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Stuff that is beautiful but useless because it does not make food or houses cheaper.
Or from Ciro Santilli's best random thoughts:
Without technology, one cannot survive. Without art, one cannot live.
But that sure enough has a Jesus semi-precursor, and likely many others: man shall not live by bread alone.
There is some art however that lives in the fine intersection between beauty and usefulness:
Something is useful if it either:
  • makes money
  • creates novel knowledge, or present knowledge in a novel way, that others may find beautiful
Maybe those are genial. Maybe not. Nostalgia is just too strong to discern. Ciro still goes back to them for rest.
These did not stand the test of time however.
When Ciro was ten years old, he was addicted to 2 cartoons: Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z!
Pokemon had just launched in Brazil in 1999, 2 years after the Japanese launch: br.historyplay.tv/hoje-na-historia/comeca-exibicao-original-do-anime-pokemon (archive) And Dragon Ball, was first aired in 1989 in Japan! My God, those translations took forever back then!
And everyone was playing Pokemon on their Game Boy Color. Ciro was already cheap however, and didn't buy the console despite wanting it, and just played it through his friends handhelds. But maybe this is a good thing. Playing alone sucks.
Tagged
Mostly video games of course.
First when he was really young, about 5, Ciro played a lot of NES, but he doesn't remember things from that era very well. Contra, Ninja Turtles, Battle Tanks, Duck Hunt, and some modern "real world jet" top to bottom rail shooter (TODO identify) are definitely some of the games he clearly remembers playing, see also: Figure "Five year old Ciro Santilli playing NES on a joystick". Nintendo hard was truly a thing back then.
As an honorable mention, Ciro remembers his teenage/young adult neighbours in Jundiaí playing some DOS games on their computer, notably there was a 3D racing one. This must have been around 1995/1997, so using some of the very earliest GPUs. Those games felt so incredibly advanced, including the required setup to play them, which required some command-line commands. It felt like some kind of black magic! But Ciro didn't really play them however.
Ciro then skipped the SNES and handhelds, which he played only through friends because he was cheap (but also because Brazil is a poor country remember, and imports are pretty expensive). He clearly remembers playing Super Mario World for the SNES and Pokemon on friends' Gameboys of course.
Ciro then went straight to 5th generation with the Nintendo 64 in 1994 which his parents bought for him during a trip to the United States. Once again, because he was cheap, the only game he bought was Super Mario 64, which likely came with the console? He played that game to death.
Then came Ocarina of Time, which blew everyone's minds, and Ciro would go to Blockbuster to rent it for the weekend, and again play to death with his friends. You had to arrive early at Blockbuster to rent it, otherwise other people would rent all copies!!!
The only time Ciro got robbed as of 2020 was when an older teenager stopped his bicycle in front of Ciro and took his rented Golden Eye 64 copy away from his hand, and run off. Poor drug addict.
Ciro always felt that the PS1 had a much uglier aesthetics than the N64, and didn't like the console. Playing a bit of Final Fantasy VI on his memory did stick deeply to his mind however. Ciro later played all good PS1 RPGs on emulation during University of São Paulo during amazing solitary nights.
And on the PC, Ciro was particularly touched by Age of Empires II and Diablo II.
As a young teenager Ciro would also play Counter-Strike with his friends at LAN houses. Playing that game would make Ciro extremely anxious, his hands got all cold, and it was a lot of fun.
After this Ciro grew up and notice that the only fun game is that of becoming become rich and famous in the real world.
This explains however Ciro's tool-assisted speedrun interests.
Outside of video games, Ciro got midly addicted to Magic: The Gathering in his early teens.
Lower teens, before discovering more hardcore stuff that is more genial and adult-venerable:So a base mix of what you migth expect from a regular male teenager born in 1989 Brazil.
OK, Ciro still comes back to those from time to time, he confesses. Nostalgia, nostalgia.
The following are also adult venerable though :-)
Video 1.
Killing In the Name by Rage Against The Machine (1992)
Source.
As mentioned on Wikipedia, it has only 8 lines of lyrics.
And the most satisfying "Ugh"s ever recorded on tape. Rap rock perfectly describes the genre.
And no, the opening sentence "Some of those that work forces" is not understandable: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/262444/what-is-the-meaning-of-the-phrase-that-work-forces-in-rage-against-the-machine
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Art trend

Words: 10 Articles: 3
Video 2.
Emmenez-moi by Charles Aznavour (1968)
Source. The ultimate ode to exoticism.

