Ciro Santilli is very happy to meet people with related interests, he really loves his like-minded online friends. Even if you don't have something a specific goal in mind for the contact, please just say hi.
To contact Ciro publicly about any general subject that is not covered in a more specific GitHub repository, including saying hi or suggestions about his website either:
- create a GitHub issue at: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io/issues/new or Giscus thread
- at mention Ciro's main Twitter account
For comments about China, first read:
and then create a GitHub issue at: github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/issues/new
Publicly viewable contact is preferred if possible to more effectively share Ciro's wisdom with the world.
But if you feel more comfortable with private contact, no problem, either:
- email:
cirosantilliwith provider ProtonMail which has domain nameproton.me. All lowercase and removing the placeholder characters<and>. Note that Ciro also controls the Gmail address with that same username, and keep in mind that dots are ignored in Gmail addresses. But ProtonMail preferred because why should we give our private minds to the CIA by default? Push notifications disabled. - Signal: username
cirosantilli.89signal.me/#eu/BuJjV0enXYTOnFFc1FZV5LFcWodL1a2Oy9VZ5uyQU7xrYxqw+npIcaHBqghWudrI. 89 is a reference to Ciro Santilli's birth year 1989. Push notifications enabled, but treat like email unless we are actively chatting back and forth.
For other less good methods that will also work, use direct messages of the following profiles from under Section "Accounts controlled by Ciro Santilli":
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cirosantilli
- Reddit: www.reddit.com/user/cirosantilli
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/cirosantilli
- Telegram: telegram.me/cirosantilli. Note that end-to-end encryption is present on secret chats only, which don't have device sync. Ridiculous.
If you are a privacy freak or are going to tell Ciro state secrets Ciro has this GNU Privacy Guard public key: pubkey.gpg.
Disqus comments were removed from his website in 2019-05-04, a manual dump is available here, removal rationale at: why Ciro Santilli removed Disqus comments from his website in 2019-05-04.
China stuff is mentioned at: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/bitcoin-blockchain.
Due to Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, Ciro Santilli' cult research is located at github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/flg-cult (permalink).
!!! Survivorship bias alert !!!
quoteinvestigator.com/2018/05/07/overcome/
If you want to do something, but you are afraid to do it, then that is likely what you should do.
quoteinvestigator.com/2013/11/08/not-bend/
Don't bend; don't water 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.
www.goodreads.com/quotes/50458-whatever-you-re-meant-to-do-do-it-now-the-conditions Doris Lessing:
Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.
For example, when Ciro Santilli was deciding what to do in university, he wanted mostly to do pure physics.
But because he was afraid he was going to die poor and unemployed because of that, he picked engineering instead.
That was a mistake.
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".
But he was a coward.
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 done engineering and learnt programming. Destiny operates in weird ways sometimes.
Furthermore, while in University, Ciro learnt about the molecular Sciences Course of the University of São Paulo, a fantastic sounding full time course that any student could transfer to called that teaches various natural sciences topics which Ciro loves (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology) and which students from the entire university can apply to transfer to only after joining the university, with the guarantee that they can go back to their original courses if they didn't adapt to the new course.
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.
Similar thoughts crossed his mind when he started his campaign for freedom of speech in China, but this time he had learnt the lesson, and went for it, and it felt very good.
If you have a day job, but also have a dream, and want to keep the day job for a reason, try to reserve the time of the day that your brain works best before or after work for your dream: do one cool thing every day.
Companies can help you grow because you see real problems from within them, but their end goal is to consume you as much as possible. Don't let that happen. Invest part of what you gain, in yourself. www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/paradox-going-outside/ The Paradox of Going Outside by James Somers (2012) puts it incredibly well:
I work, for instance, as a Web developer. It's a 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 espresso machines. 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 a specific email 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's soul-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 user experience 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.
Other quotes:
- is a phrase Sergey Brin uses. The Google Story claims he picked that up from academia, and quotes this from a september 2003 talk in an Israeli elite high school.
