words are

words are the most powerful thing that you own.

words are the worst thing you could ever say.

we don't value words enough anymore and that's why we're

suddenly so susceptible to foreign propaganda.

your words matter. a lot.


Editor's Note: the following is submitted without editing or checks for correction.


and yet i seem so incredibly unable to sit down and get mine out. i'm trying to get all these other things done instead, to not get distracted, but the reality is that not writing feels like the procrastination.

everything else is just me procrastinating from writing.

if all i ever did was write all the time i think i would be a very happy person. i don't think i'd run out of things to say.

there are blog posts that i owe myself. here's a short list of them:
- reactions from arendt's eichmann in jerusalem
- an update on the moon clock project
- a personal life update
- an essay about gentrification and home ownership and san francisco housing politics
- an essay on why i want to leave california
- an update on Mandarin learning.


Reactions: Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem

Right now, we're in the midst of an Uber vs Waymo case.  Waymo is suing Uber over misappropriation of trade secrets, or something. To keep up with the court updates, I've been following Sarah Jeong who lives tweets the court room action every day. Sarah's part of a new breed of immediate courtroom relaying, but in some ways Sarah's tweeting follows in the footsteps of other court reporters, the most recent of which comes to mind is Hannah Arendt's missives from the Eichmann in Jerusalem, published first in the New Yorker as articles and then, later, compiled into a book.

I'd be curious to see if Jeong can turn her tweet storms into a book at the end of the Uber x Waymo trial; it'd be interesting to see what the result of a tweet reporting process is compared to a missive based storytelling style.

I digress. Let's talk about Eichmann, about what Hannah saw in Jerusalem, about what she discovered about the limits and the legacy of law.

I don't think I can say it as nicely as Arendt does, but in her epilogue, written ostensibly much later, she talks about how the judgement of the Israeli courts fell short of its goal of providing a framework for crimes against humanity, such as genocide, to be tried on an international scale.

For see, the problem with Eichmann was that he didn't kill anyone. At least, not himself. Eichmann's crimes are of the white collar variety -- there were layers of men and orders separating himself from any of the front line action of murder. Rather, Eichmann's role in the massacres were merely administrative -- he was brutally efficient at arranging transportation and logistics for moving hundreds of thousands of people on an already clogged train network.  A skill that, in the aggregate facilitated the murder of millions.

But who were these Jews that were murdered? They were disowned by their countries, rendered stateless by the apparatus that was the German government, and then emigrated elsewhere, or, if there was no elsewhere available, eastward to one of the killing centers.

Eichmann was an expert on Jewish affairs. Originally, Eichmann billed himself as a Jewish expert. He used his 'expertise' in Judaism to become the first point of contact between Jewish communities and the Nazi regime. He organized Jewish Councils that, then in turn, helped to send their communities to slaughter. At first, it was merely emigration. The Jewish Council could honestly and firmly tell themselves that they were just helping their fellow Jews to escape bad conditions. What they didn't know, at least not at first, was that they were sending their communities to their deaths. Once Eichmann's team had successfully exported a Jewish Council's population, they exported the Jewish Council itself.

The goal was judenrein, or, in other words, a Jew free territory.

You know, it's strange to say but also true that if the United States had opened their doors widely and unequivocally to Jewish emigrants from Europe that not nearly as many would have been killed. Eichmann exported in earnest first. But after a while, he found that there was no where else to send Jews. Maybe they would have sent more to Israel, if it hadn't had been Palestine and heavily opposed by the British.  The first Israelis owe much of their early influx of immigrants to the Nazis' desire to see Jews leave Europe. And then even more after, once survivors realized there was nowhere to return to.

Arendt's book on Eichmann, more than any other book I have read, clearly outlined the extent and the mechanics of the Holocaust. Why didn't we read it earlier? Sure, Anne Frank's Diary is not bad reading, but in terms of expressing the total impact and political implications of the Jewish Question and how the Nazis Tried to Solve it, it's not nearly as broad and concise as Arendt's telling of Eichmann's work. Because so much of it was his work -- the exports, that is. The movement of people. 

And yet, can you charge a man with murder for the mere act of moving people? Even if he was doing so under direct orders? How much does the law of the land,, HItler's will in this case, absolve you of responsibility from your actions?  Eichmann admitted to exporting Jews to death, but he claimed innocence in the killings. 

You know, Eichmann does remind me a lot of the question of responsibility that arose lately around the Wells Fargo scandal wherein thousands of Wells Fargo employees were opening accounts for customers without their consent. The customers ended up with black marks on their credit and charges for accounts they didn't even know existed; Wells Fargo then fell to the unhappy task of assigning blame for the hundreds if not thousands of front line workers' actions. The workers were just following orders to meet quotas. WHo should be responsible for their malfeasance? To what extent do the quota setters share responsibility for their actions? I think in this case some people's heads rolled but I'm honestly not sure. What then. What now.

God I'm so tired. I should go to sleep. But there's so much more to tell you. So much more.

Metal meets the rubber; where's the road?

Having a crises about things that can mostly be defined as too much dreaming not enough doing. Sort of. Not enough doing in the right direction.

The rubber has met the metal but it's still a long way off from the road.

What's the problem?  Where's the sticking point? Why are you procrastinating on this thing that you said that you wanted to do, like actually do?

Is it the task or the totality of the thing that's holding you back?  What about this spoken for future are you having trouble coming to grips with?  You said you wanted this thing but now you're not doing the thing. You're not doing the thing.  That's the problem, with everything.  That you're not *doing* the thing.

Bah.

