Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable

I recently stumbled upon a beautiful quote from Cesar A. Cruz that I just wanted to ponder.

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”

Cruz’s quote is both provocative and elusive, a tidy aphorism masking a deeper tension. It implies a dual responsibility for art: to console those in pain while challenging those at ease. But who decides which group we belong to? What comforts one person might deeply unsettle another, and vice versa.

The beauty of Cruz’s idea is that it resists easy answers. Comfort isn’t inherently weak; it can heal. Discomfort isn’t automatically righteous; it can harm. Art lives in this paradox, in the liminal space where consolation and confrontation coexist. Cruz’s words don’t prescribe solutions, they challenge us to sit with the ambiguity, to feel both the sting and the salve of what art can do. That’s its power: to disturb us into wakefulness, but also to cradle us when we need it most.

What I Read Between May and October 2024

Haven’t updated my “What I Read Between” -series in a while mainly due just being busy in my own life but also due to the fact that I’ve reading and rereading veeery big novels. But finally having been managed to finish those, let’s gather some thoughts.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment (reread)

I’ve always been a huge fan of Russian literature, or at least a big fan of few Russian authors. Mainly due to this reason I wanted to embark on this “rabbit hole” during the summer months. Naturally, starting with Dostoyevsky.

I’ve read Crime and Punishment a couple of times during my lifetime. First, as a mandatory homework from school and later few times just out of pure enjoyment and I can say that it’s possibly one of my favorite books. To summarize, book is about Raskolnikov’s internal and external battles and the repercussions of the crimes he has done.

I love how the “crime” aspect of this book happens only in the 100 or so pages, and the rest (600 or so) are devoted to the “punishment”, which in this case means battles with psychological consequences of the crimes, insanity and isolation, ending in the moment of divine grace and beginning of Raskolnikov’s redemption.

Great book, cannot recommend it enough.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground (reread)

Along side Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground is also a book that I’ve read multiple times from Dostoyevsky. Probably I stumbled upon this book when I was a “edgy” teenager, so I thought I could see some similarities between me and the protagonist.

Book focuses mainly on diving deep into the mind of man living in solitude. So a majority of the book is about questioning various everyday concepts, such as logic, reason, free will, and showing how suffering can add depth to our everyday life.

Again, very good book that encourages reader to not just read but also to think and reflect.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

The Brother Karamazov was one of the classics of Dostoyevsky that again for one reason or another I hadn’t read so I finally was able to finish it and what a book it was! Book itself focused where heavily on rich and absorbing ideas such as spirituality and logic and their contrast. So much so, that the plot of the book itself (while being great on its own) feels secondary to the exploration of these themes.

While the high level topics might be the main thing behind the book, I especially loved the way how Dostoyevsky embedded these themes in to the main characters of the book, the Karamazov family.

Book was pretty big with lots of different events and stories (even stories within a story) so couple of paragraphs doesn’t do it justice. Just this book alone deserves a separate post. I would even argue that just reading the book once doesn’t do it justice. That being said, I enjoyed the book tremendously, and I will be reading it again in the future.

David Foster Wallace: The Infinite Jest

The Infinite Jest has always been an interesting book for me. For many reasons. First, I’ve always thought David Foster Wallace to be an interesting character on its own right. But at the same time, for the the literary prowess that he had. I had read couple of works from him previously but Infinite Jest always felt like a somewhat of a herculean task to finish. Firstly due to its length, but also for how it was written.

I remember reading some interview from DFW, where he mentioned how he “wanted to write a best-seller, that was meant for literature students/professors”, which can definitely be seen in the book. The writing style in the book is very hard and difficult. Especially to someone from whom English is not their native language.

But overall I think the book was great. Especially the time in the current world made the book feel sort of “prophetic” in many ways. Despite the book itself is set in this dystopian world. But looking it with perspective of today’s world, it’s not that dystopian.

Similarly to The Brother Karamzov, couple of paragraphs doesn’t do the book justice, since it features hundreds of different characters, many of whom are just coping with modern technological world filled with loneliness and disconnection.

Again, a great book once you get into it, which definitely deserves an another read.

Appreciation of Low Bandwidth Websites

As you might’ve seen in my last post, I’ve been without an internet for good some time already. Still (like I mentioned in the last post) I’ve really enjoyed my time without it. I feel that I can switch off much better after working hours, and I still have energy to partake in various other extracurricular activities that I hold dear to my heart, like hobby programming projects, music, reading, sports and much more. So really there isn’t much to complain.

