The Children of Gaza and the year 2025
2025 is already five days old, and as I read my last year greetings, I realize I could copy/paste them here and keep repeating the same tirade, year, after year, after year, after year, after year. It is more clear today, on 5 January (2025), than it was last year, that we are freefalling into the end of occidental civilization, not feeling the gravity of the situation just because one doesn't realize when the event horizon is crossed. Other people realize that for you, long after it happened. This is called History. And because one is wrong when one is right too early, I believe it is time for me to stop worrying and love the bomb.
I worry a lot about nuclear war, maybe because I grew up at times when people were still suffering the trauma of this new toy for humanity of unprecedented destruction, a new scale altogether since gun powder. We're now 1046 days into the Third World War as per my counting on this blog. Yet, however close we got, nothing apocalyptic happened. Prigozhin's coup failed and he died (much after my post, though), NATO kept its involvement at the logistic level only, all the red lines have been crossed without causing Armageddon and Russia found the way out: Орешник.
The oreshnik missile is not nuclear but has a deterrence almost equivalent in terms of inescapability and destruction. This allows to keep the world's fate simmering with only fluctuations into the boiling point and back to survival of the Human species. I was seeing no alternative to NATO stepping into Russia than a nuclear strike. Thankfully, Putin found one. He's not losing the war, yet he doesn't have to destroy the World to do so.
I feel that, maybe, I can stop worry so much about the nuclear doomsday clock and worry instead about mere conventional wiping out of the human race. This should happen cities at a time, though, like in the good old days of Dresden and Nagasaki, so I will even be able to blog about it! Europe might get its share of sacrificed eternity, even maybe surrendering Paris or London into memories and documented records, but at least the human race will go on.
Then I worry about the human race surviving the nuclear fire only to perish to that being lit by Artificial Intelligence. Learned machines will either wipe us out in a doomsday scenario, which is less likely (at least in the short term) or "terraforming" the homo sapiens sapiens into a new hybrid, transhumanist, neuralinked collective entity hooked to the quantum internet, that machines will have been able to put on foot, unlike the sapiens who lost the art of making miracles somewhere in the 19th century. Maybe some fundamental principle will oreshnik us out of this nightmare and make it impossible for something not Human to do what have been doing since we keep track of ourselves: approach, perceive and, eventually, project God into our creations. If machines are as good, meaning—quickly—better than us at doing this, either there is no God or we are just a link in his own design to play with the Universe. In both cases, that makes us the Species equivalent of what we, as humans, already wiped out ourselves: the enslaved, the violated and ultimately the genocided societies.
Speaking of genocides, one is going on right now, that of the children of Gaza. This happens as I write, although social media seem to have lost interest in their constant reminder that atrocities are unravelling, not quite where we are, but when we are. That is another vice of technology to bring us this modern inconvenience of witnessing crimes as if we were on the scene at the time of their occurence, thus almost committing them. Aren't we all, indeed, in a gross violation of the Duty to rescue? It is interesting how people deal with this situation. It tells you as much as hundred thousands novels making up stories to highlight a particular trait of the human character could. Most people just ignore it. Many of those, when confronted to the question, express a vague lament and hopeless desolation, as if regretting an unfortunate incident, a tragic fluke. And then turn to another topic. Other people would, on the contrary, side with the crime to avoid facing its existence. A few people denounce it publicly but they then do little more than that—speak—when they should, if really sincere, fight. It is said that pen is the mightiest sword, but only when its ink is drawn from one's blood. Otherwise it is not even literature. Mishima understood that:
Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.
One can write. But at some point, one must act. There is no sincere rebellion except that which ends up with one's guts into the open. One must try harder. And if one fails, there's always Seppuku. We have no excuse for not succeeding with our dignity, even if we fail with everything else. Failing from this ideal can bring you to purity—that of Victor Hugo, that of Kurt Vonnegut—but not to perfection—that of Georges Orwell. Or that of Mishima. They meant what they wrote.
