manuel uberti

Le conseguenze dell'amore

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A un tratto le sembra che quel fatto sia soltanto una smagliatura, un’interruzione nella trama delle cose, e a riempirla una storia vale l’altra.

— Atto di famiglia, Alessandra Carati

Raramente penso al divorzio dei miei genitori. Ero appena uscito di casa, stavo già per rifarmi una vita altrove. Sento di non avere mai capito quanto è successo o perché sia successo in quel determinato modo e non in un altro. Non ne parlo mai né ci ripenso mai, come se fosse qualcosa di secondario. E del resto è così che ho imparato a viverlo: come un fatto indipendente da me.

La mia è stata una fuga, in un certo senso, dettata dall’incapacità di affrontare quel periodo della mia vita in modo razionale. Con la scusa di avere lasciato casa per continuare altrove, ho voltato le spalle senza fare e senza farmi le opportune domande. Ho proseguito per lo più ignorando i motivi del divorzio, riducendoli a una mancanza di affetto e semplificandomi così il doverci fare i conti.

Alessandra Carati con il suo Atto di famiglia mi ha insegnato che il divorzio dei miei genitori è tutto meno che qualcosa che posso mettere da parte. Mi ha fatto capire che per conoscermi per chi sono davvero quell’episodio è ineludibile. Va indagato, piuttosto, per comprendere meglio tutte le parti in causa senza cercare conclusioni facili e affrettate.

È proprio con il soffermarsi a turno sulle persone protagoniste della vicenda che Carati mi ha obbligato a riprendere in mano l’accaduto. Invece di offrire una risposta valida per spiegare definitivamente ciò che è successo, l’autrice monzese sceglie prospettive multiple che costringono a rimettere continuamente in questione cause e conseguenze del dissolversi del nucleo familiare. Non si tratta di scegliere una posizione specifica, ma di accettare le inevitabili variabili che rendono ogni esperienza unica.

Carati misura le parole lasciando al non detto il compito di riempire i vuoti spaziali e temporali. Atto di famiglia impone in questo modo le sue linee bianche, tracciando un percorso aperto nella violenza che distrugge la coppia e che ricade impietosamente sulla figlia.

È lei, infatti, a sopravvivere alla disgregazione della famiglia. Incompresa da chi la circonda, con i tratti della madre e del padre che si intrecciano nella sua personalità senza potersene fare una ragione, si nega la possibilità di un confronto costruttivo con i genitori perché il trauma non le dà alcuna tregua, ma anche perché ciò che si è incrinato non si può più aggiustare.

Da adulta il tempo non è più dalla sua parte. I genitori lentamente svaniscono, prede della vecchiaia. A lei rimangono solo frammenti di un rapporto che non l’ha mai vista al centro del dialogo. In secondo piano mentre la famiglia voltava pagina, si trova dunque relegata nell’impossibilità di negoziare ancora qualche parola con il padre e con la madre. Sola, senza conoscersi, non verrà mai a capo delle conseguenze dell’amore.

E adesso?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

E adesso? si domandava.

— Il deserto dei Tartari, Dino Buzzati

Lentamente, un passo alla volta, sto ritrovando me stesso. Non è facile passare dal silenzio alle parole.

I primi mesi di questo 2026 sono stati un abisso da perlustrare, in apparenza senza un fondo dove potere almeno toccare. Mi sono ritirato dalla quotidianità e dal mondo esterno in cerca di qualcosa che poteva e doveva essere solo dentro di me. Mai prima d’ora avevo rivolto uno sguardo così penetrante a ciò che sono.

Nel cercarmi e ritrovarmi ho di nuovo incontrato quello che mi fa stare bene, riuscendo a viverlo con l’entusiasmo che sembrava avermi abbandonato. Affetti, passioni, le piccole e le grandi cose che riempiono la mia vita: è tutto qua. Banalmente, dove è sempre stato. Fortunatamente, dove sono ancora in grado di vederlo.

Sono rientrato nella routine a testa alta, con la voglia di credere in me e in quello che c’è. Ho ancora qualche cosa da sistemare, ma lentamente, un passo alla volta, ci arrivo.

Silenzio

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Il silenzio su questo spazio in questo inizio 2026 non rispecchia come avrei voluto cominciare il nuovo anno. Avevo in mente di leggere vari libri e scriverci qualcosina, ma le cose stanno andando diversamente.

Credo, anzi, che il silenzio si protrarrà ancora per qualche tempo, perché sto lavorando su me stesso in un modo del tutto nuovo per me. Sto combattendo contro qualcosa che non avevo mai preso così sul serio: la depressione.

Ci vorrà un po’, insomma, per riavermi qui con i miei scritti.

Perché nulla può impedire che una parte di me sia sempre vicino a te e una parte di te sia sempre vicino a me.

— Lettera a Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann

My 2025

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here we are again, with another year about to end. You have to excuse me for my silence in the last couple of months, but some things in my life needed particular attention so I haven’t had enough space in my mind to sit down for new writings on this blog.

Even now as I write these words, I am somewhat disconnected from the blank page. In my defense, 2025 has been an emotional roller coaster that I haven’t overcome yet, and I’ve got this bad feeling that 2026 is going to be a hell of a ride for quite some time.

This is to say that this year’s recap won’t look as my usual year’s recap. I’m going to highlight few, memorable things, but that’s it. No lists of any kind, then, just what was worth my while.

work

I lost my job this year, but I was prepared and in September I joined Verlata as a member of the IT department. For the first time in my life I’m working for a social cooperative, which gives a different value to my work. It also asks me to get accustomed to the fact that I won’t be providing software to car factories, banks or insurance companies.

The more I embrace my new career the more it looks like this is a change I was in dire need of. Perhaps it would’ve happened anyway, even if my previous company didn’t shut down. Or maybe not, maybe I needed to be forced into it. Whatever the case, I’m ready now.

education

Thanks to Ribellione Animale I fell in love with nonviolent communication and the world of facilitation. This has led me to join a proper course where I can challenge myself all the time with a new set of skills.

Facilitation is as much about working with a group of people as it is about discovering yourself. It’s a paradigm shift in that it pushes me to look at the world within and around me with another pair of eyes altogether.

What’s more, I’m not even halfway through the course yet and I can safely say it’s going to be a transformative experience.

music

One thing that’s been sort of constant throughout 2025’s most turbulent days is Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, revealed to me in all its intimacy by Warren Zanes’s lovely Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

It’s hard to explain why an old record combining tales of murderers with its author’s past has meant so much. Springsteen’s true intentions here aren’t really clear to me, for instance. Is he trying to sublimate his own experience through the lives of ambiguous characters? Are their stories the evil side of what his conscience is telling us? Is he just a great storyteller and there is nothing more to it?

I don’t know and frankly I don’t care either. What I do know is that Nebraska tells me something relevant to me with every song. And by the way, Scott Cooper’s film inspired by Zanes’s pages is gorgeous.

the end

It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain … remember, remember, this is now, and now and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I don’t want to blot the fear out, and blur the edges of living now. I want to become acutely aware of all that I’ve taken for granted.

— Letter to Edward Cohen, Sylvia Plath

Happy New Year.

Beating the blank page

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

You live in the problems you decided to build.

— Used for Glue, Rival Schools

Today I checked my writings directory and found a lot of unfinished stuff, all sorts of TeX files left abandoned, drafts of short stories or maybe novels I started only to feel unsure how to continue.

This is a weird pattern I’ve tended to follow all my life. As much as I’ve always enjoyed blogging, when it comes to longer writings I seem unable to proceed after a bunch of pages. Why is that? Could this be the real reason why I can’t write for a living?

I often question my ability to write. I never stop working on my style, my voice, and my choices. I also know well that I’m quite far from being a great writer, but this has never stopped me from trying my best at it.

And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that whatever I’m working on isn’t what I as a reader would really love to spend my time with. If I look closer at all my drafts, two of them strike me as projects with a structure, that is a beginning, an end and something in between. I even have chapters titles for one of them. But as I read them all over again, what is already there is not enough to please me.

My partner often tells me: “Keep writing”. Which means: “Keep putting into words whatever you have in mind and fine tune later”. This is what I usually do, though. For example, I rarely get what I want from a blog post in a single run. I may write some ideas, tweak them, leave them there for hours or even days at times, and get back to them with a fresh mind to see if it all still makes sense.

However, those TeX files are a different matter altogether and to conquer the blank page I have to identify the actual problems I have with it.

First, I aim way too high by drawing comparisons with authors I love on every line. This is the perfect recipe for failure. How is one supposed to finish a chapter when all they’re thinking about is what a different writer would do?

The second mistake I make is believing I know the approximate total number of pages I would like to have. Setting a target such as this makes me only feel distant from the target itself, because at every step my mind goes to what’s left to write to reach the ideal number.

The final and biggest issue is that I approach these writings rushing to complete them, so when after ten pages I notice I’m only halfway through the second chapter I give up and put everything aside.

Given I identified the problems, the solutions may be just around the corner:

forget about other authors and write for myself with what I have. There is always room for improvements later;
forget about the number of pages and just write anything that comes to mind. There is always room for improvements later;
sit down calmy in front of the blank page. Nobody is pressuring me to finish anything because noone is out there waiting to publish my work. There is always room for improvements later.

So, yeah, basically my partner is right and there’s really just one thing I have to do: keep writing.

Corso di facilitazione

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In chiusura dello scritto precedente avevo lasciato in sospeso una bella novità in arrivo questo mese. Perciò, senza ulteriori indugi, eccola qua: l’ultimo fine settimana di ottobre inizio il Corso triennale di facilitazione di gruppi organizzato da La Prossima Cultura.

Perché un corso di facilitazione? Perché mettere da parte la laurea specialistica per qualcosa al di fuori del contesto universitario? Il merito di questa mia scelta è tutto da attribuire a Ribellione Animale e al profondo cambiamento che farne parte ha messo in moto nella mia vita.

È in Ribellione Animale, infatti, che sono venuto a contatto per la prima volta con la pratica della facilitazione. Esservi continuamente esposto mi ha fatto capire che non si tratta solo di moderare discussioni di gruppo online o in presenza. La facilitazione porta con sé una rivoluzione culturale che in prima battuta comincia dentro di noi.

Il corso si sviluppa in tre livelli per un totale di tre anni. Mi riservo di decidere se proseguire con i livelli di approfondimento e avanzato dopo aver frequentato il livello base. Certo, aspettative ed entusiasmo sono già alle stelle. In qualche modo sento il desiderio di affrontare un percorso del genere fino in fondo, ma tempo al tempo.

In ogni caso, prometto un riepilogo a fine corso per raccontare e rivivere questa esperienza.

Con la coda dell'occhio

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Perché l’affetto quando passa non torna.

— L’arte della gioia, Goliarda Sapienza

È da un po’ che cerco ispirazione. Mi va di aggiornare il blog con qualcosa, ma tutti gli argomenti di cui vorrei scrivere mi scivolano addosso lasciando pochissime tracce meritevoli di essere pubblicate.

Sto leggendo e apprezzando molto L’arte della gioia di Goliarda Sapienza in questi giorni. Mentre lo leggo, però, la mente corre ancora a La morte di Virgilio di Hermann Broch. Un libro quest’ultimo che, pur attestandosi tra i più complessi fra quelli presenti sui miei scaffali, mi ha consegnato le più belle parole dell’anno al momento.

Nonostante mi tenga ancora piuttosto stretto Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, ultimamente ascolto con piacere due dischi nello specifico: Hard Headed Woman di Margo Price e w/ the Producers di Paul St. Hilaire. Country e dub-techno possono convivere fianco a fianco? Sì, e senza litigare per giunta.

Ci sono almeno due film che mi hanno particolarmente, e per motivi diversi, segnato nei giorni scorsi: The Life of Chuck di Mike Flanagan e Together di Michael Shanks. Sono quel genere di cinema che risveglia il mio amore per una passione che tendo sciaguratamente a tenere troppo in secondo piano.

Ognuno dei tre capoversi precedenti, a guardarlo bene, potrebbe fornire lo spunto per un pezzo più lungo. Magari anche più di uno in mani esperte. E poi, non è quello che faccio di solito? Intendo dire, non è di libri, musica e cinema che scrivo e di cui sento il bisogno di scrivere solitamente?

Non riesco a giustificare facilmente la mancanza di stimoli. Mi sento di puntare il dito contro un’esperienza complessa e ancora lontana dal potersi considerare conclusa, nella quale ho visto crescere in me l’affetto per una persona, l’ho visto travolgermi e attraversarmi, per poi prendere una direzione dove solo la coda dell’occhio può ormai percepirlo. Mentre si distanziava subdolamente l’affetto ha deciso di portarsi via qualche pezzo di me. Inutile dire che è necessario ancora uno sforzo per ritrovarmi.

Oppure c’è altro dietro agli stimoli che latitano e devo capire meglio di cosa si tratta. Dopo un paio di mesi senza impiego una nuova avventura è cominciata. È troppo presto per giudicarla obiettivamente adesso, ma se è vero che ho parecchio da fare per essere di nuovo me stesso, allora anche il lavoro dovrà aspettare per vedermi al meglio di quello che posso dare. A patto che questo sia, a tutti gli effetti, il posto dove potere essere la versione migliore di me.

Eppure, in un periodo di questioni irrisolte, ottobre arriva in compagnia di qualcosa di positivo. Annuncerò più in là di cosa si tratta così eviterò di lamentarmi un’altra volta di non avere niente di cui scrivere.

Insert date at point

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know why I haven’t shared this little helper before, but here it is.

(defun mu-date-at-point (date)
  "Insert current DATE at point via `completing-read'."
  (interactive
   (let* ((formats '("%Y%m%d" "%F" "%Y%m%d%H%M" "%Y-%m-%dT%T"))
          (vals (mapcar #'format-time-string formats))
          (opts
           (lambda (string pred action)
             (if (eq action 'metadata)
                 '(metadata (display-sort-function . identity))
               (complete-with-action action vals string pred)))))
     (list (completing-read "Insert date: " opts nil t))))
  (insert date))

What mu-date-at-point does is formatting the current date in four different ways with format-time-string and then offering them as options to completing-read.

The interesting part is how opts is built. It’s a nice trick to ensure its content is always sorted according to the order in formats. Without leveraging completion-metadata the completion system would take care of sorting the items for me.

For the record, I learned how to tweak completion-metadata on Emacs StackExchange. I suggest reading C-h f completing-read and C-h f completion-metadata to know more.

A call for systemic change

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

El que lucha por la vida nunca muere.

— Anonymous¹

I had plenty of time on the train back home after three days at the Conference for Animal Liberation in Copenhagen (CALC from now on). And I needed that time to process the amount of thoughts the conference had left me with.

Usually when I go to a conference I like to write a report on that experience.² It’s my way of recording what the event has been and has meant to me. It’s also a trivial opportunity to say “thank you!” to the organisers of said event.

However, CALC was no ordinary conference for me, and not just because, for once, it had nothing to do with the IT business. CALC has been special because it made me feel exactly where I was supposed to be, as if it was an extension and an enrichment of the sense of belonging I feel in my activism.

This was true from the very beginning of the conference. I immediately felt in a safe space when I arrived. The quiet atmosphere, the care everybody had for each and every one of us attendees, the cozy space, the breaks between sessions, the food and the workshops, the Animal Liberation March. I cannot fathom the amounts of hours that it must have taken to build such a wonderful environment, but even before the first talk started I knew CALC would end up meaning a lot more than the chance to learn something new.

Maybe it had to do with what Jake Conroy said in his final talk, when he highlighted the importance of the do-it-yourself approach and the difference that it makes when it fuels grassroots activism. You discover how resourceful you can be if you are not backed by someone, you transform what is uncomfortable into something comfortable as you struggle to make ends meet. And together with fellow activists, this can become the experience of a lifetime.

Coming sponsored by no one,³ CALC displayed the power of a community driven to a cause so few seem to deeply care about. But instead of preaching to the choir, CALC pushed hard on the intersectionality pedal in order to encourage us to think about and work for a much needed systemic change. The conference raised awareness on multiple connections that sometimes escape the movement for animal liberation.

For example, I learned a great deal about the abuse of amphibians and reptiles in China thanks to Jin Qian’s research, and I was horrified when Fernando linked cattle ranchers to civil wars in Colombia. At the same time, as Laura Broxson told us the successes of NARA and Animal Rebellion in Ireland when it comes to pig farming, I was enthralled.

Admittedly, I wanted for CALC to never really end because it looked like the beginning of something much bigger than a conference. Or I don’t know, maybe it —whatever it is— has been going on for a while and it’s just me being fashionably late to the party once again.

This quote was shown in the last slide of Fernando’s talk. ↩︎
See, for instance, Scrappy hearts and Clojure fiddles or Dutch Clojure Days 2018 round-up. ↩︎
A reference to Fugazi’s Full Disclosure. ↩︎

Pagine Animali

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Il 5,6 e 7 settembre arriva a Mantova Pagine Animali, il primo festival di letteratura dedicato al nostro rapporto con gli altri abitanti di questo pianeta.

Come No Food • No Science, vogliamo rispondere all’indifferenza di Festivaletteratura, che nonostante le proteste (nostre nel 2024 e di Fridays for Future nel 2023) mantiene come sponsor gli allevamenti intensivi e i macelli di Levoni e Grana Padano, e i combustibili fossili di Eni.

La nostra proposta è il contro-festival Pagine Animali. Tre giorni di incontri per raccontarci storie diverse: di animali che resistono, di cittadine (e non) che si organizzano contro la brutalità di un sistema cieco a tutto tranne al profitto.

Vogliamo che la letteratura sia uno strumento di liberazione e non l’ancella di un sistema economico distruttivo. Ne discuteremo con filosof* e scrittor* come Eva Meijer, Claudio Kulesko e il gruppo Ippolita, con poet* e drammaturgh* come Pietro Babina, Teodora Mastrototaro e Maria Martelli, con studios* di genere e sessualità come Carol Adams e Egon Botteghi, con artist* come Geo e Violinoviola. Gli spazi per le conferenze sono accessibili e gratuiti, e ci saranno pranzi e cene succulente ai Circoli Arci Virgilio e Arci Papacqua.

Continuiamo a chiedere a Festivaletteratura di recidere i rapporti con sponsor nocivi come Levoni e Grana Padano. Insieme possiamo scrivere storie migliori.

Ci vediamo a Mantova il 5, 6 e 7 settembre, ma puoi sbirciare il nostro Linktree per maggiori informazioni.

Ethel Cain e la mia catarsi

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Da ieri è disponibile il nuovo album di Ethel Cain, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Titolo che, nella sua semplicità, annuncia chiaramente quale sarà il tenore dei settanta minuti abbondanti di musica che ci aspettano. Senza un motivo, adoro pensare che lo si legge con l’enfasi su Always, ma può essere che io sia un inguaribile romantico. Come sempre.

Avevo grandi aspettative per questo disco, complice il fatto che sono passati tre anni da Preacher’s Daughter, una di quelle opere che entrano dal nulla nella mia vita e la sanno ribaltare con ogni singolo ascolto. Allo stesso tempo, però, Preacher’s Daugher aveva reso le mie aspettative piuttosto esigenti, per cui è difficile negare che con Willoughby Tucker (d’ora in avanti abbrevio per comodità) temevo di rimanere deluso.

Ethel Cain ha composto altra musica a suo nome oltre a questi due album, ma lei stessa considera Willoughby Tucker propriamente il suo secondo disco, perciò mi piace regolare le aspettative in base alle sue dichiarazioni. Ma, diciamolo, le regolo anche in base al fatto che niente di quello che ha fatto prima e dopo Preacher’s Daughter mi ha conquistato per davvero. Dopo tanti, e mai troppi, ascolti, Willoughby Tucker inverte questa rotta e posso tranquillamente dire che se non siamo dalle parti del precedente, poco ci manca.

Messa da parte la mia poco interessante opinione estetica, vorrei soffermarmi su cosa significa Willoughby Tucker per me in questo periodo. Di musica ne esce tanta e ne ascolto tanta, ma in che senso Ethel Cain ha contribuito alla mia catarsi? Cosa c’entra quello che sto vivendo e come lo sto attraversando con questo disco in particolare?

Senza scendere troppo nel personale, diciamo che Ethel Cain sembra stia raccogliendo pezzi che ho lasciato per strada negli ultimi mesi per comporre un puzzle che è più chiaro a lei che a me. Proprio la mancanza di chiarezza mi spinge a tornare a Willoughby Tucker ancora e ancora, perché a ogni ascolto sento un nuovo pezzo andare a incastrarsi perfettamente. Nelle parti strumentali e nei silenzi, è come se mi fosse chiesto di prendermi il giusto tempo per guardare di nuovo al puzzle con una maggiore consapevolezza.

Cosa pretenda da me Ethel Cain non mi è dato saperlo. La storia di Willoughby Tucker non è felice e solo a tratti rispecchia la mia vita recente. Quei tratti sono però quello di cui avevo bisogno, ora più che mai. Esattamente come c’era riuscita con Preacher’s Daughter, Ethel Cain ritorna per riposizionarmi nel mio percorso indicandomi una nuova strada. Si riparte, dunque. Un’altra volta. Come sempre.

Brucia, dunque disobbedisci

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I say what I mean, and I do what I say.

— Heat, Michael Mann

Uno dei più bei libri che ho letto quest’anno è A fuoco di Gianluca Grimalda, un autore portato alla mia attenzione da No Food • No Science. Ho iniziato la lettura appena prima di partire in treno per una settimana in Calabria, e tutta la vacanza ha finito per essere segnata dalle parole di Grimalda e da frequenti riflessioni dettate dalle sue esperienze.

Licenziato per essersi rifiutato di prendere un aereo, Grimalda racconta il suo viaggiare lento e l’impatto che la disobbedienza civile ha avuto sulla sua vita. Non è ovviamente solo la dimensione lavorativa ad essere coinvolta, anzi. A pagare le conseguenze dell’attivismo di Grimalda è soprattutto la dimensione affettiva.

A fuoco mescola diario di viaggio, vicende personali e ricerca scientifica. Sembra un caos, ma Grimalda tiene tutto insieme con una scrittura fluida che alterna specifici episodi del suo lungo percorso via terra e via mare per rientrare in Italia dall’isola di Bougainville a sintetiche e potenti analisi sulla crisi climatica e i suoi effetti, il tutto senza perdere mai di vista i rapporti con la famiglia.

Proprio questi ultimi sono quelli che mi hanno dato più da pensare. Dopo anni di veganismo, genitori e parenti continuano a rifiutare di prendere seriamente in considerazione le motivazioni delle mie scelte. Insistono, piuttosto, con etichette quali “radicalità” ed “estremismo”, come se il mio solo esistere diversamente costituisse di per sé un problema o, peggio, un pericolo.

Grimalda, allora, diventa un esempio e un modello di riferimento per me. Rischiare tutto consapevoli di perderlo e in nome di un valore più alto è proprio quel genere di vocazione che ci muove senza che la si possa spiegare a parole. La qualifichiamo mettendola in pratica, agendo quotidianemente nel solo modo che ci sembra possibile. Si dice quello in cui si crede, e si fa quello che si dice.

Non è un caso che abbia scelto di partecipare alla Conference for Animal Liberation viaggiando in treno sia all’andata che al ritorno. La disobbedienza è anche questa: rifiutarsi di credere che la comodità non abbia un prezzo.

Conference for Animal Liberation

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A quick announcement.

You’ll find me in Copenhagen from 29 to 31 August because I’ll be attending the Conference for Animal Liberation.

I’ve been planning this trip for a while now and I’m really looking forward to being there.

Do reach out if you want to talk about activism and veganism. I’ll be glad to share my experience and, more importantly, to learn from yours.

See you there!

Non ti dirò bugie

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

La mia scena preferita di Thelma & Louise arriva all’incirca a metà del film, quando Louise (Susan Sarandon) e Jimmy (Michael Madsen) si ritrovano in un motel di dubbia qualità.

L’iniziale tensione di Jimmy sfocia in un attimo di incontrollata aggressività, presto stemperata sia dai suoi sentimenti per Louise sia per la semplice presenza di lei al suo fianco. Jimmy si scioglie, Louise riprende il controllo della situazione e il dialogo fra i due assume toni di una dolcezza irresistibile. Poco male se il giorno dopo, come sappiamo, questa dolcezza si traduce in un amaro addio.

Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)

La recente morte di Michael Madsen mi ha riportato a Thelma & Louise per l’ennesima volta¹. Nei giorni successivi al triste annuncio, sul web l’attore americano è stato molto spesso ricordato per gli splendidi ruoli al servizio di Quentin Tarantino. Eppure, il suo Jimmy Lennox occupa un posto troppo speciale nel mio cuore per preferirgli Mr. Blonde o Budd.

Infatti, è anche e soprattutto in un personaggio minusculo eppure così memorabile come Jimmy Lennox che si può rintracciare tutta la grandezza di Michael Madsen. Chiaramente la scena descritta all’inizio non deve il suo fascino al solo Madsen. Piuttosto, a impreziosirla sono l’apparente naturalità della sua interazione con Susan Sarandon e il talento di Ridley Scott che li incastra perfettamente. Fondamentale è poi il montaggio, che alterna la seduzione di Thelma (Geena Davis) a opera di J.D. (Brad Pitt) in un’altra stanza dello stesso motel, sovrapponendo per contrasto un’intimità del tutto diversa che finisce per esaltare la qualità dei momenti tra Louise e Jimmy.

Tuttavia, cosa sarebbe Jimmy Lennox senza il sorriso sghembo di Madsen? Nel suo corpo prende vita l’incapacità di Jimmy di stare fermo mentre discute con Louise, nonché l’inspiegabile urgenza che lo costringe a puntare lo sguardo oltre la donna e oltre se stesso. Ogni volta che abbassa la testa, vinto, o che rivolge gli occhi altrove, convinto, il peso delle parole che lo investono arriva senza che a Jimmy sia necessario parlare.

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies” dice a un certo punto Jimmy, ed è così che mi piace immaginare Michael Madsen. Un attore il cui linguaggio corporeo non mente e racconta solo quello che può dire, sapendolo comunicare con grazia, senza un movimento di troppo, senza rovinare la scena cercando di imporre la propria statura.

Il cinema che amo è pieno di personaggi secondari indimenticabili, ma pochi lo sono come Jimmy Lennox. Michael ora non c’è più, ma finché ho Thelma & Louise vicino a me Jimmy ci sarà sempre.

Ho questa meravigliosa edizione Criterion. ↩︎

The chance of unemployment

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After more than eight years my journey with 7bridges has come to an end, but I don’t intend to dwell on 7bridges’s shortcomings. What is left of it will soon cease to be of any concern of mine anyway.

Instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to sit back and think about what I really want to do now. Anyone visiting this corner of the web with some sort of regularity has noticed what happened to its contents. It’s been a while since I wrote about anything IT-related and that’s because lately I’ve been finding everything IT-related to be troublesome. Simply put, IT is just not what I hoped it would be.¹

This is not to say that I’m not interested in IT any more. IT plays a crucial role in my activism and I often find myself discussing secure and more privacy-aware solutions with comrades coming from different backgrounds.

Yet the combination of activism and my BA in philosophy has led me to a peculiar position. That is, I enjoy working with people to a degree I’ve never thought possible before. I’ve discovered the pleasure of just being there for like-minded people and the rewards when I help people to get whatever they’re trying to get.

It may sound silly and naive, I know, but to someone like me, so used to sitting at a desk typing away lines of code, proper human interaction has never been a given. Note that I’m not blaming remote work for this. Out of almost twenty years spent in the IT business, remote work amounts to only a fifth of that time.

The truth is small talk is not proper human interaction for me. It can be nice, sure, but it can also be deeply boring. Most of the times it feels like everyone has to do it so we end up chatting about the same things over and over again. Maybe this is why I’ve rarely connected with colleagues on a personal level, but I’m not pointing my finger at them. It’s just me needing a different sort of people around.

I want to look at my current unemployed status as an opportunity to find myself again and move towards paths closer to what I really am. I can afford to spend some time with me instead of giving it to the next employer. Let’s treasure this privilege for once.

Every time I read the words “Emacs” and “AI” in the same sentence I cringe. ↩︎

No Food • No Science

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Questo fine settimana a Mantova, a partire da venerdì 16 fino a domenica 18 maggio, c’è No Food • No Science, un contro-festival nato per contrastare il festival Food&Science e fare emergere tutte le contraddizioni di un evento sponsorizzato dalle multinazionali zootecniche della Pianura Padana.

Fieramente antispecista e intersezionale, No Food • No Science replicherà quanto fatto l’anno scorso durante la prima edizione per mostrare che, ancora una volta, dal basso la presa di posizione politica e militante non ha intenzione di fermarsi.

Per me sarà l’occasione di partecipare a un festival che rifiuta il compromesso riformista di adeguare il dialogo verso chi non è disposto a radicalizzarsi. Mai come adesso ne sento il bisogno.

Il programma è molto ricco, consiglio di tenere d’occhio la pagina Instagram per maggiori dettagli.

Ci vediamo là.

Non sei mai cosa sei

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sono troppo destabilizzanti gli appagamenti raggiunti fuori dalla norma.

— Chirù, Michela Murgia

Non conosco tanti modi per stare vicino a un’amica in difficoltà. Ho una vita sufficientemente semplice e fortunata che per ora mi ha evitato un certo tipo di esperienza. Quella più o meno traumatica, intendo.

In assenza di particolari qualifiche mediche, il mio stare vicino è a metà strada tra una silenziosa spalla su cui piangere e una lieve sdrammatizzazione degli eventi che sto ascoltando, con il solo obiettivo di vedere l’amica tornare a sorridere nonostante tutto.

Un aspetto interessante di questo mio modo di offrire conforto è che mentre provo a mettermi a disposizione per un’altra persona vedo me stesso con occhi diversi. Non posso dire con assoluta certezza di vedermi attraverso i suoi occhi, ma è comunque un punto di vista esterno a me, uno sguardo puntato su ciò che di me abitualmente non vedo.

È come se ascoltare un’amica in difficoltà portasse con sé un insegnamento. Come se il suo dolore mi mettesse di fronte a una maestra e io, inadeguato e capace solo di impacciato supporto, diventassi il suo allievo. Va da sé che l’intenzione dietro al mio aiuto non è quella di strumentalizzare la sofferenza che ho davanti per ricavarne piacere. È innegabile, tuttavia, che più intenso diventa il reciproco scambio di parole e silenzi, maggiore è la probabilità che io scopra qualcosa di nuovo sul mio conto.

Leggendo Chirù di Michela Murgia ho ritrovato questa ambigua sensazione con una precisione glaciale. Eleonora, voce narrante e protagonista del romanzo, si propone come maestra per giovani allievi nei quali lei, e per lo più solo lei, riconosce un’intelligenza diversa dalla media. Si pone come loro mentore esistenziale, accompagnandoli alla scoperta di se stessi in un mondo il cui limite precipuo è la prospettiva che lei, dolce e severa, impone loro.

Nel fare questo Eleonora incontra e spesso si scontra con qualcosa di sé che o non sapeva di conoscere o aveva a lungo tentato di rimuovere. Così facendo, il suo passato si intreccia a più riprese con il presente. Non si tratta, però, di fornire uno sfondo storico alla vicenda. Il passato, ineludibile e rigoroso, determina ogni singolo passo che Eleonora compie, sia esso reticente o schietto. In fin dei conti Eleonora sta fuggendo dalla stessa cosa a cui ritorna in continuazione, inevitabilmente, ossia se stessa.