Currently, my new neighbourhood does have a pretty good signal – generally speaking. My apartment just happens to be in relatively awkward spot, which means that it’s surrounded by other buildings. I happen to have a relatively big balcony in my apartment as well and even in there I have basically one bar of connectivity going on. Naturally, inside I don’t have any signal or very little. Fortunately, I’ve been able to have just enough of connectivity so in case some emergency or something along those lines, I’m able to do something with my phone. But, when it comes to “surfing the web”, that’s not much that I can currently do.

That being said, I can do just some browsing in handful of site that don’t clog the whole bandwidth for silly updates and requests and mainly just focus on sharing good content. So I wanted to write a small appreciation post for people making websites that work with practically no internet at all.

TODO: Maybe gather some great examples of lite websites to somewhere?

Of course, when writing about this sort of topic, it also brings little bit of sadness to me to see how many websites is basically unusable without a relatively good internet. Fortunately, I live in a place where even at its worst, I can access relatively “fast” internet and of course most of the places (outside my apartment) is very well connected. I don’t need to go far from my house to get basically full 5G connectivity with varying speeds (whatever your contract at the moment happens to be). In places like Finland, 1 Gbit fiber connectivity is getting more and more normal even in somewhat rural areas. Germany is not on that level yet (and by many standards, very far from it) but it’s still good nonetheless. Something like this cannot be said about the vast majority of the countries around the world.

I kind of know the reason why something like this has happened that the significant portion of popular websites are basically unaccessible by many people. I think it’s largely due to this aggressive over-engineering software engineers tend to do in their line of work. Also, I’m not innocent in that front as well, since I’ve done my fair share of over-engineering during the years working in the industry. Sometimes since I wanted, sometimes it was needed and sometimes since I was told to.

But it begs an interesting question, why something like this so normal in our industry? Sure, there are cases where added complexity to your infrastructure, codebase, etc. has actually brought some benefits. But the amount of times that has happened is greatly outweighed by the amount of times when it, well, just has brought added complexity without any benefits. But hey! At least, the engineers feel accomplished when they are able to deliver that is “complex”.

From the UX point of view, this is also quite interesting topic, since I believe that no one in this world wants to have their app/product/software/whatever to be slow for the users. But often, this added complexity automatically hinders the performance of whatever you happen to we writing. You start doing more stuff than you would need to, this can be inform of unnecessary web requests, unnecessary computations and so on. I guess there isn’t any argument about the fact that something like this hinders the whole UX. Which begs the question? Why more people don’t care about the performance more in their products? You might have an application that might have a traditionally speaking “bad UX”, meaning maybe lots of menus, you need to press a lot of stuff to access whatever you might be after, etc. But, if everything happens instantly, I’d dare to argue it’s still pretty good UX, at least for many people. If then on the other end of the spectrum, you would have a great UX, but everything is slow and has to load lots of stuff, how good of an UX it really is at that point?

But yeah, I digress, seems that lack of internet just makes me want to write about stuff. Any case, TLDR, write light websites.

German Unefficiency and Living Without Internet

As some of you might know, I’ve been living in Berlin, Germany for a few years now. Wonderful city! Just what I was looking for couple years back when I moved here. City definitely has its flaws (like does every city in the world) but I still enjoy being here. City is definitely massive. Each district having their own life, own people and own quirks. Spectrum is wide from somewhat poshy areas of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg to more hip and trendy areas like Neukolln and Kreuzberg to more suburban areas around the Ringbahn. Of course, since I’m mainly into various hip and trendy activities most of my time has been spent lingering around and roaming the streets of eastern Berlin, mainly Neukolln and Kreuzberg since those were the districts I used to reside. Due to its sheer size, there’s no way, I’ve been able to experience all the city has to offer. Despite this, I feel that the city has offered me tremendously.

