Putting Cards on the Table (2019-2020)

This essay aims to present a summary of a snapshot as of 2019 of my personal philosophy and ideology, titled Rindolfism, which is dynamic and subject to change.

I am really tired of having truly intellectual people like me "speak in riddles" and be somewhat dishonest, so I'd like to put as many of the cards I have now on the table. There will likely be more into the future, and moreover, honesty is a process and a person should strive to become more honest as time goes by.

While it had earlier occurences, I derive this piece of wisdom from Saladin, a muslim king and conqueror of Kurdish descent who is legendary for being one of the most effective warriors and most noble and merciful people in history.

During Saladin's time Palestine which is also known as "The Land of Israel" or "The Holy Land" was ruled and terrorised by Knights Templar, Christian conquerors originating from Europe, who were psychotic, psychopathologic, vicious, sadistic, and vandalistic, who would have put the Nazis much less today's Al-Qaeda or ISIL to shame, and harmed the civilians in Palestine and were feared by them.

Saladin acquired a large army of loyal warriors, who all joined him by choice, had superior swords to those of the Knights Templar, and lighter armor, and he set out to release Palestine from the Knights fortress by fortress. But the most amazing thing is that he told the knights something like that:

While some knights were probably killed, many of them survived and became happy, sane, and while obstensibly Christian unwilling to fight Saladin. Even if their religious leaders told them to return, Saladin accepted that oath breaking and said he'll fight them again, which caused his Knights Templar opponents to fight extremely poorly, and be quickly disarmed, after which they learned their lesson, and would not fight Saladin again.

By letting people do what they want, they will likely do the best thing they can do. This is management by not managing and parenting by not parenting, which is and always was the best way.

The Israeli military was small and as there was a lot of work to do to properly secure the Israeli civilians it coined the terms Rosh gadol ("big minded") and Rosh qatan ("small minded") to encourage the soldiers to take initiative and try to perform their jobs as well as possible, regardless of the fact they were paid little.

This extends to non-military work, government work, and voluntary work or hobbies and endeavours: if you care about something, do it as well as possible and give it enough time as needed. It will get easier and faster in time.

For instance, a vendor on a candy store or an icecream parlour, should try to greet the customers, be friendly to them, offer recommendations to them if they ask, accept credit cards with their personal web sites or social media presence and visit them, and generally treat every customer like royalty.

If you do this, you'll likely get more returning customers, bigger tips, bigger bonuses and raises, and you may be able to land a better job based on a warm recommendation from your superiors and coworkers.

The opposite is just following orders blindly, "i just work here" attitude, which is no different from the Nazis' Superior orders - "I was only following orders" which leads to laziness, stagnation, vandalism and sadism, just like the German Nazis in World War II, or the Knights Templar in Saladin's time.

"Amateur" used to mean someone who worked for the love of it. Such people often produce better results than those who do it only for money or even a lot of money

If you care enough about a task, invest the time to do it well. It should get quicker and easier and the results better and more "professional" at the time.

As you may have read the David who fought Goliath was a hacker and it was modernised in the famous scene from Indiana Jones where Indy shoots a master swordsman using a gun instead of struggling with him. Hacking or heroism involves breaking or bending as many invisible rules as possible and not accepting your "fate" (which is usually death) and this applies both to fiction and to real life.

The opposite of hacking is conformism where you accept all the normative rules of society, fear your own shadow, and stagnate and die, possibly by taking many innocent people's lives with you.

As a result, eccentricity and "craziness" are the road to a happy life, not conformism as widely believed.

A great hacker is an action hero that is aware enough of the essence of hacking to become a greater and greater hacker, despite whatever limitations he or she may have, and despite whatever setbacks they may run into.

Despite common belief what happens when you put a great hacker (whether male or female) in a secluded place with many minor hackers or conformists, is not one crushed great hacker, but rather many great hackers, who spend time effort and conscious thought on satisfying their customers, peers and superiors. That is the "fox in a chickens' coop" motiff as exemplified in the story of Joseph in prison in the Bible, that of Milady de Winter in "The Three Musketeers", who despite appearances to the contrary was the epitome of hacking and good and is my epitome of sexiness in fiction. Finally, in my "Summerschool at the NSA" screenplay a fictionalised Summer Glau (the actress who is notable for being featured in xkcd: Venting ) is the fox (pardon the pun) who devours the hens of the fictionalised NSA.

Currently, I, Shlomi Fish, am doing the same in real life in a top security Israeli psychiatric ward where I was hospitalised for being non normative, and doing some foolish stuff. It works surprisingly well, and I'm using the collected wisdom of Moses→Saladin→Ayn Rand→the Beatles→Sesame Street→web 2.0 blogs and sites→Taylor Swift and my own intuition and trial and error.

Traditionally in history some great hackers have become so powerful that they took over the direction of the world and became a singular source of greatness. This is even though some of them were clearly or presumably fictional. Some examples:

Following the Summer Glau "termination", it was believed that there now can be one of several hacker monarchs, and that people can try to become ones while not dethroning (or sic transit gloria mundi the previous hacker monarchs.

