--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 05a
+title: The July Theses, translated and annotated
+date: March 5, 2017
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: asphalt
+---
+
+*Below the reader will find the translation of a text initially titled
+"Proposals of measures for the improvement of political-ideological
+activity, of Marxist-Leninist education of party members, of all working
+people", written by the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist
+Party (also known as PCR), Nicolae Ceaușescu, and presented on the 6th
+of July, 1971 before the Party's Executive Committee, after his return
+from a visit to some of the East Asian communist countries, the most
+notable of which being North Korea. As a sign of political change in a
+minor communist country, the Theses do bear some historical value; they
+may also be used by the reader as a template for correctly identifying
+similar rhetoric and patterns of expression in recent texts or
+speeches.*
+
+As a result of the profound transformations which have come to pass in
+the years after the liberation[^1], of the victory of the socialist
+system, of the vast political-educational activity[^2] realized by the
+party, in our country important results have been obtained[^3] in
+widening the cultural horizon, in lifting the political and ideological
+standard, in shaping the socialist conscience of those who work. This is
+expressed by the fact that our entire people, all the working people,
+without distinction of nationality, steadfastly forge the party's
+internal and external politics, that they deem to be their own politics,
+viewing it as the guarantee of their wellbeing and happiness. The
+supreme goal of the politics of our party was and is the growth of the
+material and spiritual wellbeing of masses, ensuring the conditions for
+the plenary affirmation of personality, building the new man, profoundly
+devoted to socialism and communism. The political-educational activity
+constitutes an inseparable component of the work to build the new social
+system, an outstanding pursuit of our party and state[^4].
+
+With all the great successes[^5] obtained until now, in
+political-ideological and cultural-educational work there still continue
+to persist a series of lacks, deficiencies and shortcomings, whose
+elimination constitutes an imperious necessity for the progress[^6] of
+our society.
+
+Taking into account the requirements of the current stage of the
+socialist construction, the great objectives that stand before the party
+and the people in forging the multilaterally-developed[^7] socialist
+society, it is necessary for measures to be taken to raise the level of
+revolutionary combativity and of the militant, partinic[^8] spirit of
+the entire activity political, ideological and of communist education of
+masses[^9], operated by the party organs and organizations, by mass and
+collective organizations, by state organisms, by propaganda, ideological
+and cultural-artistic institutions.
+
+1\. -- Decisive in the achievement of these objectives is the continuous
+heightening of the party's directive role in all the fields of
+political-educational activity, the increase of responsibility and
+exigency of party organs and organizations in guiding the entire work of
+mass education, performed through all the means of political influence
+and through the factors of culturalization that our society has at its
+disposal.
+
+For this purpose party leadership and control will be strengthened to
+orient the political-educational activity towards the wide mass
+promotion of our party's ideology, its Marxist-Leninist politics, to
+heighten combativity against the influences of burgeois ideology, of
+retrograde mentalities[^10], foreign to the principles of communist
+ethics and party spirit. Special emphasis will be put on presenting the
+great achievements obtained by the Romanian people -- maker of
+socialism, emphasizing the chief role of the working class, which
+fulfils with fairness its historical mission in erecting socialism, the
+cultivation of respect towards work, towards the producers of material
+goods in our society.
+
+An essential task of the political-educational work performed by our
+party is the education of all those who work in the spirit of socialist
+patriotism, of love and boundless devotion towards the motherland, of
+the decision to not spare anything for the defense of our revolutionary
+achievements, of the country's independence and sovereignty, for the
+continuous strengthening and flourishing of socialist Romania. In the
+process of building the multilaterally-developed socialist society it is
+necessary to continue acting for the even more powerful
+consolidation[^11] of unity and brotherhood between Romanian, Magyar,
+German, Serbian and other working people, who, animated by the same
+interests and aspirations, achieve together all the country's material
+and spiritual values, take part with spiritedness in the struggle for
+the flourishing of the common homeland -- the Socialist Republic of
+Romania. It is the duty of party organizations to firmly fight against
+any tendency and form of expression of nationalism. Political work must
+act unflinchingly against any manifestation of indiscipline, of
+violation of the norms of social cohabitation, in the direction of the
+development of respect towards collective belongings, towards the
+country's laws, to strengthen socialist lawfulness and public order.
+
+The direction and organization of the entire political-educational
+activity fall directly to counties'[^12] party bureaux and committees,
+to party organs at all levels, to activists who work in the field of
+propaganda, to all the communists.
+
+In realizing all these tasks, an important role must be fulfilled by --
+under the party's direction -- the syndicates, youth and women's
+organizations, all the mass and collective organizations in our
+homeland.
+
+2\. -- The Propaganda Section of the Central Committee[^13] will[^14]
+present proposals for the improvement of the organisation of party
+education, of the forms of political and ideological preparation of
+party specialists[^15] and members, in order to develop the[ir]
+partinic, revolutionary spirit, to rise the level of party
+work. Measures will be taken for the improvement of education plans and
+curricula at the Ștefan Gheorghiu[^16] party Academy and the
+inter-county party Schools, in order to ensure the preparation of cadres
+with the fundamental problems of party work, of the science of political
+leadership. Will be ensured[^17] the inclusion[^18] in perfectioning
+courses of a larger number of activists from different fields of
+activity. The recruitement of lower and higher students[^19] for party
+schools will be made among party, state and mass organization activists,
+especially those that come from the working class and have a long
+experience in production.
+
+3\. -- Will be extended and activated the forms of mass political work:
+the activity of agitators, of satirical gazettes[^20], of artistic[^21]
+agitation brigades, of different forms of visual agitation at
+workplaces, for the popularization and generalization of positive
+experience, of achievements and advanced attitudes, as well as for the
+active fight against the states of negative things[^22]. Party
+organisations will be oriented to strengthen the direct
+political-educational work, from person to person, with every party
+member, with every citizen.
+
+A special attention must the party organs give to the education of party
+and state members in the spirit of the profoundly humanist politics of
+our party, a politics pervaded with human care, in the spirit of serving
+with abnegation the general interests of society, of the people[^23] --
+a fundamental duty and principal criterion for the appreciation of
+cadres, of every communist.
+
+Party organs must develop in[^24] our cadres the preoccupation with
+ensuring the conditions for the ever wider participation of masses in
+elaborating and achieving party and state politics, in the entire
+economic, social, ideological and cultural life -- an eloquent
+expression of the profound democratism of our socialist arrangement.