While I’ve really enjoyed living in Berlin, one thing I can’t praise at all is how things work in this country. So this is not necessarily Berlin’s fault, although, I feel its also partly due to that. But more or less everything seems to be difficult here. At least in a bureaucratic sense. Difficult in a sense that nothing really works efficiently or effortlessly, or that’s how I at least feel coming from Finland to this country. I’m not saying Finland is perfect in how country should operate, far from it. I’m just saying that if you want to move from place to place, making this sort of address change to your government shouldn’t be too difficult. In Finland for example, if you want to move, there’s one URL that you go to, fill in your new details, and send the information. Pretty easy. In Germany, if you want to Anmeldung, you need to print your papers necessary, fill the forms, book time in your nearest Burgeramt, go there physically, just so someone can put some stamp in your papers. Sounds pretty unefficient, right? That’s because it is.

I also just recently read from the news how Germany was excited to have digitalised their medical patient information so that more stuff would happen digitally instead of manually. Making it easier to share medical history from doctor to doctor. Sounds amazing! Of course, something like this has been implemented in many different countries for 20 or so years, but hey, Germany is in no rush!

This sort of a ranty-detour gets us to the whole topic of today’s post about living without internet. So I just wanted to write some words down on how I feel after some undisclosed amount of weeks that I have been without internet at home.

This all started mainly due to the fact that I just happened to move into a new place and naturally I wanted to move my internet contract into the new address. Of course, naive and blue-eyed me thought that it would be pretty straight-forward. I just change the address, configure the router possibly in the address in case something needs to be done and that’s about it, right? Well of course not. Turns out, for some reason, there needs to be a internet technician come to your place and turn on the connection for you. Okay, sure. Interesting that it couldn’t be done remotely, but hey let’s go with it. But of course to make it not so easy, the technician isn’t able to find my home, which is interesting again since they know the address. Also, of course they could’ve just called me but that’s too much to ask I guess. So there’s an another try, but with the same result. Oh, and did I mention that there was two weeks between these attempts so it not like that they tried it again in a short period of time.

Okay, I start ranting again. Back to the topic. I wanted to jot down some thoughts that I’ve encountered while living without an internet. Turns out, I have really enjoyed my time! I’ve written in my blog about my “struggles” with for example social media and how it used to grab my attention almost wholly. But generally speaking, it feels that everything I tend to online, tends to be more on the excessive end of the spectrum. Call it excessive use of YouTube or other various places filled with endless amounts of content. I just feel that I tend to sink vast amount of hours in these sort of places, without getting much in return. While I’m not saying they are all bad, they certainly have good bits and pieces here and there, but the vast majority just feels brain-rot.

With these undisclosed amount of weeks that I’ve now been without internet, naturally, I’ve been away from all them. Even the cellural signal is quite weak in my new apartment so I haven’t been able to use them via it even that much. Fortunately, I’ve been able to keep in touch with family and friends with the little signal I’ve had at home and in case I’ve really had to use internet for something, I’ve had just to leave my home to find Wi-Fi, which also has been quite good for me, since I’ve a habit of going “monk- or hermit-mode” quite often.

I also recently changed jobs so fortunately I haven’t been in on any on-call rotation so I haven’t really had the need to work from home. Also, the new apartment has been quite close to the new office, so it hasn’t been too big of a hassle to go there daily. Even that hasn’t been too bad. Why it’s to my surprise is the fact that before this I really never went to the office. This employer or the previous ones. I wouldn’t say the office that we have currently is something extra-ordinary that I would really want to spent time in there, it’s still nice, don’t get me wrong. I’ve never really just seen myself as this social butterfly who can effortlessly manage themselves mingling around in an office environment. So, I’ve always just enjoyed working from home more.

The lack of internet at home has really shown itself in my life in the form of vastly increased productivity on the stuff that I value. I’m not saying that some sort of ultimate productivity is something that everyone should strive towards, which seems to often be the case in various toxic “hustling culture” ideas, but I’m more so approaching the topic from the point of view of how much time you really can use in the stuff that brings something positive and beneficial to your life. In my case, it has shown itself in the form of increased productivity for example in exercise, making music, writing, reading and also programming passion projects. I.e. more or less most of the stuff outside personal relationships and health that I find to be important in my life.

So now I’m just spitballing with the idea of really not just getting any internet to my home. Of course, if the current job situation would allow something like that. Considering all the good effects I’ve seen in my life AND considering the fact that it would be just one less thing to worry my head in German bureaucracy, I don’t really see negative side in this.