È interessante la titubanza con cui Eleonora fatica ad accettare di essere stata cambiata dai propri allievi. Certamente riconosce l’impatto che ognuno di loro ha avuto su di lei, e non si nega la soddisfazione di avere cambiato la loro vita, ma il rapporto con quello che rimane di lei dopo ogni allievo è un processo aperto, in perenne via di definizione. Più si avvicina a loro, più impara di sé.

Il problema di Eleonora è che la lezione appresa sembra non bastarle mai. Anche quando mette da parte il desiderio per l’ultima volta, sacrificandolo per la promessa di una sicura stabilità, sta solo tenacemente illudendo se stessa con la speranza di avere sotto controllo l’unica cosa che non riesce a controllare. La stessa alla quale, dopotutto, è costretta a ritornare: se stessa.

Chirù non è stata una lettura facile perché anch’io, come Eleonora, vacillo se messo di fronte all’ignoto in me. Accettare di dovermi ancora conoscere del tutto è la lezione che devo fare mia, unitamente alla consapevolezza che non smetterò mai di scoprirmi.

Non credo sia un caso, dunque, che sia stata proprio un’amica in difficoltà ad avermi consigliato questo libro.

Chi è infelice ha tutto da guadagnare, perché è dai baratri che si può sognare il cielo. Chi è felice ha invece tutto da perdere.

— Chirù, Michela Murgia

Una canzone in particolare

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Penso possa capitare a chiunque, in specifici momenti di una giornata qualunque, di ascoltare una canzone in particolare. A me, banalmente, succede sempre quando sembrano mancare i consueti appigli emotivi. Dunque mi rifugio in un luogo sicuro perché so che lì, anche se per pochi minuti, posso smettere di preoccuparmi del senso delle cose.

Poi quei minuti finiscono, chiaramente. È inevitabile, non importa quante volte io possa pigiare repeat. La musica a un certo punto si spegne e la canzone finisce. I pensieri, allora, riprendono il loro corso più o meno da dove si erano fermati. Rimane la certezza di poter tornare di nuovo a quella canzone in particolare, e con essa la consapevolezza di poter arrestare, ancora per qualche minuto, i miei pensieri.

Ho sempre apprezzato questa funzione, chiamiamola così, terapeutica della musica. È una funzione che, in un certo senso, la musica svolge sempre e da sempre per me. Anche quando credo che si stia limitando a intrattenermi, una canzone in particolare, in realtà, sta facendo qualcosa di più. Credo, cioè, che stia rispondendo a un preciso bisogno. A ben vedere, mi sembra andare a riempire una precisa mancanza.

Al tempo stesso, la canzone in particolare porta con sé un effetto diverso rispetto a quello provato con il ritorno a un disco in particolare. Quando torno a un album specifico, nella maggior parte dei casi lo faccio perché non ho voglia di musica nuova. Ho voglia di musica, sì, ma mi accontento del comfort del già noto. Evidentemente anche qui la musica sta rispondendo a un bisogno, ma direi che è qualcosa di meno impegnativo, emotivamente parlando.

D’altro canto, perché negli istanti di fragilità non mi rivolgo a qualcosa di più lungo e duraturo? Non sarebbero meglio i quaranta minuti di un disco piuttosto che i tre minuti e mezzo di una canzone in particolare?

È proprio il suo limite temporale, però, a rendere la canzone in particolare così significativa. Per superare un dato momento di oscurità, ho bisogno di credere che sia sufficiente una canzone in particolare. In altre parole, è come se l’oscurità possa e debba durare solo il tempo necessario per farmi ascoltare quella canzone in particolare.

Pur non avendo mai preso nota di tutte le canzoni in particolare che mi hanno aiutato ad attraversare periodi complicati, le ricordo tutte facilmente. Alcune di esse sono su dischi che oggi ancora ascolto, di tanto in tanto. Le altre sono svanite con il buio che avevano il compito di illuminare, ma non per questo sono meno importanti.

Oggi la canzone in particolare è Darkness dei Pinegrove.

Premo play, adesso.

A dopo.

A sense of belonging

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When we believe in each other, we are more likely to take risks and to invest ourselves in possibility, even when our own hopes are not fully formed. In this way, our relationships and the work of relationship building can change our sense of what’s possible.

— Let This Radicalize You, Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

For most of my life I tended to avoid people as much as possible. Since I don’t remember my parents regularly having friends over for a meal or a coffee, I’ve always considered my behaviour a trait I share with the rest of my family.

Before activism and before Ribellione Animale (RA from now on) in particular, I was set on my parents’ footsteps. In retrospect, the way I chose to live without many people around could be related to specific episodes from my teen days during which, among so-called friends, I experienced an insurmountable distance. Did I discard meaningful relationships because I was afraid to face that distance again? It’s hard to tell.

On the other hand, it’s easy to notice how comfortable I am any time I am involved with fellow activists. Why is this happening? How much does it have to do with me? I still don’t open up easily with other people, so there must be something else at play here.

I found the answer I was looking for in the beautiful Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba. In short, I’ve never felt to belong.

A strong organizing community is more than a labor force for social justice. It is an ecosystem of care, learning, relationship building, and action.

— Let This Radicalize You, Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

Not only isn’t activism as a group act sustainable without an organising community, but every single person involved has to experience what Hayes and Kaba describe as the sense of belonging.

I see this belonging as a sweet combination of multiple facets. That is, when I sense belonging the path to my self-determination is much clearer, I know in my heart we believe in each other, and I am empowered by relationships of mutual aid to the point that “it becomes less important whether or not I am unafraid”, as Audre Lorde wrote in The Cancer Journals.¹

The extent of this feeling of belonging becomes even more relevant when I compare my current involvement with RA to my previous experience with Anonymous for the Voiceless (AV from now on). If I may stretch a bit two categories offered by Hayes and Kaba, AV was mostly about connectivity whereas RA is all about political communion. Put otherwise, AV cared more about coordinating activists for the next cube of truth via text messages, while RA practices and encourages care for each other first and foremost.

This kind of solidarity is not a given, nor has it to be taken for granted just because we share some ideas and core values. Instead, it’s a process we go through every day, and it’s a demanding one. We have to show up for one another, we must be there in order for each and everyone of us to keep hoping in the possibility we are building together.

Together, we rise to deprive the monster of its simple story, and replace it with our own.

— Let This Radicalize You, Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

I’m not an organiser and yet I feel like Hayes and Kaba have prepared me with the basic resources to become one eventually. Through many voices who have known firsthand what it takes for any struggle to exist, Let This Radicalize You tells stories of resistance and pressure campaigns. Every word we read is an act of courage in itself.

Unfortunately, not all the battles are won in this book. The systemic oppression we have to deal with is too powerful and resilient to be broken once and for all. Nonetheless, the fact that everybody Hayes and Kaba discuss with refuses to give up should be enough for any activist reading these pages to do the same.

Whenever we look around us we see what’s at stake. It may feel like it’s too much, so we shut our eyes. Let This Radicalize You teaches us to keep our eyes open, instead, and to search for hope rather than despair. The truth is we can’t afford despair, not now. Yet this doesn’t mean that we can’t build alternatives towards hope.

My preferred way to understand hope is to consider it, ultimately, as nothing more than the possibility of change. And change is what we are.

The passage I refer to is quoted in Let This Radicalize You. ↩︎

Dire l'opposto

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

— Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde

Nel corso della mia carriera come sviluppatore software ho avuto l’opportunità di lavorare per varie aziende, sia italiane che straniere. Un percorso che, da un lato, mi ha impedito di crescere all’interno di una singola realtà, dall’altro mi ha permesso di conoscere tante persone. Do molto valore a questa esperienza, perché mi ha fatto maturare in modi magari non strettamente legati alla carriera professionale ma non per questo meno preziosi. Anzi.

Il mio divenire me stesso è stato accompagnato, tuttavia, da una spiacevole costante. In ogni ufficio che ho attraversato e con tutti i team con cui ho collaborato non è mai venuta a mancare una malsana dose di maschilismo.

Durante i primi tempi della mia carriera non reagivo a quanto succedeva, rivelandomi così, attraverso il mio silenzio omertoso, complice più o meno inconsapevole dei fatti di cui ero testimone. Fuggire da me e capire che stare zitto mi rendeva non meno colpevole degli altri ha richiesto, e per certi versi sta ancora richiedendo, un lungo e intenso processo.

Se è vero che grazie alla filosofia ho cominciato a guardare meglio dentro di me, è altrettanto vero che i primi incontri con l’attivismo hanno palesato l’insufficienza della mia posizione. Sono sulla buona strada, certo, ma ho fatto solamente due passi in avanti. C’è ancora parecchio da fare per superarmi.

Tuttavia, so di essere cambiato quel tanto che basta per avere rotto definitivamente il muro del mio silenzio. A titolo di esempio voglio portare un recente episodio accaduto in ufficio nel quale l’urgenza di obiettare alle parole degli altri ha trovato la mia voce.

Durante una pausa dagli schermi, alcuni colleghi si sono lanciati in una serie di commenti riguardo la presunta incapacità delle donne quando si tratta di programmazione informatica. Al termine di uno scambio di battute piuttosto divertenti dal loro punto di vista, uno di loro si gira e mi domanda: “E tu cosa ne pensi, Manuel?”

Io: “Esattamente l’opposto di quello che pensate voi.”

Il discorso è capitolato in fretta. L’autore della domanda ha provato a portare la sua esperienza a favore della sua tesi, ma non è servito a nulla visto che, per sua ammissione, si tratta di un’esperienza limitata. Al tempo stesso, di sicuro non sarà stata la mia reazione a fare cambiare opinione a lui o agli altri, ma non importa. Dissentire era necessario. Dare fastidio vien da sé.

Al di là del mio rifiutare beceri stereotipi, il problema è la normalità con cui essi persistono negli ambienti di lavoro in cui mi vengo a trovare. Una normalità convincente al punto tale che il cameratismo non solo è dato per scontato, ma non è mai nemmeno messo in discussione. Fra uomini e su temi specifici si è assolutamente certi di trovare conferma del proprio sentire nel collega di fianco, anche quando lo si conosce poco o proprio per nulla.

Io invece trovo che sia un piacere respingere determinate posizioni perché in esse non mi riconosco. È un piacere mettere in crisi la presunta convinzione di trovarsi fra propri simili e per forza di cose in comune accordo. È un piacere, insomma, causare dispiacere.

Le persone non si radicalizzano combattendo le battaglie degli altri.

— Manifesti femministi, Deborah Ardilli

Per essere contenti

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Le rondini mi vennero incontro con un grido alto di saluto: le riconobbi, erano ancora mie parenti; rapide, calavano nella strada mettendo ovunque la loro accorata disperazione. Le sentivo gridare dentro di me.

— Dalla parte di lei, Alba de Céspedes

Adoro l’accadere di una coincidenza significativa, ovvero quello strano evento che Carl Jung ha definito sincronicità di nessi acausali. In particolare, reputo adorabile che un libro entri nella mia vita, senza che io abbia pianificato il suo ingresso in alcun modo, per parlarmi esattamente di quello di cui ho bisogno in quel dato momento.

A onor del vero era un po’ che avevo Dalla parte di lei di Alba de Céspedes fra la pila dei libri da leggere. Più o meno da quando incontrai l’autrice per la prima volta su L’altra biblioteca. Senza un motivo preciso ne ho continuamente rimandata la lettura, lasciando passare mesi, forse un anno addirittura, tra le sue pagine e me. Finché all’improvviso, totalmente impreparato, l’ho preso in mano. Giunto al termine sono ancora impegnato nel tentativo di mettere ordine al caos di pensieri che de Céspedes ha suscitato in me.

La mia reazione a Dalla parte di lei deve parecchio allo stato emotivo in cui mi trovo ultimamente. Il che non significa che l’opera di de Céspedes non sappia farsi amare per mille altre ragioni. C’è di tutto fra le sue pagine: urgente femminilità e implacabile maschilismo; tradizioni in contrasto e distanze incolmabili fuori e dentro l’amore; la congenita inafferrabilità del presente e lo spettro ineludibile del passato; i turbamenti di una giovane in cerca di compromessi con una vita che non accenna a darle tregua; la guerra, le bombe, l’antifascismo. E molto, molto altro.

Ciò che ad ogni modo mi ha sorpreso a più riprese è la frequenza con cui ho scorto tracce di me stesso in Alessandra, protagonista e voce narrante del romanzo. Non tanto per gli eventi che la vedono coinvolta, perché, nonostante le somiglianze con l’Italia contemporanea e il suo prolungato volgere a destra, il tempo delle vicende raccontate è lontano da me, sia sul piano storico che su quello culturale.

In Alessandra, piuttosto, ho rivisto diverse versioni di me. Il me di un tempo, incapace di trovare lo spazio adatto per non dover fingere di essere qualcun altro, e perciò sempre fuori posto, perennemente confinato in un altrove indeterminato. Le mie poche certezze di allora hanno fin troppo in comune con quelle della giovane Alessandra. Come in lei, in me c’era un filtro atto ad impedirmi di penetrare senza vergogna la realtà.

Alessandra è però anche il me di adesso, ossia una persona che si dibatte tra istanze razionali e correnti irrazionali. Attonita, si muove parallelamente alle circostanze, le stesse circostanze che la obbligano tuttavia a prendere posizioni decise, spesso contraddittorie rispetto al suo più intimo sentire. Lei prova a fermarsi, cerca la quiete per ritrovarsi, ma la vita rilancia con passo greve il suo incedere inesorabile, facendosi via via più difficile da seguire.

Nessuno è contento. Alessandra se ne accorge in fretta e tenterà di dare una ragione a questa lapidaria persuasione. Nessuno è contento perché è impossibile esserlo mentre l’incertezza divora qualsiasi progettualità. La guerra annienta ogni sguardo lungimirante, ma allo stesso tempo le consolazioni indispensabili non sono nel passato di Alessandra. Guardare indietro è invece un gesto di rassegnazione al quale lei non vuole cedere. Si costringe avanti, piegata dai fantasmi di affetti scomparsi eppure risoluta nel suo respingere le debolezze che attraversano l’amore.

L’inquietudine di Alessandra dispiegata in Dalla parte di lei ha fatto compagnia a un sentimento del tutto simile in me. Non so se stiamo cercando le stesse cose, noi due, o se abbiamo gli stessi sogni. A ben vedere, anzi, non crediamo nemmeno negli stessi ideali. Abitiamo corpi differenti e ci rappresentiamo il mondo là fuori con sensibilità ineguali. Ciononostante, riconosciamo una crudele mancanza nella nostra vita, qualcosa di irreparabile che concede soltanto fuggevoli attimi di preziosa contentezza.

Avrei voluto rispondergli che la nostra era un’epoca in cui bisognava adattarsi ad essere contenti anche solo per poche ore, un pomeriggio, una notte: appena si poteva.

— Dalla parte di lei, Alba de Céspedes

Speculative fiction workshop

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Something is changing in my life. It’s a fuzzy feeling at the moment so I’m not able to explain it as I’d like to. It may have started last year after my trip in Leuven, or at least that’s when I first sensed new things in the air for me. But again, it’s hard to pin down what is really changing.

Mandy Brown says everything changes, and as a philosophy graduate I know there is a long history of thinkers who share her opinion. That’s why I’ve begun a long, tortuous process to carefully figure out where I am and where I want to be. Are they two different places? Am I exactly where I should be?

I don’t think so. I’ve been feeling restless since I came back from Leuven and I know something has to change in order to silence the craving cries in my head. I need to look around for opportunities to understand what is going on. Most importantly, I need to look within me and search for what it is that I’m missing.

However, I can’t do this by myself. I can be the one who sets things into motion, but I need someone to help me clarify what those things actually are before I can do anything about them. Seeking an alternative to myself is the only way to get a fresh perspective on what I can’t comprehend on my own.

Usually when I wish to clear my mind I write on my journal. I set out ideas and facts as orderly as I can, and then draw the best conclusion available to me. This time, though, I simply don’t have all the building blocks in front of me. I have some, yes, but I am struggling to put them together.

A viable solution could be reaching out to professional counselling or life coaches, and admittedly I thought about it more than once. Instead I applied to join a speculative fiction workshop.

I chose this approach because writing is who I am. Every time I write I am expressing and exposing myself, so confronting whatever is going on with me through writing can unveil new paths I haven’t found just yet. Furthermore, I’ll be doing it among people who feel in the same spot as me. Connecting with others might reveal to ourselves what we couldn’t see on our own.

Can't you write for a living?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If one wants to catch me off guard and make me feel nervous and embarrassed, one needs only to ask: can’t you write for a living? I usually have two different answers to this question, both of them unsatisfactory to say the least.

My first answer is simple and silly: I don’t know how to do it. Friends are kind enough to support me whenever I write something here, but this blog is mainly a conversation between me and someone who isn’t there. The one time I tried a film criticism course with the vague hope of becoming a member of the team behind the magazine the teacher was the director of, I felt out of place. The teacher was pleased enough with my assignments, but I wasn’t going anywhere with my film reviews. My writings sounded all very similar to me and I wasn’t really saying anything particularly interesting about the films we were asked to comment on. It was the same feeling I had experienced some years before, when I had tried my luck reviewing music records. Whenever I am constrained I struggle and can hardly deliver, an obvious sign that writing professionally is something way bigger than me. Furthermore, music and film criticism don’t pay the bills in Italy. Just ask anyone who’s been doing it since before I ever dreamt of writing for a living.

The second answer is even sillier: Work gets in the way. For one reason or another, I’ve always been a software developer. I started as one twenty years ago and, beside a brief period within a language school my partner and I built, it’s always been software developing for me. Undeniably, I’ve also been very lucky, because it’s been eight years now of me using the only software I still care about every day: Emacs. However, work is the first thing I blame for my lack of success with writing. In terms of hours I feel like I could be creative with, I often say my job steals the most valuable time of my day. But this is nonsense, of course, especially if we consider that nothing stopped me on my way to a BA in philosophy, not even office hours. Ten plus years of this blog speak for themselves as well, I guess. So what, then? Is writing the one and only thing I wish I could do for a living and I’ve been postponing since forever? What’s actually stopping me? Again, this makes me uncomfortable.

One of the reasons I keep writing every day is that the urge to do it is impossible to resist. Journaling helps me reflect at the end of the day, for instance. When I read a particularly interesting book, I need to write down whatever it makes me feel even if only to record those precious moments. Moreover, writing is my way of keeping track of myself more than anything else. This is why every now and then I browse the archive and go read some old post of mine. Do I still believe what I wrote back then? It’s a useful exercise. Just like journaling, it puts things into perspective, showing me how I’ve changed thus far. Besides, it gives me a sense of the quality of my writing, at least from my own point of view. I don’t like my early writings, for example, since it’s pretty obvious that I was struggling to find a way to translate my thoughts into English. And yet I like this blog for this reason as well, because it shows that I’ve not given up and I’ve never intended to.

Maybe this is the most important lesson I should take away here. In spite of all my fears of not feeling that good at what I do, and likely not being that good either, I’ve kept doing it. I should treasure this persistence. I should thrive on the mere fact that I simply love writing and forget about everything else.

La realtà del patriarca

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Anche con l’aiuto del senno di poi, se devo indicare il punto più basso toccato nel mio percorso di laurea triennale il pensiero va sempre alla stessa aula e allo stesso docente. Quella stessa aula in cui quello stesso docente cercò di convincerci del valore letterario di un testo che ogni aspirante bigotto deve avere a portata di mano, ovvero Il cavallo rosso di Eugenio Corti.

In un’altra occasione il docente in questione, che spesso amava interrompere il flusso della sua esposizione con baldanzosi aneddoti sul suo conto alternati a divagazioni dallo sperato effetto umoristico, si lanciò in un’aggressione verbale rivolta ad alcune università inglesi e americane. Il nocciolo della sua polemica era che in quegli atenei erano stati rimossi dai curricula dei classici greci come Eschilo perché considerati inappropriati.

Lì per lì, lo ammetto, ci cascai. Guarda un po’, mi dissi, uno che ha capito che la cancel culture è dannosa. Poi però sono tornato più e più volte alle sue parole, specialmente dopo che mi si è rivelato fino in fondo attraverso Eugenio Corti, e due considerazioni hanno capovolto la mia posizione di partenza. Primo, per il docente problematizzare gli incesti e gli stupri nei testi era del tutto fuori luogo alla luce del valore estetico in gioco. Secondo, il fatto che la donna in quei classici non di rado emerga come fragile, subordinata, appropriabile e misurabile in termini di funzione del proprio corpo, era perfettamente in linea con quello che Corti, e di riflesso il docente, pensava delle sue donne.

Mi è tornato in mente tutto questo mentre leggevo Realismo patriarcale di Martina Miccichè, il nuovo libro di un’autrice la cui voce sulla contemporaneità è fra le più interessanti in circolazione. Ad un anno di distanza da Femminismo di periferia, Miccichè ritorna, se possibile, anche più furiosa e decisa nelle sue argomentazioni, ma perché si fa carico di un peso, direi, di molto maggiore.

In Realismo patriarcale, infatti, Miccichè estende il suo raggio di incidenza tematica in modo da completare il quadro che Femminismo di periferia aveva cominciato a delineare. Se nella prima opera si trattava di riposizionarci per capire il significato più profondo dei margini e di chi li abita e vive, qui quegli spazi e quelle vite vengono riarticolate in vista di un più ampio percorso lungo il complicato e pericoloso intreccio fra capitale e patriarcato. Ancora una volta, Miccichè non si nasconde e fa di piccoli, si fa per dire, episodi privati i momenti di avvio per perlustrare quel sistema di oppressioni interagenti, come lei stessa lo definisce¹, in cui esistiamo e ignorando il quale chi può permetterselo vede soltanto fin dove vuole vedere.

La trasparenza di Miccichè, che fa della chiarezza nella scrittura un vero e proprio atto politico, colpisce e sa fare male sul serio. Ciò rende Realismo patriarcale, ancor più di Femminismo di periferia, un libro facile da leggere e duro da digerire, come sottolinea giustamente Rachele Borghi nella prefazione, quasi Miccichè avesse preso alla lettera le parole di Kafka sul testo come ascia nel mare ghiacciato dentro di noi. Ma è proprio questo il metodo migliore per comunicare verità scomode ed essere sicure che non ci siano fraintendimenti. Quello che bisogna dire va detto in modo che chiunque lo possa comprendere. Se non scrivesse per tutte e per tutti, Miccichè tradirebbe se stessa, e a me non sembra un’autrice interessata a contraddirsi per ora.

La categoria realismo patriarcale trova il suo compimento letterario ne Il cavallo rosso. Non so se Martina Miccichè abbia letto o meno Eugenio Corti. In caso negativo, mi verrebbe da consigliarle di starne quanto più possibile alla larga, ma penso che non abbia alcun bisogno di me per annusarne il fetore reazionario e reagire di conseguenza. Quello che conta è che, invece di lasciarci con un voluminoso e irrilevante monumento alla propria chiusura mentale, Miccichè preferisce intavolare un discorso faccia a faccia con noi per costringerci a riprendere in mano la storia, a trasformare il presente senza che il passato sia un impedimento in vista del futuro che davvero vogliamo.

Miccichè, Realismo patriarcale, p. 156. ↩︎

Ribelli e solidali

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Della mia recente scissione da Anonymous for the Voiceless (AV d’ora in avanti) ho già scritto, dunque non mi starò a ripetere in merito. Dicevo anche che non avevo intenzione di smettere con l’attivismo e che ero alla ricerca di una realtà più vicina al mio sentire per poterlo riprendere senza dover rinunciare a niente di me.

Bene, da ieri sono ufficialmente entrato a far parte di Ribellione Animale insieme ad alcune delle persone con cui avevo lasciato il capitolo locale di AV. Ma perché proprio Ribellione Animale e non altri movimenti o organizzazioni?

Dico subito che ci ho messo diverso tempo a convincermi che il modo di agire di Ribellione Animale facesse al caso mio. Due le ragioni in particolare:

conoscevo Ribellione Animale solo superficialmente;
conoscevo ancora più superficialmente il concetto di disobbedienza civile non violenta.

La prima ragione deriva da un uso frettoloso dei canali social di Ribellione Animale, attraverso i quali mi ero dato l’impressione, clamorosamente infondata, di un movimento interessato soprattutto a creare disturbo senza che le conseguenze di determinate azioni arrivassero da qualche parte in maniera efficace. È bastato un colloquio con il gruppo di accoglienza di Ribellione Animale per capire quanto teoria e prassi si intreccino con intelligenza e passione in tutto l’agire del movimento.

La seconda ragione si ricollega alla prima e deriva da un altro errore di valutazione da parte mia. Forse perché ancora scottato dall’esperienza negativa con AV, avevo dimenticato la storia delle vittorie che la disobbedienza civile non violenta è riuscita ad ottenere. Intralciare il quotidiano svolgimento di eventi così da penetrare nella routine delle persone per destabilizzarne la percezione, cosciente o incosciente, dello status quo e della sua complice accettazione è il modo più efficace per fare pressione sulle istituzioni che ogni giorno lo rinforzano, quello status quo, e respingono chiunque lo metta in discussione.

È da quando ho lasciato AV che non ho smesso un giorno di riflettere su tutto questo. Ho trovato utile ripassare l’operato di figure chiave come Stokely Carmichael e Angela Davis, ma ancora più utile mi è stato leggere Astra Taylor, nello specifico The Age of Insecurity e, soprattutto, il volume a quattro mani con Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Solidarity.

Proprio la solidarietà trasformativa che Taylor e Hunt-Hendrix tematizzano nel loro testo mi sembra essere la direzione intrapresa da Ribellione Animale. Una solidarietà con la quale non si tratta di fare di noi un’unità esclusiva in conflitto con un antagonista da annientare. Piuttosto, una solidarietà con cui costruire insieme uno spazio che valorizzi ogni differenza e che permetta di relazionarsi in modo agonistico con l’avversario consensualmente individuato. Riprendendo le parole di Taylor e Hunt-Hendrix, non dobbiamo mai dimenticare la capacità che l’essere umano ha di cambiare. Non è in gioco l’eliminazione di un antagonista, quindi, quanto la profonda trasformazione di un avversario.

È da qui che intendo ricominciare. È così che voglio continuare.

Waves of reconciliation

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

— The Sea, John Banville

I don’t remember where my interest in John Banville’s The Sea comes from. Considering I’ve never heard of John Banville before reading this book, it could be one of those titles that someone somewhere has passingly mentioned and I’ve felt intrigued enough to take a note before it vanished from my mind. But it didn’t take too many pages for The Sea to conquer me, so I guess John Banville would fit nicely into that particular shelf of mine where I place contemporary literature next to classics with no shame whatsoever.

Let me clear the air first. Even though I find it rather peculiar that Banville maintains to be primarily influenced by W. B. Yeats and Henry James when The Sea shows obvious traces of Marcel Proust, I didn’t start what I intend to be a journey through this writer’s oeuvre from this book because of Proust. When I picked The Sea up, it had been months since I made the aforementioned note, so I had no plan nor specific purpose behind my choice either.

After a few pages I felt greatly annoyed by Max Morden, the narrator. It’s been a while since I’ve come across a character so self-aware, arrogant, and petulant. But then it started to make sense. The disparaging comments he has for almost everyone around him serve more as the walls of his internal fortress, the barriers he struggles to overcome in order to reconcile with the past he’s searching for the present to mean something. This becomes particularly explicit when it comes to his relationship with his wife and his daughter. The deeper and harsher the contempt, the more his true feelings for them are calling for him to embrace the here and now.

However, how much can we trust Morden? He’s basing the account of his experiences on the power of his memory, but he acknowledges its limits and more than once he seems uncertain about his telling. One could say that this is how memory works in general, anyway. After all, Morden’s age at the time of his recollection could be the source behind black spots, incoherence, and the overall weakening of his mind. Yet he knows when he’s wrong, he knows when he’s adding too much or leaving out too many details.

During a delightful interview, Banville explained that were he to write his own autobiography he wouldn’t be factual, but it would be true. I don’t know about his other works, but I think this relation between facts and truth marvellously applies to The Sea. Everything Morden tells us may not correspond to actual events in his past, but this doesn’t make them any less true. Truth here is the inevitably relative positioning of a single point of view on a carefully selected set of memories. These memories are true as long as Morden believes them to be so and, more importantly, as long as in them he finds what he’s looking for. He’s not even trying that hard to convince us of their objective truth, nor is he bending the truth a little for pleasure. True for Morden is the act of exposing himself, the opening of private doors to let us in and see for ourselves how meaningful intimacy can be. And nothing is truer than intimacy.

Despite his untrustworthiness, Morden is alone and only his memories seem to keep him company now. Whenever he criticises someone or misremember a specific place or moment in time, we know he’s losing something precious and that this will keep him further away from the reconciliation he’s after. How we deal with our own past is never a simple operation of retelling. The audience doesn’t matter either. Some past is meant to be forgotten, other is here to stay. Sometimes we choose what we can let go, others we are stuck with our remembrances. The truth is that looking forward always implies looking back.

Yet for all that, I cannot rid myself of the conviction that we missed something, that I missed something, only I do not know what it might have been.

— The Sea, John Banville

A new artwork by Disagioia

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you visit this website on a regular basis¹ then you may have already noticed that my poorly customised hawthorn SVG is gone.

The new, brilliant artwork comes from the cleverly creative hands of Disagioia, an Italian artist who saw the lack of artistic skills on my side and was kind enough to spare me some much deserved criticism.

The great thing is that we share a common interest in veganism and anti-speciesism, so she immediately understood what I was looking for to make this corner of the web a bit more personal and beautiful.

Isn’t it pretty?

Furthermore, Gioia updated the Open Graph image as well, adding the right words from my beloved Baruch Spinoza.

If you enjoy her work do check out her portfolio to see what she’s capable of. I’m rather confident you’ll find something you’ll like in there.

Thanks a lot for that! ↩︎

Dalla periferia con furore

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Non so mai come qualificare il mio rapporto con i social. Da un lato non perdo occasione per criticarne la superficialità della gran parte dei contenuti e insultarli per il tempo che mi fanno perdere; dall’altro, c’è una percentuale più o meno grande di valore aggiunto alla mia vita grazie ad essi. Senza i social, per esempio, non sarei mai incappato in Martina Miccichè e non avrei mai saputo dell’esistenza del suo libro Femminismo di periferia.

Miccichè è una scienziata politica, una fotoreporter e un’attivista dall’approccio intersezionale e antispecista. Scrive una newsletter di nome Buccia e a me sembra che non si fermi mai, neanche per tirare il fiato. Chi l’ha vista presentare Femminismo di periferia dal vivo parla di serate travolgenti ed esperienze intense dove la rabbia appassionata dell’autrice emerge con tutta la sua forza.

È pur vero che bastano poche pagine del libro in questione per percepire con quale umore Miccichè stia scrivendo. Partendo dal quartiere milanese in cui è cresciuta, la Comasina, l’autrice analizza tutte le implicazioni della tremenda opposizione centro-periferia. Cosa significa vivere in centro se non essere al centro? E per converso, che impatto ha esistere fuori da esso? Dal suo essere socialmente costruita al bisogno di de-costruirla collettivamente, la relazione centro-periferia investe spazi che non sono solo geografici, ma esistenziali, economici e, prima di tutto, politici. I corpi umani e non umani intrappolati nella distanza dal centro sono segnati da una differenza che ne sancisce lo statuto ontologico inferiore rispetto a quello di chi gode del privilegio di poter usufruire del centro. Esistere fuori da esso, dunque, è anche resistere ad esso.