+
+4\. -- Will have to rise the role of party gatherings in debating the
+main life problems of working collectives, in increasing combativeness
+and political vigilance of party members, in lifting the critical and
+auto-critical spirit, in promoting the firm position against negative
+phenomena, against unsuitable attitudes towards work and the collective
+had, of disinterest towards the requirements of working people, against
+manifestations of indolence and superficiality. It is the duty of party
+organizations to form the mass opinion in the fight against abuses and
+dishonesty, dilapidations and all antisocial manifestations.
+
+One of the main objectives of political work, especially among the
+young, is the firm fight against tendencies of parasitism, of easy,
+workless life, the cultivation of responsibility and of the duty to work
+for the homeland, the people, for the socialist society. The fulfillment
+of a useful work for society is an honor and an obligation for all
+citizens[^25].
+
+5\. -- Is necessary the creation of a large mass current for the
+participation of all citizens and especially the young in actions of
+patriotic work -- on construction sites, in the industry, in
+agriculture, in the management of localities. The party organs and
+organizations, mass and public organizations, the local organs of state
+power are directly responsible of organizing those actions[^26].
+
+6\. -- Will need to be intensified the activity of education and
+political preparation in schools and faculties[^27]. For this purpose,
+the Ministry of Education will take measures for the improvement of
+educational plans and curricula, giving special attention to the
+improvement in the teaching of social sciences. Will need to be lifted
+the spirit of responsibility and the role of teachers in the
+political-ideological shaping of lower and higher students. Will be
+taken measures for the strengthening of the educational directions in
+the Ministry of Education[^28], ensuring their integration with party
+activists, their direct guidance from the Propaganda Section of the
+C.C. of P.C.R. The C.C. Secretariat of P.C.R., the county and town
+bureaux of party commitees answer for the guidance of the entire
+political activity within schools and faculties, of the content
+pertaining to the teaching of social sciences. The educational plans and
+the curricula of social sciences will be approved by the Secretariat of
+C.C. of P.C.R. A third of the curricula of summer courses for teacher
+preparation will be dedicated to political information[^29] and to
+debates on ideological and educational problems.
+
+7\. -- Will be taken measures for the intensification of the activity of
+political education performed by the U.T.C. organizations[^30] and
+students' associations. The principal role in the entire activity of
+U.T.C. must be had by the working youth. Must be actioned to promote
+among the entire youth the conception about the world and life of the
+working class, for the cultivation of the working class' and the
+communist party's revolutionary traditions[^31], for the education
+socialist, patriotic, through work of the young generation. The research
+center for youth's problems is to orient its activity towards these
+requirements of youth education.
+
+A special attention will need to be given to cultural-educational and
+entertainment[^32] activities among the youth and especially among lower
+and higher students, combating the manifestations of cosmopolitanism,
+different artistic fashions borrowed from the capitalist world. Will be
+forbidden the serving of alcoholic beverages in all the entertainment
+premises for the youth.
+
+Will be enlarged and intensified the atheist propaganda[^33], the
+organization of mass actions for the disproof of mysticism, of
+retrograde concepts, for the education of the entire youth in the spirit
+of our materialist-dialectic philosophy.
+
+8\. -- Will be grown the role of the Academy of social and political
+sciences in debating the current ideological problems of our
+social-political life, of the cultural activity and artistic creation,
+in elevating the ideological combativity against foreign influences, in
+the powerful affirmation of the materialist-dialectic philosophy and of
+our party's politics.
+
+9\. -- It is necessary to grow the role of the press in the widespread
+propagation of the ideological positions of our party, of our ethical
+social cohabitation principles, in the firm fight against the influences
+of burgeois ideology and of retrograde mentalities of any kind. The
+press will have to cultivate more the advanced figure of the worker, of
+the producer of material goods devoted body and soul to the cause of
+socialism, the flourishing of the homeland. Will be ensured the firm
+political orientation, especially of the cultural-artistic publications,
+in the direction of promoting militant socialist art and literature and
+of combating the tendencies to tear apart creation from our social
+realities, from the general public of the working people[^34].
+
+Through forms and varied styles of expression, the art must serve the
+people, the homeland, the socialist society.
+
+10\. -- Will have to be increased the educational role of all the radio
+and television shows. Shows will be addressed in greater measure to the
+large masses of audience[^35], especially to workers and peasants,
+ensuring therewith of their more frequent presence in
+broadcasts[^36]. Will be made a more rigorous selection of artistic
+productions broadcasted by the radiotelevision, promoting mostly movies,
+plays, musical shows from the national repertoire and especially from
+the new, socialist repertoire. Will be ensured a rational balance in the
+repertoire politics, so that there will be judiciously represented
+valuable creations from socialist countries, as well as representative
+works from the heritage of universal culture which possess a profound
+social character and a progressive, advanced philosophical
+position. Will be eliminated from broadcasts the productions which
+cultivate ideas and principles foreign to our philosophy and morals, the
+spirit of violence, the burgeois life style, harmful mentalities for the
+youth's education.
+
+Satire and humour shows will need to be directed against the negative
+phenomena in the society[^37], from the positions of our party's
+politics, removing the productions that are in bad taste and harmful or
+confusing from an ideological point of view.
+
+The radio and television will stimulate the creation of revolutionary,
+patriotic and worker's songs, as well as their distribution to the
+masses, organizing for this purpose creation and interpretation
+contests, special shows, etc.
+
+11\. -- Will be taken measures for a better orientation of editorial
+activity, so that book production responds in greater measure to the
+requirements of communist education. Will be exercised a more rigorous
+control, to avoid the publishing of literary works that do not answer to
+the requirements of the political-educational activity of our party, of
+books that promote ideas and conceptions harmful to the interests of the
+socialist construction.
+
+12\. -- In the orientation of the repertoires of public performance
+institutions[^38], will be emphasized the promotion of original creation
+with militant, revolutionary character. Will be given also extension to
+valuable works from the current artistic creation of socialist
+countries; will be ensured a more rigorous selection of the works from
+the classical and contemporary international repertoire.
+
+Will be acted[^39] more perseveringly for the development of Romanian
+creations of opera, operetta and balet with themes springing from the
+battle of our people for socialism. County and municipal party
+committees answer for the just orientation of the repertoires of
+professional artistic institutions of performance, as well as those of
+cultural houses and community homes.
+
+13\. -- Will be taken measures for the better balancing of the movies
+programmed in our cinemas, limiting the projection of police and
+adventure movies, forbidding movies which cultivate violence and
+vulgarity[^40], which propagate the burgeois life style.
+
+14\. -- An especially important role in the political-ideological
+orientation of cultural-educational activity, in ensuring a content
+pervaded by the spirit of the politics of our party of the entire
+literary-artistic creation is played by party organisations, by all the
+communists who perform their activity in this area.