Dump Your Currently Set Faces in Emacs

Every once in a while I like to play around with Emacs themes. Of course, mainly due to yak-shaving and procrastination reasons and nothing actually valid. But it’s fun nonetheless, although occasionally very tedious. Tedious in a sense that Emacs tend to come with a lot of different faces, especially if you happen to use more than a few third-party packages.

Defining a custom theme in Emacs

Emacs comes with couple relatively straight forward way to set custom themes in the function custom-theme-set where you define the name of the theme and then the faces you want to modify:

(deftheme fancy-theme)

(custom-set-faces
 'fancy-theme
 '(default ((t (:foreground "black" :background "white"))))

 ;; [... and so on]
 )

You’re also able to control on what sort of displays your custom theme should support. For example, if you want to use theme in only terminals that support minimum number of 16 different colors, you’re able to define that like:

'(default ((((class color) (min-colors 16)) (:foreground "black" :background "white"))))

Of course that can be slightly verbose, so often you might see custom themes to be set like:

(deftheme fancy-theme)

(let ((class '((class color) (min-colors 16))))
  (custom-set-faces
   'fancy-theme
   `(default ((,class (:foreground "black" :background "white"))))

   ;; [... and so on]
   ))

But it still tedious since there is a lot of faces and there can be lot of variance between the faces so often if you want to write your own full fledged theme, it’s better to explicitly set all the faces that you plan to use. Mainly since, if the face is not set in the theme it’ll use that lastly set face for that face in question, so if you session has used multiple different faces, it can lead into some funky color combinations.

Currently in my Emacs session, which is relatively light package-wise, amount of currently set faces equals to 869.

Simple tool written for aspiring theme developers

This is why, I decided to write a simple Emacs Lisp helper function to dump all the currently set faces to a buffer where you can copy them to your own theme at will. I also made it so you can simply just dump the faces from a give package if you only care, e.g. about Magit’s faces.

(require 'cl-lib)

(defconst theme-dump--buffer-name "*theme-dump*")
(defconst theme-dump--default-format-string "%s %s ")
(defconst theme-dump--string-format-string "%s \"%s\" ")

(defun theme-dump-current-faces (pkg)
  (interactive (list (read-string "Dump faces from package (leave empty for all packages): ")))
  (let ((faces '()))
    (dolist (f (theme-dump--filter-faces-by-package pkg))
      (let ((attr-str (mapconcat (lambda (a) (theme-dump--format-attr-str f a))
                                 (face-all-attributes f)
                                 "")))
        (push (if (not (string-equal attr-str ""))
                  (format "`(%s ((,class (%s))))\n" f (string-trim-right attr-str))
                (format "`(%s (( )))\n" f))
              faces)))
    (let ((buf (get-buffer-create theme-dump--buffer-name)))
      (with-current-buffer buf
        (erase-buffer)
        (insert (mapconcat 'identity faces))
        (local-set-key (kbd "q") 'kill-buffer-and-window))
      (split-window-right)
      (other-window 1)
      (switch-to-buffer buf))))

(defun theme-dump--filter-faces-by-package (pkg)
  (cl-flet ((pkg-face-p (face)
              (cl-search pkg (symbol-name face))))
    (if (not (string-equal pkg ""))
        (cl-remove-if-not #'pkg-face-p (face-list))
      (face-list))))

(defun theme-dump--format-attr-str (face attr)
  (unless (equal (face-attribute face (car attr))
                 'unspecified)
    (cl-typecase (face-attribute face (car attr))
      (string (format theme-dump--string-format-string
                      (symbol-name (car attr))
                      (face-attribute face (car attr))))
      (t (format theme-dump--default-format-string
                 (symbol-name (car attr))
                 (face-attribute face (car attr)))))))

Essentially, this just gets all the faces with face-list and either returns all of the or filters them by package name if you want. Function prints the faces into a new buffer in a format that is already suitable for new custom themes:

`(magit-section-highlight ((,class (:extend t :background "grey95"))))
`(magit-section-heading ((,class (:weight bold :extend t))))
`(magit-section-secondary-heading ((,class (:weight bold :extend t))))
`(magit-section-heading-selection ((,class (:extend t :foreground "salmon4"))))
`(magit-section-child-count (( )))

;; and so on...

The printed faces can then easily be copied to custom-set-faces for your possible new theme. Faces are also backticked by default, in case you want to change faces to use variables instead of hardcoded names.

Code is in public domain and also available in sourcehut.