La restrizione degli spazi vitali e la riduzione del valore sociale di luoghi e corpi è comprensibile solo se le si osserva da più punti di vista. Miccichè, allora, lavora in modo da non concentrare il proprio sguardo su un’unica limitante traiettoria. Per capire le vite ai margini è necessario prima capire cosa sono quei margini e le conseguenze che abitandoli ci si porta dietro. Si nasce marginalizzati o lo si diventa? Si vive in periferia o si è la periferia? Il fuori messo a tema qui è un al di là del centro che quest’ultimo sceglie, ogni giorno, di allontanare sempre di più. Davanti alla periferia il centro si volta dall’altra parte, ne rifiuta le ragioni e contribuisce ad indebolirne le certezze e le sicurezze in nome di uno status quo che si sceglie, perentoriamente, di non mettere in discussione.

Genere, razza e specie sono le categorie con le quali Miccichè interpreta la periferia, ma è anche grazie ad essa che la marginalizzazione di determinate categorie può essere colta nella sua complessità. Il maschilismo che soggiace all’organizzazione capitalistica del centro si traduce ai margini con esperienze che diventano chiare solo se illuminate da chi, in quei margini, è cresciuta guadagnando, volente o nolente, la prospettiva giusta. La violenza di genere in tutte le sue sfaccettature non è una prerogativa inspiegabile della periferia, ma è resa possibile e sostenuta dal centro che, separandosene consapevolmente, le permette di svilupparsi togliendole visibilità. Il razzismo che esclude da qualsiasi garanzia sociale ed economica è incluso dal centro come necessario correlato da espellere, in modo da assicurare il livello minimo di decoro richiesto per rimanere centro in quanto tale. Rimossi, referenti assenti, gli animali non umani costretti nella macchina di produzione sono confinati nella periferia, ridotti a cose per diventare oggetti di consumo, mentre il centro antropico concede appena un poco di spazio agli altri non umani, quelli che ha selezionato per sé.

Sono cresciuto in una periferia che pensavo non avesse troppo in comune con la Comasina di Miccichè e che mi ha nascosto molte delle realtà descritte in Femminismo di periferia. Oggi che da anni vivo altrove, è solo grazie a questo libro che ho imparato a vederne tutte le contraddizioni, a riconoscerne le eccedenze, a biasimarne le omissioni. Solo adesso capisco che tutto quello che mancavo di vedere era costruito per non essere visto. Solo decentrandomi ho potuto vedere il centro.

Un avviamento qualunque

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Non mancava altro che un’occasione, una spinta, un avviamento qualunque, per ridurre le parole a fatti; e non tardò molto.

— I promessi sposi, Alessandro Manzoni

Un breve annuncio per segnalare che, a partire proprio da questo annuncio stesso, d’ora in avanti troveranno spazio sul blog articoli in lingua italiana.

È qualcosa cui stavo pensando da un po’, a dire il vero, e più di una volta mi è stato chiesto perché non scrivessi in italiano. La mia giustificazione è sempre stata la stessa, ovvero che con l’inglese avevo l’impressione di raggiungere più persone possibili. Tuttavia, può essere un bell’esercizio per me scrivere in entrambe le lingue, poiché sarò costretto ad adeguare la forma dei miei pensieri in modi diversi.

Ad ogni modo, gli articoli in italiano saranno raggruppati sotto la categoria italian. In homepage e nell’archivio l’apposita bandierina (🇮🇹) indicherà gli articoli in italiano. Un click su di essa vi rimanderà a tutti gli articoli nella suddetta lingua.

Buona lettura!

Disorderly human

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As I was reading Agustina María Bazterrica’s Cadáver Exquisito,¹ I was surprised to acknowledge my detachment from the horrific violence perpetrated against human bodies treated as edible products. Have I become so disenchanted with the reality around me that I cannot feel anything any more? Why, then, did the ending disturb me more than what came before?

The truth is Bazterrica’s book put me through a rather unpleasant ordeal. With the sole exception of a brief episode of mindless cruelty against puppies, I found myself repeatedly unmoved by passages where the processing of selected human lives into meat is described in vivid details. Yet when the final moments revealed the aberrant plan of the protagonist, I started reconsidering everything that had happened up to that point, including my feelings.

Cadáver Exquisito can be appreciated from different points of view. It’s a powerful critique of all sorts of capitalistic exploitation and a tale of cynical survivalism, both issues of the utmost relevance nowadays. Morevover, trans-feminism and anti-speciesism can help us interpret the text as a poignant metaphor of how ingrained the disregard for other’s human and non-human lives is in the self-proclaimed superior species.²

I have to admit, though, that I was a bit disappointed at first because most of the events seem to lack emotional depth. I was afraid the reader should only care about the shocking dystopia in front of them, whereas I was looking for intellectual gratification. Events are cut short, placidly placed one after the other, and descriptions are only pertinent insofar as the reader doesn’t lose track of the horror. I didn’t understand why Bazterrica is purposefully glossing over historical facts, for instance. I was craving for more information about the pandemic that created the alternative reality she’s presenting here.

However, I was wrong on multiple accounts. First of all, we experience everything in Cadáver Exquisito through Marcos Tejo’s acts and thoughts. In confining the reader to his mind Bazterrica rightly chooses only what’s necessary to render Marcos’ version of the story. The plain language Bazterrica uses is a brilliant technique to display the cognitive dissonance her protagonist needs in order to position himself at a safe distance from the flesh and blood he’s surrounded by.

Furthermore, this is precisely why the ending hit me so hard. From the very beginning Bazterrica is convincingly eroding Marcos’ privileged, reassuring position as a member of a society whose conditions of possibility he contributes to. But when Marcos reveals himself for who he actually is, every effort he has made to escape his world turns out to be a farce. Whether speciesism or capitalism are responsible for his productive and reproductive instincts, Bazterrica doesn’t tell. The system in place permeates everything around and, more importantly, within Marcos. Whatever we presumed that he was feeling about his father, his dogs, his sister or his wife is reduced to a single goal, that is ensuring the permanence of the very system he has never really been alienated from.

Once again, horror proves to be a genre capable of penetrating our reality with unconventional strength. We may refuse to accept the premises of Cadáver Exquisito because we believe in a different worldview, but we cannot avoid the unequivocal questions about our future. A future that inevitably includes our specific worldview among many others, humans’ and non-humans'.

I read the English translation titled Tender is the Flesh. ↩︎
See Valentina Greco’s Specialità umane. Una lettura posizionata di Cadavere squisito di Agustina Bazterrica in Liberazioni #58. ↩︎

My 2024

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

2024 has been a mixed bag of delight, anger, frustration, joy, and disappointment. A year of questions, connections, and self-determination. There have been many beautiful things that I know I’m going to treasure, but unfortunately they didn’t come alone.

It’s fair to say then that 2024 has pushed me to reconsider many things, myself included. How far this is going to get me it’ll be next year’s real challenge.

Anonymous for the Voiceless

In terms of emotional turmoil this has to be the central experience of my 2024.

My journey with Anonymous for the Voiceless was what I needed to finally engage with activism. It also led me to meet awesome people who make me fell less alone in my resistance to a status quo that doesn’t understand how to care.

At the same time something didn’t seem quite right to me, and when everything fell apart I understood the true nature of this organisation and decided to leave.

However, I don’t intend to stop with my activism because of this sad outcome. I only need a better project to do it, so I’m exploring options.

Bluesky

Despite all my doubts and concerns I joined Bluesky last month and so far I’ve been enjoying the experience. I found a rich community of philosophers and academics sharing worthwhile content most of the time.

On the other hand, it doesn’t appear to be an entirely safe space. I also tend to get tired rather quickly with social media, especially if I feel like I’m wasting hours following nothing in particular.

Therefore when my next round-up comes I may not be on Bluesky any more.

Books

I thought over and over again about my favourite books of 2024. It hasn’t been an easy task and I already know I’ll regret leaving some great reads out.

In order to avoid any further crime, I’m going to use a basic alphabetical order to list the most relevant titles, hence no real preference will be expressed. Here we go:

Animali si diventa (Federica Timeto)
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
Calibano e la strega (Silvia Federici)
Checkout 19 (Claire-Louise Bennett)
Cospirazione animale (Marco Reggio)
Del governo degli animali (Benedetta Piazzesi)
Dialoghi sulla religione naturale (David Hume)
Elizabeth Costello (J. M. Coetzee)
Estinzione (Thomas Bernhard)
The Fortnight in September (R. C. Sherriff)
Letteratura come utopia (Ingeborg Bachmann)
Lettere dal carcere (Antonio Gramsci)
A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara)
Malina (Ingeborg Bachmann)
Perturbamento (Thomas Bernhard)
Poesie (Paul Celan)
Under the Skin (Michael Faber)
L’uomo senza qualità (Robert Musil)

Random notes:

Ingeborg Bachmann should be a mandatory read everywhere in the world;
every book I read about non-human animals makes me a better human one;
Paul Celan will keep me busy for at least another life;
Robert Musil is the perfect excuse to avoid direct sunlight;
Claire-Louise Bennett is the right writer at the right time;
Liberazioni has become my favourite periodical.

Missing from the list are a couple of books I spent a good chunk of hours on: the first volume of Karl Marx’s Il Capitale and György Lukács’ Storia e coscienza di classe. I have yet to recover from these challenging and deeply rewarding works, but everything I’ve been learning will stay with me.

Cinema

Overall I had great times with my old passion for cinema this year. The following selection is not strictly related to 2024 films because there is always something I missed from previous years. Anyway, here it is:

All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh)
The Animal People (Denis Henry Hennelly, Casey Suchan)
La Bête (Bertrand Bonello)
Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke)
Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
The Dreamed Ones (Ruth Beckermann)
Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard)
L’étè dernier (Catherine Breillat)
Food for Profit (Giulia Innocenzi, Paolo D’Ambrosi)
Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)
Here (Robert Zemeckis)
Judas And the Black Messaiah (Shaka King)
Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud)
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Soi Cheang)
The Young Karl Mark (Raoul Peck)

Random notes:

nothing has come close to the devastating effect All of Us Strangers has had on me, and I won’t forget it any time soon;
Food for Profit should be a mandatory watch everywhere in the world;
sometimes a giant monster is all I need to be happy;
yes, Soi Cheang, I love Hong Kong cinema too;
if Karl Marx was as sexy as Peck’s version of him, why isn’t everyone a sworn Marxist yet?

Heart of Clojure

Beside confirming itself as the best conference I’ve ever been to, Heart of Clojure has had the perhaps unintentional side effect of forcing me to rethink my position in the IT world. I’ve been working on this ever since I got back from Leuven, but I have a long way ahead of me.

Other questions arose as well. Maybe one day I’ll come back to them with the proper state of mind and I’ll share my findings.

Music

What follows is a chart as temporary as any other, apart from the first two spots which are by miles the records I needed the most this year. Without further ado, then:

SEI ALMENO UN PO’ FELICE? (Olympia Mare)
Diamond Jubilee (Cindy Lee)
Brat (Charli XCX)
This Could Be Texas (English Teacher)
All of This Awaits You (Swami And the Bed of Nails)
stillness stop: you have a right to remember (Any Other)
Make It Fit (Karate)
Light Sides (Angie McMahon)
A Polaroid for Christmas (Memoria Polaroid)
Revival of a Friend (Sour Widows)
Searching (Staples Jr. Singers)
Where Next? (Sandwell District)

Random notes:

the deluxe edition of The Get Up Kids’s Something to Write Home About made me cry ten seconds after the vinyl started spinning;
a Marta Del Grandi’s concert proved that she is truly from another planet;
I’ve been listening to Pinegrove for an insane amount of hours in the last few months. I miss them so much.

University

There is little I can add to what I wrote already, so let me just say one thing. A younger version of myself couldn’t understand the value of studying at university. That boy had to undergo trials and errors, but he got there eventually. So much so he can’t really stop now.

To be honest in the last month I’ve had some doubts about what I really want to pursue with my studies. I’ll come back to this as soon as my mind is clear. For now, I see interesting paths in front of me.

Self-creation and auto-fiction

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yet in my heart I was bereft, grieving — homesick for a place I had never seen. For a place that doesn’t exist, yet I belonged there nonetheless.

— Checkout 19, Claire-Louise Bennett

Auto-fiction is an intriguing literary genre. Part fiction, part autobiography, whenever I read a book that falls under this category I feel like I’m having a terrific conversation with its author sitting next to me. This is beautifully achieved by writers that I love such as Marcel Proust or J. M. Coetzee, but I had a wonderful time listening to Elif Batuman as well.

I’ve recently experienced a somewhat similarly pleasant feeling with Claire-Louise Bennett’s Checkout 19. I needed something to take my mind away from the dark places The Bell Jar and A Little Life had built for me, but I wasn’t expecting to be so captured by Bennett’s work.

This is due first and foremost to Bennett’s writing style. Whereas, say, Elif Batuman clearly unfolds events as she ventures to explore and perhaps relive her past in chronological fashion, Bennett lets her pen move on a seemingly free ride. Which is not to say that she’s ransacking her memories randomly and without a clue about the best way to organise her recollection. She isn’t trying to make the stream of consciousness hip again either.

Bennett is recreating herself thanks to the power of language. Instead of listening to her sardonically presenting her coming of age to us, we watch as word after word a storyteller is born. More importantly, we’re not here to witness passively the creation of her own self. Provided we are conscious of the process, we actively participate as we read along. I, for instance, found myself trying to make sense of all the literary references Bennett spreads with adorable confidence throughout the book. I kept track of all the names and the titles I don’t know, but at the same time I was seeing my upbringing as an avid reader mirrored on the pages. When a specific book meant as much to her as it meant to me I couldn’t hide a smile on my face.

This is close yet not the same as the experiences one may share with the protagonist of a novel, being them their author’s alter ego or not. Checkout 19 has of course episodes one can link to their own, but it’s more interesting to observe how Bennett’s writing is shaped by the literary world she builds for herself. The metaphor she chooses, the stories she starts telling abruptly in the middle of a chain of thoughts, not to mention the stark beauty of the sounds carefully picked syllables make. Her mastery of the language is put to test by her own imagination and as we accompany her we detect the challenge with delectation.¹

Is Checkout 19 a challenge on purpose, then? Quite the contrary. Once we’ve adjusted ourselves to the detours, we understand that there’s only one road ahead of Bennett and it’s waiting for us. Modernist and post-modernist writers knew that our thoughts rarely follow straight lines, and so does Bennett. But instead of tracing all the possible combinations on an impossible map, her cartography is simpler and gentler. At all times we are where she wants us to be. We’re lost only insofar as she’s lost. We are literally on the same page.

How much of Claire-Louise Bennett we find in Checkout 19 is not really important. In the end this book is more about the never-ending and transformational processes of language than a rigorous collection of facts we need to put together to have a precise biography. What matters is the spaces Bennett creates for us to fill. The more the blanks in common, the more we share in our own journey of self-creation.

Certain written words are alive, active, living — they are entirely in the present, the same present as you.

— Checkout 19, Claire-Louise Bennett

The last sentence is a little homage to one of my favourite lines of Checkout 19, which says: “each holding their own delectable though not always readily detectable specimen”. ↩︎

Anonymous for the so what

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Not long after I questioned myself and my assumptions about Anonymous for the Voiceless (AV from now on), chaos ensued among the Italian organising team. This is incredibly fascinating.

The situation is rather foggy at the moment. Most of the people are preparing themselves to leave AV behind, but so far, to the extent of my knowledge, there have only been meetings and heated discussions. Some of the activists I’ve talked to agree with me that something has to change, because whatever is going on hints to a toxic environment we don’t want to be a part of any more.

I don’t intend to indulge in personal attacks and random witch hunting. My doubts and concerns about AV were already there, way before the last few days of rage and desperation. From where I stand I have a limited point of view anyway, so it’s impossible to point at official culprits with absolute certainty. Nor do I need to, to be honest.

What is really important to me is how everything I’ve read about AV since the moment I started questioning it has been turning out to be true. For instance, the lack of a clear communication on how the money is managed tells a lot about the level of consideration AV has for the activists in the streets. In a recent online meeting I was reminded of the top-down hierarchy behind AV as something I am supposed to silently agree with in the name of the greater good. My refusal to act as a grovelling sycophant was deemed aggressive and unhelpful. To be fair, yes, I reacted with loud anger, but I cannot suffer obsequious smiles and selfish connivance. This, more than anything else, caused my outburst.

And yet I wasn’t expecting the proverbial shit storm I’ve witnessed in the following days. But again, I’m not interested in the gory details behind a fight of egos. The fact that there is a fight in the first place matters here. Since this doesn’t look like a disagreement that can be solved with rational discussions, all of it is just the surface of a deeper problem within AV with which nobody around me has ever wanted to engage before.

Not that I can be excused here. When I joined AV, I too was impressed by their online videos. Driven by the righteousness of the cause for non-human animal liberation, I complied and accepted their modus operandi without paying too much attention at what was going on behind the shiny facade. Now I can only wish I had started the questioning of my actions and those of AV sooner.

On the flip side, there is a valuable lesson for me here. Every form of activism I am embracing from now on needs to be closely examined before I start. I need to avoid assumptions and compromises. I need core values aligned to my own. I need honesty and proper cooperation. I need people on a common ground, not arguably benevolent dictators and obliging pawns.

Larger than life

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Every time I finish a renown classic, I fear that the next book will never match my expectations. It’s silly, I know. It’s also, I think, what the Italian school system has left me with thanks to its relentless praises for a supposedly glorious past. The old, they imply, is always better than the new. A lesson forever rooted in me.

Contemporary literature, however, is full of works that happily and shamelessly I place on my shelves next to Marcel Proust and Ingeborg Bachmann. Among these, I’d say Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life fits nicely if only because, to a certain extent, it seems to naturally complement and expand upon Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

This is not to say that Yanagihara is following Plath’s steps. It’s easy to tell their books apart, since there are all sorts of differences such as their writing style, the point of view from which the story is narrated, and Yanagihara’s rich assortment of characters versus Plath’s claustrophobic soliloquy.

Essential qualities notwithstanding, at the same time it’s impossible to keep the trajectory of Jude St. Francis’s story in A Little Life apart from Esther Greenwood’s in The Bell Jar. Plath is less direct and more enthralling, perhaps. For instance, we hardly know Esther as we turn the last page. Yanagihara, on the other hand, gives the reader plenty of time to know Jude. Everything happening in his own little life has an enormous impact on everyone who loves him, and we get to see how far the consequences of one’s choices and actions reach, in what way they defy control.

And yet both Esther and Jude don’t progress on a straight line. Both books create this gripping tension where we slowly give up expecting improvements in Jude’s and Esther’s condition. We cannot consider them safe from harm. Maybe Jude experiences more relief than Esther, especially when he finds love, but as we follow the non-linear unfolding of the events we get to understand how painful and traumatic Jude’s past has been, how it has shaped him and never ceases to do so.

In order not to forget that there is never just one life at stake, that we are who we are because there is always someone else who determines changes in our selves, Yanagihara intersects the story of Jude with those of his dearest friends, each of them unforgettable in their own way, each of them with a unique, privileged access to Jude. We learn to understand him better through their eyes, but their relationships with him lead us to a better understanding of his friends as well.

Through multiple angles, then, Yanagihara accompanies the readers in and out the lives of her characters. She also uses her inquisitive lenses to explore violence, abuse, rape, self-inflicted scars, pedophilia, and self-consciousness. The physical and psychological hell she puts us through can be demanding at times, but as ruthless as some of the cruelest episodes are, moments of uncompromising love and joy tie us close to these little lives. I’ve never met a person like JB and probably never will, but this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to. It doesn’t mean he’s any less real than me.

This is why it’s easy to relate to these characters, and I do enjoy this feeling of familiarity. I enjoy it so much, in fact, that spotting myself on the pages has become some sort of a game I like to play any time I’m reading. Usually, though, hints of my own personality are scattered among multiple characters, but it’s still fascinating to discover just how ordinary I am, how things I think only peculiar to me are actually out there for anyone to have. It’s something that projects me into a wider space beyond myself.

When Yanagihara allows her characters to experience the open, breathing web that holds them together, she is making them realise that they’re still part of a larger world. The more they look inward, the more they fail to see what is waiting for them. In other words, they’re never alone. Much like Esther Greenwood really wasn’t. Much like we never are.

A space in question

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Only by imagining the impossible will it be possible to transform the unacceptable.

— Paul B. Preciado¹

The day I acknowledged I wasn’t doing enough for what I believe in, I didn’t really weigh my options thoroughly. I knew I had to leave my desk and move beyond learning about non-human animals liberation from books, that much was clear. But it doesn’t mean I stopped reading on the subject. I never do.

Soon after joining Anonymous for the Voiceless (AV from now on), I found plenty of criticism concerning this organisation. This criticism is easy to look up, so I won’t point you to sources which may or may not be out of date when you read this, and I’ll also let you decide what to do with it. I for one think it’s necessary to question everything I do and reasoning about the meaning and value of my actions, which includes how I choose my activism to be. As much as I understand the limits and the problems of AV, however, I know in it I have a space where I’m finally able to accept myself for who I am.

This is not to say that the criticism I read did not make me reconsider my position. Nevertheless, the only way for any criticism to be effective is for it to come from within the boundaries of its object, that is where context matters. From there change can be highlighted, pushed forward, and eventually become reality. Otherwise we are only pointing fingers and shouting, something that won’t lead us very far any time soon.

And yet I do believe something has to change in AV if it wants to take non-human animals liberation seriously. If it doesn’t change, if it isn’t open to discussing its assumptions and opts to stand still, then nothing is ever going to happen. Again, context matters. Without the proper context, criticism may fall short. But without the proper context, AV is missing the broader spectrum of the fight it wants to be a part of.

This goes back to the limits I see in this organisation. The core of its approach is the so-called outreach, which is a way for us to engage passers-by in a conversation about the images of carnage we display. AV defines a protocol that activists must follow in order for the outreach to be successful. But what does it really mean for an outreach to be claimed as successful?

Much as any other activist in AV, I too watched its online workshops to understand what I was supposed to do in the street. One thing I’ve always found rather peculiar in these videos is the confrontational attitude that members of AV use during outreaches. Most of the time I saw activists orchestrating the exchange with their interlocutor like it was a debate they already knew how to win. Is winning a debate the point of the outreach, then?

Conducting yourself in this way can be off-putting or unreasonably intimidating for the person in front you, and thus eventually ineffectual. It also ignores the context from which that specific person comes. By treating everyone consuming animal products as one abstract, undeniably guilty entity, we are missing the opportunity to actually listen and understand each and every person there with us. We are, in fact, missing everything that is worth discussing, which is a scope much larger than that of an individual experience. We are missing what makes it possible, how it is put into place, and why it is exactly the way it is.

At the same time, I believe AV places me as an activist in an interesting position. Whenever I start a conversation with someone who stops to look at our screens, I’m grateful for the time this stranger is taking out of their life to at least, and perhaps unconsciously, accept that something is not right. I consider their willingness to sustain the horror an opportunity and not a challenge. This is our starting point, theirs and mine. From here, we can try to build something. We can become aware of power structures we have never considered before, we can question our biases, we can try to look at our society from the point of view of the non-human animals we trapped in it. It’s not about winning an argument, for me. It’s about normalising together the work towards an argument for a better world.

But AV has also shown me something I wasn’t prepared for. Not to this extent anyway. Our local chapter has introduced me to amazing people who never stop encouraging each other. When activism becomes tiring, demanding, disheartening, as it can be when everyone else seems to think the opposite, they’re always there to pick me up. They remind me of our purpose just by being who they are, they embrace me as one of them without asking anything in return. In the small town where I live, chances to meet people like these are not that many, and I can never underestimate a thing this precious. We are a group that moves as one not because rules force us together. We stand together as one because we all share the same sparkle. We want change. We want liberation.

My only wish is for AV to one day realise that unless liberation comes for everyone, nobody will truly be free.

From the introduction to the Italian edition of Terror anal. (Translation mine) ↩︎

Small is good

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I like to think it’s not a coincidence that, as this website is about to approach its tenth birthday, I happened to read Philippa Markovics’s words on blogging.

I grew up during the heyday of the blogosphere. RSS was the new hot thing, and there were so many nice, quirky, weird, and interesting websites to subscribe to. Most of them are gone now.

This is so true for me as well. I used to follow all these beautiful blogs about random topics such as Thai cinema and Italian jazz. I don’t know whether social media or real life are to blame for their disappearance, but I do know I miss these places a lot.

Part of the reason why I made this website as small as possible is to keep that old spirit alive. True, I also did it because it makes maintenance simpler. However, I love the fact that whenever a random reader comes here they only have my writings to focus on and, if I’m lucky, the contact options they can use to get in touch with me.

It may seem like I’m not offering much because I lack the skills to build a prettier website, and yeah, maybe this is true as well. For instance, among the websites Philippa highlights as their favourites I already know and love two of them: Todepond and Trivium. I don’t have the creative talent to design something as pleasant as Philippa’s, Lu’s or Leah’s work, but it’s OK.

I know that every reader who for whatever reason lands here has no chance to feel lost or overwhelmed by irrelevant content. What I write is what they get. What they get is just me.

My own private bell jar

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It never occurred to me to say no.

— The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

At the moment I cannot name a book with a more devastating effect on me than Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Until recently, Plath was one of those authors I only knew by name and brief anecdotal facts. But instead of wishing to have met her when I was younger, I content myself with the mere fact that I will never forget her novel.

As I was turning its pages, more often than not it seemed like The Bell Jar was reading into me. This is not an entirely new sensation, because other writers are just as capable of intimately piercing prose. Plath, however, has the rare power of poets, the unattainable talent for molding images and letters into unexpectedly perfect shapes. Paul Celan, for instance, acts in the same way on me. These artists only need few, precise words to express with delicate severity the sort of feeling one experiences during uncomfortable situations, that is when in their heart they know what they are going through but at the same time they are utterly inadequate at describing it. This is something that happens to me all the time. When it does, I usually prefer a wall of silence rather than trying unconvincingly to collect one hazy sentence after the other. Reading Plath makes me fully aware of how nearly impossible is to master the art of language.

Nevertheless, despite her ability with words, Esther Greenwood, the novel’s protagonist and Plath’s alter ego on paper, can never grasp the world she lives in. She is actually telling the story of the irreconcilable difference between herself and everything else. The introspection, though, is not instrumental to a better understanding of the world, or of herself for that matter. She doesn’t try to make sense of anything at all, because the world simply moves at another pace altogether. She is young, her intellectual heft and emotional depth are out of question, and yet peace, comfort, and ease don’t have a place for her. Her sliding into depression is shockingly natural, since there doesn’t seem to be any other option available to her. I don’t think ever before had I wanted so desperately to hug a character and being of any help.

I was taken aback at the sudden realisation that I was accepting her deteriorating state of mind as something inevitable. The point is that the bell jar trapping Esther works in the other way too. Family, friends, ex-lovers, doctors, and us readers, everyone is locked outside of the bell jar. She is alone. She sees through the bell jar, but nobody sees her. They watch her, instead, unable to help her out of there, pointlessly moving around her solitude.

How much Esther is aware of the full extent of her condition I cannot say. She rejects any sort of attempt at lifting the bell jar. She is defenseless, obviously, but she somehow knows that whatever everyone is trying to do for her is not the right thing. This is a character truly out of their time, which doesn’t imply that were Esther to be born in a different age her life would have been easier and painless. In fact, I don’t think Esther could ever been saved, here or elsewhere. The categories and intellectual structures she has at her disposal aren’t suitable for a world that reduces everything setting itself apart from the norm to a mistake to be fixed or a disease to be cured. Esther is a question mark in a world full of assertions and descriptions that make no sense unless we accept the bell jar for what it really is, which is the reason why we don’t understand each other.

R. C. Sherriff and Lake Garda

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The most unequivocal sign that in a previous life I was something other than a techie is not my involvement with philosophy, but the mere fact that it takes only few words on a page to turn my day upside down. Yesterday I finished reading R. C. Sherriff’s The Fortnight in September and although it did not match the expectations that some rave reviews had built up for me, it did manage to catch me off guard on several occasions. No wonder I cannot stop thinking about it.

Sherriff’s story is tremendously simple. The Stevens have been going on holiday for fifteen days in September since forever. Every year they travel to the same place: same trains, same streets, same guest house, same beach, same sea. Everything is carefully planned and everyone tries their best to behave according to the plan. Sherriff captures the poetry of the most trivial routines of the Stevenses from the very beginning, framing with consummate elegance their vivid joy about apparently banal accomplishments, as if no surprise is in itself a reason to be happily surprised.

But Sherriff is even better at understanding the anxiety of his characters and the tragedy of their nostalgic attempts at stopping time by trying to preserve everything as it has always been, when in fact, little by little, all has changed, the characters themselves first and foremost. The question of time, the fear of missing a chance, the anxious contempt for wasted opportunities, the impossible dreams of escape: for a Marcel Proust lover this is all too familiar and more than welcome. What I find even more interesting, and what really makes The Fortnight in September a special book for me, is how I can relate many of the people and the events in these pages to my direct experience.

When I was little, we used to spend every summer in a small place near Lake Garda. We didn’t stay for more than a day, because it wasn’t that far from our home so it was cheaper to get there early in the morning and be back right after dinner. The fierce regularity of this trip was so similar to the Stevenses’. My mother, the female version of Mr. Stevens, always packed the same lunch and made sure we always left the house around 7am in order to claim the same spot on the beach before anyone else. In the evening, she always had a table reserved in a cozy restaurant nearby for a pizza. The first two years there was a kid with whom I played a lot. We took crazy dives from the jetty in order to splash all sorts of people, German tourists in particular, who, according to us, had to walk around soaking wet. There was a small arcade where I usually went after lunch, but now I am sure it was a trick my parents used to keep me out of the water for a while.

It’s funny remembering all of this now. Along with the memories come the mixed feelings Sherriff describes with beautiful insight. The first summers everyone was so enthusiastic to be leaving for the lake. Then, as I was getting older my opinion on this trip changed. I started feeling like I didn’t want to be reassured by the comfort of a familiar place any more. Every year the beach, the arcade, the jetty looked different to me, not just because I was less and less interested in these things, trying to act like a grown-up already, but because they served as reminders of habits I was ready to abandon. I wished for new thrills, new adventures.

At the same time, only now I understand how important that small place was for my parents. Much like Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, my parents were not using that beach as a simple escape from their days of work. They were putting every inch of themselves in moments they wanted to last forever. They were trying to have something worth remembering because they knew, deep within their hearts, it wasn’t just the arcade or the jetty ageing quickly. Fighting through anxious routines the inevitable changes with which time challenges the solidity of a family, they wanted us to stay together one more time.

The jubilee of Cindy Lee

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Look in the mirror
A face you know too well
If this is heaven
I’m going straight to hell

— Golden Microphone, Cindy Lee

I’ve started writing this blog post at least five times already, looking for the best way to dive into my reflections on Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee. The old-versus-new angle, the time-versus-engagement perspective, and the double-disc-in-this-day-and-age point of view are but a few of the beginnings I’ve tried. Every single time the opening paragraph felt wrong, leading to nothing in particular and thus being utterly useless.

The thing is Diamond Jubilee had its moment earlier this year, when everyone in the music business was talking about this seemingly absurd record, repeating the story of its origin over and over again. Sure, the release on GeoCities and YouTube, the fuck Spotify! stance of its authors, even the US tour cancellation, all make for great anecdotes, but why does Diamond Jubilee have such an impact on me?