+
+Party members who are part of party and state leadership organs, as well
+as all those who activate in ideological institutions, of political
+education, of teaching, culture and art, in the entire sphere of our
+cultural life, must manifest a grand spirit of partinic exigence, of
+combativeness and Marxist-Leninist principledness. They must be an
+example in this respect, through their day to day activity as well as
+their own literary-artistic creations.
+
+15\. -- The Ministry of Interior Commerce, the Ministry of Tourism, as
+well as local party and state organs will watch that in places of public
+alimentation will be broadcast especially the musical creation of our
+country, making therewith a careful selection of foreign repertoir, in
+order to remove the music that expresses decadent currents.
+
+16\. -- It is necessary for measures to be taken to improve the activity
+of the Propaganda Section of the Central Committee of P.C.R., with an
+eye to the firm realization, at a higher level, of the duties that it
+bears. The Board of ideology and the Board of culture and press of the
+Central Committee will have to perform a more intense activity, to
+debate exactingly the problems of ideological, political and cultural
+activity, seeing to the just orientation of the entire activity
+performed in the respective fields.
+
+17\. -- In order to debate the problems of political-educational work, a
+conference will be convened at the party's Central Committee with the
+secretaries of county party committees who answer for propaganda
+problems, with cadres responsible in the field of ideological activity,
+with leaders of creation unions and of some cultural institutions.
+
+In the autumn of this year, a plenum of the C.C. of P.C.R. will analyze
+the problems pertaining to ideological, political-educational and
+cultural-artistic activity. In order to prepare the plenum, there will
+be organized debates throughout the party organs and organizations, in
+the institutions and organizations with educational character, as well
+as in the press.
+
+<p style="text-align:center; font-weight:bold;">⁂</p>
+
+Acting in the direction of the proposed measures, it is necessary that
+the party organs and organizations ensure the orientation of the entire
+political-ideological and cultural-educational activity in the spirit of
+Marxist-Leninist traditions, of proletarian internationalism, of
+solidarity of the working people of our country with all the peoples who
+forge the new socialist arrangement, with the international communist
+and working movement, with the working class, with the peoples who fight
+for national emancipation, for the defense of their independence and
+national sovereignty[^41], with all the contemporary forces that rise
+against imperialism, for social progress and peace.
+
+Our party considers that fulfilling the tasks both national as well as
+international, constitutes an inseparable dialectical unit, their
+harmonious blending being a fundamental duty of every communist.
+
+The entire ideological, political-educational, cultural-artistic
+activity that takes place in our country must have as a basis the
+general Marxist-Leninist line of the Romanian Communist Party, the
+programme elaborated by the 10th party Congress, must ensure their
+assimilation and bringing into life by our entire people. The
+improvement of political-educational activity must lead to the
+intensification of communists' participation, of all the working people,
+of the entire party and nation at forging the multilaterally-developed
+socialist society, a work that requires both improving the grade of
+material civilization of Romania[^42], as well as forming a new man,
+with a heightened socialist conscience.
+
+I bring for approval by the Executive Committee these proposals of
+measures, seeing to their publication and the organization of their
+bringing to life.
+
+<p style="text-align:center; font-weight:bold;">⁂</p>
+
+*The proposals of measures have been unanimously approved by the
+Executive Committee of the C.C. of P.C.R. during the meeting on July 6,
+1971.*[^43]
+
+[^1]: This particular doublespeak supposedly refers to the communists'
+ takeover of state affairs. As things often happen, this event also
+ occured in a specific historical context. Immediately post-World War
+ II, Romanian monarchy was greatly weakened, more so that Romania was
+ officially declared a loser in the war and its remaining competent
+ leaders got executed in Romanians' own Nuremberg Trials. This came
+ as a great opportunity for the times' pro-Soviet politicians,
+ e.g. Ana Pauker and Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu (Romanian communists' very
+ own Trotsky, if we were to be snarky), who did not hesitate for a
+ moment to grab power.
+
+ And so they did, and they evicted King Michael (the First and the
+ Only) from his bloody throne, and the rest is bloody history.
+
+[^2]: The "activity" described here and throughout the entire text being
+ completely non-descript in the sense that it doesn't really matter
+ what they did, they just did stuff, m'kay? So no one may lift a
+ finger to point out that they didn't do anything.
+
+[^3]: This sounds like crap because it is an impersonal expressed
+ syntactically as a reflexive, which, in contrast to the previous
+ footnote, gives the impression that no one did anything, but results
+ were obtained -- by themselves. In Romanian we call this "limbă de
+ lemn", i.e. "wooden tongue", because of its deliberately misleading
+ vagueness.
+
+[^4]: As the reader may have noticed, most of this paragraph is devoid
+ of actual meaning. Some of the remarkable key words are "party",
+ "social[ist/ism]", "wellbeing", "political", "educational",
+ "ideological", and they don't actually *say* anything other than
+ "we're awesome and we aim to be awesome in the foreseeable future".
+
+ Quite a nasty gamble, and an ironical one, given how the Romanian
+ socialist communist future looked in hindsight.
+
+[^5]: GREAT SUCCESS!
+
+[^6]: Progress literally means "to move forward", which is also what
+ "mers înainte" means.
+
+[^7]: The idiom "multilaterally-developed" is a well-known target of
+ derision for educated Romanians who lived through the communist
+ regime. The term's usage in public discourse correlated negatively
+ with the amount of food available on shelves, which makes the news
+ coming in 2016 from countries such as Venezuela a painful reminder
+ of times (for) now gone for Romanians.
+
+ Romanians also use this mockery as a reminder to people who naïvely
+ believe that "things were better in the times of old". Hell no, they
+ weren't, and we'd better not forget that, lest history repeats
+ itself.
+
+[^8]: This word does, to my knowledge, not exist in English, or if it
+ does, it means something else than represented here. Here "partinic"
+ denotes acting to serve the best interest of the party, in its
+ spirit and so on and so forth.
+
+[^9]: Note that "political", "ideological" and "of communist education
+ of masses" are all attributes of "activity". I am aware that in
+ English attributes generally* appear before the subject, but this
+ particular sentence is so contrived that it was difficult to put it
+ any other way while carefully preserving the initial text's
+ style. Thus I ask the reader to forgive me this flaw.
+
+ \-\-\-
+ \* One notable exception being Gilbert and Sullivan's Modern
+ Major-General's Song.
+
+[^10]: Note that while "combating retrograde mentalities" puts it in the
+ negative, and "progressive thinking" in the positive, both
+ catchphrases convey the exact same message.
+
+[^11]: The literal translation is "cementation".
+
+[^12]: I.e. "județ", pl. "județe", an administrative division in
+ Romania.
+
+[^13]: Referred to henceforth as "the C.C." or "the C.C. of P.C.R.".