Similar to the Mama Cass Elliot song "make your own kind of music" its Lady Gaga modernisation "Born This Way" , I have given an interpretation of Captain Nemo (= "nobody" in Latin) in Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea who people keep finding interesting for what he believes are superficial reasons. But these reasons are part of what makes us who we are.

The YouTuber band Cimorelli has used the fact that they are six sisters (along with some male brothers) in a large Roman Catholic family, a fact which has received a lot of hatred from environmentalists, psychologists and the media, to their advantage, and as a gimmick. As a result, they published many videos of them covering hit songs, some original songs, and have been live performing and collaborating with other singers and entertainers.

Naturally, they are not the only youtube success story. But if you get an opportunity, seize it. Were you invited to give a talk? go for it. Even if you were invited from the "wrong" reason, you will pave the road for future lectureers. A sociology student invited you to talk to them about your work as an open source / open content creator? go for it. You thought of a new Chuck Norris/etc. factoid? Write it down and share it on social media and chat. Someone asked you out and you like them and are single? Go for it. You have an idea for a nice video, story, screenplay, song, etc. Execute it.

This tweet reads

There are likely many Nonprofit organizations with millions of dollars in the bank and not enough volunteers' time to do anything with it.

If we take Sarah Michelle Gellar (SMG) she went from donating money, back when she played Buffy into dedicating time for worthwhile causes after that.

I discovered the song "One Tin Soldier" - an anti war song from 1969, by accident through Rob Paravonian' Pachelbel Rant. I found it saddenning and touching.

While I like the song as is, I wish for Cimorelli who are known for their upbeat and energetic music to cover it. But like Hillel the Elder noted: “If I am not for myself, who will be?” so I plan to record it myself using my poor man's tools, while emulating Cimorelli's style: ffmpeg, my web cam, and audacity all running on a desktop Linux system.

The song indicates that any destruction of lives, costly equipment or buildings, or even anti-spam measures, and removal/censorship of web or social media resources is self-defeating and wrong.

Karl Marx famously remarked

However, this is wrong because we should encourage people to be more able and more competent, and be less needy. So assuming we wish people to be more able,how do we measure it?

Now here is something interesting: there is a strong correlation between how able you are and how sexually desirable you are to members-of-the-appropriate-sexes (MOTAS) (who may still be attracted to you whether or not you or they are in a relationship.).

Furthermore, fitness in biology in humans corresponds more to sexual attractiveness rather than to physical fitness. In the United Kingdom, the adjective "fit" started meaning "sexy", "hot", "attractive" or "desirable" including such MOTAS who are not too athletic.

We were discussing Apple's Swift language the other day on #gnu when I told someone there he should charge 300 USD/hour for swift projects because he disliked them so much. I also said the high fee may yield a higher demand. Then I had a browser window open with the top Twitter accounts and Taylor Swift was there and I noted she likely charges more than 300 USD/hour for her live shows. He told me that he wished she will sue Apple for trademark violations of the supposed "swift" trademark and win. I joked that if "Apple sued Taylor Swift for violation of their Apple Swift language's trademark they will spend all their money in the bank on litigation and still lose." Ha ha only serious.

I then realised that Ms. Swift has become a Hacker Queen by that time. While I think her face is good eye candy, she is not that beautiful in my opinion (but she looks much better with black hair than with her trademark blonde hair. Nevertheless, there are many things we can learn from her.

First of all is that she exmplifies the amateur model, because she does stuff for fun, rather than for money.

Her videos despite often being popular probably do not offset their production value in ads, but they are good publicity, provide fodder for remixes, parodies and covers, and are fun enough to produce so she can afford to offset the cost. She doesn't work for money or even for a shitload of money. She works for fun.

Taylor is an unapologetic "attention whore" who often spends large amounts of money or even also time in activities that will make her look like a better person or more well known.

Otherwise, Taylor Swift is a great philantropist who likely also donates to friendly individuals and realises that

My last analysis of Chuck Norris and the Chuck Norris factoids turned out to not be the last word on the subject. It is well known than Norris took the facts to his advantage, and as a result became the most prominent actor in Hollywood (which I call "the Alpha Male"). However, shortly after that the factoids seem to have fallen out of favour and shortly after that, Norris announced that he retired from acting.

Now, I still added factoids about other things to my collection. Then one day in 2019, I was chatting on #gnu on freenode and after giving someone some advice came by with a new factoid which I uttered there: "If Chuck Norris gives you some advice, and you do not follow it, he'll survive. However, you likely won't.", and to my surprise my fellow to the conversation, told me it was funny. Some days later I spent some time with my sister's husband, who is an artist and a filmmaker, and showed him some of the software applications and web services as well my own software or text works, which I was familiar with as a Linux (or rather "GNU/Linux") user. Just when he and my sister were going away, I told him I had some factoids on my site, and he told me he was a big fan of those.

So what happenned?

What I think happened is that Norris started playing (and fighting) in roles he liked, even if he didn't get paid or got paid relatively little, or was paid after the fact. He became a happy amateurs rather than an increasingly unhappy professional. I won't be surprised if he has agreed to appear at local schools' plays, and/or playing roles that were completely unlike his traditional Hollywood roles just because he liked them.

As a result of that, I believe Chuck Norris, both himself and the fictionalised Chuck Norris Facts image, has become a new Hacker Monarch. Well Done!