To a certain extent it’s precisely because of everything surrounding it. The /r/cindylee subreddit, for example, full of people sharing everything and more about Cindy Lee, has thrown me back to a time, almost fifteen years ago, when my partner and I had a blog on all things Neutral Milk Hotel. We translated lyrics into Italian, wrote news and thoughts about Jeff Mangum’s future, and got in touch with amazing people overseas who kindly sent us rare live footage. I’m deeply fond of that pre-social-network period of the digital era, even though I know it’s easier in today’s web to find like-minded strangers. Anyway, when music channels people’s enthusiasm beyond the mere pleasure of listening, I’m always moved. This is the pure energy that music delivers no matter one’s opinion of it, its raw power able to cross physical and psychological distances.

Furthermore, Diamond Jubilee makes me feel like I felt when I fell in love with the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. These are two of my all-time favourite records and they happen to be long and unafraid of pushing stylistic conventions to their liking, much like Cindy Lee’s daring venture into the sublime does. A long album is like an invitation to enter a special place, a place whose owner is confident enough to ask for quite a lot of one’s own time so they can unfold an unorthodox amount of tales for them. I have but the utmost admiration for artists who truly believe that people will appreciate their willingness to share so much with them.

Speaking of actual content, if one trusts the press then Diamond Jubilee is otherworldly and unique, either an experimental rendition of Twin Peaks’ sounds re-engineered by Phil Spector’s machinery or bubblegum pop for the end of the world. To me Cindy Lee are delivering a lonely goodbye, written for everyone and spelled to nobody. I feel alone when I listen to Diamond Jubilee, and I get the impression that its authors feel alone too. Some say that this is a nice soundtrack for an on the road trip to somewhere far, but I’d rather not drive to these songs because I know they’d point me towards a different direction, eventually taking me to an unpredictable destination. Whatever Cindy Lee sing about seems to come from people who are tired of everything, sounds and words echoing each other to no avail. When the voice leaves and the instruments develop the melody, I am put in a room with the eerie sensation of being lost in a space I should know by heart. If this is Cindy Lee’s idea of jubilee I wonder what exactly they are celebrating here. Whether it’s their demise or the world’s, I see no diamonds. I only hear them.

Scrappy hearts and Clojure fiddles

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The room is slowly filling up with attendees, organisers and volunteers are moving around to check that everything is where it is supposed to be. I recognise some faces, I spot a couple of speakers. I keep looking around eagerly as if I wanted to take it all in right here right now. This is not my first Clojure conference, and I do hope it will not be the last, but as I sit I feel the same rush of emotions I have only felt once before, back in 2019. It was Heart of Clojure then. It is Heart of Clojure now.

“What does it mean to be here?”

This is a question I would end up asking myself over and over again while in Leuven. While I am back home writing this, I am not sure I have found an answer just yet, so I want to go over the last few days to see if I finally have a reply to that question.

But first, a caveat. If you are looking for a review of the conference or a report on its program, this is not it. I am sure plenty of useful feedback is already popping up around the web and many more will come out along with pictures, videos, and what have you. This writing, however, will mostly be about me and what Heart of Clojure meant to me.

With that out of the way, let’s dig in.

Heart of Clojure was bigger and stronger this time. There were two locations where talks, sessions, workshops and all sort of activities took place. But the conference was bigger and stronger in another, more intimate sense too. The first edition had already been the people’s conference. This time it was as if the organisers had wished not only to up the ante, but to make sure that everyone followed suit. And using two locations for the event had much to do with this.

Since there was always something going on, people were kindly asked to move freely from one place to another. In the rare occasion when nothing was happening, that nothing was just an illusion. Within the locations, in the halls while waiting for the next talk, outside on a bench for a break, or in the street walking to another session, people were literally everywhere, and anywhere a nice chat might start. Even an introverted such as myself could not resist this welcoming energy.

On the other hand, I also avoided many nice occasions to meet a new person or enjoy a friendly conversation. Too shy? Maybe. Too overwhelmed? Indeed. It is not easy for me to take in everything and everyone all at once, my body and my mind simply refuse to comply, I get awkwardly silent and I do not like to be around people when I feel this way. So I needed my breaks, I needed my walks alone around Leuven with my music.¹ I do not know if the organisers had planned for this kind of attendee, but to me it looked like they did. I had time both for myself and the conference, my walks and the people. I realise now that a conference such as this might not be for everyone, especially for the ones who usually like to pile up as many talks as possible, but that is not me. And I am glad Heart of Clojure somehow took care of me.

“What’s your take away from the conference?”

I was asked this question yesterday, on my last day in Leuven and the day after Heart of Clojure had ended. I did not have to think too much to answer. Lu Wilson put it nicely in their outstanding keynote, but they did deliver it directly to me with even more power in a short² conversation one evening. When I write, whatever I write, I have to be comfortable with sharing sides of me, otherwise simply feel OK not doing so. Balancing tiger with rhythm of tortoise, as Angie McMahon sings.

This self-reflexive state of mind became a constant throughout the whole Heart of Clojure not long after the two opening keynotes had ended. My position in the field was shaken multiple times as I was listening to Lu Wilson and Anna Colom. Am I doing the right thing? Am I not questioning enough the work I do? Am I not open enough, aware enough, serious enough? Am I putting my effort and my rather basic set of skills where they should belong? Miranda Kastemaa (a.k.a. pulu)’s live set felt like the much needed relief.

“What does it mean to be here?”

Back to the original question. I sense no single, unequivocal answer to it. Heart of Clojure made me connect with beautiful people, made me conscious of my limited space and time, filled me with smiles and doubts, words and code, prose and poetry. More than once people said that this conference had contributed to pivotal changes in their lives. What if just by setting my foot in Leuven in the past few days something has been set into motion?

Mostly Angie McMahon’s new Light Sides EP and The Ex’s new Great! / The Evidence, but some old favourites like Pinegrove and Fugazi found their way to my ears. Comfort music, so to speak. ↩︎
Because of me, not because of Lu. ↩︎

Words and the other

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I wanna take up space.

— Angie McMahon

I do not often think about why I write. I usually write in different places for different reasons, and not everything I put into words is meant to be read by someone else. There is this very blog here, of course, and there is also my Bujo notebook where notes, tasks, and all sorts of rants are stored.

Lately I have found myself sending small comments on the films I watch to a friend. It started off as a joke about my love for cinema, but they greatly underestimated my desire to share. Nothing serious, though. Five, maybe ten lines containing my thoughts on a film and that is it.

Nevertheless, after a while I noticed something. I noticed that when I am explicitly addressing somebody, I write much better. Maybe it has do with my language of choice. The small reviews I send are all written in Italian, which is the language I feel more confident with when I write, especially after some years at university. Or maybe it has to do with the feeling of having someone truly on the other side, someone I know and with whom a certain degree of confidence has been established prior to the exchange.

The things is, unless it is in my notebook, I always write for somebody other than me. This blog, for instance, is clearly not just an excuse for English practice. When I write, I am looking for a kindred spirit. I share not because I want everyone to know I care a lot, but because I wish to reach people who care enough. Recent experiences have showed me that I had been looking too far away. Deep and significant connections demand shorter distance and physical presence.

This is not to say that long-distance friendships never work. I have been into one for almost twenty years, and every time I receive news from this friend it is an emotion in and for itself. We both know, however, that a phone call, a message, or an e-mail will only take us so far. Our lives follow paths that never cross, thus we end up writing each other recaps in which one of us is not really a part of.

For my writings to mean something I must look elsewhere, somewhere closer to my blank page than I thought. Will this realisation lead the blog towards another direction? I am not sure yet. Most probably I will not stop writing in English, but even if I see room for updates in Italian from now on, I also need to understand what makes sense to share and what does not. One thing will not change, though: I will keep writing.

An MA is on its way

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 06:12:50 +0000

Many people have to be persuaded that studying too is a job, and a very tiring one, with its own particular apprenticeship - involving muscles and nerves as well as intellect. It is a process of adaptation, a habit acquired with effort, tedium and even suffering.

— Antonio Gramsci

Although a couple of months have passed already, my BA in Philosophy feels like yesterday. I am still processing this achievement, and yet I have decided to pursue an MA in order to continue the wonderful journey as a part-time student, mostly because I feel like I have only touched the surface of a vast ocean of knowledge. Therefore, next week I will be back in the classroom and once again ready to spend my evenings with more books than usual.

I have often been asked why I am doing this and how it is going to affect my professional career, but this is the wrong way to look at my endeavour. Usually one’s studies are strictly related to one’s future job(s). However, not everything we learn has to be measured in terms of money. I have always, always loathed this simplistic view that reduces all knowledge to a bag of tricks one can leverage to earn a salary. Put otherwise, what is wrong with learning for the sake of learning?

This is something many find hard to digest, accustomed as we are to a society that links price and value of something inextricably together. Moreover, I work in a field where philosophy is either frowned upon or used just as an abstract label for self-help literature or the misleading words of online moralists.

I am in no way interested in fixing this situation. First of all, I keep my day job as a Clojure developer and my philosophy student’s life separated. I respect my co-workers for their programming skills, but I would never embark in a discussion about Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations with them, much like I do not expect the person next to me in the classroom to appreciate the finesse of my Emacs configuration.

Furthermore, I have never considered philosophy as a standard school subject. How it has changed me is not related to the amount of concepts I have memorised nor the pleasure I experience when reading it. The change in me is the result of the combination of theoretical exercise and thoughtful practice. Since I started to understand what philosophers mean in their writings, I have also started to think and act differently. I find myself more concerned with the world around me and at the same time capable of comprehending it a bit better. This immediately translates into tangible consequences: I see problems where I did not before and I know I can do something about them.

An MA is the obvious prosecution along this path of ethics and praxis.

Philosophy is its own time apprehended in thoughts.

— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Fake nostalgia is the real emo

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Friday, the 25th anniversary edition of The Get Up Kids’ Something to Write Home About came out. It was an incredibly emotional moment for all the people who had been there in 1999 when the record was first released. Late ’90s saw the rise of nu metal on the charts, brit pop stepping aside to let Radiohead in, Britney Spears moving hearts and bodies, and music download seriously taking off courtesy of Napster. Something to Write Home About seemed unaware of all this and some people loved the record even more for it.

At least this is what I heard and read over the weekend. I was not there, not in spirit anyway, so what do I know? Too young and out of pretty much anything related to alternative music news, I was just discovering grunge and brit pop back in 1999 before adolescent’s rage diverted me to nu metal. It took a full dose of Fugazi and the AmRep catalogue to set me back on the right track. Still, The Get Up Kids were nowhere in my radar.

Fast forward to 2007. A nice guy on a now-dead internet forum introduced me to Quicksand and Rival Schools in order to kick off my post-hardcore phase. Once Drive Like Jehu and Texas Is the Reason settled in my stereo I learnt to appreciate the Emo music that I was hardly seeing on television. However, it was 2009 by then. The Get Up Kids had broken up and they had also reunited and, let’s be honest, I did not pay that much attention. I thought certain kind of music I attached my younger self to was not relevant to me any more. I was wrong, so wrong.

Another fast forward. 2017. New job, new commute. Time on public transport has always been a great time for listening to music. Unfathomable reasons had put some heavy stuff back in my ears. Luckily nothing related to nu metal. Instead, post-hardcore and noise were, once again, my go-to genres, but it was not just about old, beloved records. It took me very little time to catch up with what I missed and this was when I gave The Get Up Kids another, proper chance. I started with Something to Write Home About and it all ended with Something to Write Home About.

I know The Get Up Kids are more than an incredible record. Yet, just as all I need from Trail of Dead is Worlds Apart, Something to Write Home About is everything I could ask for to Matt Pryor and his band mates. The interesting thing is that whatever I link this music to has nothing to do with the historical significance of The Get Up Kids releasing these songs in 1999, nor are there tears of sadness for a particular live performance I missed.¹ And to be frank, how can I relate to lyrics about break-ups, one-night stands, and betrayals of all sorts? Is this really me?

I have records in my collection that I consider specifically mine. Not in an overprotective parent sort of way, but mine in terms of I just do not share them with anyone. For starters, my partner does not like them, and that is fine since we came from different musical backgrounds anyway. More than that, though, these are records where I find a side of me that I like to keep for myself. They remind me of what-ifs and situations I could have approached better, they open up a world where certain feelings make more sense, they act as the friend I want to confess things to. These records have songs that I sing along when I am alone and only when I am alone, afraid to let too much out. Something to Write Home About may very well be the leader of the pack here, and I am grateful The Get Up Kids gave me another excuse to lose myself into it.

Savvy people told me the 2009 gig in Bologna is still one of the best show they have ever been. I do not hate them for this, I swear. ↩︎

A part-time journey to a BA

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 06:12:50 +0000

Now that I officially earned a BA in Philosophy, it is time to sit down and think about this long and wild journey. I say long because it took me five years instead of the standard three that a regular student is accustomed to here in Italy. I say wild because, well, let’s start from the beginning to understand why.

Back in summer 2019, I was watching Astra Taylor’s What Is Democracy? and missing the point of almost all of its philosophical inquiries. Nonetheless, I was intrigued. I was so intrigued, in fact, that in the following days I asked my partner whether me going back to university sounded like a mad man’s project. It would have meant trying my luck with university again, but I do not want to dig into my past failures. The obvious truth is that trying serious studying with the wrong mindset is a rather pointless endeavour.

Anyway, this time my mind was really set. In order to start the courses in September, though, I had to pass an entry test to certify some basic knowledge of philosophy.¹ Coming from a software developing background meant spending a couple of months on high school manuals to get a general idea of more than two thousand years’ worth of Western thought. The test itself was based on a book with key philosophical concepts, most of them unknown to me. I had to pick a subset of these terms and explain them along with the motivation for my choice. I still remember me and about fifty kids² sitting everywhere outside the professor’s office, raising our anxiety bar every time we randomly revised the material. I waited for hours, but eventually my turn came and in about ten minutes I was out again. One question, one answer, another question, another answer. Done. I felt like a door was opening for me right there. I was ready to begin.

The first real exam was a deep dive into Plato’s and Aristotle’s works. On the one hand, it was the right course at the right time. What better way to start than back at the origins of Western philosophy? On the other hand, it made me realise the extent of my ignorance. This is why I will always treasure a tip a kind student gave me on my first days on the campus. They recommended two courses with a specific professor from whom I would learn an invaluable approach to philosophical texts. Admittedly, halfway through the first of these courses I was struggling to keep up. The now-retired professor was well known among students for taking no prisoners whatsoever. His were two of the most difficult exams I had to prepare, but to this day very little comes close to what I learned with him.

Nevertheless, a good chunk of the courses left me with many impressive insights, and this is especially true for the most demanding ones. The hours devoted to unpacking Hegel’s The Philosophy of Right will never be forgotten,³ but I will also remember fondly the energy put into preparing presentations on beloved topics, not to mention the emails exchanged with kind professors luckily never tired of my relentless enthusiasm.

Being a part-time student meant using what was left of the day after work for lessons and actual books, something requiring a sort of discipline to achieve. This is not to say that I have never been on a trip in the past five years, of course. Still, evenings, weekends, and Christmas holidays all became victims of my studying schedule. In retrospect, I could have taken some exams more lightly, enjoying some breaks more. Over and over again I pushed myself harder than necessary because I wanted to learn as much as possible and not just for that great mark.⁴

However, in the end the overall experience has been highly rewarding. I can read Hegel, for instance, and as anyone already familiar with the German philosopher knows, this is a wonderful achievement in itself. I fell in love with Spinoza, the true driving force of my thought in the years following our first encounter. Wittgenstein hypnotised me multiple times and I can only think of Plotinus as a question mark, fascinating and lonesome just like Simone Weil. I have much to learn yet from Kant and Adorno, from Deleuze and Derrida, from Hume and Schopenhauer.

They are all there, right where I can see them now. They are all there waiting for me to catch up.

OFA (Obbligo Formativo Aggiuntivo), as it is called at Ca’ Foscari. ↩︎
Even after my last exam, I felt old and out of place in the classroom. ↩︎
Although my partner does not want to have anything to do with Hegel any more. ↩︎
Saying magna cum laude out loud does feel good, though. ↩︎

Dance, dance, little dancer

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Olympia Mare (Bandcamp)

Sometimes it happens that out of nowhere music hits me harder than expected. Of course a book or a film can work in the same way through me, but the funny thing with music is the total randomness of its power. Literature and cinema are safe places for me. I usually have a specific reason to read a book and film criticism keeps me up to date with what I want to watch. Therefore, if I am not liking the pages in my hands or the images in front of me I mostly have myself to blame for the bad choice.

Music is different. I cannot resist listening to new albums, but at the same time I am not doing much to follow trends and releases. More importantly, whereas I favour certain types of books and films, when it comes to music I do not stick to a particular genre, which means I do not shy away from radio-friendly pop sensations just as I am always excited to discover underground musicians and independent labels.

On the other hand, this cautiously vague approach to new music does not welcome change easily. Take summer time, for instance. To my ears these months call for easy listening, good-for-driving songs, something to chill out without overthinking too much because we already have to take care of our sweat. So why does Olympia Mare’s SEI ALMENO UN PO' FELICE? have become my go-to record in the past weeks?

It is difficult to put into words. It is true that nowadays I mostly gravitate towards deceptively simple music, picking up quiet vibes instead of loud riffs. No wonder then Olympia Mare found their way to me. Their songs are as far away from complexity as possible, beautifully naive in their lack of pretentiousness. They sing of everything and nothing really, they play as friends invited over to not surprise anyone but the host of the party that is all in their head. With the risk of sounding a tad too nostalgic, one possible explanation for my devoted attachment to Olympia Mare is the way they remind me of how I got to where I am right now.

Again, it is hard to explain. When one relies on their feelings to describe something being objective becomes impossible, and so to me Olympia Mare is trains and subways and buses and all the cities I lived in and walked through. It is nights spent chatting with long-distance friends on a fragile internet connection, the Greenwich meridian and breakfasts on tiny tables in tiny apartments, furniture that does not exist any more, pubs out of old churches, parks where everything seemed possible and beaches where little made sense, people on stage screaming at me screaming back at them, buying tea with not enough experience to understand the difference among tea leaves and not really caring too much about it, political thoughts I cannot put my finger on, relatives that are no more and habits that never leave, an old man younger than his son and a young woman that I want to be young forever, waving hands and a wedding dress, a book of love and loving books. All of this and the only laugh I care for in between.

When music overwhelms me like this I know that I have a record I will hold dear for a long, long time. And even if it is all so relative I am absolutely convinced of it.

Heart of Clojure is back

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This will be just a quick announcement.

Heart of Clojure, the biggest Clojure conference in Europe, is happening again, five years after the first edition. I had much fun back in 2019, so I am really excited to have another chance to enjoy it.

You will find me right in Leuven from 18 to 19 September if you want to chat about beautiful topics such as:

Emacs and that’s it
Pet-driven development
À la recherche du REPL perdu
Vegan parenthesis

See you there.

Delete duplicate words

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I make a lot of mistakes when I write prose, because I usually write down everything that comes to mind and then edit sentences and paragraphs over and over again until I get what I want. This is a recipe for all sort of errors, of course.

Although I have been a happy user of Flyspell and proselint, in order not to get distracted by warnings and errors nowadays I like to avoid automatic spell-checkers or linters and rely on ispell-buffer.

There is however a specific category of errors for which ispell-buffer cannot help: duplicate words. When quickly rephrasing a sentence or adjusting a paragraph it could happen that I do not pay enough attention to the words I remove and so I keep typing with no care whatsoever.

Much in the spirit of my occasional use of ispell-buffer, I want a command that scans the buffer, finds consecutive occurrences of the same word, and removes all but one of them. Emacs already has a built-in solution for this: C-M-% (query-replace-regexp).

Nevertheless, laziness prevails. Why typing the necessary regular expression every time when a simple command can do it for me?

(defun mu-delete-duplicate-words ()
  "Delete duplicate words via `query-replace-regexp'."
  (interactive nil text-mode)
  (save-excursion
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (query-replace-regexp "\\(\\b\\w+\\b\\)\\W+\\1\\b" "\\1")))

My first Cube of Truth

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 06:12:50 +0000

Last Sunday I joined the nearest local chapter of Anonymous for the Voiceless, after many nudges from my better half who has been a member for quite a while now. As I have already written in the past, it is about time I put my thoughts into action. What does it mean to be in a Cube of Truth, though? More importantly, what does it mean to finally act as an activist?

A Cube of Truth is a simple and yet powerful way to engage in street activism. Activists wearing anonymous masks hold screens (television sets, laptops, etc.) big enough to display footage coming from slaughterhouses, farms, and all sorts of practices that exploit and abuse non-human animals. It is called cube because, given enough activists, we form a cube-resembling shape,¹ usually alternating screens with cardboard panels containing only one word: truth. Otherwise, we do what we can as long as the images speak for themselves. When passers-by stop and watch for more than just few seconds the bloodbath we display, activists outside the Cube, not wearing masks, start the so called outreach, which means they engage in a conversation about the relationship between the images on the screens and the temporary spectator’s own responsibilities.

From there anything can happen, and that is why I was not sure that this was the right thing to do for me. I have always been horribly shy and I tend to keep to myself when in public. Or so I believed. As soon as it was my turn to approach a by-stander something clicked. It was as if the only thing that mattered was reasoning calmly about my purpose for being there, respecting the person’s opinions while slowly eroding their confidence with the cruel reality of animal suffering. The key was always making my listener understand that as long as they do not act differently they are accountable for what is happening on the screens. I even surprised myself when I was able to control the tone of my reactions and the words I was using. I guess I have to thank my years at Ca' Foscari university for this, because I am pretty sure I would not have been able to do it otherwise.²

On the other hand, I was luckier than other activists. I shadowed some of them in order to learn from their experience, and after seeing them dealing with arrogant kids and obnoxious trolls not only I admired their patience, but I also asked myself: what if I were to be caught in that sort of discussions? Were they serious discussions or just distractions from real work? I saw an important lesson for me to take away there, which is learning when to halt the conversation and move on. If there is someone eager to listen and curious enough to question their own beliefs and customs, then the discussion is going somewhere and maybe there is a chance that they will rethink their actions sooner rather than later or, worse, never.

Moreover, contrary to what I usually think of myself this has led me to believe that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I can speak up for what I value, I can defend my opinion, and I can offer an alternative, reasonable point of view to people in real life, right there in the street. This is where my words have a meaning that feels tangible. This is where I belong.

More of a square, if you ask me, but let us not get into geometry right now. ↩︎
Angry replies seem like yesterday when I think about it. And of course, the angrier I got, the less I was making sense. ↩︎

Thesis frontispiece with LaTeX

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Usually when I start writing a new document I am not immediately interested about the output layout. This may sound unorthodox to one accustomed to the WYSIWYG likes of Microsoft Word, but since I mainly write in Markdown and LaTeX, I like to focus on what I want to say first and think about typesetting the text later. The look of the output matters, though, so eventually I have to deal with it.

For example, while working on my BA thesis with LaTeX I was faced with the problem of the frontispiece. Ca’ Foscari university provides a template that students can slap in front of their documents, but the choice is limited to a couple of popular file formats: DOC and ODT.

The quick and dirty solution could have been along these lines:

edit the ODT template;
export it to a PDF file;
add it to the front of my final document.

However, I decided to stick with AUCTeX and accept the challenge. The following is a working example based on my thesis that can be saved to a frontispiece.tex file:

\documentclass[12pt]{book}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\begin{document}

\begin{titlepage}

\newgeometry{top=1cm,bottom=1cm,right=1cm,left=1cm}
\fontfamily{lmss}\selectfont
\includegraphics[width=0.15\textwidth]{cafoscari-logo}\par\vspace{1cm}

\begin{center}
\LARGE{Corso di Laurea triennale in \colorbox{gray!10}{indirizzo}\par}
\vspace{1cm}
\LARGE{Tesi di Laurea\par}
\vspace{1.5cm}
{\huge\bfseries \colorbox{gray!10}{titolo}\par}
\LARGE{\colorbox{gray!10}{sottotitolo}\par}
\end{center}
\vspace{2cm}
\vfill
\textbf{Relatore}\\
\colorbox{gray!10}{nome e cognome}\\[0.5cm]
\textbf{Laureando}\\
\colorbox{gray!10}{nome e cognome}\\
\colorbox{gray!10}{numero matricola}\\[0.5cm]
\textbf{Anno Accademico}\\
\colorbox{gray!10}{0000/0001}
\vfill

\end{titlepage}

\end{document}

The only missing bit is the Ca’ Foscari university logo, referenced above as {cafoscari-logo} as per the name of the image file I used, which is cafoscari-logo.png. Here it is:¹

Now, getting a PDF is simply a matter of placing the .tex and the .png files in the same directory and run something like pdflatex frontispiece.tex.

On the other hand, I have AUCTeX and PDF Tools on my side. From the comfort of Emacs I can then set TeX-view-program-selection to '((output-pdf "PDF Tools")) and then press C-c C a to create and display the desired PDF output.

One last remark for any Ca’ Foscari student reading this. To the best of my knowledge supervisors in the Philosophy department usually ask for drafts in DOC format. Although this may not be true for other departments, unless LaTeX is a requirement make sure your supervisor and assistant supervisor, if any, accept PDFs when you want their valuable opinion on your draft.

The logo comes from the ODT template, which is publicly available on the university website. I just extracted it to a PNG file using LibreOffice Writer. ↩︎

It exists therefore I am

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 07:12:50 +0000

Setting reason aside is not something we welcome gladly, is it? After all, acting according to feelings is acting irrationally, and if we open that door we are going to let in the possibility of regrets and sorrow as well. Since we do not always feel ready to face regrets and sorrow, we prefer applying our mind on every worthwhile occasion. Or so we believe. Why do we act like we must reduce everything to reason, anyway?

John M. Coetzee taught me that it is impossible to subject the richness of our everyday experience to the rules of reason alone. He did so through one of his most beautiful and complex characters, one whose presence by now is almost tangible to me: Elizabeth Costello. And as it often happens with the best things in one’s life, Coetzee and Costello entered mine by chance, that is by way of a casual mention during a course at my university which set off the same irrational drive that led me to Ingeborg Bachmann.

Elizabeth Costello is an elderly Australian woman, a renown writer whose fame, contrary to her will, is an outcome of the success of one of her early novels. Over the course of Coetzee’s book, she is invited to give speeches on a wide range of topics around the world. She complies, even though her distress is something she will not overcome easily. Eventually, she will have to deal with the consequences of her words, standing by her opinions, and questioning her own beliefs.

As in other Coetzee’s works, taking into account the existence of non-human animals and how we live with and next to them is unavoidable. Coetzee’s ethics are much too complex for me to deal with right now,¹ so I will just single out a passage from Elizabeth Costello which I would like to expand upon.

Both reason and seven decades of life experience tell me that reason is neither the being of the universe nor the being of God. On the contrary, reason looks to me suspiciously like the being of human thought; worse than that, like the being of one tendency in human thought. Reason is the being of a certain spectrum of human thinking. And if this is so, if that is what I believe, then why should I bow to reason this afternoon and content myself with embroidering on the discourse of the old philosophers.²

I do not think that I could find better words to explain why, as I am close to get my BA in Philosophy, I am struggling to cope with some of what I have learnt so far.

Do not get me wrong, I value my time at Ca’ Foscari and there is no end to what opening my mind to philosophy has done to me.³ And yet I wish I had known Coetzee and Costello back when I was following a course on moral philosophy. It has been more than two years since that exam, but I have never been able to shake off the feeling of contempt it has left on me, its questionable attempt at winning students over to a specific worldview. It became even clearer a couple of months after the exam, but obvious hints triggered me way before that.

More specifically, while discussing the role of the human soul in Aquinas, the professor decided to share his opinion on animal rights. He did so by oversimplifying his arguments against the likes of Tom Regan and Peter Singer, while talking about animal rights movements without acknowledging how they have evolved since they were first born. It was baffling to notice how conveniently he avoided any practical matter. Why should we care about intensive farming and moral justifications for hunting when we can sit down and discuss about the human soul from the comfort of our classroom?

This whole approach served his purpose rather well. Eventually, he singled out the possibility of reasoning about infinity as humans’ defining trait. Human life, he added, follows an arc trajectory, open to the transcendental, whereas animals’ is a cycle. And so what? How is that even relevant when one looks a bit more closely at how humans have been treating animals over the course of history? More importantly, how is his discourse of any relevance to the lives of non-human animals?

I put forward my opinion to the teacher’s assistant during a seminar, but the conversation was cut short because, I can only assume, he sensed no way out from the circularity of his arguments. Are we not to be held accountable when we decide of the lives of other living beings? Is human reason so peculiar that it can be excused from thinking about the implications of all our actions and not just the ones we deem worth of moral judgements? Who are we to decide what is morally justifiable to do to living beings we share our lives with?

I believe philosophy must teach us how to live in a world greater than us. We exist only because the world exists, not the other way around. We are born humans, we argue with humans, but we find more than humans out there. If we are still discussing the human soul and otherness in human terms, then we still have to move past the old philosophers Elizabeth Costello refers to.

I suggest starting with J. M. Coetzee and Ethics to get a general idea. ↩︎
Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, p. 67. ↩︎
As I wrote other times, I will return to my experience at Ca’ Foscari later this year. ↩︎

Food for Profit

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 06:50:50 +0000

Last night, as I was walking out of the cinema where I had just watched Food for Profit, I could not help but think about the people around me. It is pretty easy to say that maybe I am not the kind of person Innocenzi’s and D’Ambrosi’s documentary aims at. Why would I need an investigation such as this to move me towards ethical choices that by now I have already been following for over ten years? And yet, beside supporting this much too necessary endeavor, I was curious to sit in a room with other people and sense the impact its images would have on eyes possibly not accustomed to the reality of intensive farming.

Let me start by simply saying that if one cares in any way about the world we live in, then they should not ignore this work. Furthermore, at the moment in Italy it is nearly impossible not to find a screening. Its authors have been literally reaching every corner of this country to make sure everyone has a chance to see the results of their five-year long effort. Considering that this is an independent film which relies on word of mouth, because big producers and giant distributors have no interest in alienating the meat industry, Innoncenzi’s and D’Ambrosi’s willingness to share what they believe in is absolutely remarkable.

However, I had my misconceptions about the film. Somehow I was expecting it to be solely criticism about European agricultural politics, as if the whole point of the documentary was to expose politicians not behaving as one would suppose, which would have been barely a surprise nowadays. This is only a part of what Innoncenzi and D’Ambrosi do, though. They cannot and do not want to hide the inevitable consequences of what some inept members of the European Parliament agree upon. Animal suffering, diseases, environmental disasters, exploitation of workers: it is all here in its vivid, horrific evidence.

After what I learnt from Earthlings and Dominion, I should be used to mindless violence, but the shock always manages to unsettle me, just as it always takes me a moment to recover from the fact that we seem incapable of treating animals and other people with the same principles of humanity we believe to have perfected over the course of history. Food for Profit acts as a powerful reminder of how we constantly and comfortably forget those principles in order to enjoy privileges that we choose not to question. As Innocenzi said to us at the end of the screening, we usually expect documentaries such as this from the US. It is about time Europe comes to terms with the same atrocities that we like to think are far way from us.