+
+[^14]: This is where the actual imperative begins.
+
+[^15]: I'm not sure this is accurate. "Cadru de partid" is somewhat
+ related to party cadres, i.e. politruks, but I think Romanian
+ communists used it to refer in general to party bureaucrats.
+
+[^16]: This guy was quite literally a nobody at his time in the early
+ 1900s. So because Romanian communists didn't have a better guy after
+ whom to name their "Academy"...
+
+[^17]: Sorry, I couldn't help myself with this "se va face" thing, as
+ the whole deed will magically turn itself into being. However, while
+ it sounds amusing, unfortunately this logic has been a genocide of
+ minds.
+
+[^18]: See, and you thought "inclusiveness" was a brand new thing
+ invented by the new activists right around the corner!
+
+[^19]: An "elev" is a student in the pre-university cycle, while a
+ "student" is the same, only in higher education.
+
+[^20]: The exact equivalent of today's "tabloids".
+
+[^21]: I don't think "artistic" means what they think it does.
+
+[^22]: The Romanian Communist Party was so progressive that it invented
+ "self-help", "personal development" and "staying positive" almost
+ half a century before it was cool. Take that, ye feckin' hipsters!
+
+[^23]: So here's the thing that leaves me thinking. It's clear that this
+ particular paragraph is a shitty piece of propaganda, in that it's
+ not even well thought out; look at it: it shifts the "humanism"
+ towards "the society", which, as opposed to what the untrained eye
+ might believe, puts the two elements in clear contrast to each
+ other.
+
+ Now, the fact that Ceaușescu (or whoever wrote his text) aimed to
+ bullshit the Executive Committee is more or less reminiscent of
+ nowaday's VC pitches, which would dispel the myth of the tyrannical
+ dictator. I mean what the fuck, he could make whatever decisions he
+ pleased, humanism be damned. So why the whole pretense? Yes, I get
+ it, in front of "the people", but what party executives gave a fuck
+ about "hoomanism"?
+
+[^24]: I'm pretty sure the "la cadrele noastre" formulation is
+ ungrammatical.
+
+[^25]: Except for those who are more equal, of course.
+
+[^26]: Goddang fucking finally, a clear, unambiguous assignment of
+ responsibility!
+
+[^27]: Why "faculties" and not "universities", I don't know. Regardless,
+ PCR had a tight political grip on Romanian academic institutions,
+ some of them still being managed in that fashion nowadays throughout
+ the country.
+
+ One notable example is University Politehnica of Bucharest, which
+ coincidentally I graduated. The ex-"rector" turned president of
+ University Senate, Ecaterina Andronescu, is also a hardcore member
+ of the Social Democratic Party, known for its strong ties with the
+ former communist regime.
+
+ The more things change...
+
+[^28]: It's unclear whether the measures will be taken from within the
+ Ministry of Education, in which case this should have been phrased
+ as "will be taken measures in the Ministry of [...]", or the
+ directions are something inherent to said institution, which is a
+ nonsensical proposition.
+
+[^29]: Political correct language lesson #123: in this particular
+ passage "information" denotes an action, not an item. That is, the
+ thesis here expresses that teachers should and will "be informed" on
+ "political matters", whatever those might be.
+
+ What the thesis means to say is that the brainwashing must go on in
+ an adequate proportion, i.e. "a third of". Let's sit for a moment
+ and analyze this linguistic construction, for it makes up a great
+ deal of the socialist mind-twisting mechanism. The first observation
+ is that in a normal (i.e. non-propagandistic) context, the action of
+ conveying information is always attached to the informer, never to
+ the informee. The second observation is that normally it is
+ completely up to the informee whether it accepts or not a given
+ piece of information, whereas the text denotes a completely
+ different type of interaction.
+
+ This, my dear reader, is exactly the mechanism of propaganda at
+ work, since a time before the invention of the printing press. When
+ you read "tech environments need to be more inclusive" or whatever
+ other subject is deemed fashionable by a Ministry of Panem et
+ Circenses near you, your conscious is fooled into believing you are
+ "being informed", while your subconscious is force-fed with whatever
+ the clique in power wants you to believe. But enough of this
+ technique, Christos Ballas has it amply documented.
+
+[^30]: "U.T.C" stands for "Uniunea Tineretului Comunist", i.e. "The
+ Union of Communist Youth".
+
+ I read in the news the other day that one of the "could-have-been"
+ presidents of US and A wanted to create a "National Service Reserve"
+ for millenials. Un(?)fortunately things didn't work out too well for
+ her, but either way, now you know where to go if you want to relive
+ the communist dream... while it lasts.
+
+[^31]: Whatwhat?! Either the text's author was some kind of a poet or he
+ was fucking kidding the audience. How can an inherently stationary
+ concept such as tradition ever revolve? I am dumbfounded by this
+ linguistic cum-gargle.
+
+[^32]: "Distracție" is normally translated as entertainment, but in
+ reality this is what entertainment is: a (sometimes benign) form of
+ distraction.
+
+ Theoretical scenarios involving a toxic surge of entertainment have
+ been proposed in works such as Huxley's Brave New World, but can
+ also be easily observed in today's very real Western World.
+
+[^33]: I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, but the reality was very
+ different. The majority of people living on what is now Romanian
+ soil have been Orthodox Christians centuries before such a thing as
+ a "Romania" even existed. Even today's rationalist-atheist
+ propaganda makes only a small dent in Romanians' belief, which makes
+ the Romanian Orthodox Church one of the country's most powerful
+ institutions, religious, political or otherwise.
+
+ Geting back to more communist times, as I said, the reality was very
+ different. The Orthodox Church still existed, although it had a very
+ precarious relationship with the state. Factually, the state
+ controlled the church mostly through the secret services, with which
+ many priests were forced to collaborate "for their own good". Even
+ so, the vast majority of Romanians still went to the church to at
+ least take part in the three major events in their spiritual lives:
+ getting christened, married and buried.
+
+[^34]: This last bit sound familiar? Let's dissect it.
+
+ "To tear apart creation from our social realities" is the equivalent
+ of nowadays' various "social justice" "warriors" brouhaha-ing over
+ "misrepresentation" or "underrepresentation" of races, genders et
+ al. in "popular media". So the propaganda machines known as
+ "Hollywood", "the music industry" et al. deliver, with the average
+ result of zero pieces of actual art, meaning e.g. posing actual
+ problems instead of pretending to solve pseudo-problems, or
+ e.g. having the property to be memorable for at least a decade. Face
+ it kids, real music ended in 1972.