ASCII art

Words: 371 Articles: 4
It should be a crime to automatically generate ASCII art from images.
For some ASCII art in the Bitcoin blockchain see: ASCII art.
Random fun mentions:
        z

        ^
        |    *------*
        |   /|      /
        |  / |     /|
top -------*------* |
        |  | *----|-*
        |  |/     | /
        |  |      |/
bottom ----*------*
        |  |      |
        +--|------|-----> y
       /   |      |
      /    |      |
  x  /     |      |
    v
          left   right
Code 1.
3D cube plot ASCII art by Ciro Santilli (2021)
Tis term was invented by Ciro Santilli, it refers to ASCII art of text, essentially creating a typeface. in that medium..
Collections and overviews:
You just couldn't resist Googling it and clicking this page, could you? You naughty, naughty bearded programmer nerd. Yes, I'm talking to you.
TODO it is quite hard to actually find non-automatically generated ASCII art of people fucking, most of them are just sexy/horny women drawn by bearded nerds, likely and based on sticky physical paper porn magazines from the 80's, good old days.
                                    |
                                    |
   Tank Man                         |
   by Ciro Santilli          00     |
   2021 CC-BY-SA 4.0          \\  +-|-+
                               \\/   /|-+o
                                \\--+ / /o
                               /|\\ |/ /oo
                        |     / ----- /oo
                        |    /       /oo
                        |   +-------+oo
                        |   oo+---+ooo
                 00     |   oo     oo
                  \\  +-|-+
                   \\/   /|-+o
                    \\--+ / /o
                   /|\\ |/ /oo
            |     / ----- /oo
            |    /       /oo
            |   +-------+oo
            |   oo+---+ooo
     00     |   oo     oo
      \\  +-|-+
       \\/   /|-+o
        \\--+ / /o
       /|\\ |/ /oo
      / ----- /oo
     /       /oo
    +-------+oo
    oo+---+ooo
    oo     oo
 xx
 --
/||\
|--|
o||0
 ||
 /\
Code 2.
Tank man ASCII art by Ciro Santilli (2021)
This image depicts the Chinese government fucking 1 million Chinese people in the ass during the Tiananmen Square Protests, which was undoubtedly one of the largest gang bangs of the late 20th century:
Video 3.
The IBM 1401 mainframe runs "Edith" by CuriousMarc
. Source. 1960's punched card ASCII porn. Vintage. EDITH is also mentioned e.g. at: www.threedee.com/jcm/aaa/index.html. No ASCII uploads found however: www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a2pser/the_ibm_1401_mainframe_runs_edith/.
Boring!
OMG, Ciro Santilli only learned about this in 2021 after: twitter.com/ryancdotorg/status/1375484757916672000

Audiovisual art

Words: 3k Articles: 112
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https://web.archive.org/web/20241128221737im_/https://www.barbapapa.com/wp-content/themes/barbapapa-from-twentytwelve/images/characters_anim/anim_02barbapapa.gif

Film

Words: 3k Articles: 100
Actor
Words: 21 Articles: 4
This guy just shows up in so many films Ciro Santilli loves. Little by little Ciro started to realize that he is amazing!

Collecting

Words: 38 Articles: 4
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Comedy

Words: 275 Articles: 18

Comics

Words: 77 Articles: 7

Webcomic

Words: 68 Articles: 4
Each comic page has an "Emergency Button" below it, which redirects to a mock PDF formatted as a research paper, so you can quickly pretend to be working. Epic.
Figure 5.
The evolution of intellectual freedom by PhD Comics (2011)
Source.

xkcd

Words: 32 Articles: 1
Website: xkcd.com/
This webcomic is venerated by software engineers as of 2020.
Being able to quote the right one at the right time is considered a fundamental shibboleth of the profession.
And with reason.
Licensed under Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC, amazing!!!
https://web.archive.org/web/20220108012523im_/https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png
Official archive: dilbert.com/

Food

Words: 64 Articles: 11
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This is the future of course, fusion power to generate electricity, and then converting electricity into food somehow.
Hopefully without going through photosynthesis, which feels complicated and wasteful.
Previously known as "Food From Electricity", "NeoCarbonFood" sounds like a more commercializable version of it.
Uses electricity to electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules, and then use bacteria that do hydrogen chemosynthesis to convert it into food.