This is what one should really focus on as they watch the film. I can hardly trust critics who pick at Innoncenzi for posing herself in a sort of egocentric, Michael Moore-like kind of way.¹ On the contrary, I believe that she needs to put herself right within these images and back them as strongly as she can. She has every right to use her public persona to engage with viewers, because I do not see this work as art for art’s sake, nor I see any point in approaching it with the dissecting eye of a film critic. There is simply too much at stake in this documentary to look at it with questionable, rational detachment or reductionist arguments.

And this is why last night I found people’s reactions more honest and important than any critique. We were all shaken by the cruelty and the indifference we had witnessed, but I was genuinely surprised by the sincere concern many showed at the end. Innocenzi kindly replied to all the questions, most of which dealt with what can we do now, what is actually feasible and what, if any, are the hopes for a better world. If one, like me, finds it really difficult to believe that the planet and whoever lives on it can put up with human actions any longer, people’s response to Food for Profit will be enough to placate the heart for a while.

See Matteo Marelli’s “review” on FilmTv. The cheap scepticism used to dismiss the actual point of Food for Profit tells me more about Marelli than the film itself. ↩︎

The irresistible tension of language

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 07:12:50 +0000

My life is over, for during the deportation he has drowned in the river, he was my life. I loved him more than my life.

— Malina, Ingeborg Bachmann¹

My career at Ca’ Foscari is coming to an end, at least in terms of my BA in Philosophy. I will write about this long and wild journey another time, but today I want to expand upon a brief talk I gave in class last Tuesday as part of an assignment for the Philosophy of Literature course.

The professor asked us to work in groups on one of the essays we have to study for the final exam, free to develop its contents in any feasible direction. For reasons I am not entirely able to explain I was drawn to Aldo Gargani’s Il pensiero raccontato, a marvellous study about Austrian poet and author Ingeborg Bachmann. Two other students soon joined me and we pleasantly lost ourselves in her words as well as among the ones by Paul Celan, Thomas Bernhard and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I was particularly fascinated by Gargani’s focus on the tension in Bachmann and Bernhard writings. This tension is not just the reader’s feeling as they turn the pages, albeit there are passages in Bachmann’s Malina and Bernhard’s Gargoyles² perfectly capable of shaking one’s own psychological grounds. The tension that Gargani highlights is within the actual language used by these authors. More specifically, the tension is between what is shown by the language and what cannot be said. Where does this tension lead?

According to Gargani the tension is always aimed at the reality we live in, its purpose nothing less than being the cause of a “moral leap”, as Bachmann puts it in her Frankfurt lessons.³ Bachmann wants us to understand that in order to confront the present we are thrown into and survive, we have to look at it through lenses that are not, and cannot, be set once and for all. The past is always transforming the present just as the present never sits still. There is nothing, then, that we can seriously take for granted. Bachmann creates a language that forces us to constantly look at where we are now and, at the same time, gaze into where we really should be. This is why in her view literature must be capable of influencing any present, the one we are currently in and every present that is yet to come.⁴

The quote from Malina I put at the beginning of this writing is the same one I used in class. To me it is the perfect example of what Gargani so acutely finds in Bachmann. In it she is conflating the tragic experience of Nazi Germany⁵ and the suicide of Romanian poet Paul Celan,⁶ thus keeping alive the horrible connection between the past, hers and ours, with the present, hers and ours. Furthermore, she is pushing us to look for implicit and explicit connections within the text and outside of it. Bachmann is fully aware that her book should not matter just for the people alive at the time of her writing. For it to be of any value to all the possible readers that will get to it eventually, its language has to keep renewing itself for every reader, creating tension between different times and different spaces.

As Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin wrote, this can only be done by using live, dynamic affinities instead of channeling static similarities.⁷ This means that language must not act as a homogenising common denominator. It should not be a universal item that subsumes concepts, historical processes, and cultural events under one, giant umbrella. If we lose heterogeneity, we lose the possibility of seeing beyond ourselves. If we cannot see beyond ourselves, we will never be able to change, and only the dead never changes.

The English translation of Malina from New Directions uses “transport” instead of “deportation”, whereas the Italian translation published by Adelphi goes with “deportazione”. I prefer the Italian version because it makes the not so subtle reference to the concentration camps clearer. ↩︎
The German title, Verstörung, translates as something like confusion or derangement, whereas the Italian title is Perturbamento, which is closer to the original meaning. ↩︎
I am referring to Letteratura come utopia. Lezioni di Francoforte published by Adelphi, but there is an English translation as well titled The Critical Writings of Ingeborg Bachmann. ↩︎
See: Letteratura come utopia. Lezioni di Francoforte. ↩︎
Her father was a member of the Austrian National Socialist Party. ↩︎
The relationship between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan was so intense and incredible it deserves a much better writer than myself. To get an idea I highly recommend starting with Correspondence: Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan and then watching Ruth Beckermann’s The Dreamed Ones. ↩︎
See Derrida’s Des tours de Babel and Qu’est-ce qu’une traduction “relevante”?, and Benjamin’s The Task of the Translator and On Language as Such and on the Language of Man. ↩︎

Everything that is born dies

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I am still processing the contents of a message that one of my favourite bands shared early today. A gravestone, that is.

This annoucement hit me hard. They published what looked like the first half of a new record five months ago and then they toured Italy for a while, hence I was ready for the new record and another chance to catch a live show. However, unless there is a cruel joke behind those dates up there, this is never going to happen now.

I have their records to return to, obviously, but a huge part of me is no more. More importantly, people who had been keeping the spirit of underground music alive since the early 2000s have put an end to a long, beautiful story.

Maybe they will be back some day with a new name and new sounds, new ideas and new friends. I sincerely hope so. And yet all will be different, me and them.

From Jekyll to Hugo

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is yet another one of those articles that bloggers¹ put up every once in a while to state they have moved to Hugo as their static website generator.

Ruby dependencies are hard to manage, especially when building my website across different machines with different operative systems. Recently I was forced to use an Ubuntu image on SourceHut because a specific version of a gem was not available on Debian stable, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Every time I change OS I need to fight with Ruby and rvm, which is not fun at all. I simply do not want to waste time in technicalities. I want the basic architecture under this corner of the web to be simple and easy to use.

Following a path similar to what Julia Evans did some years ago, I would say that overall the migration went fairly smoothly.

First I ran hugo import jekyll to have a starting point, then I grabbed the CSS generated for my old website and used it as the basis for the new version. The thing is I do not want to deal with SCSS files and SASS plugins any more. One CSS file is enough for my trivial needs, although I will need to clean it up a bit soon.

Moreover, I had to write a custom render-image.html to make sure I could use a caption under my images if needed. Other than that, combinations of project-find-regexp and query-replace let me quickly fix the syntax in my posts to make Hugo happy.

Moving to Hugo resulted in a smaller .build.yml manifest to package and deploy my website via SourceHut pages. In practical terms, I can now use an Alpine image where Hugo and hut are readily available to handle everything after a git push.

I feel old writing this word. ↩︎

The perfect book club

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In my recap of 2023 I quickly mentioned that I wanted to expand on my experience with the Proust Society of Greenwich, so here I am. I would also like to take this opportunity to reflect on what a book club should do for me.

I have always wanted to share my opinions on the things I love. I remember fondly the pre-Reddit age of internet fora and I still subscribe to mailing lists and newsletters for in-depth discussions without the ubiquitous distractions of today’s world wide web. My experience with a book or a film is not complete if I do not translate my feelings into words for someone to read or to hear. This urge to express my own mind is what has been driving me to search for book clubs over the past years. Since the Proust Society of Greenwich is the last one I joined, let me briefly describe the previous ones.

My very first book club since I have been living in this town was organised by a co-worker of my better half who wanted to make their students read books in their original language (English) in order to discuss them together (in English). I was not part of their group of students, but I asked if I could join anyway for the sake of reading and sharing comments. After a few meetings I sort of understood that the main aim of the book club was having students practice and improve their knowledge of the English language, which was not really the reason for me to be there. This is not to say that I do not need to improve my English, because I always do. Nonetheless, it was not what I had hoped for.

My second book club was organised by a nearby public library. This is a close-knit group of people, most of them part of the club since its beginnings back in the 2010s. That is why I entered a bit shyly, not really sure how to relate and what to add at first.¹ Soon I started to fit in better, but I also realised that I was not enjoying the books that we were supposed to read and talk about. I tend to treasure the amount of time I have for my readings because, simply put, time is never enough. I cannot afford to waste it on books that do not work for me.

The third book club was one I pushed for. When I got the news that a philosophy book club was about to start not too far from where I live my expectations skyrocketed. Since I am not as close to the university campus as I wish, I do not have many people around me to discuss philosophy with. I wanted the book club to be the place for close readings and unpacking of theories, because, despite my years at Ca’ Foscari, I still feel like a novice in this regard. Unfortunately, the club turned out to be something different.

Open to everyone remotely interested in philosophy, it consisted in monthly chats on selected pages of books picked according to so-called themes (e.g., friendship, love, etc.). With little to no guidance from the organisers, the books were chosen from a list including philosophical, psychological, and literary works. Mostly people shared feelings about the content of the books and that was it. I offered some feedback to the organisers a couple of times, only to be ignored. Introducing philosophy to everybody is an admirable endeavor, but that was not what I had in mind.

After reading Proust’s La Recherche for the first time I just could not stop thinking about it.² More importantly, I thought that what I had been really looking for in a book club was a group of people devoted to just one author or one book that seriously moves us. I had read wonders about an Infinite Jest marathon, for instance, but I could not find anything Proust-related in my country.³ A quick online research, however, pointed me to the right place. Fereshteh Priou, the person in charge of the Proust Society of Greenwich, kindly admitted me to the meetings and so it began.

We get together online once a month, 20-25 fellow Proust lovers. The aim is reading all seven volumes of La Recherce, a small selection of pages at a time. In this age of ever-decreasing attention span this is the right pace for such a demanding work. What really helps, though, is Priou’s vast knowledge of the subject. She singles out passages for us to discuss and she is never out of prompts to keep the words flying around. Most of the times I learn something new and yet I never feel discouraged to speak my mind. Moreover, we rarely lose focus and this is of immense value. Online meetings do not make it easy to stay constantly alert, but Priou keeps it all together nicely and in the end it always seems like one hour is way too short to share our love for Proust.

Eventually, finding myself among people who come with their own cultural background to an author or a book that everyone is at the very least interested in is the best place to spend my time while sharing my obsessions. We take it slow, we value the time spent on understanding the intricacies of Proust’s passages by paying close attention to them. This makes much more sense to me than sitting down to discuss a different book on each occasion. In the other clubs I mentioned above it was often the case that some member did not finish the book in time for the meeting, so they felt unable to add something meaningful to the conversation. Why constraint ourselves to a schedule instead of allowing us the precious and much needed moments to approach a book slowly, to parse it calmly, and savour it page after page?

On the other hand, my experience with the Proust Society of Greenwich leaves my quest for a philosophy book club open, but who knows. Some day, maybe. Some day.

“Sociability is hard enough for me.” (Coffee & TV, Blur) ↩︎
Ask my partner. ↩︎
As it is often the case. ↩︎

My 2023

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Another year, another recap. 2023 has been a strange bunch of months for different reasons. Last year I complained about not finding enough motivation with my studies and the book clubs I had joined. 2023, on the other hand, has been definitely better in these regards. I will return to my studies later when I will deal with my favourite books, but in terms of book clubs I am now a member of the Proust Society of Greenwich and I have found myself deeply involved in monthly discussions on my favourite author. A rewarding experience to say the least, something I would like to expand on soon.

Anyway, let’s proceed.

Emacs

I have to say 2023 has seen few experiments with the one and only text editor. I have moved around completion solutions just to rely on the standard, built-in one eventually, because it has been much improved in Emacs 29 and therefore in the development version I use as well. The one thing I was missing is a predictable behaviour for the window containing the *Completions* buffer. Basically, I want this window to always pop up at the bottom.

(add-to-list
 'display-buffer-alist
 '("\\*Completions*\\*"
   (display-buffer-reuse-mode-window display-buffer-at-bottom)))

Furthermore, I have been relying a lot on project-compile to run unit and integration tests and execute shadow-cljs when needed. Speaking of Cloure, I have played around a bit with clojure-ts-mode with nothing to be sad about, although I have yet to find corner cases which regular clojure-mode seriously struggles with.

Learning French

Early this year I briefly mentioned my intention to learn French in order to read the entirety of Proust’s oeuvre. I started with the popular Duolingo, but after a while I was tired of random phrases without context. I cannot learn a language like this. At most this is good for practising and revising.

Therefore I went with the good old way: a proper course with a professional language teacher. I looked for one on Preply until I found the teacher with the right qualifications. Everything has been great so far, my basic knowledge of French has already improved a lot.

Along with the lessons I have been following the same approach I had used in the past to learn English: language exposure. I watched my first French film without English subtitles (Roman Polanski’s J’accuse), I read my first French book with a dictionary on the side and no translation to help me (Neige Sinno’s Triste tigre), I have been reaching for French news (Franceinfo and France 24), and I have been keeping a grammar book next to me for some extra practice.

All of this would not make much sense if I had not set a goal for myself, which is a DELF B2 certification. It will take time, but I will get there.

Books

First, the usual selection from this year’s readings:

I piaceri e i giorni (Marcel Proust)
Jean Santeuil (Marcel Proust)
Saggi (Marcel Proust)
Vita di Marcel Proust (Jean Yves-Tadié)
Giovanni’s Room (James Baldwin)
Teoria del romanzo (Guido Mazzoni)
Le vite del romanzo (Thomas Pavel)
The Idiot (Elif Batuman)
Sulla poesia moderna (Guido Mazzoni)
Either/Or (Elif Batuman)
Bel Ami (Guy De Maupassant)
Blonde (Joyce Carol Oates)
Fontamara (Ignazio Silone)
Senza intellettuali (Giorgio Caravale)
Triste tigre (Neige Sinno)

There is no need to explain again why Proust is there. Nonetheless, here are some additional notes:

literary theory is a wonderful thing;
I consider Elif Batuman one of the most interesting writers out there. Her newsletter is a nice way to entertain me while I eagerly wait for her next book;
Blonde hit me on so many levels that I have struggled to find something interesting to write about it. I honestly believe it is one of the greatest books I have ever put my eyes on;
Triste tigre started as an exercise because I wanted to read something in French and it has ended up being an emotional tour de force. A Lolita from the other side if you will.

There is another author that has played an important role in the last months, but I have not put him on the list because I have only studied bits and pieces of his writings so far. Still, since it has already been moving me in so many ways,¹ he deserves a mention: Antonio Gramsci. Thanks to a course on political philosophy I have finally had the chance to study Gramsci more closely and work on my rather sparse knowledge of him. The more I dig the more he is leaving a mark on me as great as Spinoza’s.

Music

The new records from RVG and Angie McMahon came out right when I needed them this year. RVG showed up with their best album so far, fiercely personal and less obvious about its roots than the two before, while McMahon healed her wounds with an open letter from her heart to the world, as close to a real-life hug as possible.

I should also put Róisín Murphy here. Even though her controversial statements ruined her party, I still believe her latest effort is fantastic. And let’s not forget about Paul St. Hilaire, who came back after many years with all the dub vibes one could ask for.

As for Italy, I am glad the people behind the music festival I mentioned last year are back with a new place for great live music. Thanks to them I found out about Trust The Mask and their lovely Idiom. It was impossible to stay still at the concert, a sign of undeniable quality. I have also the utmost respect for the intrepid Daniela Pes, whose Spira sounds like nothing else around me, and only good words for Marta Del Grandi and The Thugs.

However, boygenius’ the record and, to a lesser extent, the follow-up EP the rest are what 2023 has been mostly all about in terms of music. The vinyl did not come cheap, but the record has been pretty much my go-to album until McMahon stole its thunder. It does not matter, anyway, because boygenius are a storm and they still have plenty a thunder to share.

As for older music, I have fallen madly in love with Ada Oda, who are clearly here to remind me new wave is as relevant for me today as it was back in my youth, and I have found something worth of attention in Andrew WK’s most recent and less appreciated albums. They cannot match the wild rides of his first two works but at least they do find him at peace with himself somehow.

Cinema

Just as it has been a great year for studying and reading, cinema has found its way to my heart again. The following is a mixed selection of titles from 2023 and from 2022, because I had so much to catch up with.

Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan)
La Nuit du 12 (Dominik Moll)
Novembre (Cédric Jimenez)
Coma (Bertrand Bonello)
Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
Blonde (Andrew Dominik)
Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron)
Malum (Anthony DiBlasi)
Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli)
Bodies Bodies Bodies (Halina Reijn)
Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
Bottoms (Emma Seligman)
Ferrari (Michael Mann)
Priscilla (Sofia Coppola)
May December (Todd Haynes)

As I did with books, some extra notes:

French cinema is still able to say things like nobody else;
Blonde is absolutely fantastic and I wonder if my appreciation for it could explain why I feel so distant from most contemporary film critics;
James Cameron is once again reinventing cinema;
I am so happy that horror films still talk to me;
I did not need Ferrari to love Michael Mann, but I am glad he wanted to make sure my feelings have not changed.

So much so that the critical editions of his Notebooks and Letters are already next to me. ↩︎

World Vegan Day

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It has been almost 10 years since I turned to a vegan lifestyle, but I have never written much about this choice here. Partly because I tend not to advertise my beliefs unless explicitly asked, and partly because I expect people to be able to look up for themselves what being vegan means and why it matters.

However, I do feel like this is an important cause I have not been doing enough for so far. It is true that my choice means one less person out there eating meat and dairy products, but is it really enough? Believing in something implies standing up for it, and I have never stood up for anything remotely this necessary in my life before.

To celebrate World Vegan Day I would like to share some helpful resources one could peruse to understand why a change of diet is a crucial step in the right direction and why much more could be done for a far better world.

Anonymous for the Voiceless

The not-for-profit animal rights organisation Anonymous for the Voiceless discusses veganism and animal exploitation directly on the streets. They collected some videos over at The Essential Videos and being fooled by a click-bait title such as Best Speech You Will Ever Hear makes total sense for once.

ADAPTT

Following the above mentioned video one could visit the ADAPTT website and begin their journey at Becoming a New Vegan. There is useful information everywhere on this website, so be sure to check out other pages as well.

Earthlings

A key part in my move to veganism and why I consider it the most rational choice I have ever made was Earthlings, a devastating close look at animal exploitation. This is an eye-opener for anyone who prefers to turn away from violence on animals while accepting it for illogical reasons.

LAV

What I like about LAV is the extent of their operations, the legal actions they are willing to pursue, the campaigns they constantly promote, their coordinated efforts day after day for the sake of animals. LAV is for Italians only, but one can refer to PETA for a somewhat similar approach.

This is of course only a selection of places one can have easily access to, not to mention people to get in touch with, in order to learn about different choices and alternative consequences. It does not take much to dig up more with a decent search engine.

I firmly believe we all can live a better lifestyle if we base our actions on caring, a feeling more relevant now than it has possibly ever been. When we care the world makes much more sense. With this powerful feeling within, every action makes much more sense as well.

Perhaps she would not have thought of evil as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one in which it was so refreshing to sojourn, had she been able to discern in herself, as in everyone else, that indifference to the sufferings one causes which, whatever other names one gives it, is the most terrible and lasting form of cruelty.

— In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust

Using Ugrep with Embark

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When I wrote about using Ugrep with Consult I hinted at the chance of having my custom command available in Embark as well.

Building on top of Consult is great. Much like consult-git-grep and consult-ripgrep, the integration with Embark is around the corner.

As Omar Antolín Camarena explained to me, though, it is not immediately obvious how to combine mu-consult-ugrep with Embark.

Consult async search commands are tricky to use as Embark actions, which is why there is an entire, nontrivial embark-consult package to set up the integration.

However, he kindly suggested the solution to my problem as well. I just had to add it to my setup:

(with-eval-after-load 'embark-consult
  (setf (alist-get 'mu-consult-ugrep embark-target-injection-hooks)
        '(embark-consult--prep-async embark--allow-edit))

  (setf (alist-get 'mu-consult-ugrep embark-pre-action-hooks)
        '(embark--unmark-target))

  (setf (alist-get 'mu-consult-ugrep embark-around-action-hooks)
        '(embark-consult--projectless embark--cd))

  (keymap-set embark-consult-search-map "u" #'mu-consult-ugrep))

The above code lets me call mu-consult-ugrep on the candidate at point with C-. C u, where C-. corresponds to embark-act while C gives me access to embark-consult-search-map. This approach complements my regular usage of mu-consult-ugrep via M-s u, which I generally use when what I am looking for is not the thing at point.

Note that C-. C u can be just as easily replaced by M-s u M-n M-n to leverage Emacs’ future history¹ or even by a basic wrapper around mu-consult-ugrep that would grab the thing at point. This is Emacs, of course, so the user is in charge of their preferences.

Type C-h i g (emacs) Minibuffer History RET to know more. ↩︎

Marilyn’s avatar

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I guess there isn’t any Norma Jean, is there?

— Blonde, Andrew Dominik

The first image of Marilyn Monroe I have ever seen is a photo of her, up on the wall of the living room in the house where I grew up. It has been there for as long as I can remember and it is still there today. I have never paid too much attention to it, to be honest, even when I understood who the charming lady was. It seemed like an icon from a past I did not feel really attached to. Recently, while reading Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde and right before watching Andrew Dominik’s film of the same name, I have had the chance to look at the photo more closely. Once again, it eluded me. Where is Norma Jeane here?

Oates and Dominik ask themselves the same question and set out to explore what phrasing it means, way before searching for an answer. What Oates aptly discovers and what Dominik bravely takes away from her book is that in order to understand the woman behind Marilyn Monroe one has to start from her body and think of how she lived it. This could explain why Oates’ and Dominik’s works have been met with mixed reactions. There is no point in expecting the story of Marilyn Monroe or asking for another apologetic tale of belated repentance, just as it makes no sense to complain about how shattered one’s own mental picture of her will be after the last word and the last scene. Quite the contrary. The fragments Oates and Dominik disperse should be treasured as pieces of a bigger puzzle everyone is required to complete.

Marilyn Monroe (Cecil Beaton, 1956)

Indeed, Marilyn Monroe remains a mystery the solution of which cannot be found neither in Oates’ book nor in Dominik’s film. Still, the pages and the images provide a specific point of view, an angle from which one can observe Marilyn Monroe and try for themselves to find a way in her world of mirrors, illusions, fame and failure, tragedy and eternity. I have the utmost respect for a writer, a director or, generally speaking, an artist who provokes me or even infuriates me. As long as a reaction to what is placed in front of me is demanded, art is already doing the right thing regardless of any aesthetic consideration. I like to think I deserve a bit of credit from an artist, I want to believe they know they can rely on me doing my best to engage with their effort. Simply put, I may not share the artist knowledgeable background, but it does not mean that I should be treated as a goof.

This is why I felt so compelled by Oates and Dominik. They refuse to pamper their audience and keep pushing forward whatever they think worth of our attention. Take Oates, for instance. She offers a plethora of voices, never at peace with a simple opinion, deliberately refusing to add details for the sake of completeness. What if the reader cannot understand a specific passage because they are not familiar with Norma Jean’s youth? What if they cannot recognise names, places, events? Oates does not care. She points at the source material for her book in the very first pages, so the reader knows how to fill the gaps if so inclined. Eventually, Oates shapes facts, invents characters, exaggerates situations, and breaks conventional pictures of Marilyn Monroe. What we read is beyond the true-false dichotomy. Only Norma Jean painfully knows what is true and what is false about Marilyn Monroe.

Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

Dominik accepts Oates’ uncompromising imagination and dives as deep as possible in the horror of this story. The director plays to great extent with Norma Jean being an avatar of Marilyn Monroe. One would expect the exact opposite, but Dominik convincingly insists on the psychological power of Monroe, a white men product, over the fragile woman who was never able to overcome it. Monroe takes apart Norma Jean mind and body, destroys her private life every time she tries to get it back, and owns her to the end until exhaustion. Much like Oates, Dominik picks what makes sense to him from the book and, to a larger extent, from Monroe’s life. And just like the writer, the director twists specific moments and develops new scenarios with remarkable effect. Look, for example, at his shocking depiction of Norma Jean’s nightmares or marvel at the outstanding yet unsustainable last minute of the film.

Both authors have been criticised for their supposedly merciless treatment of a sacred icon like Marilyn Monroe. Again, destabilising common conscience and subverting given myths is precisely what art should do. Oates’ and Dominik’s works aim at the same target: where does entertainment end? More than twenty years separate the film from the book, but this question is as relevant today as it was back in the early 2000s.

Using Ugrep with Consult

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 16 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have already discussed how one can leverage ugrep and consult-xref to make a completing-read variant of project-find-regexp.

However, today I would like to go a bit further and show how easily Consult can be extended to include a command that behaves like consult-grep, consult-git-grep, and consult-ripgrep, but with ugrep as its engine. True, something along these lines has been around for a while. And yet I have no need for an external package when Consult has everything in place in order to devise a custom command.

By inspecting the code behind consult-git-grep and consult-ripgrep the pattern is pretty clear:

a defcustom with the command (e.g., git grep) and its arguments
a builder function to create the actual command to be invoked (e.g., consult--git-grep-make-builder)
a wrapper around consult--grep (e.g., consult-git-grep)

Therefore, the solution is simple:

(defvar mu-consult-ugrep-args (string-join '("ugrep"
                                             "--color=never"
                                             "--exclude-dir=.git/"
                                             "--hidden"
                                             "--ignore-binary"
                                             "--ignore-case"
                                             "--line-buffered"
                                             "--line-number"
                                             "--null"
                                             "--recursive")
                                           " "))

(defun mu-consult-ugrep-make-builder (paths)
  "Create ugrep command line builder given PATHS."
  (let ((cmd (consult--build-args mu-consult-ugrep-args)))
    (lambda (input)
      (pcase-let* ((`(,arg . ,opts) (consult--command-split input))
                   (`(,re . ,hl)
                    (funcall consult--regexp-compiler arg 'extended t)))
        (when re
          (cons (append cmd
                        (cdr (mapcan (lambda (x) (list "--and" "-e" x)) re))
                        opts paths)
                hl))))))

(defun mu-consult-ugrep (&optional dir initial)
  "Search with `ugrep' for files in DIR with INITIAL input."
  (interactive "P")
  (require 'consult)
  (consult--grep "Ugrep" #'mu-consult-ugrep-make-builder dir initial))

Since I am always using the same ugrep options, my builder function is a bit simpler than consult--git-grep-make-builder or consult--ripgrep-make-builder. Other than that, it’s only a matter of understanding the right options for ugrep.

Building on top of Consult is great. Much like consult-git-grep and consult-ripgrep, the integration with Embark is around the corner. And now that the power of the minibuffer is available during my searches I have no use for mu-recursive-grep any more.

Clojure and Tree-sitter

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

By now Emacs users are well aware of Tree-sitter and the built-in integration that comes with Emacs 29. I am a bit late to the party because only recently I have started to look into treesit-language-source-alist and treesit-install-language-grammar, but right now I am more interested in how Clojure programming can benefit from Tree-sitter.

Danny Freeman is the maintainer of clojure-ts-mode, and after I kindly nudged him he made it available on NonGNU ELPA. This means that the package is only a M-x package-install away.

Once installed Emacs has to know how to prefer clojure-ts-mode to good old clojure-mode. This is where majore-mode-remap-alist comes into play.

(push '(clojure-mode . clojure-ts-mode) major-mode-remap-alist)
(push '(clojurec-mode . clojurec-ts-mode) major-mode-remap-alist)
(push '(clojurescript-mode . clojurescript-ts-mode) major-mode-remap-alist)

Since I always use CIDER let’s leverage clojure-ts-mode-hook to enable it.

(add-hook 'clojure-ts-mode-hook #'cider-mode)

This is enough to activate clojure-ts-mode, but upon entering a project I noticed the lack of a couple of useful key bindings.

(with-eval-after-load 'clojure-ts-mode
  (keymap-set clojure-ts-mode-map "C-c C-r" 'clojure-refactor-map)
  (keymap-set clojure-ts-mode-map "C-c C-x" 'cider-start-map))

Note that clojure-ts-mode is still under development. For instance, Danny is working on allowing users to pick their preferred indentation style. As Daw-Ran Liou suggested, for now I can use clojure-mode-variables to make clojure-ts-mode follow my preferred formatting settings.

(add-hook 'clojure-ts-mode-hook #'clojure-mode-variables)

I have been using clojure-ts-mode daily in the last two weeks and the experience has been great. They say Tree-sitter is a game changer. I say thank you, Danny Freeman.

Elif Batuman and Dario Ferrari

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The summer break from lessons and exams¹ is the perfect time for picking up books I have on my to-read list. Three entries in particular from this lot have been prompting so many notes and discussions with my partner lately that I cannot miss the opportunity to recap everything here. The works I am referring to are The Idiot and Either/Or by Elif Batuman and Dario Ferrari’s La ricreazione è finita.

I will not go into many details about plots and characters in order to avoid unfortunate spoilers. Still, a bit of context is necessary. Both Batuman and Ferrari write about academia experiences in a semi-autobiographical fashion, meaning they use bits and pieces from their lives to fuel their pages. With different approaches they look back at what university did to and for them. Having seen my share of the academia world in the last four years I can relate to some of the episodes, which helps appreciate Batuman’s humour and Ferrari’s sarcasm, but this sort of narrative has always fascinated me.²

What I like about Batuman is how she plays with time. She states the importance of time by opening The Idiot with a quote from Proust, and she understands perfectly well what the relationship between writing and time means for the French author.

Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the point of writing wasn’t just to record something past but also to prolong the present, like in One Thousand and One Nights, to stretch out the time until the next thing happened[.]

Like Thomas Pavel says,³ writing for Proust is not only a vocation, it is a means for personal salvation. With The Idiot and Either/Or Batuman is using her protagonist to confront a present that only makes sense as it unfolds. For all the love for Kierkegaard she shows in Either/Or, using the title of the book and the epigram to make it as clear as possible, Batuman is subtly defying the Danish philosopher’s words about the meaning of life.⁴ Instead of treating the past as a line that joins previous events and eventually leads them to the present, Batuman lets the reader notice, over and over again, how hard it is to look back at our experiences to make sense of who we are here and now. There is so much going on and even more could have happened that tracing consistent trajectories is impossible.

This is where Ferrari fails. The Italian writer wishes to juxtapose past and present using different alter egos, but in the end he has the two temporal dimensions running in parallel, struggling to connect them via moral and historical checkpoints. Whereas Batuman deals with Turkish culture as an unsolvable puzzle, Ferrari handles Italian anarchism as bygone folklore to be admired through the nostalgic eyes of a paraphernalia collector. He then directs the same pair of eyes to love and friendship, moving between failed romances and dramatic camaraderie with characters whose feeble personalities exist only to abstract the protagonist away from himself. Batuman’s heroine, on the other hand, is surrounded by human beings so rich and specific that she is constantly reminded of the depth of the human condition she desperately wants to capture. Love goes only in predictable directions for Ferrari, while remaining a mystery for Batuman, who is able to depict the vast incomprehensibility of such a powerful feeling with kindheartedness and bitter seriousness at the same time.

Ferrari surpasses Batuman prose in one regard, though, which is the portrayal of university’s inner workings. Batuman moves lightly here, focusing on a limited set of problems, the big picture always a bit too far to be properly seen. Ferrari, however, is an unstoppable force. He knows firsthand what is wrong with Italian academia, the political mess behind it, the poor state of the research sector and the lottery that a career as a professor turns out to be in this country. He may sound too cynical and caustic at times, self-deprecation not being my favourite writing style, yet if one by any chance is or was a student at an Italian university they know Ferrari is right.