+
+ "From the general public of the working people" is an attempt to
+ identify the target audience. There's on one hand "the working
+ people", and on the other hand nobody else. This is why it's nigh
+ impossible to find a good laptop nowadays: because "nobody buys
+ laptops anymore"; this is why they don't teach your kids gems such
+ as Latin, logic and argumentation in high school nowadays: because
+ "they don't use them for nuthin' anyway"*. Yes, this is a way to
+ wipe out inconvenient people and artifacts off the face of the
+ Earth, and yes, this is systematic, in case you were wondering.
+
+ And this is how we ended up with a mentally retarded
+ civilization. Or, how do they call it, "retrograde".
+
+ \-\-\-
+ \* This latter item is discussed in a post of its own on The Tar
+ Pit. I won't bother linking it, go dig through the archives.
+
+[^35]: Also known as "followers", "uniques", "clicks", etc.
+
+[^36]: Also known as "reality shows".
+
+[^37]: And that they were. For years actors such as Amza Pellea and Toma
+ Caragiu posted on their Youtubes pieces *in good taste* that were
+ aimed at communists' harmful or otherwise incompetent
+ governance. And so Romanians could live on haz de necaz for a while.
+
+[^38]: The original reads along the lines of "institutions of [public]
+ performance, theatre, opera, balet, rostrum", from which we can
+ deduce that the author was culturally retarded, because all the
+ aforementioned places are "for public performance". As in many other
+ sentences above and below this particular line, the author merely
+ pretends to be cultured, because look, he distinguished between all
+ those places he (or she) never actually bothered to visit.
+
+[^39]: By now the reader will have been driven out of their mind by this
+ formulation of the impersonal. This particular piece is also
+ somewhat special because it has no grammatical subject.
+
+ Word to the reader: Romanian is a great language; it is also pretty
+ difficult, at least as hard as French and Spanish*. Now, the
+ construction above happens to be perfectly legitimate, but it also
+ happens to be used in our context by retarded people, in a retarded
+ manner.
+
+ To Romanian-speaking readers: never** use subjectless constructions
+ such as "se va acționa" in a real-life (spoken or written)
+ sentence. It really, sadly and unfortunately for you and for anyone
+ who's communicating with you (which includes any of your potential
+ readers), really means that you're retarded beyond hope.
+
+ \-\-\-
+ \* Only, unlike French and Spanish, it has significant Slavic
+ influences, which will make your life noticeably harder if you're
+ coming from the West. Not unlike, for example, how French is a
+ perfect Latin, if only it weren't for all those Celtic and
+ Germanic influences. But we digress from the digression.
+ \*\* Unless, of course, you're willing to break this rule on
+ purpose, in which case, well. Constructions such as "din bătrâni
+ se povestește [...]" make good exceptions to the rule, and for a
+ good reason: they define an implicit logical subject, which in the
+ sentence we're analyzing is entirely absent.
+
+[^40]: Of course, they have no fucking idea what the word means:
+ vulgarity, that which is vulgar, coming from the Latin vulgus,
+ meaning the people. Yes, I know, words don't mean what they mean,
+ we're progressives and therefore fuck you.
+
+[^41]: I wonder if the mention of sovereignty has anything to do with
+ Ceaușescu's 1968 speech in which he famously slammed the communist
+ bloc countries for invading Czechoslovakia. But we're now well over
+ the length of your typical Tarpitian text, so we're going to leave
+ this story for another time.
+
+[^42]: "Make Romania great again!" and all that.
+
+[^43]: ... and this approval concludes Ceaușescu's text -- assuming it
+ was written by him, a fact that I very much doubt. The most frequent
+ word in the text is "party" (about 50 occurences, 2% of the total
+ word count!), followed by the mostly meaningless "activity" (about
+ 30 occurences). Other notable words are "political", "educational",
+ "ideological", "people" and so on and so forth. I wouldn't exactly
+ call the text a reference, but I'm sure it doesn't sound much
+ different from any other socialist "manifesto" out there.
+
+ As history shows, the plan was approved. And as history goes,
+ Ceaușescu and his clique went forward with trying to implement this
+ as per the original spec, not accounting however for the small
+ detail that Romanians are not North Koreans, and, as told by the
+ great Costache Negruzzi in his romanticization of Alexandru
+ Lăpușneanu, they're "proști, dar mulți", i.e., the people may have
+ been stupid, but there was a whole bunch of them out there ready to
+ separate the king's head from the rest of him.
+
+ From what I've been told, the first few years after the 6th of July
+ weren't so bad. Things had gotten progressively worse however as
+ Ceaușescu started his attempt to repay Romania's entire sovereign
+ debt, an endeavour which he brought to GREAT SUCCESS! By '88 (the
+ year when I decided I should fall out of a vagina) "the people" were
+ both starved and fed up at the same time, of the
+ "multilaterally-developed" claptrap among others, which was also
+ quite the achievement.
+
+ The whole thing unsurprisingly, as in Lăpușneanu's case and many
+ others before and after it, ended in blood. Ironically, it would
+ seem that political leaders, of course! the elites well-versed in
+ matters cultural, ideological, political, historical and of
+ circle-jerking and cum gargling, don't seem to have figured this
+ simple turn of events out. And so, the time draws ever nearer when
+ the next set of heads will begin to fall.
--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 05b
+title: A declaration of war on the HTTP of Shit
+date: March 12, 2017
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: asphalt
+---
+
+It has been known for quite a while now that Google are
+[waging a war][chrome-https] on plain HTTP with their Chrome web
+browser. They are openly leveraging their browser's popularity and their
+political power to force web server owners to provide services
+exclusively through HTTPS, that is, the HTTP of Shit. This is all nice
+and well, only, as it happens, I personally don't care.
+
+Let us be clear about this: HTTPS is not secure. The simple fact that
+Google claims HTTPS to be secure does not make it so. It does not make
+it so from a political point of view, since the "secureness" property of
+HTTPS only extends as far as Google's own political arm can reach, which
+arm cannot for example reach this blog. It also does not make it so from
+a technical point of view, despite the so-called "experts" having you
+believe it "just works". No, it doesn't, and for some very specific
+reasons.
+
+But before going into technical details, let us define what "security"
+means in this context. From a purely theoretical point of view, the TLS
+family of protocols have been designed to give their users three
+properties: confidentiality (communication over a given medium cannot be
+easily intercepted), integrity (data cannot be easily tampered with or
+otherwise corrupted) and authenticity (the source of given data is
+verifiable). The first property is enforced through encryption; the
+second is enforced through sealing[^1] (which for our purposes is
+equivalent to encryption); while the third is enforced through signing.
