker by all the wars they inevitably involve themselves in. At any rate, such an outcome will only contribute to peace by balancing out competing interests, not by holding some imaginary moral high ground.

There are no benevolent actors in such matters. Those who desire freedom must be ready to fight for it. Global justice is not attainable. What we can hope for is a viable balance of forces.

As for the ongoing war, the Iranian regime has blood on its hands, as do its counterparts in Israel and America.

Below are the original lyrics, my translation of them, and further comments.

Remember to also check other interpretations of mine related to Pavlos Pavlides or Ta Xylina Spathia:

• At the rock (2022-07-05)
• The king of dust (2022-07-24)
• Illegal passenger (2022-08-17)
• White storm (2022-09-12)
• Pigeons (2023-02-16)
• So close (2023-10-25)

Τώρα αρχίζω και θυμάμαι

Ερμηνεία:  Παύλος Παυλίδης
Στίχοι:    Τα Ξύλινα Σπαθιά (Παύλος Παυλίδης)
Μουσική:   Τα Ξύλινα Σπαθιά


Μια ανατολή σ'ένα κόσμο που δεν έχει πάψει
ποτέ να γυρίζει στην ίδια τροχιά
Όμως στην άλλη άκρη της γης
κάποιος βλέπει τον ήλιο να πέφτει ξανά
Όπως ξανά ανάβει ο φάρος του κόσμου
χτυπάει ξαφνικά τα φτερά του.
Το φως απ'την χώρα των πάγων
βουτάει στην καρδιά σου
κι υψώνεται πάνω απ'τη Γη του Πυρός

Πόσες φορές θα στρίψει αυτή η σφαίρα
ώσπου ν'αρχίσω πια να σ'εμπιστεύομαι
ώσπου να πάψω να φοβάμαι
Μου'χες πει πως θα 'ρθει κάποια μέρα
που ό,τι αντικρίζω θα το ερωτεύομαι
Τώρα αρχίζω και θυμάμαι

Η αγάπη πληρώνει κρυφά δολοφόνους
συχνάζει σε δρόμους χωρίς γυρισμό
Σ'αγαπώ κι ας μην ξέρω ούτε καν τ'όνομά σου
Ετοιμάσου σε λίγο θα πεις «σε μισώ!»
Είμαι το ένα μισό της σελήνης μην κλείνεις
σε λίγο γεμίζει το άλλο μισό
Η αγάπη γεμίζει ξανά τα ποτήρια
ρωτάει ποιος διψάει, ψιθυρίζεις «εγώ!»

I now begin to remember

Singer:  Pavlos Pavlides
Lyrics:  Ta Xylina Spathia (Pavlos Pavlides)
Music:   Ta Xylina Spathia


Sunrise in a world that has not ceased
to move in the same trajectory
Yet on the other side of the earth
someone sees again the sun setting
as again the world's lighthouse lightens up
it suddenly flaps its wings
The light from the land of glaciers
dives into your heart
and rises over the Land of Fire

How many times must this sphere spin
until I start trusting you
until I stop being afraid
You told me there will come a day
that I will be falling in love with all I encounter
I now begin to remember

Love secretly pays headhunters
it frequents alleys with no return
I love you although I do not even know your name
Prepare yourself as you will soon say "I hate you!"
I am one half of the moon do not close yet
the other half will soon fill up
Love fills up the glasses again
it asks who is thirsty, you whisper "I am"

This is a cryptic song that nevertheless evokes familiar images and their attendant emotions. The overarching theme is of coming to terms with oneself and to maintain an open-ended outlook that is not committed to particular outcomes.

In the opening verse, we are presented with scenes of the daily miracle that is life on this planet. In a reductive sense, the Earth is just a pile of star dust that orbits a ball of fire, in a cosmos of unfathomable proportions where such phenomena occur everywhere. Yet we anticipate every sunrise, no matter which corner of this planet we inhabit. Like flowers, we prosper when turn our sights to the luminous star. Our vitality depends on this connection. Beauty is inexhaustible, no matter how many times we see it repeat across the patterns we discern. A slice of the world is enough to engender in us a sense of awe at the grandeur of its workings. It is a continuum of life. From the smallest to the largest, we can always find that which is common in the multitude.

The refrain presents the poetic first person in a state contemplation. They wonder what more proof do they need to suspend their disbelief; the disbelief that they already have what it takes to carry forward unto the next dawn and then the ones after. With some experience, we learn that there is no one answer to life. It is the hesitation to trust our feelings that makes us operate in fear. This is because we make decisions on the basis of what others want. We do it to fit in and to enjoy the moments of validation: a poor substitute for emotional stability. Without the courage to take the initiative and to think for ourselves, the courage to be different by becoming who we can be, we are left in a condition of emptiness. No matter how much we enjoy social approval, we cannot lie to ourselves: deep down we know that our choices are not genuine and our wants are thus not met. Hence the pervasive dread that there is something out there that is better for us. Those who learn to trust their feelings have no fear of missing out on anything: they know exactly what they want.

The refrain appeals to a mysterious “you” figure, who seems to have already offered words of wisdom along the lines of the aforementioned. This could be a sage. It could also be the personification of impersonal forces. We can anthropomorphise phenomena, to make it seem like there is a tutelary figure in the skies that communicates with us through a series of impressions. Cosmic consistency allows us much, for we can be initiated into the mysteries by assiduously studying whatever is in the slice of world we are experiencing. The point is that this “you” figure explains how one should accept who they are in order to start loving.

The final verse runs counter to the boutique view of love as undying and eternal. Love comes and goes, like everything else we experience. Each instance cannot be replayed. We can only have a relationship while it lasts. Yet this fact does not deter us. When given the chance, we opt for another round, while knowing that we can still get disappointed. Combined with the above, we understand the significance of keeping in touch with our emotional side, to periodically assess our condition. There will be moments when we have to change course. It is exactly then when we begin to remember that only by staying true to our self can we act decisively to make that necessary next step.

Thanks to Ro for sharing this with me and for granting me the permission to publish it!

In this ~3-hour video I talk with Ro about a wide variety of topics that cover programming, politics, lifestyle, and art. We start by learning about Ro’s work as a software engineer for military projects. Ro studied electrical engineering and then transitioned to programming.

I learn that Ro has an interest in politics and art. In terms of the latter, Ro draws a portrait of me during our discussion. We talk until the drawing is done, which you can check out towards the end of the video.

On the politics front, we discuss my current thinking about political issues, where I am interested in the implementation of any given opinion. This is where I introduce the notion of “programmatic thinking”. The idea is to frame your opinions in terms of how you could implement them, given the prevailing conditions. Doing so helps filter out opinions that are not feasible.

We also comment on the quality of political discourse. Part of this is informed by the current technology, which reduces the spacetime of current affairs: everything happens instantly and feels proximate. Ro suggests how people need to be getting together to discuss politics. If people are open to talk, instead of shouting at each other, then common sense can prevail.

Ro points out that discussions tend to avoid any kind of disagreement, which Ro explains is not constructive: the realisation of disagreements can still bring people closer, as they can appreciate the others better and the diversity among us. Part of why this is happening, I explain, is because people adopt an expanded conception of identity, which includes their specific opinions. Then I go on to comment how criticism can be constructive: it helps people grow by better understanding what they are doing and why they do it.

The next topic is about the quality one has as a person. I comment on how those who are influential have responsibility towards those they influence. This is because they hold power. We explore this theme further. I argue that if we decouple power from responsibility, then we end up with egregious or abusive power.

The last big issue we cover is art. Specifically, how we can have a better sense of our self through the pursuit of recreational activities. Ro asks me about my writings. There are different sections on my website, which cover distinct areas of interest I have. This gives me the impetus to elaborate on the notion of being mindful of our emotional state and how we can stay fresh. The point is to commit to something that expresses a side of you. Ro comments how art is not about the result, but rather that you enjoy doing it.

This is relevant also in light of Artificial Intelligence, which we consider in further depth. I bring up the myth of Prometheus, which reminds us how all technological innovations comes with pros and cons. There are problems that come from the technology itself but also others that are the result of how people use the technology.

We close with questions about me, such as my personality, way of living, and the experience of blogging. This also connects to the point about how people are attached to their opinions as an extension of their identity. I explain how to think of our works as snapshots of who we are. Mistakes are a part of it. If we acknowledge them, we are more resilient, as we can change our views and/or face criticism without fearing that we lose who we are. I say that we ultimately do not need to take ourselves too seriously, in the sense that if we make a mistake it will not be the end of the world.

Add Ro on Instagram

Here: https://www.instagram.com/aldebaran.alpha.tauri/

About “Prot Asks”

In this video series, I talk to anybody who is interested to have a video call with me (so do contact me if you want!). The topics cover anything related to Emacs, technology, and life in general. More here: https://protesilaos.com/prot-asks.

This has become easier since Emacs 29, which introduced a command-line flag called --init-directory. It is responsible for loading the init.el that is present in the given directory. For example:

# From a terminal or shell, run something like this:
emacs --init-directory=/tmp/test-emacs/

In other words, you can keep your regular configuration intact while launching Emacs with another set of options.

Create the test init.el file

Have a directory that is unrelated to your regular Emacs configuration. Then write the init.el inside of it.

Because I do this frequently, I prefer to use the standard Linux path /tmp/. Its files get deleted as soon as I switch off the computer, which is exactly what I want in this case.

As such, if there is a bug with, say, the modus-themes, I will work with this file path /tmp/modus-themes/init.el.

But the exact location of the directory does not matter, so choose what makes sense to you.

Write the minimum necessary code

In that init file, include only the code that is needed to reproduce the bug.

Since you want to have the package installed, it makes sense to write a use-package declaration for it. Include the :ensure t directive as it instructs the built-in package manager to install the package if it is not already available.

;; Contents of the init.el...
(use-package modus-themes
  :ensure t
  :config
  (setq modus-themes-common-palette-overrides
        '((fringe unspecified)
          (border-mode-line-active unspecified)
          (border-mode-line-inactive unspecified)))
  (setq modus-vivendi-palette-overrides
        '((bg-main "#1e1f22")
          (fg-main "#bcbec4")))
  (load-theme 'modus-vivendi t))

Install from source, if necessary

If you are using an alternative to package.el like straight or elpaca, then the aforementioned :ensure t will likely not suffice: you need to build the package from source. To this end, Emacs has the function package-vc-install. Some of my recent packages have sample code that relies on this approach. For instance:

(use-package gnome-accent-theme-switcher
  :demand t
  :init
  ;; Then upgrade it with the command `package-vc-upgrade' or `package-vc-upgrade-all'.
  (unless (package-installed-p 'gnome-accent-theme-switcher)
    (package-vc-install "https://github.com/protesilaos/gnome-accent-theme-switcher.git"))
  :bind
  (("<f5>" . gnome-accent-theme-switcher-toggle-mode)
   ("C-<f5>" . gnome-accent-theme-switcher-change-accent))
  :config
  (gnome-accent-theme-switcher-mode 1))

In the above snippet package-vc-install will pull the latest commit from the main branch, though it can even get a specific commit. Read its documentation with M-x describe-function.

What matters is that you fetch the version which you are running in your personaly configuration.

Launch Emacs with this configuration

From the command-line, run something like the following:

emacs --init-directory=/tmp/test-emacs/

This will launch a new instance of Emacs. The use-package you placed there will do the work to install the package. After that you are ready to reproduce the bug in this clean setup.