Vonnegut probably had more talent than integrity, more will than might, more intuition than knowledge. Despite Mother Night, Vonnegut remained captive of the official narrative. Even for the jailbird that he was, this is the sort of clutch that prevents you from achieving perfection. The type of perfection which Rabo Karabekian could hide in his barn. In Vonnegut's case, I suspect his collected work could be his "Now it's the women's turn" counterpart:
There was no telling from that vantage point what the painting really was — what the painting was all about.
There is no way of telling from one book's vantage point what Vonnegut's story really is, what his story is all about. One clue to the continuity of themes, of the deeper meaning, is the recurrence of the places and characters: Ilium, Kilgore Trout, Eliot Rosewater, Tralfamadore... There might be something that goes beyond, much beyond the "superficial humanism", which in itself is already worth three Nobel prizes. I am currently reading Deadeye Dick, whose character's father was Hitler's personal friend in his critical artistic years. I often feel the Author is trying to communicate something which he could not write with his own blood, but in ink only:
‘who’s their leader, Paul?’” “I am,” said Paul. “And I wish to God I were a better one.”
In an interesting counterpoise to Mishima's perfect purity, one title of Vonnegut's work—and through Kilgore Trout, he was a master of titles—is «Nothing Is Lost Save Honor».
I confronted myself to the atrocities in Gaza and see how quickly I fled to discourse instead on Vonnegut's skin in the game. What would he have written about Gaza? One can get a small idea from Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, which reproduces his text on Biafra, which he titles "A People betrayed". But I do not want to discourse more now, especially not on Gaza, although that is the only topic worth talking about. I want to come back to the early hours of this January 5, where I was writing my reflections on the previous and new years.
I started with the observation that commenting on the impending doom which never actually comes—only adiabatically so—was becoming to be too repetitive, even to entertain myself. Although I did not write it yet, I had in mind the prospects of discussing the things that could happen, that should happen, but that depend on me instead of depending on Trump or Elon Musk. Although I will do so at the risk of another digression, I can't but touch upon this topical duo, which imposes itself into my highly-selective list of topics.
Whatever one thinks of the character, Trump is no short of legendary, for his incredible comeback, his surviving various assassination plots and, not the least, his departure from the American deep state's agenda. He promised to end the war in Ukraine and I hope that he will do that, a hope which is very strong as I really think that he will. He also made comments on ceasing the conflict in the middle East, which, in one form or another, I read as ending the afflictions of the Palestinian people. Despite his strong siding with Israel in most if not all things, if he could put an end to the ongoing slaughters, this would transform my interest for him into admiration. In this case, everything is already lost, especially honor. Still, if children, people, possibly full families, if those could be saved from the ongoing extinction, even though it already took place, it would bring a capital letter to the adjective I used above for the still president-elect.
In June last year, I was predicting that Trump could not be allowed to be re-elected. We are not yet passed his (second) inauguration, and anything can happen anytime. Especially if he keeps being the outsider, the iconoclast, the "maverick" that he's been all this time. He, so far, has been the only one able to bring back a Kennedy to the White House, and it's not for a lack of Kennedies having tried to do so. His teaming up with Elon Musk is also an open door to great expectations. From their side, although probably tainted with hubris, that goes so far as conquering Mars. Why not? Aren't well all in favour of people conquering space rather than their Earthly neighbours?
I must tamper what could be archived as unbound enthusiasm for Trump and Musk as soon as I'll click the "Publish" button, with several reservations on those two sure protagonists of 2025. My main concerns are in fact regarding Elon Musk. I dislike very much his—not quite monopoly (although I'd prefer putting satellites into space be more the business of states than private companies)—but double standard. I dislike that he labels himself an absolutist of free speech but still bans some people. I dislike that he turned twitter (i.e., a leftist and woke platform) into $\mathbb{X}$ (i.e., an ultraliberal, capitalistic and conservative platform). I dislike his stand on the Middle East. I dislike that he is not what he claims to be but merely what he aspires to be, and that the difference between the two is gigantic. I dislike all this because he is very powerful (both financially; with $\mathbb{X}$, mediatically; and now, with Trump, even politically). And great power entails great responsibilities. I do not think that Musk has the level of integrity and wisdom that the enormously-great power he so quickly acquired, demand, to avoid complete mayhem. He still looks and behave like a nerdish, clever and successful but boyish and egotic sorcerer's apprentice who, however, can't even look cool or even slightly charismatic, however hard you try to like him. If anything, I sense great failures for Musk, and I worry that his accumulated influence will make those splash on everybody, one way or another.