I am glad I have come across Elif Batuman and Dario Ferrari. It is obvious that I enjoyed Batuman’s books more, but both writers found more or less compelling ways to tell relatable stories. Summer demands nothing more.

Well, sort of. I am still working on a couple of exams waiting for me between the end of August and the beginning of September. ↩︎
I have admired Donna Tartt’s The Secret History long before the recent wave of enthusiasm. ↩︎
See: Thomas Pavel’s The Lives of the Novel: A History. ↩︎
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward.” (Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, IV) ↩︎

Tweaking Consult completion

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 17 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

After having adapted vertico--format-candidate to behave like I want in my Marginalia-less setup, I noticed I still had undesired documentation during completion.

Now, Daniel Mendler created the beautiful Corfu to improve completion at point in Emacs. However, he did not forget about old school users such as myself and provided consult-completion-in-region for the minibuffer lovers out there.

My only “problem”¹ with consult-completion-in-region is that by default candidates are offered with some related documentation next to them, much like what one would see with M-x were one to use Marginalia. It is possible to leverage consult-customize to change a subset of consult-completion-in-region details,² but to remove the extra information something else is needed.

(define-advice consult-completion-in-region
    (:around (&rest args) mu-completion-no-extra-properties)
  "Remove extra properties from completion candidates."
  (cl-letf (((default-value 'completion-extra-properties) nil))
    (apply args)))

A hack, yes, but also another way to prove the level of freedom Emacs empowers the user with.

Note that my small modifications to vertico--format-candidate and consult-completion-in-region are not intended to highlight any Vertico or Consult shortcomings. These are great packages that improve the standard Emacs experience, thus they should be tried as they come out of the box for a while. The fact that I can easily adjust them to my preferences just make them shine even more.

The quotes should be enough to suggest that this is not a real problem, but let me spell it out to avoid confusion. ↩︎
Try C-h f consult-completion-in-region RET to know more. ↩︎

Ghost in the Machine

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Whenever I think of artificial intelligence, Ghost in the Machine, the seventh episode of the first season of The X-Files, comes to my mind.¹ Almost thirty years have gone since that episode first aired, but it has always been one of my favourites. The plot is fairly straightforward: the Central Operating System (a.k.a. the AI) of a software company develops both survival instinct and morbid care for its creator; killings ensues; Mulder and Scully manage to stop the evil technology. Or do they? As a teenager I loved the openness of The X-Files, always leaving room for unsolved dilemmas episode after episode. I also wanted to believe as Mulder did, but that is a different story.

Today it is not uncommon to laugh at the overtly pessimistic views of shows such as this, casting aside wrongly perceived assumptions with an indulgent smirk. Beside the fact that usually the characters who never doubt common sense are the first ones to die in these tales, this sort of cynicism reveals more than it conceals.

My firm belief is that the outcomes of and the concerns about the recent developments in artificial intelligence are nothing more than the inevitable consequence of the society we have built. We have been putting our faith in technology for so long by now that it is nearly impossible to look at it from a rather different perspective. The one who does so is generally ridiculed. This is even more interesting when we think about the distinction between science and technology and how we relate to them. Think of the pandemic. What COVID-deniers' reactions highlighted is how easily we can criticise science for its shortcomings while at the same time relying on the technology that science itself made available for our rants to be out in the public.

Technology says as much of our times as fiction does. It mirrors points of view, it asks questions, and offers problems just as it looks for answers and tries to offer solutions. Like telling a story, developing a specific technology is an effort situated in a precise place at a particular time, and we can understand more of that time and that place if we read them through the stories and the technology that were born within their constraints.

However, we do not want to look at technology as we look at fiction, because we cannot believe technology to live in the realm of the uncertain, the implausible or the unreal. Technology is tangible, its immediate effects readily perceivable in our lives. Technology fixes problems, creates comfort, enables people to do things that seemed impossible. And yet, like fiction, this is a story told from a narrator who, like us, is a finite human being. A story makes sense when it ends, but we cannot make sense of our lives because we do not know when they will end and, just as well, we can never know the whole that constitutes other people’s lives. Being a finite product of finite beings, how do we make sense of technology then?

One possible answer, or at least the only answer I can think of, is critical thinking. We may never find reliable replies to metaphysical doubts, but we can still stop ourselves from mindlessly consuming technology and pause for a moment, a moment long enough to figure out whether the full impact of new technology is clear and understood. It is fairly obvious to me that this was not the case for mobile technology. Have we ever stopped to think about how a smartphone could change the life of a teenager? Do we not see what happened to the attention span of people after years of push notifications? My university has already issued a statement warning that papers will be proof read to avoid misuses of ChatGPT, which is telling of how little to zero thought has been put into the pivotal transformations artificial intelligence will bring upon us.

Lost in our market-driven technological bubble we please ourselves by being concerned about the dangers of AI during lunch breaks or between rounds of beer. I know we are still capable of critical thought, but I am not sure for how long we will be. I cannot help but think that the smarter technology becomes, the dumber end users might get.

Along with Kill Switch from Season 5, yes, but only when I am in a deeply apocalyptic mood that usually drives me to watch The Terminator one more time. ↩︎

Tweaking Vertico candidates

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of the Emacs packages I do not seem to get used to is Marginalia. There is nothing wrong with it and since Daniel Mendler is involved the ELisp underneath is great. However, to me it’s just too much information where I rarely want it. When I need that sort of documentation it’s always a quick key binding away.

Given the author it should not come as a surprise that Marginalia works rather smoothly with Vertico. In fact, it works so well that I only see a “problem” when I use it without Marginalia. Months ago I reported this minor glitch to Daniel, but to cut a long story short, at the end of the current selected item vertico--format-candidate adds a newline escape sequence to which the vertico-current face is applied as well.

I know, it’s a minor thing that should not stop me from using Vertico. Still, it can be fixed quite easily. I suggested an advice in the aforementioned report, but since vertico--format-candidate is implemented as a cl-defgeneric I can do better:

(with-eval-after-load 'vertico
  (set-face-attribute 'vertico-current nil :extend nil)
  
  (cl-defmethod vertico--format-candidate (cnd pref suf idx _start)
    "Format CND given PREF, SUF, and IDX."
    (setq cnd (vertico--display-string (concat pref cnd suf "\n")))
    (when (= idx vertico--index)
      (add-face-text-property 0 (1- (length cnd)) 'vertico-current 'append cnd))
    cnd))

Beside ensuring that vertico-current does not extend beyond the selected candidate, I use the lovely named 1- function to avoid applying this face to \n as well.

Note that something like fido-vertical-mode does not need a hack like this. Yet I simply cannot resist tinkering with my favourite packages.

Bandcamp and independent music

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When I heard of Bandcamp joining Epic Games I had mixed feelings. Since I have been out of the gaming world for years¹ I know next to nothing about Epic Games. All I know is that an independent music platform has become part of something bigger and way more powerful, but the extent of this giant’s interest in music, and indie musicians in particular, eludes me.

A year or so after the acquisition I read about workers at Bandcamp unionising.² Not too long after Bandcamp decided to react and I am sure the muscles upstairs backed them up swiftly.

I will need more details about this whole story in order to understand what is really going on, but even as it is, I cannot help but question how I should act now with regards to Bandcamp. You see, I love Bandcamp and use it regularly. I buy records from independent artists³ and I don’t remember how many musicians I have bumped into just by randomly browsing the website.⁴ This doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy buying music from my favourite local store, which still makes me feel like I did when I bought my very first CD, or that I don’t get excited when I can chat with musicians selling their merchandise right after the live gig.

However, Bandcamp makes supporting independent music a couple of clicks away, while giving me the pleasure of sending a message to the people behind a record instead of a random seller on Discogs. It’s not really laziness, is it? Back in my twenties, I rarely had the chance to support, say, Australian artists in such a direct way. When Amazon became a standard for online shopping I thought that was it, and to a certain degree it was,⁵ but there is so much independent music struggling to survive that whenever avoiding middle men is possible I am all for it.

Amazon is cheap and used items on Discogs are a bargain, I am well aware of the situation. Not to mention the streaming services I ignore on purpose since stacking records on my shelves is a much more relaxing experience. But even with digital records, which I buy only sometimes otherwise I would have to sleep on a mattress made of vinyls and CDs, Bandcamp does not make me feel like the bad guy who rips off artists shouting “sharing is caring, man!” to justify the ZIP archives frantically downloaded from advertisement-loaded corners of the web.

Don’t get me wrong, I was around during the early age of file sharing and there were tons of music in and out my primitive Internet connection, but that didn’t stop me from buying records. The thing is Bandcamp offers a relief to my conscience, because now I can get a preview of a track or a whole album to get a general idea of its sound, decide if I care enough to spend some money for the digital version, or show some love and order the much more rewarding vinyl edition, all of it without backstabbing small bands or young DJs from rural towns.

Considering that I don’t keep up with music-related news and releases like I used to, this is even more precious. Nowadays when I want to listen to new music I bounce around labels, bands sharing their favourite acts, solid advice from shrewd friends⁶ and that’s it basically. It’s always nice when I hear or read about a new name and I can find more about them on Bandcamp, which means I can learn about their music by actually listening to it instead of reading reviews or other sort of comments.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I used to write —rather poorly, I must say— about music, so I kind of know the value of a good review for the reader, who maybe gains more insights from a different point of view, but especially for the musician, who may actually need as much press as possible to reach a wider audience. And yet, having been a music enthusiast for most of my life, I know the sounds I like and I can easily understand whether that new record is what I am after or not. Bandcamp is just the right place at the right time for someone like me.

What now, then? Obviously I don’t want to stop supporting my favourite musicians. At the same time I cannot afford to attend every single concert in order to buy their last work because the middle man is playing dirty tricks while faking good behaviour to prevent opposition. And of course I cannot just write to all of them complaining about the Bandcamp situation and asking them to find a different option for sharing their sounds. If you love music boycotting Bandcamp puts the artists, and not just you, on a dangerous path. This is not the world a sappy seventeen-year old with an awkward smile, leaving the country side on a forty-minutes bus ride to get to a record store, would have imagined waking up to.

Though the Wipeout HD online community will always have a special place in my heart. ↩︎
See: Workers at Epic-owned Bandcamp are unionising because “It’s not enough to get small wins alone” and @bandcampunited. ↩︎
The last record I bought is from Lleroy. ↩︎
Off the top of my head I would say RVG, a band particularly dear to me. ↩︎
For English books and specific Blu-ray editions I often have only Amazon to rely on. ↩︎
The list of artists trustworthy people put into my ears is endless. To name just a few of the ones I am more grateful for: Angie McMahon, Terre Thaemlitz, Róisín Murphy, Nina Nastasia… ↩︎

CIDER and Clojure LSP

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When I wrote about formatting Clojure buffers I also mentioned that Clojure LSP can take care of this among other things. Since my working days are pretty much Clojure days, it’s time to check out how LSP can help me in this regard and whether the experience is worth an extra tool.

Installing Clojure LSP is trivial so I will leave you on your own with that. After the installation the first thing I tried is the obvious M-x eglot in a Clojure buffer, but all I got was a connection timeout error as a reply. Weird, I thought, this has never happened with LaTeX. However, the solution was simple: I just needed to increase the default value of eglot-connect-timeout to 60.

Emacs can leverage many goodies from Clojure LSP thanks to Eglot, but some of them out of the box interfere with CIDER. For instance, the integration with ElDoc is better left in the capable hands of Eglot in order to avoid duplicates when displaying documentation.

(setq-default cider-eldoc-display-for-symbol-at-point nil)

(defun mu-cider-disable-eldoc ()
  "Let LSP handle ElDoc instead of CIDER."
  (remove-hook 'eldoc-documentation-functions #'cider-eldoc t))

(add-hook 'cider-mode-hook #'mu-cider-disable-eldoc)

In a similar fashion I put Clojure LSP in charge of completions. This approach is useful when in a Clojure buffer all I need is some poking around to understand the code in front of me. There is no need to jack-in with CIDER to do just that.

(defun mu-cider-disable-completion ()
  "Let LSP handle completion instead of CIDER."
  (remove-hook 'completion-at-point-functions #'cider-complete-at-point t))

(add-hook 'cider-mode-hook #'mu-cider-disable-completion)

I am sure CIDER can, and probably will, embrace Clojure LSP some day, but one cannot blame its developers for these nuisances. On the contrary, we should be grateful for the ease of customization at our disposal, which is one more reason to appreciate CIDER, if you ask me.

Anyway, now I can get rid of mu-cljfmt-format-buffer and rely on M- eglot-format-buffer for my Clojure formatting needs. A happy ending indeed, because removing code from my init.el is always a pleasure.

Jump to minibuffer from completions

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

More than a month after my commitment to the default built-in completion system I can say that everything has been going smoothly. I adjusted my muscle memory to hit TAB in the minibuffer whenever I need to pop up the *Completions* window, which to my surprise has not been happening as much as I was expecting. The only thing that I added to the original setup is the following:

(keymap-set completion-list-mode-map "M-e" #'switch-to-minibuffer)

This is easier to reach than M-g M-c when I want to move from the completion window to the minibuffer. Admittedly, it’s not something that I do often, but it can be useful if I need to edit what I have just typed.

If you are wondering why I chose M-e for this, the answer is simple. I like isearch-edit-string and use it regularly, plus the e in M-e reminds me of the verb “edit”, which is what this key binding allows me to do.

Why Proust?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have been asked the question in the title twice recently, only to find myself seemingly incapable of explaining my reasons without stating the obvious. It was not the first time that words did not come to me as I really want, and I am sure it will not be last. In order to avoid being cornered by “why Proust?” inquiries again, I decided to put my answer into writing.

Marcel Proust’s name entered my life around my last days of high school. Back then I just had the luxury of an online forum’s community to escape my small, rural town and access a broader range of cultural items. The forum had a section where topics about books showed up every now and then. Truth be told, we were more into films and music, but luckily I wasn’t alone in my passion for literature. I was, and to a certain degree still am, a novice in this regard, so I used to take every recommendation as a chance to widen my limited horizon.

When a member opened a topic about Proust, though, I was scared. I had already read some classics, I knew my way around some English and French literature, but the guy did not care to mention, among other things, that À la recherche du temps perdu was over 4000 pages, nor that it’s nearly impossible to understand without taking into consideration its author’s life. Plus, I didn’t have a teacher as good as the one who made me fall in love with I Promessi Sposi next to me. I could only think of one thing: let’s bookmark Marcel Proust in my mind and get back to him when I feel ready. Slightly embarrassingly, I felt ready almost twenty years later. Put otherwise, it was never the right time to pick up Proust.

We could argue about the notion of right time for ages, I suppose. To me, the right time to do something is when it feels natural to do it, to the point that I start doing it without really thinking about what took me there instead of somewhere else. The right time is also a wonderful and mysterious feeling, especially with books. I remember fondly the right time for Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace because an ever-changing stream of emotions bathed me while reading their works. And even more incredibly inexplicable was the right time for Baruch Spinoza, with the implications of his philosophy destroying most of my thoughts about the world around me. These authors happened to be what I needed in a particular moment in my life, and the fact that they have stayed with me since then adds depth to my idea of “right time”.

When was the right time for Marcel Proust and À la recherche du temps perdu? I cannot pinpoint a day, but last year both the writer and the book found their ways back to me. It had mainly to do with university, I suppose. My partner took a class with a professor who teaches Proust, albeit not in that specific course. Proust was named, though. As it is my custom, I started endless talks on my desire to know more about him, subtly convincing my partner to shut me up by joining me in the hunt for the Italian edition of La Recherche.¹

While devoted to its pages, two things happened. First, during a course on Gilles Deleuze we spent quite some time on his Proust and Signs, working on the relevance of Henri Bergson’s concept of virtual memory on both Deleuze and Proust. My enthusiasm was so manifest that on the day of the exam I ended up talking about Proust even if I wasn’t explicitly asked about him.² Second, rather impulsively, I enrolled on the course of the aforementioned professor to enjoy a theoretical study of La Recherche with some help from Mikhail Bakhtin, György Lukács, Thomas G. Pavel, and Franco Moretti.

The more I learn about La Recherche, the more I want to know about Marcel Proust. His first writings, his early poetry, his essays, George D. Painter’s classic biography, I just cannot stop reading, and I am now seriously considering learning French to dig deeper.³ Just as it happened with Bolaño, Wallace, and Spinoza, Proust’s words speak to sides of me that I wasn’t even aware of having. They seem to understand me better than anyone else, not solely because they shine a light on my inner self, but because they confront me with possibilities yet to come and paths I’d better not take. This is why Proust.

There are different editions and formats of Proust’s masterpiece available in Italy. I wanted the seven volumes translated by Giovanni Raboni, which are starting to be replaced by a new one volume edition, large and heavy enough to make holding it with your hands an endless struggle. ↩︎
The professor appreciated it anyway. ↩︎
The entirety of Proust’s correspondence is not available in Italian. ↩︎

Better built-in completions

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Despite me doing my best to track Emacs development and build the latest master regularly, I forgot to check out the improvements on the default *Completions* buffer that are going to be available on the next official release of our favourite text editor. Thankfully, Robert Enzmann did it for me.

Much like Robert, I’ve been living with Vertico, Consult, Corfu and Orderless for a while now, and you won’t be hearing any complaint from me on that side. These packages are simply fantastic. Still, by now a regular reader knows I enjoy the vanilla Emacs experience, and if there is a chance to stick with it I am not the one who is going to miss it.

Robert did a great job already at explaining what’s new when it comes to built-in completions and what settings you can tweak to take advantage of the new developments. He is sporting pretty animations too, so go check his writing for further details. I’ll just mention that, beside setting completions-header-format to nil, I set completion-show-help to nil to keep the *Completions* buffer as clean as possible.

A setup like this is a radical change for me. From my IDO days, I have always relied on a completion approach rather different than what is available on the very first Emacs run. Basically one that provides more than a bare prompt. As expected, it took me a while to adapt and learn to change my old habits. Take M-x, for instance. With Helm or Icomplete candidates appear before I hit other keys, and since I usually sort them by usage, I can navigate to the most recent one without typing its name at all. To overcome the confusion, I tried to think at the prompt as a shell one. Like I do in a shell, I type some letters and then reach for TAB to complete the rest. It’s not that I wasn’t doing something like this before. Think of file paths, for example. However, most of the times the initial list took me away from the prompt entirely because what I was after was a C-n away.

Moreover, every Vertico and friends user knows that they stay close to Emacs internals and work like building blocks, nicely complementing each other in order to extend step by step core functionalities. This means that nothing is stopping me to keep Consult and Orderless around or having Corfu ready to pop up completion candidates at point without having to move my eyes to the bottom of the screen. For anyone yet not convinced, this is another sound proof of how carefully the likes of Daniel Mendler and Omar Antolín Camarena designed their packages.

To get back at Robert’s article, I’ll ask myself the same question he did to himself and I’ll reply with a similar, enigmatic answer: will I see the *Completions* buffer more often from now on? Yes, probably yes.

LaTeX footnotes and Tempel

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For those who remember, the combination of AUCTeX and Eglot makes me happy. And those with even better memory surely recall me mentioning BibLaTeX for my footnotes. The thing with footnotes, though, is that having beautiful, automatic completion for my bibliography is only half of the story. The other half is leveraging yet another great package from the unstoppable Daniel Mendler: Tempel.

As usual with Daniel, the README is full of details, so there is little for me to add. Following the documentation, I have M-+ bound to tempel-complete and then I have few templates for things like clojure-mode, emacs-lisp-mode, and haskell-mode in an aptly named templates file. I also have the following for latex-mode:

(footnote "\\footnote{" p ".}")
(texcite "\\textcite{" p "}")

It may look like trivial stuff, I know, but this is all it takes to insert a footnote:

Hit M-+
Pick footnote
If no bibliographical entry is needed, type the desired text
Otherwise, hit M-+ again
Pick textcite
Let Corfu powered by Digestif offer the required bibliographical entry

Trust me, it’s a quick manoeuvre once you get used to it. It’s also a bit cumbersome, if you ask me. Daniel must know me better than I know myself because Tempel already provides a simpler option, namely the tempel-key macro.

(with-eval-after-load 'tex
  (tempel-key "C-c t f" footnote TeX-mode-map)
  (tempel-key "C-c t t" texcite TeX-mode-map))

Now with few key strokes and AUCTeX doing the rest of the heavy lifting I can safely focus on the content of my document without worrying about the footnotes.

Note that tempel-key sort of fixes a small issue with tempel-complete. When I hit M-+ right after the last letter of a word, I get a message saying tempel--interactive: tempel-complete: No completions. To avoid this unpleasant behaviour either I add an extra whitespace character to be removed after the footnote is ready, or I use tempel-key. The better alternative is obvious.

A final warning: the most recent version of Digestif introduced a problem with completion-at-point and Xref, which I reported on the bug tracker. For now it’s possible to work around the issue by using commit f1b4202 as I wrote over there.

My 2022

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This year I am going to approach my usual recap in a different way. Instead of separating best-of lists I will look back at 2022 in a single writing to keep it simple.

2022 will not be remembered as a particularly stimulating time. For instance, I have struggled to keep my enthusiasm alive when it comes to university. This is not solely because of the whole mess with dual lessons, but it encompasses the quality of the courses and what I have been learning as well. Maybe I will return on this at some point in the future, but for now let me just add that once again I can’t wait to get it over with. Almost the same reasoning can explain why I left the two book clubs I had joined in 2021. I was not pleased by the reading choices nor by the discussions around them, and more often than not it felt like I was putting obstacles between me and the books I want to read. But let’s set aside the negativity for a while and see what really mattered this year.

Emacs

I usually document my Emacs adventures on this website so I’ll be brief. For the ever-present and more reliable software in my computing life this has been the first year fully away from Magit and MELPA. The built-in VC system has been a trustworthy companion, and the combination of GNU ELPA and NonGNU ELPA has provided the few external packages I need. Speaking of packages, Eglot deserves a mention. It’s true that I don’t use it for work, but whenever I deal with academic writings (LaTeX) or hobby projects (Haskell) Eglot has made me appreciate some of the goodies that LSP has to offer. Another package worth being included here is detached.el, which I’ve been using to run commands like bundle, yarn, and shadow-cljs from shell-mode without losing control of the buffer. So neat.

SourceHut

Early this year I moved my projects from GitHub to SourceHut. This was such an important step for me because for my repositories I don’t want to worry about actions, notifications, unnecessary JavaScript, and giant corporations stalking my code. SourceHut firmly avoids all of that and provides the user with a small set of great tools. GitHub helped me to get out of my cave and learn how to share and collaborate with others, something not to be underestimated. However, SourceHut cares. The least I could do was joining them to support this wonderful act of caring.

DivestOS

After almost six years, in May I decided to leave the default Fairphone OS behind and look for something different. The experience with DivestOS has been so fantastic I had to make a donation to this awesome project. My phone battery now lasts longer than ever before and the user interface is generally more responsive, but the true value of this OS is that I have a Google-free Fairphone 2 that works as expected. For a person who has basic needs when it comes to their smartphone and wishes for better privacy, DivestOS is the perfect solution.

Books

From the book lover perspective 2022 has been intense, and I am not referring to the total number of pages I read. What I mean is the profound quality of the works I’ve been through and the hours spent thinking both while reading and after the turn of the last page. Even in the one case where I got angry at the author it was still worth it. Here are the most rewarding readings of the past months:

Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
In the Eye of the Wild (Nastassja Martin)
Cecilia e le streghe (Laura Conti)
Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition (Maria Wirtemberska)
Le Père Goriot (Honoré de Balzac)
Beloved (Toni Morrison)
Spinoza’s Religion: A New Reading of the Ethics (Clare Carlisle)
Horcynus Orca (Stefano D’Arrigo)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
The Pale King (David Foster Wallace)
In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)

Most of these are classics so you don’t really need my words to pick them up. Still, it’s safe to say that for one reason or another they all are experiences to treasure, worth the time and the effort that they require. If you are wondering where philosophy fits in my 2022 readings, I can say Kant, Hegel, and Deleuze are the authors I have spent a great deal of days on, but there has been room for Spinoza, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Adorno too.

Music

As an avid music listener and record collector, I feel a bit ashamed in this regard. The only records I bought this year are Big Time by Angel Olsen and II by Liberato, but Olsen’s costed me a small fortune, so there goes my banal excuse for not sticking more with music in 2022.

Anyway, some of my best experiences had more to do with concerts. I went to a little festival last summer, called Upside Fest, created by the same people behind the loveliest place for beer and live music around here that sadly did not survive the pandemic. The festival was all about independent music, workshops, and being friendly to each other, which is the sort of spirit the organizers always put in everything they do. It took place in the small park of what long ago was the castle of the town, a cozy and quiet environment which invites everyone to massive chill out sessions. It’s impossible to come out bored or unhappy when these people are involved.

On the opposite side of the intimacy spectrum, I finally attend a Liberato’s live performance. The show has been postponed multiple times due to COVID-19, but eventually they did it and it was glorious. I am not too fond of big concerts and huge crowds these days, but Liberato is some of the best music Italy has at the moment so I could not miss it. He pretty much remixed all of his tracks, interpolating covers and extending them with new beats for the entire set. We danced (well, jumped around mostly) and yelled Neapolitan words for two hours. Fun times indeed.

Cinema

I know this is going to sound horrible coming from a self-proclaimed cinephile, but all things considered I have not been able to feel moved, involved, passionate with a film not already part of my Blu-ray and DVD collection. I can mention Elvis and Kimi as pleasant and interesting movies, but titles such as Deep Water, Armageddon Time, and Crimes of the Future were just below my expectations. The only exception to this bleakness is The Fabelmans, which although formulaic, predictable, and not up there with the best from Steven Spielberg, shows love for the art and it understands where the heart fits among the images. It reminded me of Zhang Yimou’s One Second, hence storytelling for the sake of telling.

It looks like I have been approaching films with a precise idea of what I wanted from them, which is obviously not the right thing to do. Cinema owes me nothing and it’s up to me to be open and apply my mind accordingly. I see myself getting tired quickly with recent films, throwing around comparisons and unable to accept what is in front of me. I have not been keeping up with new releases, at least not as much as I used to, so I don’t have the proper tools to understand where cinema is going and why. I hope this is just some sort of vacation from one of my deepest and oldest loves in order to regain the mindset to be at peace with it again.

Automatically format Clojure buffers

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Contrary to my experience with free or open source projects, when it comes to the proprietary software I have been developing for work since late 2004, code formatting has never been matter of discussion. There was a team, back in my days in the UK, that enforced some strict rules via Ant, but until today that was the sole exception.

Luckily the people I am coding with nowadays are more open to this kind of problem. Yes, I used the word problem. As I explained to a co-worker when I raised the question of formatting tools, I read code as I read a book. I cannot imagine sitting through different books each written according to the authors' own ideas of stylistic conventions. It’s about having the text, whether words or code,¹ accessible to anyone by making the assumption that the first step to understanding is ease of legibility.

The team agreed on using cljfmt for this task. Most of the developers here use Clojure LSP and, from what I understand, the integration with cljfmt is already there for them. I, on the other hand, went with a more manual approach. I first built the cljfmt binary with GraalVM thanks to Rune Juhl Jacobsen’s useful cljfmt-graalvm. Rune offers a snippet for use-package and Projectile users, but I leveraged project.el and a CIDER hook instead.

(defvar mu-cljfmt-edn "cljfmt.edn"
  "The name of `cljfmt' configuration file.")
  
(defun mu-cljfmt-format-buffer ()
  "Format current buffer with `cljfmt'."
  (when (derived-mode-p 'clojure-mode)
    (let* ((pr (project-root (project-current)))
           (cfg-dir (locate-dominating-file pr mu-cljfmt-edn))
           (cfg-edn (expand-file-name mu-cljfmt-edn cfg-dir))
           (cmd (if (file-exists-p cfg-edn)
                    (format "cljfmt -c %s %s" cfg-edn buffer-file-name)
                  (format "cljfmt %s" buffer-file-name))))
      (shell-command-to-string cmd))
    (revert-buffer t t)))

(defun mu-cider-format-buffer ()
  "Automatically format current buffer after saving."
  (add-hook 'after-save-hook #'mu-cljfmt-format-buffer nil t))

(add-hook 'cider-mode-hook #'mu-cider-format-buffer)

Some things worth considering:

the location and the name of the cljfmt.edn file matter, so check your projects if you follow my approach. For instance, the snippet provided by Rune uses .cljfmt.edn. With mu-cljfmt-edn I can customize it per-project via directory variables, if needed.
clojurec-mode and clojurescript-mode are both derived from clojure-mode. This explains the use of derived-mode-p;
in buffers handled by clojure-mode I always have CIDER enabled, even if not necessarily jacked-in. For a more general approach, clojure-mode-hook should be preferred;
CIDER provides an integration with cljfmt. Depending on your needs that may be already enough.

With a tool tweaked to format code idiomatically for us, now it’s time to argue about names. Wait, let me refresh my hadoukens first.

By the way, looking at code as text is the subject of Sense and Structure: Towards a Textual Analysis of Software, a recent talk by Zach Tellman. ↩︎

A new filmsinwords.eu

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As of today Films in Words, the website I use for my writings on cinema, becomes an archive. I will keep it around for a while, but I imported its contents here and anything new related to cinema will be posted on this website. Some time next year filmsinwords.eu will not be available any more.

The reason for this change, in case you are wondering, is a practical one. I first started blogging in English with Films in Words, and I did not want to use it as a personal website. So when manueluberti.eu arrived, the idea was to keep my techie and film buff sides separated. Years passed, and to my surprise content not involving Emacs has surfaced here. It makes sense then that I host my cinema writings on these pages as well.

To make browsing by category easier I added pages for articles grouped by category, like Emacs, Cinema, and Books.

For an overview of all the writings there is always the whole archive to peruse.

Jump to the last change in the buffer

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Ages ago I did the minimally required amount of work to get Chris Done’s goto-last-point to MELPA. Recently the maintenance of that package has been taken over by someone else as part of me moving away from GitHub and caring only about projects I want to actively maintain.

The thing with goto-last-point is that it’s too much code for me. I simply want to jump back to the last change in the buffer when I need. A savvy Emacs user knows that commands such as isearch-forward (C-s) or beginning-of-buffer (M-<) push mark at the previous position, making it easy to go back to that position with a quick C-u C-SPC.

However, suppose for a moment that for some inexplicable reason you reached over to the scroll wheel to move around your buffer. C-u C-SPC cannot help you now.

(defun mu-back-to-last-edit ()
  "Jump back to the last change in the current buffer."
  (interactive)
  (ignore-errors
    (let ((inhibit-message t))
      (undo-only)
      (undo-redo))))

Bind mu-back-to-last-edit to a key binding of your choice and no matter the weird dances your point is put through, you can safely reach for the last edit without thinking too much about it.

Note that I am using ignore-errors and inhibit-message just because both undo-only and undo-redo display useful messages that, in this specific case only, I don’t need. You could avoid them if you don’t mind some noise in the echo area.

Giacomo Leopardi was a loser

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Not too long ago, I was having dinner with relatives and friends. The conversation was circling around topics I do not much care about (e.g., food), but at some point, I don’t remember exactly how, we moved to more interesting subjects. Specifically, literature and poetry. A friend mentioned how hard teaching poetry at their school is, and we ended up sharing comments on our favourite poets. As soon as Giacomo Leopardi’s name was thrown around, from the other side of the table a relative quickly shared their thought: “Giacomo Leopardi was a loser!”. It took me a while to realize what had just been said. Then I failed miserably at trying to explain the stunning beauty of L’infinito to an audience not particularly interested in the sublime, the absolute, and the Spinozistic reality of the poem.