Write down all the steps

To help the maintainer identify the source of the trouble, keep a record of all the steps you followed. Some bugs show up when the package is loaded, but others are triggered only after a specific action is performed.

Normally, Emacs will pop up a *Backtrace* buffer when it encounters an error. Copy its contents and send them to the maintainer, together with the init.el you used, and the list of the steps you followed.

Sometimes you just need to re-install the package

It sometimes happens that you install a package and it is completely broken. Although this looks bad, it may not even be a bug, but an issue with the old bytecode you had on your system from the previous version of the package.

Do M-x package-delete, select the package, restart Emacs, and then M-x package-install to install the package anew. If everything works, then the problem is gone and you do not need to tell the maintainer about it.

Make it easier for maintainers to help you

With this knowledge, you can provide high quality bug reports for the packages you rely on. Good luck!

Their upbeat rendition of My old troubles is a case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lyxHHlX6z0. There is the guitar and what sounds to me like elements of American country music, though it also captures the primordial spirit of a Dionysian festival. Compare it to a more traditional interpretation, which is also nice in its own way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBNAhwaeyss.

Below are the lyrics, my faithful translation of them, and comments on the substantive points.

Also read my interpretation of The birds fooled me by Kadinelia (2024-12-28).

Τα παλαιά μου βάσανα

Ερμηνεία:  Καντινέλια
Στίχοι:    Παραδοσιακό
Μουσική:   Παραδοσιακό


Τα παλαιά μου βάσανα
περά- καλέ περάσανε και πάνε
Τα τωρινά γικήκανε
φιθκιά καλέ φιθκιά για να με φαν

Λελαλε κι αμάν αμάν
τα παλαιά μου βάσανα

Άνθρωπε γλέντα τη ζωή
μην εί- καλέ μην είσαι πλεονέκτης
Γιατί στο χώμα που πατάς
είσαι καλέ είσαι ένας επισκέπτης

Λελαλε κι αμάν αμάν
άνθρωπε γλέντα τη ζωή

Τα βάσανα μου τραγουδώ
τον πό- καλέ τον πόνο μου γλεντίζω
Κι όπως τον εύρω τον καίρο
ετσά καλέ ετσά τον αρμενίζω

Λελαλε κι αμάν αμάν
όπως τον εύρω τον καιρό

My old troubles

Singer:  Kadinelia
Lyrics:  Traditional
Music:   Traditional


My old troubles
they pa- dear they passed and they go
My current ones became
snakes dear snakes to eat me

Lelale and aman aman [expressions of joy and woe]
my old troubles

Human enjoy your life
do be dear do not be greedy
Because on the ground you stand on
you are dear you are a guest

Lelale and aman aman
human enjoy your life

I sing my troubles
my pai- dear my pain I enjoy
And however I find the times
thus dear thus I navigate them

Lelale and aman aman
however I find the times

This song is a celebration of flow and lightness. It is about not dwelling on what has transpired: letting go of the past woes and success stories to deal with the prevailing conditions as they unfold. The prerequisite is to understand that you do not take anything with you. Not the good parts. Not the bad ones. Time is inexorable. It goes by and you are powerless to stop it. What once defined you is taken away before your eyes, sometimes in tiny increments, at others in large chunks.

Flow is about dealing with the world as-is. Learn from the past, but do not remain preoccupied with it. Bring to the present the parts that are relevant and forgo the rest. There is no going back to rectify your mistakes. It is impossible to replay those states of affairs, giving you the opportunity to do things differently. Whatever lingering doubts or regrets about a world that no longer exists are forever burdensome. Same principle for the future. It is common to invest all your hopes in some potential outcome that is not a direct consequence of your deeds. You anticipate it, thinking that it will finally deliver to you all you ever desired. If that happens, it turns out that you actually wanted something else. And if it does not happen, the meantime is spent ignoring or bemoaning your condition. Your attention span has shifted away from the immediate circumstances, making it almost impossible to appreciate what is available to you.

Lightness is the emotional state you have once you start going with the flow. You recognise that experiences belong to their place and time. As such, you do not make an attempt at clinging on to them. They stay, but you continue. Life is a little bit like travelling the world on foot. All you have is a backpack with provisions. Your physical limitations mean that you cannot afford to carry anything else, no matter how much your heart desires it. And if you commit the mistake of putting more weight on your shoulders than what is sustainable, you will experience unending torment.

Kadinelia invites you to change how you deal with negative feelings. What someone said about you is often inconsequential. Yet if you keep revolving around it, doubting your abilities, and loathing your self for not being good enough, then the negativity gets amplified. It becomes a force so preponderant that it makes you act in a disjointed fashion.

Singing and dancing, among other physical activities, are effective remedies for overthinking. It is no coincidence that Dionysos (Dionysus) is more than just the god of festivities: he is also related to reanimation, resurrection, and rebirth. By participating in the festival or, more generally, by getting “out of your head” you do something in zest. It is engrossing and immersive. We call such activities “recreational” because they effectively reinvigorate us, remaking us as it were.

The challenge, then, is to find joy in what is in your milieu. Start with the little things. Pay close attention to them. Take note of what you think their positive qualities are. If it is only negatives you notice, make it a challenge to come up with a better design for at least some of them. How would you improve them? Try that in earnest. The very work on such a project is already channelling your vitality towards something other than the negativity you had discerned.

The general idea is to work on your situational awareness. To be able to describe what is around you and how you feel in the moment. This empowers you to quickly spot the aspects of the world that can have a benign effect on you. Whatever you do though, remember that you are but a guest on this earth. Do what you must while you can. And do not take yourself too seriously.

On Thursday, the 12th of March 2026, at 6 PM United Kingdom time (GMT) I will give a talk titled Computing in freedom with GNU Emacs. My intention is to introduce Emacs to a wide audience. Participation is open to everyone.

I will post a reminder as we get closer to the date of the event. Looking forward to it!

The first big topic is about the distinction of “street smart” versus “book smart”. I explain how the experiences of one’s life influence or condition their perspective. In this context, I introduce the idea of basic powers, which I mention again in various parts of the video, as I connect the dots.

The second is the distribution of competences in society and how people are different. This relates to how some tend to be more interested in spirituality than others. I note how this is a fact of life. I explain, in this regard, how elitism is misguided.

The third issue is about personal responsibility and the more general idea of embodying the change you wish to see. I provide relevant examples.

The fourth and final point is on giving people what they need, though not necessarily what they want. I elaborate at length, while drawing connections to other thoughts I expressed.

The package supports the universities of Oxford and Cambridge out-of-the-box, though users can define their own institutions. I have two institutions there to provide concrete examples. I am happy to add more, but the idea is for users to maintain their own data.

Below I show a complete example using data for a school in Austria.

Write the calendar data

To make this work, you first need to specify the data. This has the same structure as institution-calendar-oxford-university-dates and thus passes the test of institution-calendar-valid-data-p. Look at the code for Oxford to get an idea. Here is a sample:

(defvar my-austrian-school-dates
  '((2025 (wintersemester ( 9  8 2025) ( 2  6 2026))
          (sommersemester ( 2 16 2026) ( 7 10 2026)))))

This is an Austrian school that has two terms for the academic year starting in 2025: wintersemester and sommersemester. The symbols for those terms can be anything. Internally, the package uses the first letter to form the week indicator, followed by the number of the week within the given term.

Each term defines a start date and an end date as a list of integers of the form (MONTH DAY YEAR). I picked a form that is consistent with the way calendar.el represents the date, otherwise I would have used a different standard.

Register your institution

The variable institution-calendar-user-entities contains all user-defined institutions and their corresponding calendar data. Each entry is a cons cell of the form (ENTITY . CALENDAR-DATA), where ENTITY is an arbitrary symbol and CALENDAR-DATA is the symbol of a variable that holds the data, as shown in the previous section.

Here is how we can add to this list:

(add-to-list 'institution-calendar-user-entities (cons 'austrian-school 'my-austrian-school-dates))

In this example, I am calling the newly registered institution austrian-school, which is how I can refer to it elsewhere. I am associating this austrian-school with the calendar data of the variable my-austrian-school-dates.

Make the institution-calendar-mode work for your institution

With the aforementioned in place, the user option institution-calendar-entity can be set to the value of austrian-school:

(setopt institution-calendar-entity 'austrian-school)

If the institution-calendar-mode is enabled, then the regular calendar command will display week indicators for this school. This is good if you only need one calendar. But if you work with many institutions and thus need to switch between their calendars, then ignore this step and move to the next one. Or ignore it anyway if you prefer to keep the M-x calendar intact.

Define a custom command for your institution

The macro institution-calendar-define-convenience-command makes it trivial to define a command that produces a calendar buffer for the given institution. This is like M-x calendar with the minor mode institution-calendar-mode enabled, except it does not alter the output of the calendar—so you can use them both (or, anyhow, use as many as the institutions you care about).

;; This defines the command `institution-calendar-austrian-school'.
;; Call `institution-calendar-austrian-school' with M-x or bind it to a key.
(institution-calendar-define-convenience-command austrian-school)

Once you evaluate this macro call, you will get the command institution-calendar-austrian-school. Use that to produce a calendar that works with the austrian-school in particular. If you are curious, M-x institution-calendar-oxford-university will still do the right thing for the University of Oxford. Same for the command institution-calendar-cambridge-university.

Use an intermonth header

The user option institution-calendar-include-intermonth-header adds a header above the week numbers. By default, this only works with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Though you can extend the package to support your institution by adding to the value of the variable institution-calendar-intermonth-headers. Thus:

(add-to-list 'institution-calendar-intermonth-headers (cons 'austrian-school "AU"))

You can skip this step if you do not plan to display the intermonth header. Those are not shown by default.

Putting it all together

This is how your configuration of the institution-calendar may look like:

(use-package institution-calendar
  :ensure nil ; not in a package archive
  :init
  ;; Install it from source.
  ;; Then upgrade it with the command `package-vc-upgrade' or `package-vc-upgrade-all'.
  (unless (package-installed-p 'institution-calendar)
    (package-vc-install "https://github.com/protesilaos/institution-calendar.git"))
  :config
  (defvar my-austrian-school-dates
    '((2025 (wintersemester ( 9  8 2025) ( 2  6 2026))
            (sommersemester ( 2 16 2026) ( 7 10 2026)))))

  (add-to-list 'institution-calendar-user-entities (cons 'austrian-school 'my-austrian-school-dates))

  ;; This defines the command `institution-calendar-austrian-school'.
  ;; Call `institution-calendar-austrian-school' with M-x or bind it to a key.
  (institution-calendar-define-convenience-command austrian-school)

  (setopt institution-calendar-include-extra-week-numbers t)
  (setopt institution-calendar-include-intermonth-header nil)

  ;; These are optional, if you want `M-x calendar' to work for your institution.
  (setopt institution-calendar-entity 'austrian-school)

  (institution-calendar-mode 1))

Sources

• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/institution-calendar
• Screenshot: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-02-11-emacs-institution-calendar/
• Backronyms: Interestingly Nothing Serving Teachers Implement Term Utilities Took Inspiration from Oxford Novices… calendar; Institution … Cambridge Added Lent Entry Notwithstanding Dates Already Recorded.

