Joan Bagaria is a contemporary Spanish artist known for his work in various forms of visual art, including painting and digital media. He often explores themes related to modern society, technology, and humanexperience. His style may blend abstraction with figurative elements, creating a unique narrative in his artwork.
Advait Mat, also known as "Advait Mat," refers to a spiritual and philosophical tradition rooted in Advaita Vedanta, which is a non-dualistic school of Hindu philosophy. Advaita Vedanta emphasizes the idea that the individual self (Atman) and the ultimate reality (Brahman) are one and the same, teaching that the perception of duality is illusory. The term "Mat" can denote a philosophical school or a system of thought.
Gunungan is a significant element in Wayang, the traditional Indonesian puppet theater that has deep cultural roots, particularly in Java. The term "Gunungan" translates to "mountain" in English, and it often symbolizes the mystical mountain or the axis mundi, representing the spiritual connection between the earth and the heavens. In Wayang performances, the Gunungan is used asa backdrop or a transition device between scenes.
I was going to do this sooner or later, it was inevitable, but the timing was partly triggered due to noticing that English speakers (and likely many other nationalities) are not able to easily read/hear/pronounce "Ciro".
After something broke on the website due to SQLitevsPostgreSQL inconsistencies and took me aday to figure it out, I finally decided to update the test system so that OURBIGBOOK_POSTGRES=true npm test will run the tests on PostgreSQL.
Perhaps the appeal of Zen is that it stepped away from Mahayana's "God and entities", and went abit back towards the Buddhist psychology-like/self improvement grassroots?
I had meant to make an update earlier, but I wanted to try and add some more "visible end-user changes" to OurBigBook.com.
Just noticed BTW that signup on the website is broken. Facepalm. Not that it matters much since it is not very useful in the current state, but still. Going to fix that soon. EDIT: nevermind, it wasn't broken, I just had JavaScript disabled on that website with an extension to test if pages are visible without JavaScript, and yes, they are perfectly visible, you can't tell the difference! But you can't login without JavaScript either!
I still haven't the user visible ones I wanted, but I've hit major milestones, and it feels like time for an update.
I have now finished all the OurBigBook CLI features that I wanted for 1.0, all of which will be automatically reused in ourbigbook.com.
The two big things since last email were the following:
This feature means that you can split large input files if rendering starts to slow you down, and things will still render exactly the same, with the larger table of contents.
This will be especially important for the website because initially I want users to be able to edit one header at atime, and join all headers with \Include. But I still want the ToC to show those children.
For 400k USDI will quit my job or not get a new job and work on OurBigBook full time for asecondyear to try and kickstart The Higher Education Revolution. Status: ~44k / 300k USD. At 4M USDI retire and work on open STEM forever. More realistically perhaps would something like 800k USD for four years like the MacArthur fellowship wink.
For a followup, it would be an interesting experiment to spend on year full time solving as many courses asI can from aworld class university in the city where I live in the UK, and adding that as content to the platform to see if that would attract interest, and reaching out directly to course takers at their university environment to try and help them. I intended to do that in year one but my got distracted by tech. It is quite possible that no one has ever done that before in history: a highly motivated technical person with the time and opportunity to do one single thing: help top university students learn their STEM courses better and have more fun doing so. I have in particular identified one course where this would be particularly feasible: the mathematics course, given that much of their course materials, and also their building are quite open. I do sometimes wonder if doing this would be just awaste of my life. But part of me tells me it could generate big interest and is worth a try. It would also be fun for you to watch me continue to commit career seppuku.
For asecond follow up year, I increased my requirement to 400k USD to give me more peace of mind. So the total donation so far is 344k, and if I reach a total of 400k USD, then I'll work on the project for asecondyear.
At 4M USDI retire and work on open STEM projects forever. At these timelines, I can't guarantee it will be specifically on educationtechnology specifically all the way, but I guarantee that whatever it is it will be open and extremely well explained as usual.
It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant - James Watson
Total donations to date ~244k USD. Donation breakdown:
cryptocurrency: note that Ciro is not a regular crypto user, so you might want to make a smaller test donation and confirm that it worked by contacting Ciro before going for colossal amounts (one can dream):
Monero address: 4A1KK4uyLQX7EBgN7uFgUeGt6PPksi91e87xobNq7bT2j4V6LqZHKnkGJTUuCC7TjDNnKpxDd8b9DeNBpSxim8wpSczQvzf. Secret view key: 7ccaf885ff5540b0ff18927e6ac5da30130afb1eaee09ad95d3c4536a6337e0f. This is a self-custody wallet on a "clean" dedicated Monero laptop connected the Internet. I check for incoming transactions from my dirty main laptop via a view-only wallet each weekend. The cash out method used is latest simplest thing that wasn't yet blocked in my country on a given week, the last time that was centralized swappers[ref]. The fact that the cash out method changes weekly confirms that Moneroprivacy hadn't yet been broken by countries and that Monero is still one of the most usefulcryptocurrencies: Section "Are cryptocurrencies useful?". For transparency, I announce all non-trivial transactions on social media, and the full list of transactions can be seen by anyone with the secret view key provided. I previously had different addresses, so pre-existing donations on older addresses will not be visible there.
