James Somers Updated 2025-07-16
Huge interest overlap with Ciro Santilli, e.g. he's into
- molecular biology in general: I should have loved biology by James Somers
- JCVI-syn3.0: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/07/a-journey-to-the-center-of-our-cells
- cryo-EM: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/07/a-journey-to-the-center-of-our-cells
- David Goodsell: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/07/a-journey-to-the-center-of-our-cells
- History of Google: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge
Jami (software) Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli worked on it for a brief time in 2016, when it was still called Ring, before he got fired. :-)
The people were quite nice and the project idea is fine, Ciro hopes they succeed.
Ring - Peer to peer network for real time communication - FOSDEM 2016 by Ciro Santilli
. Source. Jazz fusion Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro's 2020 perfect Friday evening: jazz fusion + study quantum field theory on an Amazon Kindle. Ahhhhhh.
Jazz fusion musician Updated 2025-07-16
Jean-Luc Ponty Updated 2025-07-16
Jim Baggott selects the topics for his books by writing about things he wants to know more about Updated 2025-07-16
Mentinoned at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Baggott quoting popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2012/09/jim-baggott-four-way-interview.html
Ciro Santilli and Jim would get along mighty well: there is value in tutorials written by beginners.
John Sulston Created 2024-11-26 Updated 2025-07-16
Fun fact, in 2024 Ciro Santilli corrected John's place of birth on hist Nobel Prize page: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2002/sulston/facts/, details: Getting a list of all currencies from Wikidata with SPARQL.
John von Neumann Updated 2025-07-16
This is the one Ciro Santilli envies the most, because he has such a great overlap with Ciro's interests, e.g.:
John von Neuman - a documentary by the Mathematical Association of America (1966)
Source. Some good testimonies. Some boring. Jundiaí Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli lived there from 1995 to 1997.
Justin Helps Updated 2025-07-16
Creator of Primer
youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Primer gives real identity:Feels exactly the background you'd expect: disilusioned by the educational system, and working to make education better! Great guy! Reminds Ciro Santilli of himself a bit.
- the name is Justin Helps from Minnesota
- dropped out of his PhD that got boring, and used to work at Khan Academy
- LinkedIn gives PhD subject: www.linkedin.com/in/justin-helps/ as materials science
- twitter.com/helpsypoo personal Twitter account
Face reveal at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC91Bf8hQVo
karlcow/markdown-testsuite Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli was contributing to this, when CommonMark left private mode and killed it, thus wasting many hours of Ciro's time.
See also: Ciro Santilli's minor projects.
kenorb Created 2024-11-04 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli feels that this user has a surprisingly similar contribution pattern (one of the top necromancers) and subjects (Python, Bash) to Ciro Santilli.
Ciro tried to contact him to say hi, but it was hard to find a contact. kenorb, feel free to send Ciro a hi one of those days. Ciro knows kenorb knows Ciro exists because kenorb has in the past starred some of Ciro's stuff, e.g. github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer from Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain.
His GitHub github.com/kenorb gives name Rafal W. and links to some trading stuff: github.com/EA31337, especially compatible with his stated location of London.
Rafal is Rafael in Polish: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafał It would normally have the l with a stroke, but ASCII.
His LinkedIn sys the R3 company he works at is actually a blockchain company: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R3_(R3CEV), FOREX appears to be his on-the-side.
Khômiss Updated 2025-07-16
They intentionally projected the idea of a semi scary and cool secret society/cult/Fascist/Gestapo/non-racist Ku Klux Klan-like organization
Khômiss members would wear a face cover whenever they would go out "on duty", notably to break a student's door with a fire axe when some student had fucked up particularly bad.
The Khômiss had an ambivalent character: while on one hand they would punish students that they felt had fucked up, they were actually semi approved by the school's head.
And conversely, they could also play pranks on the school head, e.g. vandalizing their office with funny objects if they had made some decision that was particularly unpopular to the students. This also likely with tacit approval, and as a way to be a "cool independent organization that also represents the students".
As such, the Khômiss aimed to be a sort of a "conscience" of the cohort, punishing the evil deeds of either side.
They were apparently unfortunately disbanded by the school in 2013 it seems, just after Ciro Santilli left. They took some poor student out by car and left him more than 1km outsie of the school for some reason. But he had a cell phone and walked came back, so doesn't feel that serious. Likely the political correctness of the times just caught up with them.
Bibliography:
- fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditions_de_l%27École_polytechnique#La_Khômiss
- 2013 www.leparisien.fr/archives/la-mauvaise-blague-de-trop-a-polytechnique-02-07-2013-2945871.php news about the dissolution of the Khômiss.
- 2012 www.lajauneetlarouge.com/la-khomiss-deux-cents-ans-et-resolument-moderne/ A profile of the Khômiss by the student magazine "La Jeune et la Rouge"
Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard Updated 2025-07-16
Krusader Updated 2025-07-16
The most powerful GUI file manager ever?? Infinite configurability??
Ciro Santilli wasted some time on it before he gave up on file managers altogether and started using only the CLI with a few aliases.
Kudos Updated 2025-07-16
Ahh, Ciro Santilli was certain this was some slang neologism, but it is actually Greek! So funny. Introduced into English in the 19th century according to: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kudo.
Kung Fu (1972 TV series) Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli enjoyed watching the temple flashback moments on YouTube.
Combat in the USA is of course terribly ridiculous due to guns Are Worthless.
Largey Brage Updated 2025-07-16
Both of them attended Montessori education at some point. Interesting! Mentioned in a talk by Sergey and highlighted at The Google Story.
They stepped down from leading Google roles in 2019: www.npr.org/2019/12/03/784570156/google-founders-brin-page-step-down-pichai-takes-over-as-alphabet-ceo
As The Google Story puts it about Largey:Ciro Santilli likes that.
Scholarship was not just emphasized in their homes; it was treasured.