The idea is that hl-line-mode cannot work equally well for contexts with competing priorities: (i) line selection, or (ii) simple line highlight. In the former case, the current line needs to be made prominent because it carries a specific meaning of some significance in the given context: the user has to select a line. Whereas in the latter case, the primary mode of interaction does not revolve around the line highlight itself: it may be because the focus is on editing text or reading through the buffer’s contents, so the current line highlight is more of a reminder of the point’s location on the vertical axis.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): lin
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/lin
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/lin-changelog
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/lin
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/lin
• Backronym: LIN Is Noticeable.

Below are the release notes

Version 2.0.0 on 2026-02-12

This is the first tagged release since 2024-08-05. The package is in a stable state: it does everything it is meant to. This version makes some small refinements, mostly in how parts of the code are written. Though there also are some nice user-facing changes:

• The lin-gnome-accent-color-mode synchronises the accent colour of the GNOME desktop environment with Lin’ own lin-face. This happens live, so any buffers that are already using the lin-mode (directly or via lin-global-mode) will get the updated colour.

• The user option lin-gnome-accent-color-override-foreground controls whether the faces that correspond to GNOME accent colours should override the underlying text colour or not. This is useful for improved colour contrast. The default is to not override the foreground. Setting lin-gnome-accent-color-override-foreground to non-nil changes that so, for example, the lin-face will be set to lin-red-override-fg instead of lin-red (of course, faces can be modified by users/themes to override the foreground anyway, so this is about the default behaviour).

• New faces to style the current line when lin-mode is enabled include lin-purple, lin-orange, and lin-slate. Those do not override the underlying foreground colours by default. Whereas lin-purple-override-fg, lin-orange-override-fg, and lin-slate-override-fg apply their background while also setting the foreground (remember that you always control which face to use by changing the user option lin-face).

• The lin-global-mode skips all private buffers. These are buffers that users normally do not interact with directly. Their names are prefixed with a space and, by default, are hidden from the view of switch-to-buffer and related commands.

• The default value of the user option lin-mode-hooks now includes the world-clock-mode-hook and xref--xref-buffer-mode-hook. The former relates to the command world-clock, while the latter is used by any command that produces Grep-like results via the built-in Xref infrastructure (for example, my Denote package does that for a few of its commands). The lin-mode-hooks is a list of hooks for major modes that should use the Lin style for the selection line highlight.

This is about a new package of mine: institution-calendar. It is not going to be available on GNU ELPA. Users will have to install it from source (code for this is further below). The reason is that the predecossor to this package, oxford-calendar, was not accepted:

• https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-01/msg00337.html.
• https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-01/msg00401.html.

I will consider my options going forward, with whatever that means for all my packages.

Overview

The institution-calendar package augments the M-x calendar buffer to include indicators about the applicable term. Each term has week numbers, which are displayed on the side of the regular calendar data.

The user option institution-calendar-entity specifies which institution’s data to use. Currently, the value can be either oxford-university or cambridge-university. Contact me and I will add support for your institution.

Each term shows the week numbers it formally defines. For example, the University of Oxford has three terms of 8 weeks each. When the user option institution-calendar-include-extra-week-numbers is set to a non-nil value, then an additional two weeks are added: week 0 for one week before the term starts and an extra number after the term ends. This is useful for scheduling purposes, such as to arrange meetings in preparation of the work ahead or to report on what happened.

The user option institution-calendar-include-intermonth-header writes text above the institution’s week indicators. This makes it a bit easier to tell them apart from the regular calendar data.

Showing the calendar

Enable the minor mode institution-calendar-mode to make all future calls to M-x calendar use the relevant institution data.

If you do not want to affect the M-x calendar output, then use the command institution-calendar: it is functionally equivalent to having the aforementioned minor mode enabled, except it has no permanent effect on M-x calendar—that will keep its original appearance.

If, for whatever reason, you need to check the calendar of a specific institution, then do M-x institution-calendar-cambridge-university or M-x institution-calendar-oxford-university (more such commands will be available to match any other institutions that this package will support).

Installation and configuration

(use-package institution-calendar
  :ensure nil ; not in a package archive
  :init
  (unless (package-installed-p 'institution-calendar)
    (package-vc-install "https://github.com/protesilaos/institution-calendar.git"))
  :commands
  (institution-calendar
   institution-calendar-cambridge-university
   institution-calendar-oxford-university)
  :config
  (setopt institution-calendar-entity 'oxford-university)
  (setopt institution-calendar-include-extra-week-numbers t)
  (setopt institution-calendar-include-intermonth-header nil)

  ;; If you want to permanently change what M-x calendar shows, enable
  ;; this mode.  Otherwise, use the relevant command from the
  ;; :commands listed above.
  (institution-calendar-mode 1))

Sources

• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/institution-calendar
• Screenshot: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-01-09-emacs-oxford-calendar-package/
• Backronyms: Interestingly Nothing Serving Teachers Implement Term Utilities Took Inspiration from Oxford Novices… calendar; Institution … Cambridge Added Lent Entry Notwithstanding Dates Already Recorded (yes, I always have a lot of fun writing these!).

Yesterday morning two labourers came to work at the neighbouring vineyard. Their task was to prune the grapevines. I had to bring the puppies indoors because they are still too eager to defend their territory. The older dogs know when to fight and when to keep a watchful eye. But the puppies lack experience. They need more time to learn when they need to show ferocity and when to hold back. Usually the latter is enough of a deterrent. I am training them little by little and am confident that they will become competent guard dogs. The key is patience: I cannot force things to happen.

At noon the labourers took a lunch break. I went to greet them. My goal was to have a chat in order to learn more about what it takes to manage a vineyard. The labourers are foreigners. They could barely communicate in Greek. English was not much of an improvement either. They told me that their employer was nearby, a couple hundred metres further up the valley. I thanked them for the hint and went to meet this person. He is a local. His name starts with “A”, so for the purposes of this article I will call him “Mr. A”.

Mr. A is in his mid-sixties. I wanted to ask him about the best time to plant new grapevines. My previous attempts have been unsuccessful. He said that the droughts have been harsh and that I should try again this year. Even in March is a good time. What matters is that there is enough humidity and/or rainfall for the first couple of years. If necessary, I should water them a little bit. The grapevines do not need to be watered further once they grow enough. It is only necessary to prune them, which I already know how to do properly.

He then asked me if I am the “guy with the dogs”, to which I answered affirmatively. There are plenty of people in my area who have a dog at home, but I am one of the few, if not the only one, who consistently walks around with dogs. Plus, I have four of them now and they are medium-to-large animals. People will often ask me how do I handle four dogs when even one is already a challenge, regardless of size. I explain that it is not magic. If you put in the time to train them properly and remain consistent in your verbal and non-verbal communication with them, then you get the desired results. Being able to physically handle four dogs is important, of course, though good manners make everything easier.

Mr. A went on to tell me his story. He did most of the talking. “I am a guerrilla like you”, he said “I built my own house beyond the built-up areas, installed solar panels there, and now need to have dogs to guard the place while I am away”. I thought likening us to guerrilla fighters was a figure of speech that did not carry any weight, but he continued down that line of thought: “we fight to the bitter end”, he added. I was maintaining eye contact while listening. What I saw was indeed a fighter, but also a man with deep regrets who was trying to set in motion what he kept postponing for a lifetime. I felt that he was trying to muster the courage to wish something into being rather than merely describe his condition.

I offered to help him with anything he needs for his homestead. As for his impression of me, I made no comment. I let people speak their mind. I do not try to correct them, nor do I wish to elicit favourable opinions. If somebody says something about me, I take it as-is. I am curious to understand their point of view, though I do not question the merits of their position. The reason is that one’s impression of me may be inaccurate from my perspective but is not wrong from theirs. What they have developed up until that point is a function of what they are aware of and the circumstances of their being. Their opinion, to the extent that they are honest about it, is a true reflection of a certain state of affairs. Whether that aligns with the facts of my life, let alone how I perceive of them, is a matter of correspondence between data sets and attendant judgement calls.

Concretely, I was reluctant to commit to the notion that I am a guerrilla fighter. I do not think of myself as fighting against anyone. To my mind, I am but an ordinary villager. I live peacefully in a rural area, doing much of what people used to do for millennia. My life is quiet here. When I am not working on the computer, I spend time with my dogs and/or do manual labour for my house/land. I tend to all my projects with care and, generally, mind my business without interfering in the affairs of others.

I know that my lifestyle is nothing special because this is how my parents grew up. Their parents were peasants as well and so on for all previous generations that we have records of. Same for their relatives and neighbours. It is not until the second half of the 20th century when everyone started treating rural life as démodé.

I live here because it appeals to me. I am not interested in starting a mimetic trend. I think those quickly get overtaken by shallow gimmicks, like with the so-called “trad” wives who bake bread in their cute pink ovens while wearing a ton of makeup and the finest clothes. My relatives, say my grandmother, was an actually traditional matriarch who would have had some stern words for this show… But I digress. My point is that I just do my thing, as I am not fishing for Internet points.

How I became suspicious of the urban life I had is due to serendipity. One day I stumbled across a 4-hour-long music video that emulated natural sounds to induce a state of “deep focus and relaxation”. You hear the water flowing, the wind blowing, the birds chirping, and are supposed to be empowered to act or, simply, to fall asleep easily. To me, this presented an intellectual challenge: if the natural rhythms have a benign effect on me, and if the baseline of what I experience daily is to my detriment, then why do I not reverse the dynamic? Instead of escaping from stress to find moments of tranquillity, I can operate in a calm environment and engage in high-intensity activities on demand.

Those videos can never address the underlying problems. They effectively wanted me to experience an aspect of the world through a proxy. Instead of going out there to get a feel for how it is, I was invited to sit in front of the computer for several more hours, indulging in my sense of comfort. What would I be doing in the meantime, if not to aimlessly consume more “content”? That seemed unhelpful to me. It took me a while to understand what had to be done, but I already knew what the right direction was for me. I had to change my ways, to scrutinise those activities that I had not put any thought into, and to become someone I would be happy with. Since then I decided to partake in the world without intermediaries and to live a life of initiative.

Videos of natural sounds can never capture the complete experience because there is no sense of danger or discomfort. If I am in the middle of some unfamiliar forest after the sun sets, then my alertness is at its maximum. Something primal awakens, which makes me a wolf among wolves. In those moments, I am not my usual self because I viscerally understand that the world is not necessarily kind to me. The cosmos has no favourites. The world at-large does not revolve around me. It does not care if I live or die, if I am happy or miserable. In this world I find pleasure and grief. What prevails is an equilibrium. I then feel in every fibre of my being how I have to struggle for whatever it is I want to change. To try to the best of my abilities for as long as those last, because the universe will not conspire in my favour.

Mr. A is implicitly spot on about a certain behavioural trait: the inclination to put ideas into action. This I do have and am much more decisive than I used to be. It is inherently risky to make decisions with far-reaching implications. There is a chance that you are wrong and there is no way to get compensated for the lost vitality or the years that went by. But how can we ever know if we do not put thoughts to the test? I collect as much information as I can to inform my judgement. When the answer is not clear and I am pressed to make a decision, I let my gut feeling be the tie-breaker.

Ikaros (Icarus) took his flight too close to the sun. In a sense, his was an act of hubris, of trying to escape from the confines imposed on the human condition by the gods. His death was the price he had to pay for such insolence. Though I think of Ikaros as a hero who dared to push against the boundaries in order to discover where the terminus is. Some people have this trait of not listening to words of caution. They only submit to the authority of facts and reason. Everything else is an opinion whose relevance remains to be determined. Conventional wisdom fails to amuse them. They heed the song of the siren, which lures them to the high seas where adventure, treasure, and death, stand side-by-side.