Bitcoin address: 3KRk7f2JgekF6x7QBqPHdZ3pPDuMdY3eWR. This is a Coinbase wallet, off-chain transactions with no transaction fees accepted from other Coinbaseusers. This method has been tested, I have been able to receive funds from this address in 2023. Fees: non-fixed trading fees[ref] + 0% withdrawal fee on top of any Bitcoin network for on-chain transactions[ref]
Ethereum address: 0x44cF8C9C015F46d3b2Df730b6492823FD7A91044. Test transaction recommended.
Solana address: DjdaGawoVFdqxJEqpBGsSWuR4G4MVFNiNkAEu89HuKcE. Test transaction recommended.
Symbolic 1dollar/month donation are extremely welcome to signal your interest! This way if a certain critical mass of sponsors is ever reached (~100?), Ciro can start to more actively asking slightly higher amounts to really try to achieve full time self sufficiency.
Ciro is interested in contracts/voluntary work that would be compatible/synergic with the OurBigBook.com project. Some possibilities include:
interacting directly with classes of university students to help them learn the class subject, while at the same time spreading the universityknowledge outside of the university walls
one-to-one mentoring of individuals of any age that are looking to make an impact in the world, and not just pass their exams
fixing specific bugs in related projects Ciro has experience in. These could be either via one-off contracts, or on platforms such as:
Note to potential anonymous crypto donors: I live in the UK, and after some messy back and forth that included freezing my account at one point, Barclays finally decided that they do not allow me to receive anonymous donations. And I'm pretty sure that the same would happen on any other British bank sooner or later. Therefore, while I continue to accept anonymous donations, they will not count towards my "if I get XI do Y"-type donation goals, since I can't reliably spend that money. If you want to donate in crypto, and clearly give me your real identity and an explanation of how you got the money, then that is fine, it can count. Just be warned that I will need to give that information to my bank and clear it with them beforehand, and if they are still not happy with it, I'll just give it all back. Your identity does not have to be publicly disclosed, only the dates and amounts. But my bank has to know.
If you would like public acknowledgement for your support, Ciro will very gladly give it, just let Ciro know how you'd prefer it. Due to Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, many supporters have chosen to be anonymous, and that is totally fine, not everyone is interested in politics, or has a situation where going public is acceptable, so we don't have a standard setup yet, let's build it together. A acknowledgement section at the bottom of this page would be a minimum, but I for larger donations we could add a your advertisement in alocations such as:
Maybe if he ever gets enough credibility, such opportunities would actually materialize. It could be abit like Periodic Videos, but for molecular biology and physics, and backed by OurBigBook text/tree with minimal openly licensed videos. The fact that such opportunities are essentially impossible outside of the boredom of the university system is something we should really change about education.
Ciro Santilli is a UK resident. He will register asa "solo trader" (slightly funny legal term) and treat donations that he uses for projectsas grants, which pay regular income tax:
The amount that will be declared is the same as he grant amount that was requested, e.g. if 100k USD is requested for 1year, then 100k USD will be pro-rata declared on that year.
Any remaining donations that don't yet meet specific grant goals will be initially treated as cash gifts which pay no tax. If in the future they are used as grant money after further goal amounts are reached, then they will taxed as grants.
Note however that if the donor is UK-based and dies within 7years of the gift being given, inheritancetax has to be paid on them as per: www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax/gifts, at a maximum of 32% and going to to 0% at 7years, so let me know from the afterlife.
Ciro paid his bill for £24,321.87 ($32,729.70) on 2026-01-02. Announcements:
This was one of the profile pictures that Ciro Santilli used as part of his campaign.
Ciro later went on to prefer the "unmodified" Xi Jinping photo cover of some edition Xi Jinping Though, which also reminds Ciro very much of religious devotional pictures, e.g. those of Li Hongzhi.
Ciro understood that the best propaganda against a dictatorial enemy is recontextualized unmodified propaganda produced by the enemy itself. Their propaganda speaks for itself
Ciro feels that the view count started increasing more slowly since 2020 compared to his reputation, likely every single Chinese user has already viewed the profile.
A few initiatives have created reasonable sets of robotics-like games for the purposes of AI development, most notably: OpenAI and DeepMind.
However, all projects so far have only created sets of unrelated games, or worse: focused on closed games designed for humans!
What is really needed is to create a single cohesive gameworld, designed specifically for this purpose, and with a very large number of game mechanics.
study the AI, and add a new mechanic that breaks the AI, but does not break ahuman!
The question then becomes: do we have enough computational power to simulationagameworlds that is analogous enough to the real world, so that our AI algorithms will also apply to the real world?
To reduce computation requirements, it is better to focus on a 2D world at first. Such world with the right mechanics can break any AI, while still being faster to simulate than a 3D world.
Don't bend; don'twater it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
His family was not even poor. He was young and did not have a family to support. His father even told him: "do whatever the fuck you want, we support your decision".