Healthy Disregard For The Impossible
- quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/29/find-love/
Find What You Love and Let It Kill You
- Cute boy things by Caroline Ellison:
if you are a boy with the confidence to advocate for unconventional ideas and take actions based on them you are valid
- How can I be as great by Justine Musk:
rock the boat
- From the 1922 poem Portuguese Sea by famous Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, which gets drilled into the head of every Brazilian high school student:He who wants to pass beyond the Bojador
Must go beyond pain.Quem quer passar além do Bojador
Tem que passar além da dor. - Translation of a poem by Muhammad Iqbal TODO date:One is reminded of As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.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."
- "NPC life" as a way to refer to a soul crushing job
- twitter.com/0xTenkito/status/1775167216641548732, a cryptocurrency investor says: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.If my portfolio goes to 0 and I lose everything, I will continue with my normal life, in a 9-5 job, and I will try to invest again as soon as I 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.
- archive.ph/mlaLK
- twitter.com/0xTenkito/status/1775167216641548732, a cryptocurrency investor says:
Don't be a pussy. Be a Based God
Dilbert "A small brain irrationally puts more weight on a small loss than on a huge opportunity" cartoon (2000)
Source. 
Jake Likes Onions "Slowly" cartoon
. Source. This is what trying to reach a dream part time feels like. The cartoon reads: "The tiger pursues its prey. Slowly. The human pursues its life goals. Slowly. Very slowly.".Excerpt from the documentary film "Steve Jobs: Secrets of Life" (1994)
Source. 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's a 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.
Of course, survivorship bias alert!
What Would You Do If Money Were No Object by Alan Watts
. Source. Sample transcription: genius.com/Alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object-annotated: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 as a 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't matter 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 a good 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 lives we 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?
Keep Chargin' from a Show of Hands by Victor Wooten (1996)
. Source. 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 by Charles Bukowski
. Source. Charles Bukowski is one of the most hardcore don't be a pussy people ever. It's almost scary. Far beyond Ciro level.
thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/2008/11/the-laughing-he.html
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.
www.goodreads.com/quotes/39207-if-you-re-going-to-try-go-all-the-way-otherwise
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 a test 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.
Bukowski kissing his typewriter.
Like Ciro Santilli and his computer!All adults are bored scene from an Edward Teller, An Early Time
. Source. 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!
One of the least evil of the big tech companies of the early 21st century, partly because Sergey Brin's parents fled from the Soviet Union and so he is anti censorship, although they have been tempted by it.
Google only succeeds at highly algorithmic tasks or at giving infinite storage to users to then mine their data.
It is incapable however of adding any obvious useful end user features to most of its products, most of which get terminated and cannot be relied on:
This also seems to extend to business-to-business: twitter.com/MohapatraHemant/status/1343969802080030720 ex-Googler tells how they lost the cloud to Amazon.
More mentions of that:
- world.hey.com/dhh/google-suffers-from-a-digital-petro-curse-908e919a "Google suffers from a digital petro curse" by David Heinemeier Hansson (2021), the creator of Ruby on Rails
- killedbygoogle.com/ dedicated website, source on GitHub: github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle
Too many genius engineers. They need some dumber people like Ciro Santilli who need to write documentation to learn stuff.
Ciro Santilli actually attempted two interviews to work at Google in the early 2010's but very quickly failed both on the first phase, because you have to be a fast well trained coding machine to pass that interview.
Ciro later felt better about himself by fantasizing how he would actually do more important things outside of Google and that they would beg to buy him instead.
He was also happy that he wouldn't have to use Google crazy internal tools: someone once said that Google's tools make easy tasks middle hard, and they also make impossible tasks middle hard. TODO source.