Mr. A praised my integrity. I do not know what made his say that. I barely talked, anyway. All I did was to seek advice about grapes and to then pay attention to his instructions. What I said about myself was limited to my name: “Protesilaos”. Perhaps he meant to thank me for what I had communicated through my deeds and body language: a fight is possible and its outcome is not a given. Those who give up lose before they start. In this regard, Mr. A may be on to something with his metaphor. Though I still choose to believe that my uneventful life in these mountains is not an open conflict with some rapacious establishment, but a mere appreciation of the basics.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.0.0 on 2026-02-09

Two new themes

doric-jade is a light theme with a predominantly green feel.

doric-copper is a dark theme with orange, magenta, and cyan colours.

I have update all screenshots: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures.

Revised styles for Org TODO and DONE

The relevant faces now use a colour-coding scheme where TODO states are rendered in red while DONE are green.

This is done to ensure cross-theme consistency. Those faces communicate a certain state and, therefore, it is better to not have to relearn which colour means what while switching between the Doric themes.

Org ~code~ faces stand out more

This is done to differentiate them from =verbatim=. It is especially important for users who choose to hide the markup with the user option org-hide-emphasis-markers (I used to do that but realised that the ambiguity was a problem in many cases, because ~code~ and =verbatim= have different semantics in some exported formats).

Refinements to all Org heading or heading-like faces

This covers the regular Org headings as well as anything that performs the same function, such as in the Org agenda buffer.

All regular headings use the main foreground value. The document title and the Org agenda equivalent of that are rendered in an accent colour for greater effect.

Combined with the aforementioned revision of the TODO and DONE states, Org buffers are easier to read and work with.

Tweaks for the Org agenda faces

The faces that communicate the current time and applicable filters are made more intense. The idea is to spot them more quickly.

Faces that pertain to diary or diary-style events no longer use italics to avoid exaggerations.

Blocked tasks are easier to spot.

The applicable query in the structure header is made more prominent.

Overall, Org agenda buffers should be easier to scan.

More obvious style for Org exporting

The active/available keys in the Org export dispatcher use more intense colours and have greater padding around them. This is what I also do with the Modus themes (and all derivatives) to improve the legibility of those keys.

Magit branch and author faces are redone

The authors in log views and elsewhere have a distinct colour to stand out a bit more. Branches use consistent typography, while the current branch stands out more than the others.

New colours for transient faces with background values

Enabled and disabled keys use a green-red coding scheme.

Active values and arguments have a style that is the same across themes for the same reason as Org TODO and DONE.

Transient headings use the main foreground colour to not draw more attention than they need to.

Git commit faces follow the aforementioned patterns

Those are seen when writing a commit message in Magit.

VC logs better differentiate the commit author

The relevant face uses a distinct foreground. It no longer applies a bold weight, as that had the effect of making the buffers much busier than necessary.

Colour-coded styles for Dired marks

Items that are marked for selection are rendered in a green style, while those marked for deletion are red.

This is done for cross-theme consistency, so that users do not have to think twice before performing the relevant operations.

The doric-themes-with-colors macro for advanced users

This macro is effectively the same as a let for binding the colours of the active Doric theme. Advanced users can rely on this macro to write functions that, for example, set the theme-specific red colour value of a given face.

Miscellaneous

Symlinks in Dired buffers are easier to spot. Same for visited links in Info buffers.

Org definitions no longer override the foreground of any other face present in them. Same for the notmuch header in view buffers.

Our next big topic is art and creativity. Eric is a musician and has a keen interest in the artistic experience. Over the course of our talk we comment on ways to be creative, the different forms of expression we find from conservation to exploration, and how harmony is experienced. Many finer points here involve the sense of awe, how aesthetics cannot be reduced to words, that text alone disturbs us because we do not connect to a person’s emotional state, and more. Eric asks me what I think about the rhythm of life, also with regard to my way of choosing to live in the mountains and how all that underpins my creativity.

We share how myths and catchy stimuli play a key role in religiosity, as well as how religion cannot be reduced to a system of propositions: it also has a social aspect to it and a function of social reproduction. Our attention is focused on how people understand when not to take themselves too seriously. Examples we expound on involve Santa Claus and the Greek gods. In this regard I explain how Greek religion and Greek mythology are distinct, even if the latter draws inspiration from the former.

At many points we draw parallels between matters of human creation, such as art, and the natural order. For example, there is a way in which an idea stands the test of time when its application leads to viable results.

Eric has appeared before in this series: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2025-07-23-prot-asks-eric-emacs-lisp-music-aesthetics-minnesota/.

Links from Eric

• My program “hms”, a featureful CLI time-duration calculator: https://emfred.com/programs/hms.

• My piece of music “Flying Home”, which features recordings of birdcalls at various playback rates: https://emfred.com/audio/sbp4-05-Flying-Home.mp3.

• My collection of music which includes “Flying Home”, called “Sketchbook, page 4”: https://emfred.com/sketchbook/pg4.

• And finally, in case a listener would like to contact me: https://emfred.com/about/contact

About “Prot Asks”

In this video series, I talk to anybody who is interested to have a video call with me (so do contact me if you want!). The topics cover anything related to Emacs, technology, and life in general. More here: https://protesilaos.com/prot-asks.

I just saw your selfie after you cut your own hair[1]. Even though I live in the city and have a barber, cutting my own hair has been always in the back of my mind, something I am “pining for” (lack of a better phrase).

Do you have any tips for cutting your own hair? Would you consider writing a blog post on this? I would like to know what tools you use, mirror arrangements, stylization tips you use on yourself, etc. etc.

Footnotes: [1] https://protesilaos.com/selfies/2025-10-22-haircut-now-refinements/

Sure, I will respond here and this will become the text of the blog post (without disclosing your private information). I guess it makes sense to do this as a video, but it will be difficult to do an informative recording on my own where I show mirrors and stuff. Maybe in the future…

I have been doing my own hair for a long time now. I first experimented with it while I was a teenager. The hairstyles I do are fairly simple, in that they do not involve a lot of detail-oriented steps. I do not use scissors for my hair, though I do have them for the beard if/when it is long (have not done that in a while, but I might let it grow again this year).

The simplest hairstyle is the buzz cut. You take the electric clipper and run it through your hair to create a uniform look. The way I make sure that I catch everything is by placing the other hand in front, so it guides the clipper. Using both hands ensures that you actually do not need any mirrors. You rely on your sense of touch and continue until you can no longer feel any hair that is longer than the rest. Just make sure not to cut diagonally. Gently guide the blades on a straight line, otherwise you will injure yourself. Also pay attention to the angle of the blades: they should touch the skin from the size, rather than vertically.

Another easy one is the clean shave. Start with a buzz cut to keep the hair short and then use a razor to make a deeper cut. The razor I use is the same I have for shaving. It is one of those generic ones you find in stores with the 2 blades. There are other more renowned brands with 3-5 blades, but I pick the cheaper option here because it is good enough. To get the deepest cut, apply the razor counter to the direction the hair grows towards. Make sure you are consistent though, otherwise some spots will have a deeper cut than others. As with the clipper, make sure not to run the razor diagonally: always move it in a straight line

The other hairstyle I do which you linked to is a bit more involved, in that I trim only the sides. For this I use two mirrors, one that is framed on the wall and another that I hold in my hand. The exact curve for the sides will depend on my mood, but the idea is to complement the shape of the skull. The highest point I want to shave off is where the top of the skull ends. It will depend on the shape of your head, of course, but check if you can make a distinction between the upper part of the skull and the sides. Imagine that a ball rolls from the top: there must be a point where it meets the “cliff” and clearly falls off. Then draw the line there. Once you are at this point, you use the techniques that apply to the other two hairstyles I covered.

Clippers come with different guards for controlling the length of the hair. Note that these can be false friends, because you must also be mindful of the force you are applying. If you do rely on the guards, be careful to maintain a steady hand and to be consistent throughout. Otherwise the results will be uneven.

You may want to use such guards if you do a multi-level hairstyle where the sides get progressively deeper from top to bottom. I have done that before. The principles are the same. Using mirrors and keep your hands steady.

With two mirrors, one inertial and another that you move around, you can easily spot every side. Though you still have to get used to using the tools while mirroring the motions. And then, you will need to become sufficiently ambidextrous with them, as you cannot use the right hand to cut deep on your left side and vice versa while also maintaining a clear view through the mirror. This is the most difficult part of the process, so you may want to practice with the easier techniques before you get to this.

Something I also do while shaving/trimming my beard is to do the sides first before moving to the centre. The idea is that if I run out of battery or must leave quickly then I still have something that is tolerable, if not already great. And if I planning to do the rest, then I can work on it later.

Part of doing everything myself is to keep costs at a minimum. I do not have fancy products, like lotions and stuff. I also never put really hot water on my hair (actually I do cold showers year-round, but this is just a me thing) or have a hair drier, so there never is any related damage that has to be repaired. The hair stays healthy thanks to the overall lifestyle. If you do need products though, then that is fine: check online for suggestions, as I really am of no help here.

doric-jade is a light theme with an emphais on green. doric-copper is a dark theme with mostly orange accents and hints of patina. Both themes retain the Doric quality of using few colours while relying on typography to establish rhythm and structure.

Below are their samples.

[ Or just check all the pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures. ]

doric-jade

doric-copper

Coming in doric-themes version 0.7.0

Both doric-jade and doric-copper are in-development. I have already worked on their finer point, but may still make some tweaks before publishing them as part of the next stable version of the doric-themes.

About the Doric themes

The Doric themes use few colours and will appear monochromatic in many contexts. They are my most minimalist themes. Styles involve the careful use of typographic features and subtleties in colour gradients to establish a consistent rhythm. Legibility is still high.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

Below are the original lyrics in Greek, my faithful translation, and some comments on what I make of them.

Τον ίδιο το Θεό

Ερμηνεία:  Μπλε, Τζώρτζια Κεφαλά
Στίχοι:    Γιώργος Παρώδης
Μουσική:   Γιώργος Παπαποστόλου


Πάνω σου η γη ξυπνάει
Ήλιος μπαίνει από παντού
Κάθομαι και σε κοιτάζω μη με φοβάσαι

Είσαι ακόμα από τον ύπνο
Τ'όνειρο έχει εξατμιστεί
Μάρτιο θυμίζεις, πώς να σε προβλέψω;

Ένα απ'όλα τα βιβλία
Που έχω μέσα μου βαθιά
Του έρωτα φεγγάρια μαύρα το φωτίζουν

Τίποτα δεν έχει μείνει
Κι όμως όλα είναι εδώ
Άφησε με να αγγίξω τα μαλλιά σου

Τον ίδιο το Θεό
να είχα απέναντι μου
σου λέω προτιμώ
στην κόλαση μαζί σου

Άφωνη η ζωή ρωτάει
«Τόση ομορφιά από πού;»
Βρέχει ο ουρανός ρουμπίνια κι απαντάει

«Μόνο η αγάπη ξέρει»
Τώρα έμαθα κι εγώ
πόσο ανάγκη έχω από την αγκαλιά σου

Τον ίδιο το Θεό
να είχα απέναντι μου
σου λέω προτιμώ
στην κόλαση μαζί σου

Τίποτα άλλο εκτός
από εσένα στο φως
Τίποτα άλλο που να με σκοτώνει γλυκά

God himself

Singer:  Blé, Giorgia Kefalá
Lyrics:  Giorgos Parodis
Music:   Giorgos Papapostolou


The earth awakens over you
Sunshine enters from everywhere
I sit staring at you do not fear me

You are still asleep
The dream has evaporated
You evoke March, how can I predict you?