Over the course of the next days I kept returning to the statement “Giacomo Leopardi was a loser”. I wanted to understand it better. I was not particularly interested in shaming the author of the comment, because I am not a poetry expert, so it would have been silly to hold up true aesthetic values for art’s sake without being able to justify my opinion. I simply was fascinated by what something like “Giacomo Leopardi was a loser” could tell me on the author of the comment’s views on poetry and art in general.

What happens when we value a piece of art according to our perception of the author? The relative who expressed their opinion on Leopardi has never cared too much about humanities, so what does it mean for them to acknowledge something as beautiful? One possible explanation is that what they deem beautiful is in fact what they instinctively like or, to a certain degree, think they understand. This is the old subjective versus objective argument encapsulated by the following expression: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

However, I don’t think this kind of relativism can be used as a solid principle, mostly because it can be conducive to naive forms of skepticism for which there is no easy way out.¹ It’s also true that the mere fact that we like something does not make it automatically beautiful for everyone, and yet there are work of arts generally considered beautiful but in front of which we are not moved at all. Is art failing at communicating a universal value of beauty, or is it just us lacking the right perspective and the proper knowledge to grasp beauty as it should be?²

Another question raised in me by “Giacomo Leopardi was a loser” concerns the relationship between the person and the artist who that person is. I remember being desperately incapable of making a distinction between the two, for instance, praising or insulting an art piece depending on how close the author was to my political ideas. A professor dear to me once said: “Should we trash Being and Time now that we know of Heidegger’s sympathies for the Nazi Party?”.³ Whatever the term “loser” means, it makes absolutely no difference when we consider what Leopardi left us with. We have his poetry, we can read his writings. What do they tell us? Do they still mean something to us? Is Leopardi’s art relevant today? Unless the answer to all of these questions is negative and justifiably so, I see no point in avoiding Leopardi in light of how the man was supposed to be.

Moreover, if beautiful is only what I like and can understand, does it even make sense to study this poet, or even poetry at all, at school? There is a not so subtle utilitarian dimension to a notion of beauty built upon an individual’s own interests which, in turn, renders poetry somehow imposed on students against more practical, day-to-day matters. This is an all too familiar situation, because it goes hand in hand with what I want a teacher to be. When I think of poetry, I think of the highest peak of the humans’ adventure with language. When I read poetry, I am taken simultaneously more beyond and within myself than with any other art by the incredible simplicity of the nature of poetry itself: it’s just words on a page, how can they push me so far? If a teacher cannot enable their students to explore the unknown sides of themselves by means of poetry, then the students are totally free to set Leopardi aside and move on. Finding beauty in poetry is hard, and that’s why it takes a really great teacher to make it possible.⁴

Still, suppose for a moment that we have finally found a poem we do like. Suppose the poem has already been valued as beautiful by experts way more trustworthy than us. Should we consider its beauty useful? In my rather limited experience, engaging with beauty in art and humanities does not seem to pay the bills, so is there even a point in studying Giacomo Leopardi when the world out there will rarely if ever match your knowledge with a salary? Let me provide a short question as a quick answer first: who cares? Now let me try to expand on it.

Conflating beauty with interest makes sense only if, for a while, we wish to take care of ourselves in a less income-driven way. Yes, finding beauty in things is for the most part a self-involved endeavor. One can reasonably say that as long as there is pleasure in it, then something is beautiful and worth of their attention. Money means nothing here: I want beauty to provide instant gratification, please. Such a hedonistic stance depends on the kind of pleasure one is looking for. If it is immediate excitement or a quick diversion from boring routine we are searching, then this is not the beauty a poem like L’infinito conveys. To appreciate its beauty one needs hard work. One must know what Leopardi is writing about; one has to remove any interference with their reading; one has to be open to the endless paths the poem will eventually uncover.

I know it takes considerable effort and time to do all of that and usually lack of time is the primary objection to this process, but I do not want to waste words on the amount of hours daily spent in front of screens of different sizes. The point here is actually very simple: you have to work for beauty to work on you. When you succeed, beauty succeeds, and as you feel the eternal you will know that it is worth every penny you are not putting in your wallet while sinking in this sea.

Put otherwise: if everything can be judged according to one’s opinions, then the statement “everything can be judged according to one’s opinions” is questionable as well. ↩︎
Studying Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment has led me to inquiries of this kind. ↩︎
I will never share Martin Heidegger’s ideas on Nazism, but Being and Time is one of the books I can point at if asked about my love for philosophy. ↩︎
I have never had a teacher capable of doing it. Luckily, I had teachers able to show me the wonders of literature and philosophy, and so I came to poetry with my eyes partially open already. ↩︎

Update on Eglot and jdtls

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is just a quick update on the status of Eclipse JDT Language Server support in Eglot.

Since my Python skills are close to none, Roland Grunberg kindly stepped forward to make sure that jdtls can take care of setting up everything in order to avoid ugly workarounds in Emacs and, I guess, other text editors and IDEs as well.

The fix will be available on the next Eclipse JDT milestone. However, nothing stops you from grabbing the latest snapshot build and M-x eglot away in your Java projects.

Even though I am not working with Java these days, it’s good to know that I could do it in Emacs with the nice features LSP offers.

Working with diff-mode

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One Emacs package that has been with me for a very long time is diff-hl, and the reason is not its on-the-fly coloured fringe markers, but the fact that colours stay there when I visit the same buffer later. This is useful since more often than not I end my work day with something still in progress, so the next morning it’s easier to use diff-hl-next-hunk and diff-hl-previous-hunk to move around my unfinished edits.

However, I have put diff-hl aside because there have been some welcome improvements lately on the built-in diff-mode, especially the possibility to edit its buffer contents and commit straight from it. I now find myself using C-x v D (vc-root-diff) many times a day, and by using diff-mode more, I have started to appreciate one simple thing that was already available to me but have always ignored, that is the navigation among hunks with diff-hunk-next (n) and diff-hunk-prev (p).

The pattern, already become muscle memory, is the following:

C-x p p to enter the project I am working on
Visit the file I am interested in
Hit C-x v =
Move with either n or p to the desired hunk
Hit RET to jump to the hunk
Hit C-x 1 to hide the diff-mode buffer

Easy and quick. I guess one could even speed up the process by using something like recentf-mode, for instance, but I’ll leave that to you wild ELisp explorers.

By the way, after months with VC instead of Magit,¹ the combination of vc-dir, vc-git, diff-mode, and shell-command has resulted in one of the most dreaded command any serious Emacs user can think of, one that I cannot even type out of fear of mystical forces coming after me. Let’s just say it involves package-delete and… Dear GNU, they’re already here.

My actual focus on VC roughly started last year, see: Rebasing with VC. ↩︎

Automatically highlight regular expressions

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

While reading the nice Straightforward Emacs: Automatically Highlight Buffer Text, I kept wondering whether I could get a similar solution with Emacs built-in facilities. The article explains how to highlight “TK” and variations of it (e.g., “TKTKTKTK”) using the helpful hl-prog-extra. The author says they had to rely on an external package “after some searching and trial and error”, but it is in fact possible to avoid hl-prog-extra for the simple problem they are trying to solve. The trick is using font-lock-add-keywords.

First of all, I am going to use a custom face instead of the font-lock-warning-face one used in the original article, because I like to think of “TK” as a comment instead of a warning.

(defface mu-tk-face '((t :inherit font-lock-comment-face :bold t))
  "Face used to highlight \"TK\" markers.")

Then I am going to create a small function to hook into the mode where I want to use “TK” markers.

(defvar mu-tk-regexp "\\(TK\\)+"
  "Regexp to identify \"TK\" markers.")

(defun mu-markdown-mode-setup ()
  "Configure `markdown-mode'."
  (font-lock-add-keywords nil `((,mu-tk-regexp 0 'mu-tk-face))))

The rest is trivial:

(add-hook 'markdown-mode-hook #'mu-markdown-mode-setup)

This should be enough already, but since I use flyspell-mode in my Markdown documents it has to ignore “TK” so as to avoid having the flyspell-incorrect face interfering with my own mu-tk-face. In order to accomplish this, I need a function that ignores these markers so I can use it as the value of flyspell-generic-check-word-predicate.

(defun mu-flyspell-skip-tk ()
  "Ignore \"TK\" markers when spell-checking."
  (not (string-match-p mu-tk-regexp (thing-at-point 'word t))))

Finally it’s enough to add the following to mu-markdown-mode-setup:

(setq-local flyspell-generic-check-word-predicate #'mu-flyspell-skip-tk)

Now I can use “TK” markers as intended.

Hopefully it should be obvious that I am not advising against using hl-prog-extra for your highlighting needs. My code is a small solution to a tiny itch, while the scope of hl-prog-extra is much larger. The intent of this writing is just showing that for certain tasks Emacs comes already prepared.

Ugrep and consult-xref

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is going to be a small correction to my previous post about Ugrep and project navigation.

If you remember, I was using xref-show-definitions-completing-read to make project-find-regexp offer its results in the minibuffer. The problem with that command is that the results are grouped by file, which is good, but within the groups they do not appear to be sorted by line number, which is not so good.

However, since I am already using consult the solution is right behind the corner.

(defun mu-project-find-regexp ()
  "Use `project-find-regexp' with completion."
  (interactive)
  (defvar xref-show-xrefs-function)
  (let ((xref-show-xrefs-function #'consult-xref))
    (if-let ((tap (thing-at-point 'symbol)))
        (project-find-regexp tap)
      (call-interactively #'project-find-regexp))))

The documentation of consult-xref itself is pretty clear.

Show xrefs with preview in the minibuffer.

This function can be used for ‘xref-show-xrefs-function'.

Now the only thing left is saying “Thank you, Daniel Mendler!” one more time for all his beautiful work.

Search thing at point with Ugrep

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

When I described how I use Ugrep in Emacs I forgot to mention something. It’s true that I rely on project-find-regexp (C-x p g) for searches, but there is a specific use-case where this command is not as handy as it usually is: project-wide navigation.

To be more precise, in my daily workflows it can happen that all I need to do is jump to a different file where the thing at point is used. The power of project-find-regexp is too much here, because I don’t need the *xref* buffer with all the results and the ability to replace them. I just want a quick a way to hit RET on the candidate I am looking for and move to the desired file.

With xref-search-program set to 'ugrep¹ the solution is trivial.

(defun mu-project-find-regexp ()
  "Use `project-find-regexp' with completion."
  (interactive)
  (defvar xref-show-xrefs-function)
  (let ((xref-show-xrefs-function #'xref-show-definitions-completing-read))
    (if-let ((tap (thing-at-point 'symbol)))
        (project-find-regexp tap)
      (call-interactively #'project-find-regexp))))

The trick is temporarily setting xref-show-xrefs-function to xref-show-definitions-completing-read, which according to its documentation does exactly what I am looking for.

Let the user choose the target definition with completion.

When there is more than one definition, let the user choose between them by typing in the minibuffer with completion.

I then bind mu-project-find-regexp to M-? and all is set. Needless to say, the heavy work is still done by project-find-regexp. Such an awesome tool.

Note that I am overriding the default M-? on purpose, because the original xref-find-references does not take things like .gitignore into account, something absolutely necessary in large projects where I want to avoid having useless candidates spam the ever precious minibuffer.

Finally, be aware that a better version of mu-project-find-regexp can be found here.

Once again, refer to Using ugrep with Emacs for the configuration details. ↩︎

Horcynus Orca

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It’s the only European answer to Moby-Dick: D’Arrigo is Melville’s equal.

— George Steiner¹

After I closed the last page of Stefano D’Arrigo’s Horcynus Orca I could not help but think about David Foster Wallace’s E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.² What would have Wallace thought of D’Arrigo’s prose? Would Horcynus Orca complicate his reaction to postmodernism? Here I am assuming that the American writer did not have a chance to pick up D’Arrigo’s masterpiece when he was alive. I am also fairly confident in my assumption because a) it takes a profound knowledge of Italian language and culture to get through Horcynus Orca and Wallace was not known to be an expert in this regard and b) there is only a German translation available but it was published years after his death. Still, does his reasoning about postmodernism apply to Stefano D’Arrigo?

In a sense, it certainly does. Horcynus Orca was published in 1975 but D’Arrigo had been working on it since 1950, thus the writing process started and culminated right within an age dense with postmodern fiction. John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino, Thomas Pynchon, Ursula Le Guin, J.G. Ballard, are only few of the several authors whose literary efforts were distinctly geared towards what was supposed to happen after the modernism of early twentieth century. Stefano D’Arrigo could be added to this list as well, as he was clearly influenced by writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T.S. Eliot, but I like to think that he understood how truly modern Herman Melville had been and even venture to say that before David Foster Wallace embarked in his post-postmodern mission, D’Arrigo had already moved in the same direction.

For the thirty-one year old Wallace behind E Unibus Pluram, literature needed to progress beyond postmodernism by forgetting about its penchant for self-awareness. He sensed the powerful influence of media on fiction, and he brilliantly acknowledged the cynicism that rapidly followed the irony television so insisted upon. His ideal book was a combination of the style of postmodern masters with the themes of modern literary geniuses. When I think of this, I like to imagine Thomas Mann or Marcel Proust writing about today’s society after some years in the company of Cortázar and Pynchon.

In this regard, Horcynus Orca resembles Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Thematically, both works are focused on individual persons and their struggles with a world always out of reach. D’Arrigo’s main character, ‘Ndrja Cambrìa, can hardly cope with the leftovers of World War II in Southern Italy, while the Incandenza family, Don Gately, and Joelle van Dyne in Infinite Jest have to endlessly deal with addiction and media-driven entertainment. In both books, the father figure is of utmost importance. It’s the key to Wallace’s mystery but it’s also what anchors ‘Ndrja Cambrìa to a past he cannot escape. At the same time, the two writers share stylistic choices to a certain degree. Beside streams of long sentences, just as Wallace crafts new vocabulary and makes extensive use of slang, D’Arrigo mixes regional dialect with invented jargon. Furthermore, whereas the American writer breaks the narrative structure with a plethora of end notes, the Sicilian author disrupts it with the language itself, forcing the reader to make sense of neologisms at any time.

There is one more similarity which I find particularly fascinating. Horcynus Orca and Infinite Jest avoid unambiguous resolutions. While this can be somehow implied in the title of Wallace’s work, the irony of it bouncing back to the reader after the last page, what does the same reader come out with at the end of Horcynus Orca? The closing hendecasyllable points to an infinity reminiscent of Wallace’s one, but this is pure speculation. The intentionally misspelled title, with that H and that y left there without any explanation, does not help either. On the contrary, I think it may just be D’Arrigo telling us that questions will arise before the very first page. This openness from both books demands multiple readings, closer inspection, and thoughtful attention, which is nothing less than what the world we live in constantly requires from us. It’s an invitation to care, and the complexity of these pages makes explicit how hard learning to care actually is.

What sets Stefano D’Arrigo’s Horcynus Orca apart from its contemporaries is precisely what David Foster Wallace was aiming for. Had they had the opportunity to meet, one can only wonder what the two might have talked about. Would they have agreed on their views on postmodernism? I like to think they would.

See: George Steiner - Un umanista assediato dalla scienza (My translation). ↩︎
The essay can be found in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. ↩︎

Fix jdtls configuration for Eglot

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

When thanks to its developers I added support for jdtls in Eglot, I did it by removing a lot of boilerplate in the package devised to accommodate the complex setup needed for Eclipse JDT to start the language server. This made the java-mode entry in eglot-server-programs simpler and it also moved the responsibility of providing the correct defaults to the jdtls script itself.

However, recent versions of jdtls seem to still require extra configuration, in particular with regards to the -data argument that before my change was tweaked within Eglot. Understandably, Eglot’s maintainer cannot spend all his time hunting down random quirks for every LSP server out there. Therefore, it’s up to the users to update their configuration at least until jdtls takes care of this problem once and for all.

The small hack I added to my init.el is the following:

(with-eval-after-load 'eglot
  (let ((cache (expand-file-name (md5 (project-root (project-current t)))
                                 (locate-user-emacs-file "jdtls-cache"))))
    (add-to-list 'eglot-server-programs `(java-mode "jdtls" "-data" ,cache))))

The above snippet works fine with the latest jdtls (as of 2022-08-11 14:25) and OpenJDK 18.0.2-ea. I updated the relevant Eglot discussion as well, so refer to it if you need more details.

Forget the old dream

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Since music plays a huge part in my life, I am always interested in seeing not just how cinema leverages it, but also how music can make use of cinema to offer new angles from which to approach it. I already wrote about music videos and film concerts, and yet Angel Olsen’s Big Time poses a different problem: has music become cinema or is it something new altogether?

Accompanying a record with visuals is not a novelty, of course, nor is using music for a film which ends up highlighting the music itself (e.g., Prince’s Purple Rain). However, Olsen places Big Time in a peculiar position. It’s not a concert film, it’s not a narration of the record’s concept by means of images, and it’s not even a re-telling of the album’s songs via loosely connected music videos. She wanted something different for her sixth full-length work.

Big Time (Kimberly Stuckwisch and Angel Olsen, 2022)

To understand Big Time as a whole one must immerse themselves in Olsen’s present history insofar as she is willing to disclose it to the public. Much has changed in her life since the 2019’s marvel that is All Mirrors. A year later she shared the true origins of that album with the instrumentally more intimate Whole New Mess. Then, collected both records plus demos, remixes, and covers in Songs of the Lark and Other Far Memories, which is to say she wanted to be done once and for all with this troublesome time in her career. In the midst of the pandemic she streamed live concerts from her home among other places, crafted various mixes and covers, and found the time to work with Sharon Van Etten on Like I Used To before unveiling Big Time and embarking on The Wild Hearts Tour with Van Etten and Julien Baker.

This admirable relentlessness is, however, only half of the story. After the breakup that turned the self-imposed isolation to reconnect with herself into the proper space to conceive All Mirrors, life went on with new challenges for the American song-writer. Olsen has recently come out as gay and right before starting the recording session for Big Time her mother died of heart failure, only two months after her father passed away in his sleep. Her music has always been a means to cope with events that are hard to process, let alone control. Yet the songs in Big Time, although rooted in a musical style prone to inward reflection such as country, point to a move beyond the contemplation on loneliness and grief one can find in her earlier recordings. It’s as if Olsen is replying to her own call to action by actually taking the necessary steps to set things into motion.

The Big Time film marks both the beginning and the end of this process. It came out the day before the official release of the record of the same name and it expands on the images and the background story that were already present in the singles that anticipated Olsen’s new adventure, namely All the Good Times, the title track, and Through the Fires. The plot was born out of dreams of time travelling that Olsen had at the time of her mother’s passing. Kimberly Stuckwisch, the director, helped her creating a story arc which crosses reality with events that did not really happen, while keeping the whole thing perfectly relatable for anyone who experienced at least once in their life changes as pivotal as the ones Olsen is dealing with here.

Big Time (Kimberly Stuckwisch and Angel Olsen, 2022)

This is a sympathy that goes from the record and the film to the listener and the viewer, but it works the other way around just as well. Olsen wants us to listen to and to watch attentively at what it meant for her to live through painful and transformational moments, offering images to support sounds and words to reach wherever chords cannot. However, this is true for every honest artist willing to share with heartfelt confidence the dark side of their existence. Here, more than ever before, Olsen is making her experience an example of intimacy shared not for the sake of art but for that of real life. She needs to move on, she wants to fight to get where she can feel safe. The fact that the film is not entirely precise about the details of her story is not just a way to render the dream narrative with cinematic devices, it’s also a way to make her intimacy something as universal as possible. We need to move on, we want to fight to get where we can feel safe.

Looking back at Olsen’s career and listening closely to her songs one cannot help but notice her research for something through constant shifts to new musical forms and styles. What has she been looking for? The easiest answer to this question is her true identity. But is that really it? She was already alone with the desperate necessity to manage things on her own in Unfucktheworld, the first track of her 2014 album Burn Your Fire for No Witness. “I am the only one now”, she said back then. She was also not ready to open up fearing to be hurt again when she sang “With no promise of the future am I not allowed to think kindly of a stranger” in Woman from 2016’s My Woman. She then made her anxiety even more explicit in the opening track of All Mirrors with the words “If only we could start again pretending we don’t know each other”.

Now it seems like she has eventually accepted why the other matters. Big Time is about looking for the other, reaching out for someone who cares, and in doing so, letting go everything that may impede this dangerous quest. The last images of the film show Olsen’s erasing her past self and kissing her partner at the dawn of a new day. She is awake, now, the dream finally come to an end. Life begins anew and everything is set right in front of her. A new day for her and a new day for everyone she is sharing it all with. Therefore, as inseparable from the music as the film is, Big Time is also a nod in our direction. When the music ends, when the images are gone, we still need help to move on, because by ourselves we are going to make it unnecessarily difficult. Angel Olsen has removed the differences between music and cinema. In doing so, she is urging us to forget about the differences between ourselves and the others. Only among others we will disclose and thus find our true identity, only then serenity and peace of mind will come.

Ugrep in Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Almost a year ago I wrote about my handy mu-recursive-grep, an easy way to combine rgrep and vc-git-grep. But after Leah Neukirchen mentioned ugrep recently, I could not resist checking whether it was a good fit for my daily Emacs usage. A couple of benchmark¹ impressed me enough to add support for it directly via xref-search-program-alist.

The details to configure everything you need are over at Using ugrep within Emacs on the project README. Once set, you can just hit C-x p g (project-find-regexp) in your project and let ugrep do his magic.

Moreover, as the README mentions, it’s possible to leverage grep-template to have commands like lgrep rely on ugrep.

(setq-default grep-template (string-join '("ugrep"
                                           "--color=always"
                                           "--ignore-binary"
                                           "--ignore-case"
                                           "--include=<F>"
                                           "--line-number"
                                           "--null"
                                           "--recursive"
                                           "--regexp=<R>")
                                         " "))

Thus, mu-recursive-grep becomes a bit simpler:

(defun mu-recursive-grep (search-term search-path)
  "Recursively search for SEARCH-TERM in SEARCH-PATH."
  (interactive
   (progn
     (unless grep-command
       (grep-compute-defaults))
     (let ((search-term (grep-read-regexp))
           (search-path (expand-file-name
                         (read-directory-name
                          "Directory: " nil default-directory t))))
       (list search-term search-path))))
  (lgrep search-term "*" search-path))

As mentioned in Grep’s good rep, for project-wide searches C-x p g is my go-to key binding. However, there are situations when I want to limit the search to specific paths, and that’s where I prefer using mu-recursive-grep.

A closing remark: before blindly leaving grep, ripgrep, or even vc-git-grep behind, I suggest to benchmark the performance of each tool and see what actually suits you best. You may find that whatever you are using at the moment is already the best choice.

See 54608#14 and 54608#20. ↩︎

The privileged classroom

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday all the students at Ca’ Foscari university received an email from the Educational Programmes and Student Services Area Manager of the school. The key content of the email is the following:

2022/2023 classes at Ca’ Foscari university of Venice will be delivered exclusively in person.

Emergency teaching methods such as dual, synchronous or asynchronous lessons will not be provided.

I have been thinking about this email since I first read it. Despite being predictable behaviour from an institution which has never really wanted to act differently, there are other things to consider.

First, Ca’ Foscari is blatantly ignoring the new peaks of COVID-19 infections in order to be “consistent with the values that we have always recognised and upheld in recent years: the relationship between students and faculty . . .”. However, how much do they really value this “relationship”? The email states that the classroom capacity will be back to 100%, and yet without any rule in place to enforce the use of masks I am left to wonder why security and health are so easily overlooked. What’s even more fascinating is that the Italian healthcare institute released an official bulletin documenting the raising numbers of infections on June 24, right within the range of days when the Conference of Italian Universities Rectors (on June 22) and then the Regional Monitoring Committee (on June 27) agreed upon delivering classes exclusively in person.

Furthermore, it’s not clear what is going to happen to the technology and the services that have been built and maintained during the last two years. Most of the professors are openly against remote classes and lesson registrations, so they did it reluctantly and, more often than not, without bothering to learn how to use the tools at their disposal. Students did not help in this regard either. Among the ones online with me during the lessons, many participated with both camera and microphone turned off the entire time, thus forcing teachers to stare at walls of black squares on their Zoom window. The problem here, as I see it, is two-fold: on the one hand, if you are a teacher and your university forces you to use certain tools it also has to provide decent training. I cannot expect all the professors in humanities to be familiar with multiple screens or Zoom breakout rooms, for instance. However, Zoom is not Emacs. If you are still hitting the wrong button after, say, ten lessons, then the issue might be found somewhere between the chair and the keyboard. On the other hand, students not willing to be a part of the lesson from remote should just be kicked out of the session. I know this sounds brutal, but I took time off my daily job to do my best and be at every possible online lesson, asking questions, interacting with professors, and in general making the most of it. I seriously doubt that every student with a black square in their place was actually unable to do something about it.

Eventually Ca’ Foscari is about to forget the progress it has made in the last two years by enabling students such as myself to be seriously engaged with the faculty. It’s fairly obvious to me that when they talk about “the relationship between students and faculty” they have a precise idea of who these “students” should be. This unwillingness to compromise is making me question my willingness to compromise. I was willing to accept their Google-owned platforms and their Zoom because, despite the poor technological choice, work was being done to bring people in instead of keeping them out. Am I willing to continue with the compromise now?

DivestOS on my Fairphone 2

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 15 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One of the reasons I am not a heavy smartphone user is privacy concerns. However, the truth is that I have a smartphone and I use it, so clearly being aware of a problem and not acting on it is not going to fix it any time soon.

This is why I have finally decided to move to a different operative system for my Fairphone 2. After researching the right OS for my needs I landed on DivestOS. I won’t go into the technical details underneath the software because the website is fairly rich in this regard. Let’s see the practicals, instead.

First of all, I backed up the important data on my phone. This means PGP keys, OTP settings, and everything else that Google was not already saving for me. I then downloaded the required fp2 images from Device Downloads. After that, I moved to the Bootloader/Installation page and went through the Prerequisites section by making sure USB debugging was enabled on my phone and by running the following command on my laptop:

sudo apt install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

Since DivestOS is a fork of LineageOS, I preferred to follow the Install LineageOS on FP2 steps instead of the ones over at the Fastboot section of the Bootloader/Installation page. Why? Because I am a newbie at smartphone flashing and I wanted clear instructions on how to proceed.

The installation went smoothly. I then set up the few apps I need, making sure everything from my VPN to basic email was working as expected. The only problem I soon discovered is PosteID, which is the app I use to handle SPID, the digital identity system the Italian government offers to access online administration services. Luckily, there is a workaround to avoid the PosteID app which relies on good old SMS for part of the authentication process. It’s limited to 8 messages every 3 months, but that is enough for me.

When I started this de-googling project I knew I was sacrificing comfort in favour of more control over my digital life. How much the whole operation is worth only time will tell.

First steps with Ubuntu 22.04

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As curious as one can be with new toys, I’ve been playing safe and lazy for a while now by upgrading my laptop only to a new LTS when it is available.¹ “Upgrade” is a misleading word, though, because in my case it means that I start from afresh by erasing the disk, installing the new LTS, running my Ansible Playbooks and retrieving my backup data.

Anyway, Ubuntu 22.04 is my first step into the Wayland world. Beside building Emacs with PGTK and not noticing much of a difference from my years with X Org, I discovered soon that vokoscreenNG does not work here. Well, this is only true for the version available via apt, because the 3.3.0 (beta) on the official website seems to do what I need.

The most annoying thing I found out is Firefox provided through snap. I avoided snap on Ubuntu 20.04 by simply disabling everything related to it. I wasn’t ready to leave the reliable apt aside for my basic package management needs. I still don’t much care about snap to be honest, but the problem is that Firefox via snap does not play well with KeePassXC-Browser. So I moved to LibreWolf and be done with it.

Last but not least, the Network Manager. I need to connect to my university VPN when studying from home, which is what I do most of the time anyway. The university VPN is necessary to access the ever helpful library system and spend insane amounts of hours through papers and other niceties. The university website recommends the installation of network-manager-vpnc-gnome, which is what I was using on the previous LTS. On Ubuntu 22.04, though, vpnc support in the Network Manager is broken so I have to resort to the command line to make it work. However, there is a GUI solution that can be achieved with nm-connection-editor.

I faced other minor problems with the provided Ruby version and the building of my websites, but luckily rvm helped me fix everything. I am confident it will come a day when installing a new LTS will just be a smooth matter. For now, I am glad I know what I am doing.

The home server runs Debian stable, so that’s an even safer and lazier approach. ↩︎

Restart Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Tracking Emacs development is always nice, because I get to explore new things as soon as they are made available. Yesterday Lars Ingebrigtsen introduced a new command: restart-emacs.

Let’s C-h f restart-emacs RET to check what we are dealing with:

Kill the current Emacs process and start a new one. This goes through the same shutdown procedure as ‘save-buffers-kill-emacs’, but instead of killing Emacs and exiting, it re-executes Emacs (using the same command line arguments as the running Emacs).

It sounds useful, doesn’t it? So I quickly devised a new command to let me decide whether I want to quit Emacs or re-launch it:

(defun mu-quit-or-restart (&optional restart)
  "Quit Emacs or restart it with RESTART."
  (interactive "P")
  (if restart
      (restart-emacs)
    (save-buffers-kill-terminal t)))
(keymap-global-set "C-x C-c" #'mu-quit-or-restart)

This little command should be obvious: C-x C-c does the usually killing, whereas C-u C-x C-c re-executes Emacs. This will come in handy when I upgrade packages, because I tend to restart Emacs after that and being able to do it quickly is a great thing indeed.

Note that keymap-global-set may not be available if you are not following the Emacs master branch. Rely on global-set-key in that case.

The Red Horse

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

When I wrote about my favourite reads of 2021, I also wrote that starting this year I would share my thoughts on the books I enjoy. My intention was to go longer on specific titles instead of collecting small paragraphs in a round-up post in December. However, I cannot really say that I enjoyed the book I am about to discuss. What makes it still worth of some words is the fascination I found myself in when researching its origins and its author. A fascination that soon became an obsession because the more I dug the less I found. I am writing this piece out of an urge to put an end to the affair between Eugenio Corti’s Il cavallo rosso (The Red Horse) and me.

Il cavallo rosso came to my attention last year when a professor at Ca' Foscari university mentioned it during one of their lessons. Theirs was more than a title-drop, though. They went as far as calling it one of the best books of the twentieth century, and this really took me by surprise. I had never heard of Eugenio Corti and his work before. Why had such a work of art by an Italian author born not too far from my hometown always eluded me? I wanted a copy of that book as soon as possible. After about a month with its 1080 pages¹ I turned the last one feeling confused and offended. I couldn’t possibly understand why Il cavallo rosso should be praised as a masterpiece and why a university professor should suggest it as a notable work to their students. Unless I was missing something, that is to say.

Il cavallo rosso is divided into three parts. Corti writes about his experiences during the Second World War on the Russian front in the first two, and how his life turned out to be after the war in the third one. In doing so he does not put himself directly into his pages. Instead, he splits ideas and different moments of his life among a set of closely related characters. Just like the author, all of them were born and raised in Brianza, an area between Milan and Lake Como which Corti depicts as an earthly paradise of Catholic traditions and pious solidarity. I use the word “Catholic” carefully here, because Il cavallo rosso cannot be read without taking into account what Corti wanted to achieve with it in terms of religious view. I would venture to say that it’s next to impossible to accept this book for what it is without sharing its author’s point of view on Catholicism and faith.