But whatever the case: Ciro will not, ever, spend his time drilling programmer competition problems to join a company.
www.wired.com/story/google-shakes-up-its-tgif-and-ends-its-culture-of-openness/ "GOOGLE TGIF 1999 video". TGIF is the weekly all hands meeting abolished in 2019: www.wired.com/story/google-shakes-up-its-tgif-and-ends-its-culture-of-openness/
It is true that one image is worth a thousand words, but unfortunately it is also true that one image takes up at least as much bytes as a thousand words!
Having one single page to rule them all is of course the ideal setup for a website, as you can Ctrl + F one ToC and quickly find what you want.
And, with Linux Kernel Module Cheat Ciro noticed that it is very hard to write so much intelligent prose that becomes larger than reasonable to load on a single webpage.
He then started using this technique for everything he writes, including this page and Chinese government.
However, if there are too many images on the page, the loading of the last images would take forever in case users want to view the last sections.
There are two solutions to that:
- be traditional and create separate web pages
- be bold and load images as they appear on the viewport: stackoverflow.com/questions/2321907/how-do-you-make-images-load-only-when-they-are-in-the-viewport/57389607#57389607Edit: OK, it was standardized with
loading=lazy, without need JavaScript!Now the last awesome thing would be a method that loads first images in viewport, then those below, and then those above, that would be the ultimate solution.This question comes close: stackoverflow.com/questions/7906348/change-loading-order-of-images-already-on-page
Ciro is still deciding between those two. The traditional approach works for sure but loses the one page to rule them all benefits.
The innovative approach will work for interactive viewing, but archive.org will fail to load the images for example, and there may be other unforseen consequences.
Wikimedia Commons is awesome and automatically converts and serves smaller versions of images, so always choose the smallest images size needed by the output document. Readers can then find the higher resolution versions by following the page source.
This also comes to mind: motherfuckingwebsite.com
zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/ from zettelkasten:
How many Zettelkästen should I have? The answer is, most likely, only one for the duration of your life. But there are exceptions to this rule.
Future self, answer these.
10 years:
- 2017-2027: did self-driving cars become big?
- 2017-2027: did virtual reality become big?
20 years
- 2018-2038: are companies offering free full genome decoding just to get your genomic data and sell it to pharma companies?Someone like Ciro then creates an open source genomic database funded by health organizations that publishes genomes + phenotypes anonymously. Genome to phenotype analytics go crazy big.
40 years:
- 2017-2057: was human level AI reached (by non-bio devices :-)), even if very slow?
- 2017-2057: did China become democratic?
- 2018-2058: did impressive brain-computer interfaces show up?
Ciro Santilli is actively looking for donations and contracts so he can continue to work full time on OurBigBook.com sustainably, and develop free hardcore university-level STEM education for all ages!
At 100k USD, I quit my job to work full time on it for one year. During this year I will use my contacts with STEM students of a world leading university near where I live and solve as many of their problem sheets as possible, mostly by referring to OurBigBook.com articles I'll be writing. The goal is to get as much STEM knowledge as possible into the world, and highlight how flawed presencial and sequential Higher Education is, while positioning OurBigBook.com as an alternative way to organize humanity's knowledge. Quite grand.
Status: ~144k / 200k USD reached. 1st year locked in and started 1st June 2024 to 31st May 2025[ref], 2nd year stretch goal open. A second year greatly improve chances of success: year one I solve a bunch of courses, year two I come guns blazing with the content and expand further. Donation breakdown:More details: Section "Accounting method"
- 2024-03-18: $126,352 (!!!): anonymous 1000 Monero donation to self-custody wallet. Further comments: 1000 Monero donation.
- 2024-03-13: $1,375: anonymous 10 Monero donation to self-custody wallet
- 2023-11-20: $14.563: anonymous 100 Monero donation to Binance wallet
- 2023-09: $810: anonymous 0.032 Bitcoin donation to Coinbase wallet
- subscriptions up to 2024-01: $143,795
At 1M USD I retire and work on open STEM education forever.