One among all the books
That I have deep inside of me
Love's dark moons are luminating it

Nothing is left
Yet everything is here
Let me touch your hair

God himself
had I in front of me
I tell you I prefer
to be with you in hell

Speechless life asks
"Whence all this beauty?"
The sky rains rubies and responds

"Love only knows"
Now I know as well
how much need I have for your hug

God himself
had I in front of me
I tell you I prefer
to be with you in hell

Nothing else except
you in the light
Nothing else that is killing me sweetly

This song is a recognition of—and appreciation for—imperfection. It invites us to keep things simple in accepting what we have. There is beauty to be experienced if we are willing to work for it, provided we do not fall in the trap of seeking perfection.

The poetic “you” is a flawed lover. They remind the first person of the notoriously temperamental month of March: sometimes scorching hot, at others icy cold. Oscillations between the extremes can be difficult to handle. This lover does have redeeming, even admirable, qualities though: it is why our protagonist has evidently fallen in love with them. The point, then, is not that the lover is erratic but that this fact poses no impediment whatsoever to the relationship.

One’s attitude is of paramount importance. The poetic “I” exhibits the necessary maturity to make things work by trying in earnest, despite admitting that this relationship is a drain on them. The frailties of character, the contentious parts, are qualities that every person and, by extension, every relationship exhibits. To entertain the typically false belief that the grass is greener elsewhere is to never be satisfied with anyone or anything.

Be constructive and supportive, while still drawing boundaries. Yet refrain from the self-fulfilling negativity of seeking triggers for anger, frustration, and petty complaints. Give and take gracefully without wanting to be the boss. The expectation to control the other, be it through physical coercion, emotional manipulation, or financial restrictions is what renders the relationship lopsided and abusive.

Admitting to one’s own mistakes is equally important. Otherwise it comes off as insecure, while being patronising and hypocritical. Whenever you catch yourself telling your lover in a belittling tone how to be a better person look in the mirror and ask what you could have done differently to set them up for success.

Sometimes the problems are insurmountable. It takes courage to recognise as much and seek a resolution. What this song reminds us is to not be trigger-happy: try to the best of your abilities before quitting.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): beframe
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/beframe
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/beframe-changelog
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/beframe
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/beframe
• Video demo: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2023-02-28-emacs-beframe-demo/
• Backronym: Buffers Encapsulated in Frames Realise Advanced Management of Emacs.

Below are the release notes

Version 1.5.0 on 2026-02-04

This version fixes two bugs and makes other minor tweaks.

The first bug pertains to the performance of the command beframe-switch-buffer or the command switch-to-buffer when beframe-mode is enabled: they were really slow when the list of buffers was long. Now they are always fast. Thanks to Alexandre Rousseau for reporting the problem in issue 17: https://github.com/protesilaos/beframe/issues/17.

The second bug is more subtle. It is about persisting the completion metadata category value in all prompts that read a buffer, when beframe-mode is enabled. This change means that users who configure the user option completion-category-overrides will not get the expected results in buffer prompts affected by Beframe.

Thanks to Stefan Monnier for commenting on the initial implementation, specifically telling me that let binding the metadata can affect nested minibuffers, which we do not want. This was done on the emacs-devel mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2025-12/msg00264.html.

Below are the lyrics, my translation of them, and further comments on what all this means to me.

Έπαψες αγάπη να θυμίζεις

Ερμηνεία:  Πυξ Λαξ
Στίχοι:    Φίλιππος Πλιάτσικας, Όλγα Βλαχοπούλου, Νίκη Παπαγεωργίου
Μουσική:   Φίλιππος Πλιάτσικας


O καφές σου έχει κρυώσει
και το ράδιο κλειστό τώρα για μέρες
Σε θυμάμαι είχες ξαπλώσει
Στου μονού κρεβατιού τις καλημέρες

Το ξέρω πως δεν το διάλεξα
αν έπρεπε τη σκέψη μου να ορίζεις
Μα ακόμα δεν κατάλαβα
γιατί έπαψες αγάπη να θυμίζεις

Υπάρχουν το νιώθω υγρά μονοπάτια
Υπάρχουν κομμάτια από φως στη σιωπή
Τραγούδια που'γίναν με δάκρυα στα μάτια
Τραγούδια που'γίναν απλά η αφορμή

You stopped evoking love

Singer:  Pyx Lax
Lyrics:  Philippos Pliatsikas, Olga Blachopoulou, Nike Papageorgiou
Music:   Philippos Pliatsikas


Your coffee has gotten cold
and the radio is switched off for days now
I remember you had laid down
on the single bed's good mornings

I know I did not choose
whether you should define my thought
But I have yet to understand
why you stopped evoking love

I feel there are humid paths
There are pieces of light in silence
Songs that were made with tears in the eyes
Songs that were made as an impetus

The titular “you” is each of us in potentiality. We stop evoking love when we no longer care about our wellness. The coffee that stays there is a metaphor for the fact that we do not pay attention to our state of being: what should be savoured in a timely fashion is neglected altogether, left to the side where it cannot give joy anymore.

It helps to think of our person as a stranger. What would be our response to someone who, with sincerity in their eyes, would seek our help? We would probably react with kindness. We would even be willing to make a small sacrifice to accommodate this troubled soul. We would be eager to show our support in the hope of engendering in this person the belief that everything is going to be alright.

What we usually do, however, is to take our self for granted. Even if we are still polite to others, we assume we have a licence to apply a double standard: politeness for them, disregard or even scorn for us. This is not a sustainable arrangement. Each of us is like a delicate flower: if we do not water it enough and clear the weeds periodically it will wither away.

In the absence of self-love, there is no capacity for love at-large. The reason is that we make everything a matter of desert (as in “to deserve”). We argue that we do not deserve to be loved and how we are not good enough in this or that way. Self-loathing takes hold which eventually transmogrifies into a worldview of negativity, contempt, and resignation. Ultimately, it begets the thought that nobody is deserving of love as they too have many faults if we pay close attention.

The image of the radio that is switched off points to the disconnect we thus experience. Our view of the world is no longer informed by what is actually happening around us. We have become a cruel judge that ignores the facts, or selects only those that support their prejudice, and then has no capacity for equitable adjudication of the case. Once we mentally check out from our surroundings, we let our fears and insecurities define our outlook.

Exactly why we might withdraw into this bleak condition is unclear. Each individual will be formed by different experiences. The common in the multitude, though, is that the turn inward is not done with an intent for temporary introspection but a want for permanent escape. To be introspective is to look inside in order to find that which is of use outside. Whereas to seek an exit is to toy with the notion of giving up on life.

Others may care about us, but are nevertheless powerless to sustain the fire in our heart. We do not accept love because we do not believe we are worthy enough. Only our own initiative can change this opinion. It happens when we try, little by little, to reach the point of looking in the mirror without regrets, with no sense of guilt, with mere lightness having accepted who we are.

The final verse reminds us that there is scope for a rebound. Making songs with tears in the eyes still constitutes song-making. Those tears are the honest representation of the moment. We do not hide them nor do we pretend that everything is in order. We let it all out so that it cannot exert power over us. And then, from a position of clarity, we notice how there is light in the darkness, and that this song shall provide the impetus for a new beginning: to regain the capacity to give love and to receive it; to love despite all the imperfections.

Below are the lyrics in Greek, my translation of them, and some further comments on the meaning of this song. Also check my other interpretations involving one or more of these artists:

• Hamlet of the Moon (2022-07-14)
• Horoscope (2022-10-16)
• Always smiling (2023-01-06)
• A black stoker from Djibouti (2024-09-26)
• Minor adulterations (2025-03-01)

Δεν είμαι άλλος

Ερμηνεία:  Χρήστος Θηβαίος
Στίχοι:    Μάνος Ελευθερίου
Μουσική:   Θάνος Μικρούτσικος


Πίσω απ'το φως της μουσικής που ταξιδεύεις
είσαι ολόκληρη Αργεντίνικο ταγκό
Και μήτε στ'όνειρο σου πια δε με γυρεύεις
όπως παλιά μ'ένα σκοπό χερουβικό

Και για τον κόσμο που μισείς, δεν είμαι άλλος
Και για τον κόσμο που αγαπάς, δεν είμαι αυτός
Άλλοι νομίζανε πως ήμουνα μεγάλος
κι από σπουργίτι θα γινόμουνα αετός

Μες τα νεκρά τα καφενεία ρίχνει χιόνι
κι εγώ πενθώ την ερημιά ενός φιλιού
που σαν το ρούχο η αγάπη μας παλιώνει
κι είναι σαν ήχος χαλασμένου πιστολιού

I am not another

Singer:  Christos Thivaios
Lyrics:  Manos Eleftheriou
Music:   Thanos Mikroutsikos


Behind the light of the music you travel to
you are an Argentinian tango throughout
And not even in your dream do you seek me anymore
as you did in the old days with an angelic tune

And for the world you hate, I am not another
And for the world you love, I am not this one
Others believed that I was grand
and from sparrow I would turn into an eagle

It snows in the dead cafeterias
and I mourn the solitude of a kiss
while our love ages like a cloth
and is like the sound of a defective pistol

I understand this song as a contrast between expectations and facts. The poetic first person is struggling to reconcile who they are with who they are supposed to be. They witness their world disintegrate before their eyes and are powerless to stop it. This order, represented by the love that once was, is likened to a rag and a broken firearm. Much like a weapon that can no longer perform its main function, what stands is a simulacrum of what once was: it looks eerily familiar but is devoid of the underlying drive.

One cliché about love is how much it hurts. While I understand the point, I think it helps to point out what actually causes pain: the expectation of permanence in a world of impermanence and the belief in ownership in a world of non-ownership. When there is suffering, it is because we have misunderstood the workings of the cosmos. Instead of appreciating the experience as it happens, we become invested in a promise that cannot be delivered.

In the opening verse, we learn about the poetic “you”. We may describe this character as more than a lover: they are art incarnate, the poet’s muse, if you will. Their entire being is likened to Argentinian tango, where each performance is defined by the intimate connection between the dancing duo. Tango also leaves an impression of power and attraction, which then is juxtaposed to the solitude one finds in the memories of a kiss. The kiss is a memento of joyful moments, but also a reminder of the prevailing conditions. The cafeterias are forsaken not necessarily because they are literally empty, but as a sign of death within: our protagonist no longer wishes to visit those places.

Here again we get a sense of how tormenting the overall phenomenon of love is. It leaves emptiness in its wake. There is no substitute for it. It makes and breaks us. Even though it is blissful while it lasts, it engenders in us the hope that the peak is actually the baseline. What liberates us from the torment is acceptance. To admit that our entitlement is misplaced and to acknowledge that the world does not revolve around us. There are no exceptions, no opt-out clauses.

Love, then, is about the “what is”. Like a dance under the light of the full moon, it happens here and now. Enjoy it while it lasts. The “what was”, the “what shall be”, the “what could have been” are all thoughts without a clear terminus that trouble the mind indefinitely. Same for the troublesome question of “what will others say?”.