+
+Distributed communication systems[^2] are fraught with many problems,
+two of them being: the meta-problem of authenticating the instruments of
+authentication (i.e. the keys, and more importantly, their owners) and
+the problem of invalidating said instruments (i.e. key
+revocation[^3]). The two problems are unresolvable. Let me explain what
+I mean by this: "unresolvable" means "not solvable using technical
+means", which means that so far science has given us no sound solution,
+and searching for one is not so different from looking for a solution to
+the P vs. NP problem or for a device that can reverse entropy[^4].
+
+Having said that, TLS, and thus HTTPS, proceeds to solve this
+unresolvable problem; and it does this using two of the worst possible
+approaches.
+
+The first approach is to make the protocol's implementation a hack, with
+the purpose of (as much as possible) providing "universal support"[^5]:
+support all the key exchanges algorithms, all the encryption algorithms,
+the newest, the latest, the greatest (if possible) algorithms. All this
+bloat and clutter is what has spawned what you may know as Heartbleed;
+or DROWN; or BEAST; or many, many other attacks on faulty
+implementations which are anything but maintainable.
+
+The second approach is to base the protocol upon a centralized model of
+key generation, exchange and revocation, the Public Key Infrastructure
+model. The model is, granted, attractive to socialists, because it
+follows from the basic assumption that Alice and Bob are not able to own
+their keys, so someone needs to own them for them, to distribute them
+and revoke them in case of incidents[^6]. This, like all
+[socialist systems][mechanics-of-socialism], has (among others) the
+problem that it creates single points of failure. This is how you got
+the DigiNotar compromise, the VeriSign compromise and others.
+
+Thus we can claim that not only TLS, and thus HTTPS, is not secure; we
+can claim that it is *antithetical to security*. To be clear: I don't
+claim that they don't "just work". They do "just work", to the degree a
+shabby hut works: at the first earthquake or thunderstorm wind, it will
+fall; and when it does, it will fall *hard*, à la the "too big to fail"
+nonsense. And when it does, the first to suffer will not be the gang of
+idiot programmers, Google engineers or IETF bureaucrats; it will be the
+"users" of this fragile construction.
+
+This lengthy introduction being laid out, I wish to formally issue a
+declaration of war on the HTTP of Shit, also known as HTTPS. This
+entails an open war with Google, The Linux Foundation, Facebook and
+pretty much every entity listed as a sponsor on the
+[Let's Encrypt][lets-encrypt] web site. There isn't much that this
+declaration of war entails, as myself and my blog are very small pieces
+in this puzzle, but I hope for it to serve as an example for all those
+who share the philosophy described here.
+
+The Tar Pit's hosting web server will pointedly not use HTTPS for the
+foreseeable future, which will result in it being marked as "not secure"
+by browsers such as Chrome in the near future, and all that for
+arbitrary reasons. Furthermore, in the near future[^7] The Tar Pit will
+remove all support for Chrome: the HTML dialect will probably be limited
+to around version 4, the CSS decorations will go away and the so-called
+"web fonts" will have to hit the proverbial dirt as well. The interface
+will perhaps not look so fancy as it does now, but alas,
+[everything costs][freedom-is-slavery]. I will however make sure that
+the blog looks and acts decently in lynx, w3m, Dillo and maybe Firefox,
+which should be more than enough.
+
+As for Google Chrome: let it be the most popular ever, and let it
+continue being useful for browsing the Internet of Shit, using the HTTP
+of Shit. Collectivist computing[^8] is not needed around here, nor is it
+useful in any general or particular way.
+
+[^1]: See Nick Szabo's [The Playdough Protocols][szabo] for further
+ details on sealing.
+
+[^2]: Not necessarily computing systems, but distributed communication
+ systems in general. For example a system comprising Alice, Bob and a
+ messenger pigeon is *in principle* -- which is to say,
+ *qualitatively* -- equivalent to a system comprising the same Alice
+ and Bob communicating over the Internet.
+
+ This is a more serious matter than a first glance would reveal:
+ while the Internet is significantly faster, which gives it clear
+ quantitative *as well as qualitative* advantages over other
+ communication media, it is per its definition *qualitatively
+ equivalent* to so-called "lesser" forms of communication. This is by
+ and large a good thing, as it tells us that were the Internet to
+ collapse, reality would not fall apart.
+
+[^3]: Revocation is more related to the property of authorization than
+ it is to authenticity, but there is a certain point, namely the
+ philosophical realm of identity, where the two converge. Let's
+ explain this.
+
+ Let's say that Alice owns a key `K` and gives it to Bob and some
+ other parties. At some point in the future, Alice may not want to
+ use `K` to communicate anymore, for which purpose she wants to have
+ a way to mark `K` as invalid, which is equivalent to uttering loudly
+ "`K` is not mine anymore, so if you use it to communicate with me in
+ the future, you do so at your own risk". This is a problem of
+ authentication/identity, and its solution may lead to a weak form of
+ forward secrecy.
+
+ At the same time, upon uttering this, Alice revokes herself the
+ *authorization* to use `K`: we assume she cannot change her mind in
+ the future (which may be disastrous). This particular point is very
+ important to our discussion, because as we see, in the framework of
+ TLS and PKI, Alice does not own her key, but in fact some higher
+ power does.
+
+[^4]: This might seem like an exaggeration, but it's not. The discussion
+ exceeds the current subject by far, but let's take a very brief
+ example to illustrate the problem.
+
+ Alice and Bob, having not known each other before, meet in person to
+ exchange keys, which as far as I know is the most secure form of
+ authentication in existence. Bob gives to Alice a piece of paper and
+ says "here, this piece of paper contains my public key", and Alice
+ does the same to Bob.
+
+ And now comes the problem: are Alice and Bob supposed to trust each
+ other? And if so, what protocol dictates this? And if not, why not?
+ Can you grasp the problem at hand? How can we define trust without a
+ pre-existing context?
+
+ For our amusement, let us also define some contexts. Let's say Alice
+ and Bob have a common friend who recommends each to each other: this
+ reduces to the Web of Trust model, but what formal guarantees does
+ this context give? Or let's say Alice and Bob's keys are generated
+ by the Department of Key Generation in the
+ [Socialist United State][we]: this reduces to PKI, which reduces
+ Alice and Bob to cattle, but *what formal guarantees does this
+ particular context give*? Humour me.
+
+ Or let's step this up a bit, and assume that Alice and Bob are
+ lovers who have known each other for thirty years, and spouses and
+ whatnot. What formal guarantees do we have that Bob isn't gonna leak
+ Alice's private key to his housemaid who gives him better fucks?
+ What, you haven't seen marriages fail after thirty years? I have.
+
+ Which problem reduces to that of [trust][the-problem-of-trust],
+ which in turn reduces to entropy: what formal guarantees do (or
+ can!) you have that, given enough time, your cells aren't going to
+ fall apart?