Pasta

Words: 1 Articles: 1

Game

Words: 11k Articles: 212

Puzzle

Words: 26 Articles: 5
Video 4.
The algorithmic trick that solves Rubik's Cubes and breaks ciphers by polylog (2022)
Source. Talks about the Meet-in-the-middle algorithm.
Video 5.
The algorithmic trick that solves Rubik's Cubes and breaks ciphers by polylog (2022)
Source.
The definition is not very precise, as in many games with random elements there is a mixture of both skill and luck.
So we just use the precise Non-deterministic game term instead for any game that has any random element beyond the control of the players.

Board game

Words: 3k Articles: 47
Computer chess
Words: 876 Articles: 16
As of 2020's and earlier, humans were far far behind. As of 2020s and earlier, even an average personal computers without a GPU, the hallmark of deep learning beats every human.
Chess is just too easy!
Video 6.
Will a computer defeat Garry Gasparov? by BBC (1993)
Source.
The cool thing about this notation is that is showed to Ciro Santilli that there is more state to a chess game than just the board itself! Notably:
  • whose move it is next
  • castling availability
  • en passant availability
plus some other boring draw rules counters.
A Chess UI is a program that interfaces with a chess engine in order using a computer chess interface to allow human players to interact conveniently with the engine.
The user friendly Chess UI! Exactly what you would expect from a GNOME Project package. But also packs some punch via the Universal Chess Interface, e.g. Stockfish just works.
Both chess engine and a CLI chess UI. As an engine it is likely irrelevant compared to Stockfish as of 2020. TODO: does the UI support Universal Chess Interface?
Cool project history though. Started before the GNU Project itself, and became one of the first packages.
Advanced. Not beginner friendly, very clunky.
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Related to Leela Zero, a Go engine
Deep learning implementation, a bit analogous to AlphaZero, but for chess only.
One of the most powerful chess engine as of 2023: computer chess competition.
Most of what follows is part of the Universal Chess Interface. Tested on Ubuntu 22.10, Stockfish 14.1.
After starting stockfish on the command line, d (presumably display) contains:
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | r | n | b | q | k | b | n | r | 8
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | 7
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 6
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 5
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 4
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 3
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | 2
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | R | N | B | Q | K | B | N | R | 1
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
   a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h

Fen: rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
Key: 8F8F01D4562F59FB
Sweet ASCII art. where:
Move white king's pawn from e2 to e4:
position startpos moves e2e4
Then display again:
d
gives:
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | r | n | b | q | k | b | n | r | 8
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | 7
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 6
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 5
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   | P |   |   |   | 4
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 3
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | P | P | P | P |   | P | P | P | 2
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | R | N | B | Q | K | B | N | R | 1
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
   a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h

Fen: rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 1
Key: B46022469E3DD31B
so we see that the pawn moved.
Now let's make Stockfish think for one second what is the next best move for black:
go movetime 1000
gives as the last line:
bestmove c7c5 ponder g1f3
TODO:
  • what is ponder? Something to do with thinking on the opponent's turn: permanent brain.
  • understand the previous lines
To make the move it as suggested for black, we have to either repeat the entire sequence of movements:
position startpos moves e2e4 c7c5
d:
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | r | n | b | q | k | b | n | r | 8
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | p | p |   | p | p | p | p | p | 7
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 6
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   | p |   |   |   |   |   | 5
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   | P |   |   |   | 4
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 3
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | P | P | P | P |   | P | P | P | 2
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | R | N | B | Q | K | B | N | R | 1
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
   a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h