The Trump/Musk question would deserve another dedicated analysis, and if things carry on the way they do, we will have many and ample occasions to return to the topic. Closing my digression here, I wish to conclude on what motivated me to talk to myself through whichever reader might want to read that: this feeling, this opportunity of being one's actor of what changes in the World. As readers from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest know, one's World is really whatever is at reach around us. Making a change there is possible.
For 2025, I would like to return to this website, where I will publish, in a few minutes, my greetings to the 360 days that remain until I make another review of what's been going on and what is likely to come next. Leaving for the UK, we left a bit abandoned the maintenance of several of our most dearly obeyed traditions: our calendars (we had been missing the 2022, 2023, 2024 in addition to the 2025 which we did produce in time for Reyes, as we used to do). Our News. Our records of trips and pictures, especially since the loss of our Nikon D5300 in the Shambles of York. Our development of this place, which still runs on MediaWiki 1.21.5 (the current version is 1.43) and thus got obsolete in many aspects, including maps, displayed equations (mathjax), etc.
I am looking forward to fixing all this but also to implement features which would make our web more interesting for both ourselves and people visiting it (we reached 10 million views on 8 October (2024) and, at the second of writing, have added over half a million views564,781 more views in the 89 days since we reached $10^6$.
With over 6345 views per day on average, this is not all coming from us! Some people are browsing the content we webbed for us on the Internet, and I would like to give them a chance to interact with it. This might not be trivial for various reasons ranging from spam to security, but I could try. I should try. I will try.
I would also like to provide more material (meaning, more thought) on all the basic content which we host, such as people, events, years, and more advanced features.
Here, for instance, is how our years look like on this day:
Those in black are those which are still not existing. We have something for 1912 (although only a picture of the date from a house on the Plaza del Torico in Teruel) and then nothing until 1977, which is when I was born. Even for the dates when this web was very active, we are missing entirely 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2016! I hope that copying this line in my next year's greetings, they will all be clickable and blossoming with great content. This currently reads like this:
The same could be said for other themes than dates. We have a system of templates that help to gather themes together, see, for instance,
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which at the time of writing, looks like this:
or
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or
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or even
There are many such themes (including all the municipalities of Spain), in themselves not very easy to locate, unless you know where to look. One milestone for this web is the publication of the thematic pages
in a tribute to Douglas Adams's Life, the Universe and Everything, providing a sort of index to our online content. I had started to compile that on my shadow wiki for years, but the latest version got lost in a computer crash some years ago and requires, like so many other things, to be retrieved, rescued and revived. I put it as another of 2025's objective to achieve this, and make the above clickable too.
We also want to keep developing Sotito and turning it into our Mosquito Island, which should also transpire through this web. One sight which is dearly daily to me is the growth of our Lemon tree's first lemons. They are still tiny: %% but I hope to show you how they'll grow with us as we go through time together.
I do not put as objectives here those which are scientific and academic, as those have never been put in pause. I have, in fact, spent enough time on what is left of the year and should go back to actually transforming them, including my scientific deadlines which are all already flashing red. Let me, therefore, conclude this today's rambling with the following picture:
This is a picture of twenty (20) photons sampled from a wavefunction which gives me such events on azag at the rate of around 1 per hour. The very first such image was sent to some coworkers on 3 January (2025). Here is the second one:
There is too much to say about what you see here. If you can, just appreciate the great beauty of this scatter! I hope to bring details on the arXiv and then to a scientific journal very soon. So God, help me!
⇠ See also the 2024 greetings.