Note to potential anonymous crypto donors: anonymous donations incur a regulatory risk. I cash out most of such donations and announce it very clearly to the government and banks. For example, at one point Barclays even froze my UK account. But things seem manageable for now. On one hand, such donations serve as a fun test of the financial system. But on the other, if all banks reject my money or if the government decides to take it, I will write off the anonymous donation at zero.
How to give:And if you have a different preferred payment mechanism not listed above, please contact Ciro, and he will set it up.
- one time donations:
- 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 Monero privacy hadn't yet been broken by countries and that Monero is still one of the most useful cryptocurrencies: 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 Coinbase users. 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.
- TransferWise tag: wise.com/pay/me/cirod3. It shows as "Ciro Duran Santilli" and that's correct. No fees apparently? Love it!
- PayPal: paypal.me/cirosantilli. Note that dots in Gmail address are ignored, and it is perfectly normal if the email you see has some extra dots in it. Fees: 2.9% + 0.30 GBP[ref].
- 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):
- monthly subscriptions of 1$/month or more on either:Symbolic 1 dollar/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.
- GitHub Sponsors: github.com/sponsors/cirosantilli. Fees: 0% for individuals, up to 6% for organizations[ref]
- Patreon: www.patreon.com/cirosantilli. Fees: 8% pro plan + 1% PayPal withdrawal capped at 20 USD[ref]. We are waiting to reach the cap to withdraw!
- larger grants/contracts from filthy rich individuals or organizations: contact Ciro as mentioned at: Section "How to contact Ciro Santilli" to discuss.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 university knowledge 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:
Ciro's current ambitions require him to remain in developed countries, because Ciro wants to document advanced science and technology by liaising with top universities, and there is not nearly as much high technology in poor countries. Remaining in developed countries is also a required due to family reasons.
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 a locations such as:
- near the top of of the accounts controlled by Ciro Santilli, e.g. one of Ciro Santilli's Twitter accounts, github.com/cirosantilli or stackoverflow.com/users/895245
- near the top of cirosantilli.com
100k USD/year is a semi arbitrary amount that sounds nice. My last day job total compensation as of 2024 was about 150k USD/year.
Intro to the OurBigBook Project
. Source. 
Maybe if he ever gets enough credibility, such opportunities would actually materialize. It could be a bit 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.
The anonymity of the donation is mind blowing.
The first sensation Ciro Santilli got was as if God himself had come down from heaven to toy with an unsuspecting human being. God running an experiment. Or perhaps an AGI that had already secretly taken over. Not very different.
Like with God, this was the answer to Ciro's prayers on Twitter. A one way conversation that leaves you uncertain of the details.
Whichever the case, Ciro is going to put on the best show he possibly can for your money, documenting every step along the way in usual fashion!
Besides the awesomeness however, anonymity is a risk.
Ciro ran this over and over in his head, and the only big risk of anonymity is that if this money is ever proven to be from the proceeds of crime, he would have to give it back to the government and "lose one year's salary he would have otherwise gained".
However, that worst case scenario is not bad enough. If anything, it was a great excuse to quit his job for his family and wife is already worth it. Ciro could do it and survive, though situation would deteriorate slowly. But he was a coward previously.
Ciro does however feel that there is good chance that it is legitimate.
Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions are exceptional, he's amazing right! He deserves this! Of course, there is danger in this rationale which scammers could exploit. But bro, if scammers are going to send 100k USD to me, then please continue to do so!
Also which criminal would be stupid enough to donate proceeds of crime to a highly public person who is going to clearly announce it?
Just be warned, if you come with a baseball bat trying to get the money back by force, I will call the police immediately and by God you will not get it!!
Given this, Ciro just keeps thinking about the likely profile of the donor:
But the "why anonymous if not criminal" question remains. Generally rich people want recognition both for:Two options that come to mind:
- reputation washing
- to make their donation mechanisms higher profile which allows raising more and attracting better candidates and reach greater impact
- rich crypto dude that doesn't want thieves to know he is rich
- more public rich person that doesn't want association with Ciro Santilli's naughty projects, notably Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, but perhaps also CIA 2010 covert communication websites, which could hurt business.