If you are a sparrow, it is liberating to admit as much. There is the potential of love for every bird, provided it flies in the skies it belongs to. Sometimes those are in distant lands, in which case the little bird must work extra hard to get there. Do not pretend to be an animal you are not. Do not assume a role that you cannot live up to. Do not fall for the memes. Doing so will only further reinforce the dread that grips your heart each time you are left alone with your yourself with no more distractions to inhibit introspection.

The goal is to be at peace with your actuality. What others believe you should be doing with your life is just noise. They have opinions without knowing how you feel deep inside. In others words, they are misinformed. And, above all, they are prone to speak irresponsibly, for they are not going to live with the consequences of their opinions.

Below are the original lyrics, my faithful translation of them into English, and further comments on the substantive points.

Πανσέληνος

Ερμηνεία:  Χάρις Αλεξίου
Στίχοι:    Χάρις Αλεξίου
Μουσική:   Χάρις Αλεξίου


Στην μέση ενός μικρού σπιτιού, που'χω νοικιάσει
το γέλιο ενός μωρού παιδιού με έχει αγκαλιάσει
Τα ζήτησα όλα απ'τη ζωή μου, τα πλήρωσα με την ψυχή μου
να έχει ένα τόπο η καρδιά πριν να γεράσει

Μα έχει πανσέληνο απόψε κι είναι ωραία
είναι αλλιώτικη η σιωπή χωρίς παρέα
Δεν νιώθω θλίψη μα μου’χει λείψει
το κοριτσάκι αυτό που αγάπησες τυχαία
Δεν νιώθω θλίψη μα μου'χει λείψει
το λάγνο ψέμα σου που τα'κανε όλα ωραία

Είναι σκληρό για μια γυναίκα να'ναι μόνη
στο λέω τώρα που η αλήθεια δε θυμώνει
Όση και να'ναι η δύναμή μου θέλω έναν άνθρωπο μαζί μου
Η μοναξιά στήνει παγίδες και πληγώνει

Μα έχει πανσέληνο απόψε κι είναι ωραία
το σπίτι μου έρημο μα κάνουμε παρέα
Δεν νιώθω θλίψη μα μου'χει λείψει
το κοριτσάκι αυτό που αγάπησες τυχαία
Δεν νιώθω θλίψη μα μου'χει λείψει
το λάγνο ψέμα σου που τα'κανε όλα ωραία

Full moon

Singer:  Haris Alexiou
Lyrics:  Haris Alexiou
Music:   Haris Alexiou


In the middle of a tiny house which I rent
the laughter of a baby child has embraced me
I asked for everything from my life, I paid with my soul
for there to be a place for the heart before it gets old

But there is full moon tonight and it is nice
silence is different without company
I feel no grief but I do miss
the young girl you once loved by chance
I feel no grief but I do miss
your lustful lie that made everything nice

It is harsh for a woman to be alone
I tell you now that the truth does not cause anger
No matter how much is my strength I want someone with me
Loneliness sets up traps and hurts

But there is full moon tonight and it is nice
my house is deserted but we hang out together
I feel no grief but I do miss
the young girl you once loved by chance
I feel no grief but I do miss
your lustful lie that made everything nice

I think of the lyrics as a confession. The poetic first person, who may well be Haris speaking in earnest, shares with us how she misses who she used to be. This person from yesterage, the “young girl” alluded to herein, is not merely a younger version of the protagonist. It is the one—and only one—who experienced a certain experience: the love of a specific man. The “young girl”, then, is integral to the story of this mature woman’s life, for it is that very girl that attracted someone special; someone with whom they partook in a shared experience that only they know the most intimate details of.

In this regard, the reference to the baby child and its laughter is important for two reasons. Firstly, what we are presented with is the perspective of a mother. Secondly, the child is the living embodiment of what happened and a sweet reminder of it.

Love in general is not uncommon. Humanity at-large expresses it in a multitude of ways. What is unique to each of us though, is the subjective view of certain instances of love if/when those do happen. It is all about the particular place and time where the paths of those involved intersect. According to the song, this convergence was a matter of chance. Yet such is not a quality that detracts from the magic of the moment. If anything, it is a contributing factor to it, for it reminds us how something exceptional can occur in a world of happenstance.

The confession I discern pertains to the oft suppressed desire for adventure which is hidden behind an intellectualist facade such as the typical claim that “I only care about his character”. The mention to the “lustful lie that made everything nice” tells us about both the burning passion involved in said adventures, erotic as they are, and also the most blatantly wishful and false belief that fuels them: “forever”.

Feelings of irresistible attraction are transient and short-lived, much like the full moon. Though we prefer to believe that our case will somehow be different, even though the odds are stacked against us. Yes, there are exceptions. It is those rare cases where the lovers make considerable efforts to fall in love again and again, instead of letting routine consume the excitement. “Let me tell you about my day” followed by a series of the same old complaints is how routine asserts its ugly dominance. What remains is an empty shell of a relationship.

Knowledge of the lie does not inhibit the passions, mind you. We want to play the game, even if only for a single round. It is why there is no grief in this song for what has transpired. There are no regrets either. No bemoaning of the fact untruths were spoken. The poetic “I” recognises its current pain and gracefully expresses the want for companionship, with everything that comes with it. Perhaps it is an admission that another round would be exhilarating. Hindsight, then, does not inspire us to seek the truth in such affairs but, instead, to hope for the day when we are told. in a whispering voice, that our dreams will survive the mornings.

Another rainy day. The clouds have been low in the valley. I can barely see the opposite side, even though it is about a hundred metres away. Every time of the year has its beauty. This is no different. I appreciate it while it lasts.

The nearby stream gets flooded whenever there is heavy rainfall: it is why I spent months setting up flood-control infrastructure and redirecting the flow of water. On such days gravel comes downstream. I have put some sturdy obstacles to hold the larger pieces in place, while still allowing water to flow through. Stones and sand accumulate there. I collect them daily with a shovel and distribute them around my land on a wheelbarrow.

There are several spots in my land that get muddy and slippery. By putting coarse earth over them, I make them safer to traverse. Plus the result looks pretty. This project is time-consuming. Working in the ice cold water is uncomfortable, though it is worth the trouble. Once I am done, I will remove the obstacles from the stream so that they do not hold back anything I would not want to have there long-term.

I check all the spots in my vicinity to make sure everything is as it ought to be. I am proactive, though knowing what is happening allows me to act in a timely fashion if I need to intervene. Being in control is a matter of safety as well as a precondition for iterating on my goals without experiencing major setbacks. For example, I never actually had to deal with a flood since I first came here. But if I had never done any of that work, the kind of weather we have now after an intense drought would have surely put me at greater risk of harm. This is due to how dry soil with insufficient vegetation is more prone to erosion: there is nothing to hold it together.

Generally, I maintain situational awareness. It allows me to act swiftly, calmly, and decisively. This is what I did when the wildfires were raging this past summer. I kept my cool in large part because I had a clear mental map of where to be and the possible paths to safety: I had been checking them out on a daily basis.

Alertness stands beside paranoia. One must be safe, but being “too safe” detracts from the quality of life. What helps is to have a sense of the longer term: the world is not collapsing. If we focus too much on the short-term and the details, we lose sight of the bigger picture, which engenders in us the functional equivalent of claustrophobia. In other words: it disempowers us.

The narrow perspective may distort our perception, in how we estimate the extent of a threat or the interplay of factors. Indeed, too narrow a view will make us miss relevant factors altogether, both those that contribute to potential trouble and the ones that provide an antipode to it.

Our outlook aside, we have to tend to our physical condition. One must be able to breath easily, if they are to think clearly. More so in times of duress. The baseline heart rate has to be fairly low, so that there is enough of a buffer when push comes to shove.

In short, the mental and the physical go together. Those who think that meditation alone, without respect for the body, will give them peace of mind, are in for a rude awakening.

One earns the power of control through consistency and patience. It is a state of being characterised by balance and elegance. Those who are typically described as “control freaks” are not actually in control of anything, which is why they are freaking out all the time. All they are good at is to anger and/or infantilise those around them. Maybe their desire is to reach a point where they can affect their environment. But want alone amounts to nothing if it is not underpinning a stepwise plan of action to build up the requisite capacity.

The hut project has given me a house. This is its purpose. I like it for that very reason. Though it has also affected certain intangibles. It is my own initiative and its product is a function of my labour. As such, it reinforces the impression that part of my fate is in my own hands. I know that if something does not work well, it is because I did not do it properly or completely failed to account for some factor. And, conversely, if everything is in order or moving in the right direction it is due to my ongoing efforts.

Being told what to do without a cogent argument as to why has always rubbed me the wrong way for as long as I can remember. Give me a valid point and I will follow. Demonstrate with reason or facts and I obey. Else do not bother. Physically, I need an outlet for my energy. Let me run, let me dig, let me explore. Just let me be: I do not interfere with anyone’s activities and will not boss anybody around. Same on the intellectual front, where I want to express my thoughts without holding anything back. I do not appeal to any authority nor do I claim to be an expert. I just have to be left to my own devices.

Where I am, I love that nobody will do the work in my stead. Mine is a double-edged life: reward for my achievements and punishment for my shortcomings. Having embraced this reality, I do not brag about the good things nor do I complain about the bad ones. “Good” and “bad” are mere figures of speech. To me here, what is, simply is. There is no attendant judgement call that matters. I accept the consequences of my choices without arguing with the heavens and am prepared to deal with the circumstances as they unfold.

People operate on a spectrum of safety and risk, which correlates with blending in versus standing out. At the one extreme are those who follow the beaten path, act on the basis of directives, respect existing structures, and take no responsibility for their actions. At the other extreme is someone like me, who will speak their mind and be ready to take the hit on the chin.

When I launched my website, for example, I was still a university student yet was already vociferous as if I was a preeminent scholar in my field. Not being an expert did not deter me. Nor was I afraid of being wrong—of which I have been countless times, both stylistically and substantively. I admit to my faults. If I improved at all in the process it is through trial and error: a baptism of fire. The mistakes are integral to my growth as a person. I do not hide them, as they are constitutive of who I currently am.

On the aforementioned spectrum, none of the extremes is better than the other. I am not proud of my disposition. Again, no value judgements. Mine is a descriptive statement of how things stand. I do not prescribe it as the conduit to the blissful life.

The extremes on the spectrum represent complementary modes of behaving. The same person can be situated on different parts of the spectrum, depending on the specifics of the case, though they generally are more on one side or the other. What matters is that we appreciate the diversity among people, so as to not try to force everyone to act the same way: all have their role in the social whole.

A competent leader figure, which may be a parent, teacher, football coach, et cetera, knows whom to leave to their own devices and whose hand to hold. A one-size-fits-all treatment is not only lazy and misinformed but detrimental to those involved.

The desire for control is understandable and, depending on the specifics, indispensable. The parent must be there to define the boundaries within which the child can explore its world. What the parent offers is effectively a robust framework of control, inside of which there can be freedom. The child is thus empowered to employ its faculties while being shielded from the most pernicious consequences.

Control loses its benign function as soon as it denies any space for experimentation and failure. In the above example, the child can never learn to trust its own devices if it is babied in the strictest of ways. If it is not allowed to fall while trying to walk, then how will it ever be prepared to deal with the far more painful hits that life has in store for it?

What applies to individuals holds true for societies at-large. Those that seek to maximise safety, else to monitor and regulate everything down to the last detail, necessarily give rise to the tyranny of the perceived known, which manifests as totalitarianism. At the other extreme, those who deify the individual and see no need for constraints whatsoever, such as through tradition that has stood the test of time for millennia, usher in the tyranny of the perceived unknown, which is experienced as ochlocracy and which shifts rapidly from one fad to another.

The desire for control is what protects the baby, but also what kills the latent hero in it. It is why we have to make efforts to understand each other, not merely to tout how open-minded we are. Ignorance cannot beget tolerance.

It will be another rainy day tomorrow. I am looking forward to it.

The other day I was reading through my RSS feeds to catch up on the news. I noticed an article with a title along the lines of “I want to be allowed to hate on fatherhood” (me paraphrasing). The author was a man about to tell us how much suffering is involved in being a father. I thought to myself that this is yet another one of those common performative gimmicks of the attention economy: the influencer must be ever-more outrageous and controversial in order to outcompete other influencers in the race for clicks.

Even though I knew that the content would not amuse me, I followed the link. Yes, I am stupid. As I read through the first couple of paragraphs, I realised that it was getting even more preposterous than I had expected, with mothers who are hating on motherhood and the like. So I stopped reading, unsubscribed from that feed, and went out for a walk a bit earlier than planned.

Judging by what we get online, modern medicine is out of sync with the times. Before delving into the specifics of one’s health, the doctor should ask “when was the little time you touched grass?” and should then prescribe a couple of months of daily exposure to natural scenes combined with a strict diet of no computer time past work. Sure, this is tongue-in-cheek, though I do believe we are losing touch with the basics. Once the meme becomes reality, new memes tend to be even more egregious.

Walking connects me to my immediate reality. The pace of my hike is relatively slow, as is the rate of change in my environment. Life here is uneventful, in the sense that there is nothing “grand” happening on the people front. Seasons come and go. With them I get the small joys of each day, such as to notice slightly different colouration in the river across my house, or to be exposed to the scent of a certain flower. These are the kind of mildly uplifting feelings that will not work for clickbait purposes, but will instil in you a sense of peace.

As I walk, a buffer is formed between my thoughts and my potential actions. If, for example, I get the idea to write a flagrant one-liner, I cannot do it impulsively. Instead, I have to slowly cover the distance back home, while breathing fresh air and continuing to think things through, and only then do the deed. By that time, the urge to commit mayhem is gone. Same principle for long-form writing or talking at length and in depth: it keeps you in check.

Think of how frequently people post something invidious and delete it afterwards: it is because there is no intermediate space between their incomplete thoughts and their capacity to broadcast byte-sized venom in an instant.

In my surroundings, there is no controversy and strong feelings. Things are calm. Here no form of life tries to be as hyperbolic as possible. Nature is subtle even in its most awesome moments. I have learnt from it to be simple in my ways. To appreciate the few things that are available to me and to not complain for what is not mine.

The person who does not touch grass and is always online is conditioned to constantly seek fuel for strong emotions, be they pleasure, hatred, indignation, disgust, or pity. They need to be compelled thus, for that is all their digital environment has ever supplied them with. All emotional stimuli are readily available in unlimited quantity.

As a side-effect of such conditioning, the person develops a sense of entitlement, but also an expectation for constant intense stimulation: they think the world owes them happiness, comfort, or whatnot. Consequently, this is a milieu that is dominated by the increasingly gory and obscene. It is all shouting at you, upping the pressure on your conscience.

The digital world has a speed that is faster than what we can sustainably live with. If you follow the news cycle for a while, you already feel that the world is on the brink of collapse. Tune in to any talk show to find people screaming at each other, no matter the topic. After sufficient exposure, you are one degree away from either exploding in frustration or imploding in depression. When subtlety is lost, so is stability.

We underestimate the latent toxicity of information and of the thoughts it can engender. We know that we should be careful about what we eat, drink, and breath, but we forget that what we think also contributes to our wellness or lack thereof. The information we are exposed to creates a certain climate that skews our perception accordingly. The question, then, is whether this is a viable environment for us.

Touching grass is not necessarily comfortable. It requires some effort and does not provide instant gratification on demand. We have to earn it through patience and perseverance. Nature is not the omniscient, benevolent figure that tends to our well-being and conspires in our favour. That is the figment of our wishful thinking. What we get in the great outdoors is indifferent to us. Nature does not make promises and no-one is entitled to anything. The more you are out there instead of being in your head, the more you realise that you are not at the centre of the world.

I am here as a passenger. Later I could miss a step, fall, break my neck, and die on the spot. That almost happened to me a few winters ago when I stepped on ice and went sliding downhill at 5 in the morning, with nobody around. This world does not revolve around me: it will carry on the way it always does. It does not idolise me. I am not its epicentre. I am yet another life form the same way rats and trees are.

This is not me devaluing myself, rationalising my lack of self-esteem, or whatnot. Even the most conventionally successful or popular person is subject to the same forces. Whatever importance we think we have, nature reminds us that it is not much. So I am a philosopher, among others. One may think this is a major achievement. In the sense of putting in the work, indeed it is not something that comes about easily. Though being a philosopher is no different than being a non-philosopher, if we abstract away the details: we all are people who will get the same treatment by the cosmos, namely, ageing and death, typically combined with a hard lesson in humility.

The “has been” kind of celebrity wants to cling on to their past glory, such as by claiming that “in my time I was swaying public opinion and moving the crowds”. Well, now you are reaching your end and nobody cares who you used to be.

Such is the bigger picture. I am humble because I understand that (i) I have no ownership over anything that is nominally “me”, such as my intelligence or looks, and (ii) however good I am, there are magnitudes that are far more potent than me. No matter how strong my volition is, it is not able to halt that which is inexorable, nor to alter that which is immutable.

Coming back to that article, I could comment on the substantive point, but it would be a futile effort. The reason is that the incentives for extremism are systemic. Once this fad of the parent who hates parenthood runs its course, it will be superseded by a yet more extremist position, such as the parent who cultivates and then sells their offspring for profit, and so on. I cannot even come up with realistic scenaria anymore, as the real outcomes will probably be far worse than what I can imagine, if the memes are allowed to run amok.

The reason I unsubscribed from that feed is because I do not want my mental state to be governed by phenomena that are not pertinent to my being and to be distorted by methods that prey on my feelings. Why did I subscribe to begin with? Because I thought there was some decent journalism there, which has been on a steady decline for several months due to the innate logic of the attention economy: exaggerations are better for viewership.

Clickbait is the intended transmission mechanism. The whole routine of “comment, like, subscribe, and hit the bell button” is the ritual sacrifice we make to the altars of profitability. Deep down we know we are being disrespected by such manipulation tactics, yet the system is set up to reward those who exploit them the most.

The Internet distorts spacetime by making everything appear proximate and imminent. It is not. As soon as I switch off the computer, I am presented with a world whose rhythms match mine. I quit social media a long time ago for the same reason. Idem for not turning my phone into a “productivity” tool: I do not want to be constantly connected to an information network that is withdrawn from my actuality.

The sun is about to rise. I am ready for another day. I know that I am not special in this place. I will not be rewarded with everything my heart desires. And I do not matter in the end. Such is tranquillity.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): ef-themes
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/ef-themes
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/ef-themes-changelog
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/ef-themes-pictures
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/ef-themes
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/ef-themes
• Backronym: Eclectic Fashion in Themes Hides Exaggerated Markings, Embellishments, and Sparkles.

Below are the release notes.

Version 2.1.0 on 2026-01-27

This version introduces two carefully designed, legible and colourful themes: ef-orange (light) and ef-fig (dark). Both draw inspiration from the fruits they are name after.

The convenience commands ef-themes-select-dark and ef-themes-select-light use the minibuffer to select+load an Ef theme that is either dark or light, respectively. The more general command is ef-themes-select.

All screen shots of the themes are updated to reflect their current status: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/ef-themes-pictures.

Remember that since version 2.0.0 the ef-themes are built on top of my modus-themes. This means that most of the changes happen to Modus and are inherited by Ef.

Writing makes me feel calm. It removes all concerns and distractions. This is a consequence of focusing on the task at hand. While elaborating on this essay, I cannot also process with equal effectiveness all other stimuli that demand attention. Irrelevant thoughts I could otherwise entertain are pushed to the side. I cannot pull them to the centre of my conscience while also trying to make this blog entry happen. In other words, I benefit from the fact that I am not good at multitasking: I just do one thing well, which is to produce this sequence of letters.

Doing this also puts me in control. I slow down my experience to a pace that is natural for my current activity. When I am exposed to, say, the news cycle, I sense that the information world is speeding away from me. Everything changes so fast, I cannot keep up with it, and I either surrender to constant distraction or feel stressed and disempowered. When I write or, generally, when I proceed out of my initiative, I maintain my balance. My poise is perfect. My progress inexorable.

I can find other good reasons to write, such as to keep a record of the little things that happen to me on a daily basis. Personally, I do not take note of the trivia, such as what I ate earlier or all the details that kept me busy. I prefer to capture impressions. Those are the abstractions I derive from multiple phenomena. I discern in them that which they have in common, as it was imprinted in my mind.

Whether one chooses to be detail-oriented or not is secondary to the function of a journal as a device for retrospection. We have data points that help us piece together a narrative of our life as it was happening.

The contents of one’s journal are largely irrelevant, so long as they experience at least some of the aforementioned. My journalling is mostly philosophy without the overthinking. It reveals an integral part of my personality. I like sincerity and the ordinary lad. Anything that looks or sounds deep and expects subordination ultimately fails to amuse me. Think of the dog who will pee at the tire of a cheap motorcycle and a luxurious car with equal disregard for social sensitivities and role-playing. Once you get that picture in your head, you gain insight into my worldview: when something is shallow, I do not treat it as if it is profound.

The point of journalling is to create an outlet for honesty. I happen to publish almost all of my writings (except those that contain details of people and places). I do this because it is “hard mode” at the emotional level and I have a highly competitive side that I need to keep happy. Journal entries will typically be private. The outlet for honesty is thus safe: nobody should know what you believe about yourself, what you feel in those moments, and so on.

No matter the specifics, the key is to gradually develop a habit of writing with regularity. In this regard, quantity beats quality. Focus on expressing as much as you can, with a frequency that is high yet sustainable (doing too much too quickly will not last long). In a similar spirit, try to write without succumbing to perfectionism. Let the typos stay there and keep things close to their original form. Your mistakes are a reminder of your imperfection. They keep you honest and grounded.

Which brings us to the heart of the issue: writing is hard. If you have never done it before, you may underestimate how difficult it is to put your thoughts in a coherent order. It is even harder to arrange them in a manner that is both enjoyable and informative or persuasive. The best pieces of writing are those that inspire us to become a better version of who we are. We may say that they touch our soul in what might as well be pure magic. The rest we forget about.

As a beginner, you should not have high hopes about the quality of your output. It will be awkward and clumsy. This is fine. Think of the baby that makes its first steps. It lacks grace in its motions. Do not feel ashamed that your baby steps are sloppy. This is nature: it just is. To judge your preliminary works as “bad” it is to misunderstand them.

What should I be writing about? This is a question whose answer will change depending on your experience. In day one, the only answer that should compel you into action is “anything; just write about anything you feel like”. This too may be vague though, so let me tell you how I did it.