+
+[^5]: This "universality" snake oil is not new in the world of
+ technology. See for example Popescu's article on
+ [Unicode][unicode-is-stupid].
+
+[^6]: Yes, PKI is a form of communism. I'll restate this in bold: **PKI
+ is a communist concoction**. Now go and whine to your boss about how
+ Lucian is gratuitously mean and all, while zhe, I don't
+ know... fucks you in the ass or something.
+
+[^7]: Meaning, as soon as possible. What, if Google, that is, the owner
+ of a number of servers on the Internet, is allowed to state vague
+ timeframes, why would I, the owner of a number of servers on the
+ Internet, not be?
+
+[^8]: As opposed to the personal kind. This is yet another philosophical
+ and ideological discussion which needs an essay of its own, but
+ until such an essay comes into existence, you can read the statement
+ of [No Such lAbs][nsa], my posts on cloud software
+ ([part one][cloud-software-i] and [part two][cloud-software-ii]) and
+ many others.
+
+[chrome-https]: http://archive.is/S4yT0
+[szabo]: http://archive.is/Cjlr5
+[we]: /posts/y02/04b-we.html
+[the-problem-of-trust]: /posts/y03/059-the-problem-of-trust.html
+[unicode-is-stupid]: http://trilema.com/2016/unicode-is-fucking-stupid-the-definitive-article/
+[mechanics-of-socialism]: /posts/y00/017-the-mechanics-of-socialism.html
+[lets-encrypt]: http://archive.is/pDJzm
+[freedom-is-slavery]: /posts/y03/04f-freedom-is-slavery.html
+[nsa]: http://nosuchlabs.com/
+[cloud-software-i]: /posts/y00/00e-cloud-software-is-unreliable.html
+[cloud-software-ii]: /posts/y02/041-cloud-software-is-unreliable-ii.html
--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 05c
+title: The Tar Pit development log [i]
+date: March 19, 2017
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: tech
+---
+
+I was [recently reminded][contravex] that my blog lacks a comments
+box. This is not a new issue: I've admitted a while ago that I
+[might have to fix this][commenting], and while the long-awaited magical
+solution hasn't even been on the table (or nowhere near the horizon, for
+that matter), The Tar Pit has been going through
+[various issues][new-tarpit] which
+[led to changes][i-wrote-a-blog]. Long story short, the blog is now
+generated through a small tool[^1] mostly written and entirely
+maintained by yours truly.
+
+This event opens up an opportunity, that is, the chance to write a
+blogging software that is the result of pragmatic engineering, as
+opposed to [undisciplined enthusiasm][software-engineering-ii]: the blog
+can be specified as an [unambiguously useful][unambiguous-usefulness]
+tool with a clear purpose, and more importantly a clear set of
+limitations, stemming from the fact that the concept of blog pertains to
+an immutable set of functionalities. Everything outside that immutable
+set represents functionality of anything else but a blog.
+
+The problem of what constitues an X, where X is a conceptual artifact of
+computer science and software engineering, is uncoincidentally a very
+hard problem -- arising from what we know as
+[abstraction hell][iadul-abstractizarii], which means that the concept
+of blog is not unambiguous in and of itself, etc. And this is where we,
+and by we I mean this is where this series of posts comes in.
+
+This development log proposes to walk the reader through the process of
+building a blog, and at the end hopefully to elucidate the definition of
+blog, at least from the author's point of view.
+
+The principal cause of this development log is the
+following. Intuitively, making a blog from scratch is not a difficult
+intellectual endeavour. This intuition given, any intellectual with the
+patience to get their hands dirty in matters of techne[^2] should be
+able to make their own or otherwise steal from another and understand on
+their own. This possibility given, any braindead blog solution stamped
+and approved by a Committee of Blogs near you, e.g. Wordpress, becomes
+useless, except maybe for the plebeians who will forever live in abuse
+of Gutenberg's goodwill. Thus if we can, then, in the Pythons' own
+words, let's get on with it.
+
+This lengthy introduction left behind us, let's start with a few
+requirements. In order for a blog post to display comments without much
+fuss (e.g. manually updating the page), the HTTP server needs a dynamic
+page generation component. Thus the server must not only serve some
+static content, but it must also grab some content from a database[^3],
+somehow combine it with the static content, then dynamically generate
+the HTML page from the two items and only then serve it. This is easy to
+achieve through templating, and it's why PHP was created. This is also
+how The Tar Pit works, only the template-to-HTML-page conversion is done
+by me before the content reaches the site, instead of being generated
+dynamically by a HTTP server.
+
+Since The Tar Pit lives in the world of Common Lisp, what we need is a
+way to serve HTML pages generated on-the-fly using the HTTP protocol. As
+a bonus, it would be nice to have a component that can resolve blog
+paths in a more intelligent way. For example, we could access not only
+`/posts/y42/12c-post.html`, but also
+`/posts/y42/12c-post`, and also, why not `/posts/12c`. In any
+case, on a HTTP GET request, a server should be able to grab a post in
+template form (i.e. not yet fully[^4] converted to HTML), manipulate the
+dynamic parts as needed, convert the template to HTML and then serve the
+resulting page. On a HTTP POST request, the same server should be able
+to add comments to the database, but this something we will get into
+later.
+
+The Common Lisp world already has a bunch of [HTTP servers][cliki]
+available for our benefit. The hard part consists in figuring out which
+one is more suitable for our purpose. Ideally, I would like to integrate
+into The Tar Pit a software that brings along a minimal set of
+dependencies and comes with as few features as possible; features which
+I can then grab from other software if I decide I need them -- the
+essential definition of HTTP server being software that receives a
+request and responds according to the
+[Hypertext Transfer Protocol][http-rfc]. On a first glance all the
+aforementioned servers seem equally suitable; but let's do a more
+thorough examination:
+
+* **AllegroServe**: Portable HTTP server implementation written by Franz
+ Inc. Portable in that it works on multiple Common Lisp
+ implementations, an aspect I am not sure I am interested in, as SBCL
+ seems more than enough. Pro: it's self-contained. Con: the unneeded
+ components would require trimming: The Tar Pit
+ [will not use SSL][https] in the foreseeable future; no external CGI
+ is required; CL-WHO is already used as a templating language; virtual
+ hosts are unneeded, as that functionality can be already provided by
+ e.g. Apache. Other than that, it doesn't seem bad.
+* **Antiweb**: "Antiweb is a webserver written in Common Lisp, C, and
+ Perl by Doug Hoyte and Hoytech". Had I wanted C and Perl, I would have
+ used Apache.