- crazy rich person with a philosophy of "if they knew who I was it might interfere with what they do". AKA a God.
So that he can work full time on OurBigBook.com and revolutionize advanced university-level science, technology, engineering, and mathematics eduction for all ages.
Donating to Ciro is the most effective donation per dollar that you can make to:
- improve hardcore university-level STEM education for all ages
- help make every child into the next Nobel Prize/Fields Medal/deep tech unicorn co-founder
Ciro's goal in life is to help kids as young as possible to reach, and the push, the frontiers of natural sciences human knowledge, linking it to applications that might be the the next big thing as early as possible. Because nothing is more motivating to students than that feeling of:rather than repeating the same crap that everyone is already learning.
Hey, I can actually do something in this area that has never been done before!
To do this, Ciro wants to work in parallel both on:
- the multi-user website e-learning platform of OurBigBook.com
- creating amazing teaching content that motivates that platform, and that deeply interests Ciro, notably quantum mechanics and its related applications:
- quantum computing
- molecular biology
- condensed matter physics and chemistry
- slightly more theoretical stuff in somewhat related fields of:
- continue to dump his brain/research in areas Ciro has expertise in: software engineering and open source software
Ciro believes that this rare combination of both:produces a virtuous circle, because Ciro:
- proven passion and capability to learn and teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects
- proven programming skills, including web development
- wants to learn and teach, so he starts to create content
- then he notices the teaching tools are crap
- and since he has the ability to actually improve them, he does
As explained at OurBigBook.com and high flying bird scientist, Ciro is most excited to make contributions at the "missing middle level of specialization" that lies around later undergrad and lower grad education:But on that middle sweet spot, Ciro believes that something can be done, in such as way that delivers:in a way that is:
- at lower undergrad level, there is already a lot of free material out there to learn stuff
- at upper graduate level and beyond, too few people know about each specific subject, that it becomes hard to factor things out
- beauty
- power
- in your face, without requiring you to study for a year
- but also giving enough precision to allow you to truly appreciate the beauty of the subjectCiro's programming skills can also be used to create educational, or actually more production-like, simulations and illustrations.
Ciro believes that today's society just keep saying over and over: "STEM is good", "STEM is good", "STEM is good" as a religious mantra, but fails miserably at providing free learning material and interaction opportunities for people to actually learn it at a deep enough level to truly appreciate why "STEM is good". This is what he wants to fix.
The following quote is ripped from Gwern Branwen's Patreon page, and it perfectly synthesizes how Ciro feels as well:
Quote 1.
Omar Khayyam's chill out quote
. Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier... but not to ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life and prosperity.'
In addition to all of this, financial support also helps Ciro continue his general community support activities:
- writing and updating his amazing Stack Overflow answers: Section "Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions"
- saving the world from the CCP: Section "Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China"
This game (1 or 2, can't remember) made an impression on Ciro Santilli for some reason.
Only many many years after playing it, after Ciro started getting more interested, did he learn that it was actually an adaptation of the Chinese mega-classic Water Margin.
"Suikoden" is the actual Japenese transliteration for the Chinese name of the original Water Margin novel.
Yet another case of Chinese thing better known in the West as Japanese.
The game puts great emphasis on the concept of the 108 Stars of Destiny, which never left Ciro's mind: making 108 allies, the main collectible of the game, allows you to make a more powerful alliance, and unlock better endings.
This is Ciro Santilli's favorite laptop brand. He's been on it since the early 2010's after he saw his then-girlfriend-later-wife using it.
Ciro doesn't know how to explain it, but ThinkPads just feel... right. The screen, the keyboard, the lid, the touchpad are all exactly what Ciro likes.
The only problem with ThinkPad is that it is owned by Lenovo which is a Chinese company, and that makes Ciro feel bad. But he likes it too much to quit... what to do?