When I experienced the mental block many years ago I pictured the following scenario: I am in the middle of nowhere and am asking where should I go, but I have not even taken the time to describe what is around me. I am looking too far ahead while completely ignoring whatever is in front of me. In other words, my priority should be to identify what my immediate condition is. I must be able to describe my surroundings. Once I have situational awareness, I can broaden the scope to cover a few metres further away from where I stand. And then I will slowly move around, to cautiously explore the space. After every few steps, I will repeat the exercise of acquainting myself with my milieu. Eventually, I will grow in confidence to quickly understand what is happening and to easily relocate without jeopardising my safety.

This scenario helped me understand that before figuring out what I wanted to focus on, I needed to appreciate the circumstances I was operating in. Otherwise I could not anticipate the next steps and get a sense of whether my longer-term goals were realistic.

Concretely, you should write about anything that comes to mind. The easiest, I think, is to describe how you feel right now, what is in your vicinity, how your day went, and the like. Imagine someone you care about calls you on the phone and asks you how was your day: you will say more than one sentence, right? Then do the same with your journal entries: report on what is happening, however inadequate the delivery is.

Once you practice this for long enough, e.g. for six months, you can start adding comments on the more technical or specialised topics that are of interest to you. If, for example, you wish to one day have a blog about programming, you can introduce an aside on, say, Emacs Lisp, and then connect it to something that is part of the immediate reality you have been journalling about. Remember that you are still reporting on things to someone who is not exactly like you, so you want to stay away from the technicalities. You are not writing a paper for an academic audience. Keep it simple.

From the next paragraph onward I provide an example which is true to the spirit of my original entries. My style back then was different. Words did not come as easily as they do now and each statement was unrefined. Still, this example is how I made the breakthrough. Use it as inspiration to get into the habit of writing. Do not worry if expressions do not flow as easily as you would like. Also, do not make the mistake of judging your text too harshly: you are not competing for any award at this stage. Just write and focus on the basic power of consistency. Consistency brings forward the best version of yourself in whatever you are committed to. Do it slow and steady. Be a turtle, if that is what it takes to get to your destination. Check the example below and good luck with everything!

I have been meaning to write for a long time now. But whenever I sit down to express my thoughts, I blank. Even though I have all sorts of ideas, there are no words to explain them. I do not know what to do about it. So I am admitting to my failure. I came here to write something grand and instead I am sharing how powerless I am in the face of a mental block.

Perhaps I am like those lonely guests I used to serve five minutes into my night shift, which would start at 16:00. I would open the bar and make preparations for the super busy hours ahead. Work would start in earnest at around 18:00 and would peak between 21:00 and midnight. Those guys, universally men, would be there all alone. There was no music playing. Not knowing what to do, they would order a pint of lager and just hang at the bar. Sometimes they would chat with me for a while, though not for long enough as I had all sorts of tasks to tend to.

So here I am now. I arrived at the bar and it is too early for party time. I could go back home, else quit, though that would probably be even more boring than just riding it out here. Sure, itt will be awkward for a little while. This is just in my head, anyway. Except I am not at a bar, but in my own room, sitting in front of the computer, trying to write my first journal entry while blanking on what to cover.

Not knowing what to do, I shall describe whatever is around me and take it from there. It is nighttime. I have the room’s light switched on. My monitor’s brightness is set to a low level. I adjust it depending on the environmental light. During the day I increase it and will set it to the maximum if there is direct sunlight.

I am writing this in Emacs. My font size is set to a face :height of 100. This is the Emacs equivalent of 10pt that other programs use. When I do video calls I increase it to 180 to make it easier for others to follow what I am demonstrating. Otherwise I prefer this relatively low value.

My desktop computer is fairly loud. I have not done enough research into the hardware parts. My suspicion is that the fans are too noisy. I imagine there are silent options out there. Those might be more expensive. I may check them out in the future, though this is not a priority. All I am doing here is describing what is happening around me.

Local time is close to 23:00. I have been active from the early morning hours. Today was cloudy again. It will remain like this for the whole week. There will hopefully be plenty of rainfall. The more the better.

The dogs are asleep. We did our usual long walk in the mountains. They ran around and expended all their energy. I am happy to be with them every day, care for them, and set them up for success.

Even though it is late in the day, I still have the energy to keep going. My teammates at the local football club used to call me “the dog”. If you have ever tried to dribble past a dog you know exactly what that nickname is about. I would hound my opponents for the full 90 minutes as if my life depended on it. Playing with me in midfield was fun because I would do all the dirty work while you would engage in glamorous tricks.

Now I am more into nerdy endeavours with Emacs and free software, while I still have the same levels of physical activity. I am not the typical nerd. I did not grow up with computers. Tabletop games are still alien to me. And, yes, mathematics is not my strong point. But I am learning and am having fun.

I guess I also am not your typical intellectual either. I read stories about famous thinkers, for example, only to realise that I am nothing like them. They have these fabulous experiences that befit their genius. At the age of 5 they were versed in the Socratic dialogues, at 12 they had compiled their first collection of poems, and at 15 they were studying at some prestigious college. Me at 5 I was turning my grandparents’ furniture upside down. At 12 I was playing around in the mud and at 15 I was picking fights with lads twice my age on football fields made out of gravel.

Somehow I ended up here. Writing is a means of self-actualisation. What you see here is an example of snippets of thought that pertain to my immediate reality. I do not experience a mental block anymore. Whenever I did, I would circumvent it by reporting on my day’s trivialities.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): tmr
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/tmr
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/tmr-changelog
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/tmr
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/tmr
• Video demonstration: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-01-19-emacs-timers-tmr-demo/
• Backronym: TMR May Ring; Timer Must Run.

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.3.0 on 2026-01-25

This version adds some user options and new features to an already stable package.

Timers can be paused

The command tmr-toggle-pause will prompt for a running timer and pause it.

Users who have something like the following in their configuration, have access to tmr-toggle-pause under the P key:

;; All TMR commands are behind this prefix key.  So `tmr-toggle-pause' is C-c t P.
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c t") #'tmr-prefix-map)

In the buffer produced by the command tmr-tabulated-view the pause functionality applies to the timer at point. The tmr-toggle-pause is invoked with the P key.

An extra column in the tabulated view shows whether a timer is paused or not. Here is an example:

Start      End        Duration   Remaining  Paused?  Acknowledge?   Description

08:49:41   09:19:46   30m        29m 17s    Yes                     Work on TMR for 30 minutes
08:49:31   08:54:31   5m         3m 53s                             Prepare tea
08:49:21   08:59:21   10m        8m 42s              Yes            Edit the description with this one instead

Configure the confirmation text for acknowledgements

When a timer is set to be acknowledged (i.e. the user must confirm that they saw it elapse) it prompts for confirmation. The default input text that confirms the acknowledgement is ack. This is now subject to configuration via the user option tmr-acknowledge-timer-text.

Change how frequently the tabulated list is refreshed

The buffer produced by tmr-tabulated-view is set to automatically refresh every 5 seconds by default. In previous versions this was every 1 second. The new user option tmr-tabulated-refresh-interval can be set to a number of seconds or nil. In the latter case, the automatic refresh is disabled.

Removed the long-obsolete tmr-tabulated.el

Its code was merged into tmr.el on 2024-10-30 and all it was doing thenceforth is issue a warning to those who would require the tmr-tabulated feature. Now (require 'tmr-tabulated) produces an error.

Minutes past nine. I just returned home from my final walk of the day. The temperature is hovering around 0 ℃. There is some snow at the highest peaks, though not enough for skiing. Tonight is especially humid. I could see the reflections of the faint moonlight on the air. We are almost at the first quarter of the new moon. I put cold water on my face as soon as I entered the house and am now writing this. I feel invigorated to continue after a full day of working and tending to my routines.

Most days since the winter solstice have been cloudy and we have gotten plenty of precipitation. Still not up to the desired levels, but much more than what we had experienced last year. Last night we got heavy rainfall for the first time in what probably is more than a year. I am still used to waking up on such occasions to check on the status of my flood-control project. The infrastructure work I did is holding up nicely. The stream has taken the direction I gave it. Vegetation is growing where I want it to be. Everything is solid and sustainable. Breaking the bedrock in some carefully selected spots was the final touch. I overcame this challenge through careful observation and sustained efforts in the face of discomfort. But I do not rest. There is much more to be done.

When the spirit resigns, the body follows. The other day I met a “neighbour” (+30 minutes away) who is in his early 70s. Less than a year ago he was full of energy, tending to his olive trees and other plants, among many other activities (woodwork and hunting, for example). Now he gave up on everything and remains idle all day. The reason is that a relative of his will soon uproot the trees to build some apartments for tourists… Fuck this greedy world. To deny a man of his projects is to kill him before his time. My neighbour lost the source of his enthusiasm: the grand idea that provided him with the power impulse to act.

When we serve a higher purpose, we muster forces that are otherwise not available to us. We submit to the higher authority, to that which transcends the confines of our ego, to achieve our highest deeds. Such is the awe we draw from it that it gives us strength in the face of adversity. Once things get tough, we do not lose our calm because our purpose is like a fixed position in the constellations: we can always spot it and reorient ourselves accordingly even in the middle of terra incognita.

This is how, for instance, humans survive for decades in warzones while the coddled fellow online has a mental breakdown after reading some harsh words on a forum. The latter is fragile, for they do not think big. They have been trapped in their own little bubble owning to the cumulative effects of bad habits, yet they think of it as their safe space. This is a circle of superficial comfort that necessarily shrinks the more they try to avoid any hardship. Once the self becomes the goal, then the inertial point of reference is lost. There is no lofty standard anymore. Complacency creeps in. Idleness becomes the norm and whatever does not come about easily is dismissed with the help of some convenient ideology.

A friend of mine who had just turned 30 at the time we met remarked that “we are old now” («γεράσαμε»). This is a common saying among defeatist Greeks. The attitude of my compatriots is to let go of all intensity and switch to a mode of rapid decline after their 20s. I do not share that ethos. “No, my friend” I told him “I still have four decades of youth”.

When I was standing at the peak of the mountain earlier, well over a 1000 metres above sea level, I felt the cold breeze on my face. It was dark all around and calm like every winter night. The sky was clear and I could see the quarter moon in the Western sky. It is in these conditions of tranquillity that the soul gets anabaptised as it draws the astral energy to reengage. While standing there I took stock of the work I did today, starting from before dawn. Each project received my undivided attention. I did it with honesty, to the best of my abilities. I was thus satisfied with myself. Tomorrow shall be the same. Such is my outlook.

I feel the responsibility to always put forward the best version of myself; to try things in earnest. Why? Because I do not believe that my deeds are limited to my self. All I do has an impact on the world and those who get to know me. Thus there are consequences that are felt far away from where I stand, including for people I will never meet.

It all starts with my attitude and what it enkindles in the hearts of others. I want them to turn skyward when they think of me. Not to find me. No. I belong to the ground. They must identify that which is greater than them. I embody a timeless message, a reminder if you will. To make them aspire to their highest. To motivate them to not shy away from duty and to never be satisfied with their own mediocrity. When you cheat on yourself, when you renege on a promise you made for your own wellness, find the courage to admit to it and try again until you get the basics right. The rest follows from there, given consistency.

One’s mindset is not the conduit to immortality. Though it is a prerequisite for sustained excellence; excellence relative to one’s baseline. The growing moon is a reminder that there are forces in this world that defy our volition. There is no “if you truly believe it” kind of gimmick that works for them. The moon will be full in ten days and soon the Chinese people will celebrate another Spring Festival. The years come and go. What remains in the cosmic memory is one’s legacy as a source of power for those yet to be.