+* **Araneida**: The web server behind CLiki, the files are still
+ available [on the web][araneida]. Pro: minimal set of external
+ dependencies. Con: same as AllegroServe; for example The Tar Pit will
+ never have a web-based administration interface, and thus it will
+ never use web-based authentication mechanisms; I also doubt it will
+ ever use cookies.
+* **dwim.hu**: Common Lisp utilities written by [dwim.hu][dwim-hu],
+ among them being a HTTP server. Looking through the ASDF file for
+ dependencies, `hu.dwim.quasi-quote.xml+hu.dwim.quasi-quote.js` doesn't
+ strike me as very sane. Clearly not a first choice.
+* **house**: Written as part of the DEAL project (whatever that is), but
+ otherwise [its own thing][house]. Pro: it seems very small: about
+ eight files, not more than about 300 lines each. Con: the list of
+ dependencies is not insignificant. It does probably deserve a second
+ look though.
+* **Hunchentoot**: The alpha and omega of Common Lisp HTTP servers
+ nowadays, it seems. It's like a shwarma with everything, and thus I'd
+ like to avoid using it unless I'm out of other options.
+* **jarw-inet**: Utility library for various protocols, including HTTP,
+ written by [John A.R. Williams][jarw]. Unfortunately the links on the
+ project page are dead, and google has been unable to help me find any
+ code.
+* **s-http-server**: Simple HTTP server written by Sven Van
+ Caekenberghe. Code is available on [GitHub page][s-http-server]. Pros:
+ it *seems* small (most of the code is bundled up in one file); it
+ seems done. Cons: it depends on a few other libraries written by
+ Caekenberghe; it contains some SSL support code which needs to be
+ eliminated. So far it *seems* like a good candidate for The Tar Pit's
+ web serving component, but I need to give it a more detailed look
+ before passing judgement.
+* **sw-http**: Allegedly fast HTTP web server written (and abandoned, it
+ would seem) by Lars Rune Nøstdal. A mirror is available on
+ [GitHub][sw-http]. Pro: It *seems* small and not too bloated. Cons: I
+ don't want to know what `bootstrap-types.lisp` does; one of the
+ dependencies is the library of Alexandria; another is the library of
+ CL utilities; yet another of the dependencies (also an utility
+ library, also written by Nøstdal) is abandoned and nowhere to be
+ found. Not sure I want to try this out.
+* **teepeedee2**: "Fast webserver for dynamic pages". Available on
+ [GitHub][teepeedee2]. Much in the vein of Hunchentoot, huge and with a
+ heavy dependency burden.
+* **toot**: Result of an attempt to cut stuff from Hunchentoot. It's
+ smaller, but not small enough, the list of dependencies being hefty. I
+ tried it out and it works, but for the amount of things it imports, it
+ doesn't even support setting a custom 404 page. Requires a lot of
+ trimming and modifications; I'm not convinced it's a good choice, but
+ in lack of a better alternative, I'd dive into it.
+* **Wookie**: Yet another Hunchentoot fork. Async and all, nothing
+ interesting to see here.
+
+In addition to the list on CLiki, I've found a few more by googling:
+
+* **cl-http**: Also known as the Common Lisp Hypermedia Server. Probably
+ one of the first web servers ever written, at least in the Lisp
+ world. Unfortunately all the official sites and FTP mirrors pointed to
+ by Google are dead.
+* **cl-http-server**: Distinct from the cl-http above. Written by Tomo
+ Matsumoto and available on [GitHub][cl-http-server]. It looks similar
+ to s-http-server in most respects.
+* Some frameworks written on top of Hunchentoot, and some frameworks
+ written on top of the frameworks written on top of Hunchentoot,
+ turtles all the way down to? I'm not even considering them.
+
+I think this is enough for us to get an idea of what Common Lisp has to
+offer in terms of HTTP servers. In the worst case, we know that there is
+a lot of code to cut from, making this method the modern equivalent of
+building our own web server. Assuming that's not the case, then: AServe
+is a powerhouse that I'm willing to consider in lack of more minimal
+working solutions; s-http-server and cl-http-server sound promising;
+house might be worth trying; the rest would only be worth taking into
+consideration in the worst case scenario described previously.
+
+But that's enough for today.
+
+[^1]: Embedded in the source code that is available
+ [on GitHub][github]. Given that GitHub is a venue owned by actors
+ having a dubious relationship to [freedom][is-slavery], I don't
+ expect this to last forever. Thus at some point I will host my own
+ public code repository with blackjack and hookers, only without the
+ blackjack.
+
+[^2]: Which in any civilized world everywhere and everywhen means any
+ intellectual, period. This is Leonardo's most important lesson:
+ you're not [human][worth-to-humanity] unless you're willing to
+ understand the important things that your lazy reptilian brain
+ otherwise refuses to,
+ i.e. [the miracles that matter][the-miracles-that-matter].
+
+[^3]: The pedantic will point out that static files served by the HTTP
+ server are usually stored in an operating system's filesystem, which
+ itself is a database.
+
+[^4]: For example we wouldn't run Pandoc on every page request, as that
+ would be unnecessary and also a big performance killer.
+
+[contravex]: http://www.contravex.com/2017/02/18/the-robot-tax/#comment-54657
+[commenting]: /posts/y00/023-maybe-i-was-wrong-about-that-commenting-thing.html
+[new-tarpit]: /posts/y03/050-the-new-tarpit.html
+[i-wrote-a-blog]: /posts/y03/053-i-wrote-a-blog.html
+[github]: /posts/y00/006-the-tar-pit-on-github.html
+[is-slavery]: /posts/y03/04f-freedom-is-slavery.html
+[software-engineering-ii]: /posts/y02/049-the-myth-of-software-engineering-ii.html
+[unambiguous-usefulness]: /posts/y03/052-on-the-unambiguous-usefulness-of-tools.html
+[iadul-abstractizarii]: http://lucian.mogosanu.ro/bricks/despre-inteles-iadul-abstractizarii/
+[worth-to-humanity]: /posts/y01/032-your-worth-to-humanity.html
+[the-miracles-that-matter]: http://trilema.com/2014/the-miracles-that-matter/
+[cliki]: http://archive.is/fDkg9
+[http-rfc]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616
+[https]: /posts/y03/05b-https-war-declaration.html
+[araneida]: https://www.common-lisp.net/project/araneida/araneida-release/
+[dwim-hu]: http://dwim.hu
+[house]: https://github.com/Inaimathi/house
+[jarw]: http://www.jarw.org.uk/lisp/inet.html
+[s-http-server]: https://github.com/svenvc/s-http-server
+[sw-http]: https://github.com/cpc26/SW-HTTP
+[teepeedee2]: https://github.com/vii/teepeedee2
+[cl-http-server]: https://github.com/tomoyuki28jp/cl-http-server
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff