= Ciro Santilli
{c}
{tag=École Polytechnique alumnus}
{tag=Human}
{tag=Male}
{tag=Sinophile}
{title2=三西猴}
{title2=1989-}
Ciro Santilli is a <male> <human> <software engineer> and <Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China>[activist] <Ciro Santilli's biography>[born] in <Brazil>, <Earth> in 1989 AD.
Quick facts:
* Nationalities: <Italian> and <Brazilian>
* Grew up in: <Brazil>
* Relationship status 2017-: <Ciro Santilli's wife>[married]
* Given name pronunciation: take your pick from <Ciro Santilli's given name>
* <Ciro Santilli's Chinese name>[Chinese name]: 三西猴, means "three western monkeys". Phonetic approximation to SANtilli CIRO. More info at: <Ciro Santilli's Chinese name>. Semi-unintentionally reminds <Chinese> people of <image 19th century illustration of the Journey to the West protagonist Sun Wukong>[Sun Wukong (孙悟空)]. This association is further slightly strengthened by the phonetic choice of 三 San, which Ciro later noticed matches the middle character of <Tang Sanzang>[Tang Sanzang (唐三藏)], the monk in Journey to the West. The given name 西猴 was given by <Ciro Santilli's wife>, then recent girlfriend, as a semi-joke, and he took it up because the best way to take a joke is to play along with the joker. 三 was chosen by Ciro himself.
* laptop: high end <ThinkPad>[Lenovo ThinkPad]
* <distro>: latest <Ubuntu> release
* <Vim> or Emacs: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/e1vh8n/from_now_on_my_pronoun_is_vivim/[vi/vim]. But for The Love, will someone please make an open source <C++> <integrated development environment> that actually just works?
* tabs or spaces: <pragmatism>[spaces]
* <Mailing list> or <Git>(<GitHub>[Hub]\|<GitLab>[Lab]): Git(Hub|Lab), with passion, see <mailing list>{full}
* <system test>[system] or <unit test>[unit] tests: <high flying bird vs gophers>[system]
* <programming languages>: <Python> and <C++>. He'll learn <Rust> and <Haskell> once he's rich. As of the 2020s, <Rust> was picking up some serious steam, so Ciro might end up eating his own words there.
* musical instruments to listen: <the best Chinese traditional instrumental music of all time>[Chinese Guqin] and <the best modern instrumental Western music>[electric Jazz-fusion guitar]
* metric or <imperial units>[imperial]: metric, for The Love. <International System of Units>[Science]? <having more than one natural language is bad for the world>[Standardization]? 21st century anyone?
* <QWERTY> or <Dvorak keyboard layout>[Dvorak]: <pragmatism>[QWERTY, alas]
* birth name: <Ciro Duran Santilli>
Other people with the same name are listed at <Ciro Santilli's homonyms>{full}.
\Image[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Xiyou.PNG/337px-Xiyou.PNG]
{height=500}
{title=19th century illustration of the <Journey to the West> protagonist <Sun Wukong>}
{description=
<Sun Wukong> (孙悟空) is a playful and obscenely powerful monkey Journey to the West. He protects <Buddhist> monk <Tang Sanzang>, and likes <Ciro Santilli's psychology and physiology>[eating fruit, just like Ciro]. Oh, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku[Goku] from <Dragon Ball> is based on him. His <japanese (language)> name \i[is] "Sun Wukong" (same <Chinese characters> with different Japanese pronunciation) for the love. His given name "Wukong" means literally "the one who mastered the void", which is clearly a <Dharma name> and <physics and the illusion of life>[fucking awesome] in <The correlation between software engineers and Buddhism>[multiple ways]. This is another sad instance of a <Chinese thing better known in the West as Japanese>.
It is worth noting however that although Wukong is extremely charming, Ciro's favorite novel of the <Four Great Classic Novels> is <Water Margin>. <Journey to the West> is just a <Monster of the Week> for kids, but <Water Margin> is a fight for justice saga. Sorry Wukong!
}
\Image[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/Ciro_Santilli_in_lab_coat_playing_with_pippete.jpg]
{height=700}
{title=<Ciro Santilli> playing with a <pipette> at the <University of Cambridge> circa 2017}
{description=
The photo was taken in an open event organized by the awesome Cambridge Synthetic Biology outreach group, more or less the same people who organize: https://www.meetup.com/Cambridge-Synthetic-Biology-Meetup/[] and who helped organize <oxford nanopore river bacteria>{full}.
Taking part in such activities is what Ciro tries to do to overcome his <When in doubt, choose the course that has the most experimental work>[lifelong regret of not having done more experimental stuff at university]. Would he have had the patience to handle all the bullshit of the physical word without going back to the informational sciences? Maybe, maybe not. But now he will probably never know?!
Notice the orange high visibility cycling jersey under the lab coat, from someone who had just ridden in from work as fast as possible as part of his "lunch break". It is more fun when it is hard.
}
\Image[https://web.archive.org/web/20211020164925im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Escribano.jpg]
{height=500}
{title=<Scribe> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Miélot[Jean Miélot], 15th century}
{description=
<Ciro Santilli> fantasises that he would have make a good scribe in the middle ages, partly due to his <Ciro Santilli's psychology and physiology>[self diagnosed graphomania], but also <having more than one natural language is bad for the world>[appreciation for foreign languages], and his mild obsession with the <natural sciences>.
<OurBigBook.com> is Ciro's view of a modern day <scriptorium>, except that now the <Illuminated manuscript>[illuminations] are <YouTube> videos.
<Chill and eat your bread in peace> comes to mind. A scribe, in a library, reading and writing the entire day in peace and quiet. The life!
The job of a Internet-age scribe is basically that of making knowledge more open, legally extracting it from closed copyrighted sources, and explaining your understanding of it to the wider world under <Creative Commons licenses> on the web. And in the process of greater openess, given a <OurBigBook.com>[well organized system], we are able combine the knowledge of many diffferent people, and thus make things more understandable than any single/few creator closed source source could ever achieve.
Ciro once saw some cartoon on <Wikipedia> help pages of a turtle with a book in one hand, and typing into Wikipedia on its computer, TODO find it. That cartoon summarizes well the modern scribe life.
Another analogous version of this fantasy more in touch with Ciro's <sinophily> is the ideal of the <Chinese scholar>, notably including their stereotypical attributes such as mastery of the <Four arts>.
}