Ciro is also reassured to see that in every enterprise he's been so far as of 2020, ThinkPads are very dominant. And the same when you see internal videos from other big tech enterprises, all those nerds are running... Ubuntu on ThinkPads! And the ISS.
Those nerds like their ThinkPads so much, that Ciro has seen some acquaintances with crazy old ThinkPad machines, missing keyboard buttons or the like. They just like their machines that much.
ThinkPads are are also designed for repairability, and it is easy to buy replacement parts, and there are OEM part replacement video tutorials: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vseFzFFz8lY No visible planned obsolescence here! With the caveat that the official online part stores can be shit as mentioned at Section "Lenovo".
Further more, in 2020 Lenovo is announced full certification for Ubuntu www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/06/03/lenovos-massive-ubuntu-and-red-hat-announcement-levels-up-linux-in-2020/#28a8fd397ae0 which fantastic news!
The only thing Ciro never understood is the trackpoint: superuser.com/questions/225059/how-to-get-used-of-trackpoint-on-a-thinkpad Why would you use that with such an amazing touchpad? And vimium.
To talk about something without giving the real name to not scare off the audience Updated 2025-01-10 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli hates it when an expert does this!!!
If you estimate that the audience won't know the name of the concept, that's fine, do explain it as well.
But you must also give the name!!!
This also manifests itself when news outlets omit foreign names from healines, notably Chinese, but likely happens to all non-european languages too.
Talks about rebellion of the oppressed (and bandits), and therefore has been controversial throughout the many Chinese dictatorships.
The book is based on real events surrounding 12th century rebel leader Song Jiang during the Song dynasty.
It is also interesting that Mao Zedong was apparently a fan of the novel, although he had to hide that to some extent due to the controversial nature of the material, which could be said to instigate rebellion.
The incredible popularity of the novel can also be seen by the large number of paintings of it found in the Summer Palace.
This is a good novel. It appeals to Ciro Santilli's sensibilities of rebelling against unfairness, and in particular about people who are at the margin of society (at the river margin) doing so. Tax the rich BTW.
It also has always made Ciro quite curious how such novels are not used as a way to inspire people to rebel against the Chinese Communist Party.
Full text uploads of Chinese versions:
- www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23863/pg23863.html No table of contents.
The remedy to cowardice, inattention, censorship and amorality.
Due to Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, Ciro Santilli maintains information on this at mostly at:
Dan Dascalescu's "Web page archiving" comparison table: web.archive.org/web/20130922192354/http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/reviews/online_services/web_page_archiving
Why Ciro Santilli removed Disqus comments from his website in 2019-05-04 Updated 2025-01-10 +Created 1970-01-01
Commit: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io/commit/794705a201a79b5128934e69df85e3511655c03f
As Ciro started getting a lot of comments on his home page about China, he decided that Disqus does not scale, and that it would be more productive long term to remove it and point people to GitHub issues instead.
Upsides of removal:
- Disqus discoverability is bad:
- there is no decent way to search existing issues, you have to do JavaScript infinite loading + Ctrl + F. So every reply that he wrote is a waste of time, as it will never be seen again.
- comments don't have: decent URLs, titles, metadata like tags or open / close
- Disqus archival is bad: web.archive.org/ does not work, and no one knows how to export the issues: www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Disqus
- before, there were two places where people could comment, Disqus and GitHub issues. Now there is just one.
- Disqus has ads if you ever reach enough traffic, which unacceptable, especially if the website owner don't get paid for them! It also makes page loads slower, although that likely does not matter much.
Downsides:
- people are more likely to comment on Disqus than to create an issue on GitHub, especially because most people use GitHub professionally. But this has the upside that there will be less shitposts as well.
- with Disqus you can see all issues attached to a page automatically, which is nice. But for as long as Ciro is alive, he intends to just solve the issues, cross link between content and issues and tag things appropriately.
Ciro's stance towards China hasn't changed, and China comments and corrections about his website are still welcome as always.
Related issue: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io/issues/37