Fen: rnbqkbnr/pp1ppppp/8/2p5/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 2
Key: 4CA78BCE9C2980B0
or alternatively we could also use the previous FEN notation as a starting point;
position fen rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 1 moves c7c5
Note how the Universal Chess Interface interface is very simple: we just load a state and then decide what to do next for that one state. The engine holds only one and exactly one state at a time, and you can't even modify it differentially without loading new one from scratch.
Let's move white again with our brain with either:
position startpos moves e2e4 c7c5 d2d3
position fen rnbqkbnr/pp1ppppp/8/2p5/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 2 moves d2d3
Set a specific position from fen:
position fen rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 1
Computer Go
Words: 30 Articles: 8
One cool thing about computer Go vs computer chess is that in go you can easily parametrize the game difficulty by board size!
Tagged
On Ubuntu 22.10:
sudo apt install quarry
quary
just works with GNU go.
"Game" is a bit of a stretch as there are no player choices at all.
A more precise word would be simulation.
More precise, this "game" is exactly an absorbing Markov chain.
Since Snakes and Ladders is nothing but a Absorbing Markov chain, the results are exactly the same as for that general problem.
www.jstor.org/stable/3619261: How Long Is a Game of Snakes and Ladders? by Althoen, King and Schilling (1993), paywalled.
First major one: Magic: The Gathering.

Meta (game)

Words: 160 Articles: 1
The meta of a game is the currently dominating know strategy or set of strategies, see also Section "Nash equilibrium".
To break the meta means to find a new strategy that offers a significant advantage over the existing meta.
For the specific of video game glitch breaks see: Section "Meta breaking glitch".
Due to Ciro Santilli's self perceived creative personality, Ciro Santilli is very attracted to meta breaks.
Video 7.
How One Man Changed the High Jump Forever by Olympics (2018)
Source. Dick Fosbury created and implemented the Fosbury Flop jump style in 1968.
Video 8.
Akiyo Noguchi asks the rules while climbing! | Beta Break Ep.1 by Albert Ok (2020)
Source. Happened at the 2015 IFSC Climbing World Cup during the Haiyang, China, bouldering event. The author has a playlist of such climbing meta breaks. In climbing, the meta is called "the beta". Climbing competitions are perhaps the sport in which the meta is broken the most often, since each stage is unique.
Video 9.
Lukas Hofer's Revolutionary Technique by IBU TV (2019)
Source. Lukas created a new technique to pack up his rifle during biathlon competitions.
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Video game

Words: 7k Articles: 143

Literature

Words: 1k Articles: 83

Luxury goods

Words: 55 Articles: 1
One of the things Ciro Santilli most deeply despises.
Real luxury is to understand quantum field theory and number theory.
Clothing/jewelry/car luxury is at worst a way to show off. And at best a replacement for nature/the countryside. People living in big cities have lost nature, and to some, looking at luxury goods (or watching television) serves as a (unsatisfactory) replacement.

Music

Words: 5k Articles: 149

Pornography

Words: 455 Articles: 16
Video 10.
What is more obscene: sex or war? scene from The People vs. Larry Flynt
. Source. 1996
This is the kind of mind-bending argument twists that Ciro Santilli loves. If we take out the "a real child is hurt" aspect, does it still make sense to make it illegal?
Of course, hentai of young-looking girls has already existed since forever. Bit with newer image generation methods in the 2020s used for computer generated child pornography, especially sometimes photorealistic text-to-image generation, things are taken to another level.
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Could this be a powerful SEO hack?
This is a porn style defined by Ciro Santilli as:
  • content is designed and owned by the actors
  • full face reveal
  • doing normal vlog things like talking, visiting places, eating, etc., not just fucking
Ciro believes that this is an interesting type of pornography, as it feels more natural and humane than all the horrible trash that comes out of horrendous professional mainstream porn industry.
Yes, it could go down the YouTube/Instagram alley, and lead the vloggers to do things they wouldn't normally do because of the audience. But who is to say that Ciro Santilli doesn't do the same on Stack Overflow to some extent?
That type of porn requires some big courage to make. Or balls if you will. Kudos to those creators, as it is so taboo it could greatly impact their future job prospects.
The travel sex vlog appears to be the most popular way to do it. Presuamably the reason being that you would not be able to interact with people in a normal job, so to keep things interesting you need to go to some random places.
Examples:
One of the first 1 million USD (zero artistic value) porn movie. And also a piece of shit! Hotter porn has been shot in kitchens around the world using iPhones.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220330011213im_/https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/2/Open/MTI%20Home%20Video/Pirates%20(2005)/_derived_jpg_q90_310x470_m0/Pirates2005-PosterArt.jpg