It was also in part because a physicist uncle which he respected suggested that as an engineer Ciro might be able to make useful contributions to tooling required by physics. When Roberto Salmeron died in 2020, Ciro's friends shared this 2013 video interview with the late professor, where he explains he first went to the University of São Paulo to study engineering (like Ciro), but then fell for his passion for physics (like Ciro?), his first task being to build a Geiger counter, thus explaining the likely origin of the uncle's theory. But who knows, maybe he was right. Maybe Ciro's OurBigBook.com will become huge and help a lot of people, and it might not have had Ciro not doneengineering and learnt programming. Destiny operates in weird ways sometimes.
But did Ciro do it? Nope, he remained an even larger coward.
Had he studied more sciences, he might have been happier, and might have had greater achievements later in life, in particular when he went to École Polytechnique.
Maybe not, but now this doubt will never leave his mind until the final day.
I work, for instance, asa Web developer. It'sa very good job. Our office is a block south of Union Square, a 12-minute commute from my apartment. We're served breakfast every morning. Our kitchen is stocked with "provisions" of organic beef jerky, coconut water, craft beers, chips, and two restaurant-class espressomachines. We have two ping pong tables and buckets of 3-star ping pong balls. (A new office manager bought "1-stars" once and some of the guys protested by crushing them.) We work on 4-cored Apple Mac computers with dual monitors. We have an unmolested hour for lunch, 10-minute breaks in the morning and afternoon, and a "do not disturb" policy past the working hours. We even have aspecificemail address where employees can ask for free things: genuine maple syrup, hot chocolate, a $900 chair, a new keyboard. Most of the programmers make six figures, and many of those have only three or four years of experience.
It's impossible to say so without sounding like the spokesperson for Entitlement itself but working there is still sort of soul-crushing. It'ssoul-crushing in the way that any job that doesn't command your full passionate attention must be. What happens is that I will be in my chair in the early afternoon and I will accidentally step out of myself and all I'll see is time passing, nine-hour parcels of healthy consciousness forever being packed away as the userexperience of clerical workers or consumers or whoever gets marginally better; and I'll end up thinking that this enterprise of mine is not so much creative but bureaucratic, that what I've gotten good at is reading the instruction manuals of other people, finding my way around their insignificant warrens. And in those moments the whole business will seem to me like kind of a tragic waste.
Said one gazelle to another, "I will Take shelter in the harem from now on; For there are hunters at large in the wild, And there is no peace here for a gazelle. From fear of hunters I want to be free. O how I long for some security."
His friend replied, "Live dangerously, my Wise friend, if it is life you truly seek. Like a sword of fine mettle hurl yourself Upon the whetting-stone; stay sharp thereby. For danger brings out what is best in you: It is the touchstone of all that is true."
If my portfolio goes to 0 and I lose everything, I will continue with my normal life, in a9-5 job, and I will try to invest again as soon asI get a financial cushion again.
I have nothing to lose, I can always live the standard NPC life, but to escape from it you have to take risks and take risks.
However there is one thing to lose, if you do safer investments and don't lose everything, then you might be able to retire earlier.
. Source. This is what trying to reach adream part time feels like. The cartoon reads: "The tiger pursues its prey. Slowly. The human pursues its life goals. Slowly. Very slowly.".
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That'sa very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it... Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?
Let's suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say, well, "we're getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do". So I always ask the question, "what would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?"
Well, it's so amazing asa result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we'd like to be painters, we'd like to be poets, we'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way. Or another person says well, I'd like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses. I said you want to teach in a riding school?
Let's go through with it. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
And after all, if you do really like what you're doing, it doesn'tmatter what it is, you can eventually turn it - you could eventually become a master of it. It's the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you'll be able to get agood fee for whatever it is. So don't worry too much. That's everybody is - somebody is interested in everything, anything you can be interested in, you will find others will.
But it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like, in order to go on spending things you don't like, doing things you don't like and to teach our children to follow in the same track. See what we are doing, is we're bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of liveswe are living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it's all retch and no vomit. It never gets there. And so, therefore, it's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?
That's the way I live my life, I give it my all. I think that a person should really make up his mind what he wants to do, and when did made up, he cannot fail at it. The basic rule to sucess I think, is when the going gets tough, that is a positive signal to keep chargin'.
your life is your life don't let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can't beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the Gods wait to delight in you.
If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are atest of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the Gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
I have one of two choices - stay in the post office and go crazy... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.
Up to the time that I met Klug ([a mathematiciam]), I was sure that all grown ups were people to be pitied. They had to work, they were tired, they were bored with what they were doing. I heard both my parents often complain. Klug was the first man whom I met who most obviously enoyed what he was doing.
But to be fair, being a fucking "genius" might be a requirement to escape that fate!
"I just stopped thinking" scene from Malcolm in the Middle S05E21 "Reese Joins The Army"
. Source. Working in most big companies can feel like this sometimes. We need stronger AI (AGI?) to help wipe out this boredom. A anti-AGI blues moment for you.
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable asa static site.
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