Do you ever think that maybe the time has come for you to stop being uncomfortable.  If discomfort is the only thing that you know, maybe finding a comfortable place to be, like chilling in the what is instead of the what could be, would be a beneficial thing to do with life and time.

What do you say, dog?  Do you?

Dog says it's hot as balls in here and I couldn't disagree.

here is a series of thoughts that i have had today

reality is not what you think it is.

my name is neil saitug and i write about things.  i also read things.  most of what i read will never come to fruition as written thoughts.  this thought, in a great company of other sad thoughts, saddens me the most greatly.

here is a series of thoughts that i have had today, and a few recurring thoughts from this week:

- the power of explanation, as expostulated by David Deutsche in his two books, The Fabric of Reality and the Beginning of Infinity, are everywhere.  it is one of the core functions that powers great teachers and great ideas alike.  explanations are cross-cultural; they are universally treasured by humans of all creeds, classes, occupations and concerns.  in fact, I would naively posit that the key to understanding any group or single human being is to understand the explanations that they make use of.  this thought is so deep, that I find it reflecting back at me in almost any media or interaction, both present and past.

- the true revolution that underlies the free software movement (rebranded and watered down in the mid-aughts as Open Source software). this thought is driven largely by finishing off Gabriella Coleman's Coding Freedom.  coincidentally, the Google v. Oracle debate that is occurring right now makes a great stage for dissecting the current day status of copyright vs freedom of speech legal status of open source code; in fact I would argue that the lawsuit is one of the most monumental public and legal moments for open source/free software meets copyrightability that has occurred since Coleman's book was published in 2012.  on a more personal note and as someone who writes code, i found myself deeply reconsidering my own attitudes and proprietary assumptions surrounding the code that i write.  when i write and publicize code on the internet, what is my relationship with the people who find it?  how is that similar (or different) to the relationship that I am assuming right now, with you, my reader?  to what extent is code different than essays?  what is the most important thing about putting my code out in the world: is it freedom of that code to become part of the commons of code that exists for the world to use, or is it recognition of authorship, or monetary?  how much control do i as a creator of a public work do i retain for myself over the work itself?  how much does that matter to me?  are ideas really free, if they have a creator?  or am i just a vessel for the work?  (can you hear it?  the voice? no?  i'll tell you what it's saying: ego, ego ego).  i'm leaning strongly towards allowing the next bits of software that i write to be strongly free, but am struggling with accepting that other people may make money off of them.

- book mania.  i've been buying books like a fiend for a while now, and have been feverishly reading through them.  i'm starting to flag a bit tho, as the number of books that i want to read, while currently in my lifetime an attainable goal (that is to say that given all of the books that i would like to read currently, if i were put a hard stop on the list, i would ostensibly be able to finish all of the books within the end of my lifetime.  there is a point where this will no longer be the case, however.  what that point it is is...?)  so, given that i can read all of the books that i want to read, is there an ordering or certain works that are more important to read earlier than later?  this builds a bit upon the idea that there are certain thoughts or habits that can act as catalysts for further thoughts or lines of inquiry; ideally these generative books would be the ones that i read first, and save all the others for later, where the timeliness for them is less important.  ok, so how do i pick out which books are more timely than others?  i don't have a good answer for this yet, but here's a few general rules of thumb that i've been using: recently written books get higher priority, as they're more likely to be timely/about currently actionable things.  books that are recommended to me by someone else are more important than books i've found via Amazon.  books that pertain to lines of inquiry i find currently interesting are ranked higher.  fictional works have currently taken a bit of a backseat, the thought being that most plot lines are things that I've read before, and assuming that most fictional work is not contributive to 'generative' thought as other works (i'm sorry to say it, but recent experience has proven this to be exceptionally true).  here's a list of the books (and book genres) that i'm currently attempting to find time for: finishing David Deutsche's Beginning of Infinity; a book/dissertation of the results of a generative, social AI experiment (starting to wonder if i wouldn't have gotten thru this faster if it had been in ebook format); a number of books on the history concerning the 34th street district (Macy's, Santa Corp, Empire State Building, Penn Station) -- these have a deadline of next Monday; Pychon's Bleeding Edge; a book of short stories; Hamilton's biography; a book on the engineering systems underlying NYC; Tuttle's beginning Chinese characters; a very recently published book on poverty and racism in America; an ethnography on sex, commercialism and public space in Times Square; there are more but i can't remember them.  Ok so maybe the most daunting thing right now is finishing Deutsche's Beginning of Infinity (it feels like I've been stuck on it for months now).  Unsticking this one should hopefully let the others flow more quickly.  Books that I've abandoned as being not longer relevant or just plain uninteresting: A.O Scott's book on Criticism & Camus' The Rebel.

- ups and downs of having a dog.  i've been a bit down on myself lately for not entirely appreciating the responsibility of having a pet, to say the least.  it is a bit of work, and time and, most prohibitively, a certain amount of guilt inherent in leaving her at home by herself, or not letting her sniff the flowers for as long as she'd like to because i need to get home.  strangely, one of the bigger pluses of having her (besides the companionship and built-in schedule reinforcement) is the removal of the curiosity of what life would be like with a dog. i've been talking about getting a dog for years now, waffling on it you could almost say.  now i rarely have that mental pressure or distraction.  in a way, the relief is a huge validation of the power of doing things and dealing with the consequences than not doing things but forever wondering whether or not *now* is when I should do that thing.  ie: favor action over waffling, because the peace of mind pays dividends a thousand fold.  a strong corollary to this is writing thoughts down -- writing things down and publishing them on the internet has the effect of helping to clear out my mental space, like reducing the pressure in a hose.