Quote

Words: 159 Articles: 9
Ciro's best quotes selected by no one other than Ciro can be found at: Ciro Santilli's best random thoughts.
Jesus has some nice ones: Section "Quote by Jesus".
Related to technology:
Is this exact sentence really from UNIX philosophy? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Do_One_Thing_and_Do_It_Well
Of course, it has precedents, e.g. jack of all trades, master of none
There are infinitely many variants across the ages:
Tagged
First They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You, Then They Attack You, Then You Win
Possibly fake, but memorable:
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.

Sport

Words: 1k Articles: 38
See also Ciro Santilli's critique of rooting for sport teams.

Athlete

Words: 14 Articles: 1
The athletes Ciro Santilli admires the most are from endurance sport:
Video 11.
Muhammad Ali on the Vietnam War-Draft
. Source.
It is not a practical fighting style. But it is an awesome game/exercise.
Tagged
"Dojo" is the japanese version of the word that unfortunately came to dominate in the West, the original is of course Chinese Dao4 chang3 (道場) which means:
  • dao4 (道): Taoism, the Enlightned Path to something
  • chang3 (場): suffix indicating "a place where you do something"

List of sports

Words: 867 Articles: 25
Football is a synonym for association football, can we be done with that! The word "soccer" is an aberration.
See also Ciro Santilli's critique of rooting for sport teams.
Video 13.
Can we survive Edd Sorenson's Rebreather Class? by BlueWorldTV
. Source. This video gives a good overview of what a rebreather looks like.
Edd Sorenson is the greatest cave body recovery diver ever, performing incredible stunts of endurance and bravery in his many body recoveries.
He even saved a few cave divers alive, which is extremely rare as almost all incidents lead to deaths.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220112174926im_/https://tekdiveusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/72474091_2829836630362705_3372956156782706688_n-500x500.jpg
Besides that, he was also one of the early proponents of sidemount diving, a method of diving that allows divers to enter through smaller restrictions than the traditional back mounted diving. The method was initially considered dangerous, but after technical developments which Sorenson contributed to became the dominant form of cave diving.
Sorenson also made technical and educational contributions to civilian rebreather diving, which he mastered and often used in his many body recovery missions, as the method allows him to stay underwater for longer periods of time.
On top of all that, he's a great storyteller, which together with his physique and demeanor helps to cement his fame.
His name is Danish: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sørensen He looks incredibly military, but apparently isn't: youtu.be/K7m03k1k-Bk?t=171 He had an excavation business in Portland, Oregon, and wanted FIRE movement to Florida. He got a bit hurt by by the dot-com crash, but still managed to move after liquidating all assets.
This is another perfect example of how shitty our world is. The dude wasted his life until he was 40, and then only when he started doing what he really loved did he become mega famous and succesful. Video "What Would You Do If Money Were No Object by Alan Watts" comes to mind strongly yet again... After the move he relocated to the Jackson Blue Spring area.
Video 14.
TechDiver Chronicles, episode 2 by Dan Wright
. Source. 2024.
About 50k subscribers on 2021, which feels way too little for the video quality and quantity.
Ciro Santilli believes that this channel will go very far, certainly achieving 1M subscribers in they keep it for one or two more years. Update: it didn't, as of 2024, shame.
They are Utah-based, and they do many many amazing weekend trips. They mostly drive from home to some trailhead, and then climb up and down it the entire day.
No technical rock climbing, only bouldering, but they still manage to reach many amazing places, and there is a level of danger in many of their ascents.
They also often ski down the mountains when there is snow.
The cool thing about this channel is that as the name suggests, they are not professionals, and what they do can be done by anyone without working full time on it, as long as you have adequate preparation.
Tagged

Website

Words: 13k Articles: 214

Ancestors (1)

Synonyms (1)