What is Corti’s view on Catholicism, then? Corti distinctively puts himself into a conservative position when it comes to religious matters, promoting a reactionary tale of the present which, according to the character of Michele Tintori, Corti’s closest alter ego, has diverged too much from the pure sanctity of the Middle Ages. The key to understand Corti’s version of reality is the third section of Il cavallo rosso, where the writer forgets about the depths of his male characters by reducing them to little variations of the same notion. The notion being that Communism and everything that has led to it are the prime sources for the moral decadence of the world we live in. Tintori condemns Marx multiple times, reassuring the reader that he studied his books when he was in a concentration camp, while at the same time conveniently forgetting about the differences between Marxism, Soviet Communism, and Chinese Communism. The same character later justifies the Inquisition, a noble cause that only Christians have the right to judge, and defends fascist censorship because it spared Italians the trouble of reading bad literature. At a certain point I lost count of the times Partisans and the Italian resistance movement are ridiculed, but the blind compassion for German soldiers and the hanged body of Mussolini did not escape me either. The more we proceed through the third part of Il cavallo rosso, the more Corti insists on the obstacles that an Italian government scared of Communist and Socialist propaganda placed on his younger self’s way to stardom. Again, it does not matter how Communism and Socialism differ from each other. What matters is that anything other than Catholic faith is inherently wrong and opposed to Tintori/Corti and his success.

I have to admit that Tintori’s tirades, angry and emotionally charged, can easily appeal to people who identify with his opinions. In this regard, Il cavallo rosso is basically a pamphlet of Catholic stances, a literary exercise in dogmatism for the sake of a cause the moral grounds of which cannot be argued with. The real problem with Il cavallo rosso is that only one on Corti’s side, and who basically thinks like him, can in all honesty consider this book a great artistic achievement.² As much as Corti’s experiences on the Russian front are telling of the horrors and the misery of the soldiers and the prisoners, shining a light on events which may not be always remembered as they actually deserve, it’s hard to applaud the third section of this book for the writing style or the content. For instance, Corti is incapable of portraying female characters. He measures them in terms of beauty and devotion to God and to their male partners. More so than with men, women have no real meaning here except serving as reminders of what a good Catholic mother and wife is supposed to be. In a couple of occasions Corti links one of this women, Alma, to Alessandro Manzoni’s Lucia Mondella. Is he trying to create a bridge between Manzoni and himself? If so, Corti fails miserably at it. Lucia is rich with inner turmoil and fear. In I promessi sposi, we witness her becoming a woman every time her unshakeable faith is put to test. Her chastity is not her pedigree, it’s not something to show off. It’s one and all with her intimacy, a private matter altogether. References to Manzoni are not enough to save a character as poorly developed as Alma, whose inexpressive look, a trait so peculiar the reader has to be constantly reminded of, is the only thing one can eventually remember her by.

Interestingly enough, Alessandro Manzoni is one of the writers Eugenio Corti is compared to in the reviews collected on the last pages of the edition of Il cavallo rosso in my possession. This is a baffling comparison, because even if it’s true that they both write from a profoundly religious perspective, Manzoni does not shy away from the wrongdoings of the Church, revealing the shallowness of don Abbondio over and over again. The only way for Corti to criticise a priest is by attacking his progressive views. But even if Manzoni did stand alongside the Church — think of Cardinal Federigo Borromeo — just take the arrival of Renzo Tramaglino in a Milan devastated by famine and weigh it against Corti’s description of life in a concentration camp. Manzoni judges but does not forget the scene in front of him, whereas Corti, in order to state his position on Communism, does it at every turn of the page. He spends an incredible number of words in detailing war scenes, which is probably the one thing he does really well, but prisoners are just good or bad, much like women are just beautiful or ugly for him. In Manzoni we sense the mob, we see poverty, and we feel anger because what Renzo sees is what Manzoni wants us to see. We know what Manzoni thinks because he lets the readers grasp it without force-feeding them. With Corti, however, we only wait for the next iteration of his commentary against Communism. This can obviously be a specific choice of his. Corti may be more concerned about the cause rather than the effects of the horrors around him, but then critics who make use of the comparison with Manzoni are either doing so mischievously or are ineptly trying to raise Corti’s status to that of a classic without securing solid grounds for their statements.

While reading and researching I kept asking myself: what are the praises for Corti and Il cavallo rosso based upon? Why is it that these praises seem to focus only on the poignancy of the historical content and blatantly avoid its more controversial aspects? Try it for yourself. Try to go onto your favourite search engine and look up “Eugenio Corti” or “Il cavallo rosso”. Unless you first hit some comments on Amazon which are openly against this book, you are going to find Catholic zealots rambling about the transformative power of these pages or the methodical removal of this literary talent from the history of Italian literature. The only piece of criticism you may find is Il nobel al provincialismo, which refers to a more interesting article on the now defunct Infonodo.³ You will also note that most of the positive reviews are vague about the writing style and prefer to drop names such as Alessandro Manzoni, Lev Tolstoj, Vasilij Grossman and J. R. R. Tolkien to give you a general idea of the book without actually telling anything useful. Why should I think of Tolkien when reading Corti? The English writer hides Christianity away in the The Lord of the Rings and there is no single meaning consistently put forward. It’s up to the reader to decide what to take away from it. Furthermore, none of these writings on Corti questions the facts or his rather few ideas, and this only means that there is a common ground from which a specific worldview is thrown at the reader’s face. These are not studies on Il cavallo rosso. It’s not even proper criticism. At most it qualifies as advertisement.

In order to counter my theory one could point to the comments on Corti that have been published on paper. For example, on the pages of Il Timone, a Catholic-oriented Italian magazine, one can find various entries about him. Most of them come from Paola Scaglione, who also seems to be the only person to have published books about Corti in Italy.⁴ What I find even more fascinating is that not only Corti wrote on this magazine, but the professor who led me to Il cavallo rosso published something here as well. Which brings me back to their advice. I am struggling to understand why someone who has taught philosophy for a long time felt it necessary to recommend so narrow-minded an author. I want to believe that there is more than a moral cause behind their words, because I want to believe that when one invests their life in philosophy one is always open to different contexts and ideas. Differences matter. Eugenio Corti, on the other hand, is all about removing them in favour of just one point of view: his.

Resources

The following are the most relevant resources in Italian I consulted when researching for this piece:

Il futuro di uno scrittore di razza
Forum dei cattolici romani su Cornelio Fabro
L’eredità di Corti - Radio Radicale
Il Timone
Commento di Paolo Gulisano
Commento e intervista di Paolo Smeraldi
Commento di Benedetto Chieffo
Recensioni su Feltrinelli
Il nobel al provincialismo and the related “Eugenio Corti: come la destra cattolica ha costruito artificialmente la fama letteraria dello scrittore promuovendolo alla candidatura per il Nobel”

I have this edition. ↩︎
A heartfelt thank goes to professor Valentina Ciciliot for helping me put this thought into better words. ↩︎
It’s still available through the Wayback Machine, although I made a copy (including all the comments at the bottom) to not let it disappear any time soon. ↩︎
See Eugenio Corti: come la destra cattolica ha costruito artificialmente… in Resources. ↩︎

Welcome SourceHut

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I will not go into many details on me leaving GitHub behind, because Protesilaos has already done it and I share his appreciation for SourceHut. So, without further ado, here we go: https://sr.ht/~manuel-uberti/.

The migration went fine. I only had a small issue with my website, mainly a www to non-www HTTP redirect not behaving as intended, but I am investigating. For now, manueluberti.eu is the new kid in town. I do not want to spend too much time over this problem, though. If a solution does not come up in the next few days, consider the www gone once and for all.

Needless to say, since I still want to report bugs and file pull requests on projects hosted on GitHub I am keeping my account over there.

Eglot and Eclipse JDT for Java

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I mentioned that I helped making it possible for Eglot to use jdtls, the Python helper script packaged with Eclipse JDT to start the language server with sane defaults. The only problem I had during my work on this is that jdtls requires Python 3.9 or later, why my Ubuntu 20.04 machine comes with the 3.8.10 version. Since changing the default Python on Ubuntu can bring pain,¹ I decided to have Emacs work with Python 3.9 only for my Java projects.

First, I installed the required Python packages:

$ sudo apt install python3.9 python3-9-venv

Then, in my Java project root directory I ran:

$ python3.9 -m venv env

Finally, I had to tell Emacs how to interact with this new Python environment. In the root directory of my project I added a .dir-locals.el file with the following content:

((nil . ((buffer-env-command . ">&2 . \"$0\" && env -0")
         (buffer-env-script-name . "env/bin/activate")
         (python-shell-virtualenv-root . "./env"))))

I am using Augusto Stoffel’s buffer-env to pick up the activate script and run it automatically for me. Checking the Python version with M-! /usr/bin/env python3 -V RET told me I was doing the right thing. Keep in mind that you don’t have to set buffer-env-command like I do. Here I am setting it back to its default value because I changed it in my init.el to specifically deal with direnv. Anyway, with everything in place Eglot correctly interfaced with jdtls for a smooth Java developing experience.

A note to myself: I will probably need to revisit this setup as soon as I move to the new Ubuntu LTS which, I guess, will provide a more recent Python by default.

Trust me on this. ↩︎

Eglot and digestif for LaTeX

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t think I have enough words to express my admiration for Eglot. The more I use it, the more I appreciate its minimalist approach that just does the right thing and then gets out of my way. With the help of its maintainer João Távora and the friendly Felicián Németh, I have done my part to help keeping it up to speed with Eclipse JDT latest developments. I had to give back something, didn’t I?

Why stop at Java, though? Since I have come to enjoy the niceties of LSP, I decided to push it a little further and step outside my comfortable software developer zone to check how Eglot can improve on my experience with LaTeX. Albeit a bit early in my student’s career, I have followed a kind professor’s prompt to pursue some ideas of mine and have started working on my thesis. Mind you, I have been a happy AUCTeX user for quite a long time and I do not intend to leave it behind. How can Eglot fit in, then?¹

The “don’t be silly, trust Emacs!” answer comes from Augusto Stoffel in the form of digestif. If you are familiar with a language server, you know what digestif does. I like to think of it as AUCTeX missing piece, because it offers completion, documentation, and navigation commands that really make a difference when writing a non-trivial LaTeX document. Furthermore, Augusto has recently added specific integration for BibLaTeX, which turns inserting citation and footnotes into a nice and easy task and it also means that I can safely disable RefTeX now.

Installing digestif is just as painless as well: put the self-installing script in your $PATH, make it executable, and run it once. Or you can use luarocks install digestif if you have luarocks on your machine. Back in Emacs, Eglot will take care of everything else. Try M-x eglot in your LaTeX buffers if you don’t believe me.

When I first heard of LSP I wasn’t sure of what to do with it. Well, to a certain degree I still am. For instance, I am not using clojure-lsp even though I spend eight hours a day with Clojure. However, when it comes to LaTeX I don’t think I am going to abandon Eglot and digestif any time soon. Whether or not you use AUCTeX, with digestif the experience is simply more comfortable and, thus, better.

Most Emacs users would suggest Org instead of plain LaTeX here, but I just enjoy writing LaTeX in the old fashioned way. ↩︎

Ignore project buffers

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 27 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As you may already know, I take buffer switching seriously. Jokes aside, one of the key bindings I use the most is C-x p b, which is bound to project-switch-to-buffer by default. As the above linked article explains, it takes little time to find myself with many open buffers, some of which may not be immediately relevant to the context of my actual work.

Instead of tweaking switch-to-buffer, though, I decided to make it possible for project-switch-to-buffer to act according to certain conditions. With the help of Dmitry Gutov, I have recently added project-ignore-buffer-conditions on Emacs master. Now, for instance, I can do the following:

(defvar-local mu-ignored-buffers
    '("\\` " "^\\*Async" "^\\*Completions" "^\\*Flymake" "^\\*Help"
      "^\\*Messages" "^\\*eldoc" "^\\*envrc" "\\*tramp" "^\\*xref")
  "A list of predicates for buffers to ignore.")
  
(defun mu-project-ignore-buffer-p (buffer)
  "Check if BUFFER is a member of `mu-ignored-buffers'."
  (seq-contains-p mu-ignored-buffers (buffer-name buffer) #'string-match-p)) 
  
(setq-default project-ignore-buffer-conditions '(mu-project-ignore-buffer-p
                                                 (derived-mode . comint-mode))

Note that I changed project--read-project-buffer to take the new defcustom into account, so project-display-buffer and project-display-buffer-other-frame are also affected.

Futhermore, to understand what kind of conditions you can use, check project-kill-buffer-conditions which is what I based project-ignore-buffer-conditions on following Dmitry’s tip.

Handling wildcards in paths

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My recent experiments with Eglot and Java led me to figure out how to speed up the connection to Eclipse JDT Language Server. Basically I wanted a simpler version of eglot--eclipse-jdt-contact to avoid any prompt and just do the right thing for me.

Looking at Eglot’s bug tracker, there is an issue with some tips: #424. I followed the instructions and added the relevant code to my init.el:

(with-eval-after-load 'eglot
  (defconst mu-jdt-launcher
    (concat "/home/manuel/jdt/plugins"
            "/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.6.400.v20210924-0641.jar"))

  (defun mu-eglot-jdt-contact (_interactive)
    "See `eglot--eclipse-jdt-contact'."
    (let ((cp (or (getenv "CLASSPATH") path-separator)))
      (setenv "CLASSPATH" (concat cp path-separator mu-jdt-launcher))
      (unwind-protect (eglot--eclipse-jdt-contact nil)
        (setenv "CLASSPATH" cp))))
  (setcdr (assq 'java-mode eglot-server-programs) #'mu-eglot-jdt-contact))

However, I do not like the hard-coded path to the JDT jar file, mainly because I have to manually update it every time I install a new version of the language server. Fortunately, Emacs has what I need right under the hood: file-expand-wildcards.

(defconst mu-jdt-launcher
  (let ((path "~/jdt/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_*"))
    (car (file-expand-wildcards path 'full))))

If you check the documentation of file-expand-wildcards you will notice that it returns a list of file names matching the given pattern. In this case, there is only one element in that list, so car can safely grab it. Again, the documentation will also explain the meaning of that 'full argument, but I am sure it is pretty clear already.

My 2021 in films

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

2021 has been a weird year. On the one hand, the pandemic still wants to be with us and I had to say goodbye to a dear relative. On the other hand, cinema has satisfied me unexpectedly in different occasions over these last twelve months, even though I haven’t spent too much time with it. Something a dear friend usually does. Let’s recapitulate.

After a couple of months of catching up with films I missed in 2020, Zack Snyder’s Justice League entered the scene bringing forth his creator’s vision like it was originally supposed to be. Albeit an epic four-hour run, this is a film that leaves so much in the air that everyone who has enjoyed it as much as I did is obviously still wishing for more. However, it seems like we are not going to get more material in this regard. Months later Snyder would come back with Army of the Dead which confirmed that whatever he has to say about zombies is not what I want to hear from him.

Another director that graced me with two of his works this year is Zhang Yimou. The political drama Cliff Walkers is a house of mirrors which probably indulges in standard propaganda too comfortably, but One Second goes way back to Chaplin to break the viewer’s heart with some of the simplest and yet more profound emotions cinema seems to have forgotten about. Predictable just as it is immensely enjoyable.

Speaking of enjoyment, Godzilla vs. Kong and No Time to Die easily accomplish what they are looking for. The first takes the good of Kong: Skull Island but extends its intuitions to a better understanding of the images and the icons at its disposal. The latter closes Daniel Craig’s affair with 007 by using all that his body can offer to the frame. It wants us to remember Craig’s grandeur by pushing on the tragedy pedal too overtly, but one cannot deny the sheer improvement these Bond films have brought to the overall franchise.

I was moderately happy with Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man and Steven Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move, but the fact that I haven’t felt the urge to revisit them tells me that not everything clicked with these films. Almost the same can be said for Halloween Kills, the twelfth installment of the blood-driven saga of Michael Myers, and for Coming Home in the Dark, which frightens with its darkness until it becomes irrelevantly tiresome.

I had much more pleasure with two little films that instantly became my beloved guilty pleasures of 2021. The Woman in the Window and The Voyeurs invite us to join them in the well-known and irresistible art of curiosity. Both explore breaking privacy barriers and fulfilling the perverted desire of knowing more about others than they know about us in order to exert more control over them. The Voyeurs is slightly better because there is lovable honesty in its sleaziness, even though it could have pushed for more in this regard.

Some old friends came back this year with their new efforts. Raging Fire is the way Benny Chan chose to leave us forever. The action is great and the old Hong Kong spirit is alive, and I have certainly liked it more than some of the recent works from Dante Lam. Still, I was a bit exhausted at the end, but maybe that’s what Benny Chan wanted me to feel. Something very close to how I felt with Abel Ferrara’s Zeros and Ones. He is a true rebel in the cinema world, but I need more time to wrap my head around his last three films. And then there is M. Night Shyamalan. Old finds him on the same spot he has always been, using the same tricks for kind of the same stories, but one way or another he keeps me there in front of the screen with a smile on my face.

Unfortunately, these good pals had to deal with Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta which simply blasted them all away and forced its way to my heart. Once again, Verhoeven is not scared of images and the power that a single image can have. Once again, he places a woman as the centrepiece of his plan. And once again, he demands our total attention, our alert cooperation, because he is still refusing to dumb his cinema down to the industry standards. Considered alongside Basic Instinct and Black Book, and more so than Elle, Benedetta can be seen as part of an ideal trilogy where women state, defend, and reinforce their position in spite of men.

The struggles of Benedetta reminded me somehow of the struggles Britney vs Spears portrays. This documentary is more of a call for help than a cry for scandal, hence something genuine, at least as far as a pop star’s extra-ordinary life can be. Help is also what the characters of Bonifacio Angius’ I Giganti scream for, which makes all the more sense when one considers the present we are living in right now. Angius tells us hope is terribly out of reach. Can we find a way to move beyond a simple nod that shows tacit agreement? Rarely in recent years a film has moved something inside me for days with the same frightening aplomb of I Giganti. Its sincerity fits like a glove, but underneath that glove one never knows whether a punch or a caress is waiting for them.

Mentioning pop stars makes me wonder: is there anything Lady Gaga cannot do? In a farcical fanfare beautifully unable to contain itself like House of Gucci, Gaga manages to be the centre of a full-blown overacted extravaganza where talents such as Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons trade outlandish duets with younger stars like Adam Driver and Jared Leto, while she spins the wheel of their bravura in all seriousness. Ridley Scott captures our present of rich masks and disposable personas by trapping a gossip-generator story in a luxurious cage of nothingness. House of Gucci is what a nice satire like Don’t Look Up can only achieve in few great moments.

Finally, right on the last days of this 2021, Steven Spielberg decided to surprise me one more time. Fifty years after Duel, having mastered the cinematic form in a career as full of marvellous moments as it is occasionally spoiled by missed opportunities, Spielberg shoots for the moon with a project so out of time that it was bound to be the box office bomb it is turning out to become. However, the magic of West Side Story’s tragic love story, the brilliance of its choreography and its montage, its irresistible music and colours, all make for an earnest request to watch cinema in order to rediscover pleasures that we don’t even know whether they exist or not any more. Spielberg will always be the smiling kid in the middle of a gathering of tired and cynic adults, reminding everyone that the dream must be kept alive.

The best books of 2021

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

To the brave reader who has been following me somehow regularly it’s obvious that Emacs is the main topic of discussion here on these pages. Being it a personal website, though, it makes sense to expand on other topics as well. And since my cinephile side is pretty much covered by Films in Words,¹ what is left to write about? Books, of course. Starting from next year I will share here a few words on the books that I enjoy the most. For today, however, a classic best-of list is all that I am going to offer.

I have selected only the most relevant books from this year, setting aside almost everything related to my university exams. Without further ado, from bottom to top:

12) Spinoza (Lorenzo Vinciguerra)

Carocci has been covering many great philosophers with these handy companions. Beside Vinciguerra’s, I have been through the ones about Aristotle, Plotinus, and Decartes and they all proved to be more than mere introductions. They are deep, clear, and concise explorations that help the reader move swiftly among outstanding thinkers. I am singling out Vinciguerra’s book because Spinoza is particularly dear to me, but any serious philosophy enthusiast should check Carocci catalogue.

11) The Broom of the System (David Foster Wallace)

Not my favourite work from David Foster Wallace, but he was still able to absorb me and enthrall me. Even though most of the time I was looking for clues to understand how he moved from here to Infinite Jest, he was already a superb writer and an enigmatic story-teller when he published this.

10) Michael Mann (Pier Maria Bocchi)

My favourite Italian film critic on my favourite film director. There is nothing much to add. This is a work of love, it’s plain to see, but it is not only for Mann’s devotees. Bocchi has dedicated more than twenty years to study the director’s career and the amount of insights in these pages is outrageous. I won’t say this is the book about Michael Mann, but yes, it definitely is.

9) Surfacing (Margaret Atwood)

A little book about the imaginative power of memory and how hard it is to control it. Atwood does not tell. She evokes impressions, suggests emotions, points at infinite directions. She traps the reader gently and then shocks them at the right time.

8) Philosopher of the Heart (Clare Carlisle)

One the most introvert philosophers of all time, Kierkegaard put everything he thought and was in his writings, so why should we read a book about him written by someone else? Carlisle answers this rather silly question of mine with a marvellous work that places the reader within the Danish philosopher’s mind and heart. Eventually, she poses an interesting question to any Kierkegaard’s apprentice out there: what if there is something about him that he was not able to process with his philosophy?

7) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen)

Franzen always seems capable of capturing something about my life when he writes, as he does all the time, of people that could not be more different from me. Freedom tops the already great The Corrections not only because of this, but also because whenever I think of life one of his characters comes to mind, and more often than not they have such familiar faces.

6) Attesa di Dio (Simone Weil)

Considering my idea of Christianity, when a book forces me to think about the Pater Noster for months then it has to be special. Weil’s explorations of every word of the Lord’s prayer is the only thing I could think of when, a few days ago, I happened to be in church for a funeral. Faith remains a complicated issue for me, but Weil has forever changed the way I look at prayers.

5) Diari 1941-1943 (Etty Hillesum)

As a member of a book club, at one of our meetings I had a hard time explaining why it is next to impossible to write about what it means to live through hate and die because of it after Hillesum’s pages. Which is the main reason why I didn’t enjoy the book we were discussing, anyway. I wish Etty could have been there because she would have found the right words. She was truly one of a kind.

4) The Human Stain (Philip Roth)

From now on when someone asks me about race I will point them to this book, simply because I’ve never seen the hypocrisy of so many opinions about race and racism framed so intelligently. Roth’s sharp writing takes no prisoners. As soon as I was sure to have him finally pinned down, he punched me hard and woke me up once and for all.

3) Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)

For reasons beyond my understanding Melville’s masterpiece has entered my life many times but only this year I was able to pick it up and go through all of it. In awe, of course, because there is no other way to witness the literary genius of Melville at work. If you are not deeply in love with this book already, I could not recommend the Norton Critical Edition enough.

2) I Promessi Sposi (Alessandro Manzoni)

Possibly the most hated book in Italian high schools, I was lucky back then because I had a great teacher that was able to convey her passion for Manzoni to a kid who was not ready for the world just yet. More than twenty years later I decided to see whether I Promessi Sposi had still something to offer to me. It’s safe to say that it will take me a while to find another novel that can match the emotional turmoil Manzoni has put me through once again.

1) La Divina Commedia (Dante Alighieri)

As great as the above-mentioned teacher was, a colleague of hers who was supposed to enlighten us about Dante Alighieri was instead a complete jackass who disregarded La Divina Commedia entirely, and so I ended up finishing high school with little to zero knowledge about this classic. More so than with Manzoni, I wanted to feel ready when approaching Alighieri, and studying philosophy has taken me right where I wanted to be. I am going to read La Divina Commedia over and over again for the rest of my life and I am confident I will never be able to talk about it with the respect and the wisdom it deserves.

That’s all from 2021. Happy new year, people!

An old blog of mine, not available any more. See: A new filmsinwords.eu. ↩︎

The Mast-Head

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I am not really good at advertising so this will be short and straight to the point.

My wife is back at blogging after a long hiatus. Head over to The Mast-Head to read her ideas on whales, fountain pens, knitting, yoga, and whatever else she feels like writing about.

I also know for a fact that she uses Emacs, so surely her blog will be an awesome project indeed.

Completing shell commands

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The more I move to VC,¹ the more I end up relying on M-! (shell-command). Admittedly, this is a tool I’ve hardly ever used before, but since VC lacks many features covered by Magit, sometimes I need to interact with the power of Git straight from the command line.

One of the best things about Magit is that I don’t have to remember the many Git options to use it every day. Through transient menus, Magit makes Git a matter of few key strokes. On the other hand, from time to time I find myself on remote machines where Magit is not available, so it does not hurt to have a better understanding of the basic Git operations at my disposal.

However, typing them all out every single time is not the kind of pleasant activity a lazy Emacs user enjoys. Juri Linkov shared this little trick on emacs-devel:

(defun mu-minibuffer-complete-history ()
  "Complete minibuffer history."
  (interactive)
  (completion-in-region (minibuffer--completion-prompt-end) (point-max)
                        (symbol-value minibuffer-history-variable)
                        nil))

Juri also suggested to bind it to C-TAB in minibuffer-local-map which, coincidentally, is the same key binding I have to manually complete with Company outside of the minibuffer.

What Juri’s code does is popping up a *Completions* buffer with the history of the commands used in the minibuffer. I only use it with shell-command, but try it with C-x C-f for fun.

I leave it as a small exercise for the reader to understand how to switch from the minibuffer to the *Completions* buffer and vice versa. Tip: C-h m is your friend.

See A job for VC and Rebasing with VC. ↩︎

Rebasing with VC

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks without Magit¹ have forced me to rethink how I use Git in my projects. I have already written about some commands I have been using, but beside basic things, how does Emacs hold up in a more complex situation?

Let’s talk about interactive rebasing. If you are familiar with Magit,² you know how simple it gets. This is what I usually do from magit-status:

l for magit-log
l for current
n as many times as needed to move to the commit I want to start rebasing with
r for magit-rebase
i for interactive
s on the commits I want to squash
C-c C-c to confirm
write the commit message I want
C-c C-c to confirm
P and -f to push with --force-with-lease enabled

It’s quicker to do it than to write it all down, especially now that it has become muscle memory. No wonder I was still relying on Magit to interactively rebase on my first days with VC.

Since I did not find a similar solution in vc-git, I asked on emacs-devel how the core developers approach this workflow. I got different, interesting replies that can be roughly summed up with:

bare command line
helm-ls-git
custom code

Not wanting to be scared away from a non-Magit option, this is what I have eventually ended up doing:

in shell-mode, I run git rebase -i <branch>~<commits>
in the buffer that opens up I type s on the commits I want to squash
C-x C-s
C-x k RET
in the buffer with the commit message I edit the text as I wish
C-x C-s
C-x k RET
either I run git push --force-with-lease from shell-mode, or C-u P from C-x p v to push with --force-with-lease added manually

Note that this approach requires that in ~/.config/git/config I have editor set to emacsclient and either I have server-start somewhere in my init.el or I do M-x server-start before starting the actual rebasing.

It looks like that even without Magit I can do everything from Emacs, which makes for a good alternative in my opinion. Nonetheless, it does not take a PhD to notice that Magit makes the whole rebasing easier to sort out. Hence, you will not hear me scream “drop it already and party hard, fellas!”. Sorry.

Not entirely true, but keep reading. ↩︎
Who isn’t in this day and age? ↩︎

Stashing with VC

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Following my previous article on VC, I felt like proposing a key binding for vc-git-stash to the Emacs developers was something that could turn out to be useful for other VC users.

As it is usually recommended to do in these cases,¹ I filed my request using M-x report-emacs-bug: #52158. You can see that I specifically mentioned mu-vc-git-stash, the thin wrapper I coded to have VC stashing commands easily reachable, in order to back my proposal with the custom code I used to scratch a tiny itch.

Lars Ingebrigtsen, one of the Emacs co-maintainers, replied to me quickly² suggesting that I can use C if I put my cursor on the Stash: line of the vc-dir buffer. That led me to discover that if I move the cursor onto a line pointing to a stash I can press P to pop it with vc-git-stash-pop-at-point. The outcome should be obvious: I can get rid of mu-vc-git-stash.

Why wasn’t I using these key bindings before? As I wrote on the bug tracker, C-h m in vc-dir buffers does not document them and I did not find them explained in the 28.1.10.2 VC Directory Commands section of the manual either. If the documentation is not added, I may get in touch with the Emacs maintainers to see if I can contribute it myself. Unless of course the documentation is already there and it’s just my reading and searching skills failing me.

I was once advised to use this approach on emacs-devel. ↩︎
This is something Emacs core developers do all the time and I don’t think it’s appreciated enough. They always reply to my questions, even the ones that on second thoughts I consider silly. ↩︎

A job for VC

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Some days ago I briefly wrote about my willingness to give Emacs built-in VC system a try for real. For real means that it’s easy to praise the beauties of vc-git when working on personal projects such as this blog, but is VC actually worth it on bigger projects where different people commit and push regularly, rebasing is a habit, and merge conflicts are unavoidable necessities?

A warning first. This article is not intended as a VC tutorial. It aims to be an example of how I use it or, to phrase it better, how I started to use it. As Mickey Petersen suggests in the “Exploring Emacs” section of his great Mastering Emacs book, if you want to know more about VC there is plenty of information right within our favourite text editor. Furthermore, Protesilaos Stavrou has a couple of nice videos on VC you might want to check out: Introduction to VC and Workflow with VC for Git.

Now, let’s break down a common workflow of mine:

A new ticket is assigned to me
I create a new branch for this ticket, starting from the master one
I code my thing
I commit and push my code
I file a new merge request ready to be reviewed
The review may require changes to my code
I may need to rebase my changes onto master because other developers have merged their branches before me
Merge conflicts may arise and need to be fixed
I push my updated code ready to be reviewed again
If everything’s fine I merge my changes, otherwise back to my edit/rebase/merge process until it’s properly done
Meanwhile, it may happen that I need to stash my changes and quickly fix a higher priority bug

This more or less happens on a daily basis, so the interaction with Git (the only VCS I have used in the last ten years) must be smooth. On the other hand, Git-wise the above workflow is not that complicated. For instance, I rarely use features such as cherry-picking or bisecting.

On the surface, the main difference between Magit and VC is transient. Magit transient menus make all the operations I described above¹ a breeze. From checking out a branch to interactive rebasing, Magit requires few key strokes to accommodate my needs. The blatant truth is that Magit wraps everything I want from Git and much more in a user interface that just works.

VC, however, is not tightly coupled to Git, so it does not cover all of its many options. And yet I was able to manage my work projects with VC alternatives to Magit commands.

VC has its own vc-git-stash, vc-git-stash-pop, and vc-git-stash-delete commands, but instead of calling them via M-x I devised mu-vc-git-stash and bound it to z in vc-dir-mode-map:

(defun mu-vc-git-stash (pop-or-delete)
  "Create, pop, or delete Git stashes.
With no POP-OR-DELETE call `vc-git-stash'. With one prefix
argument call `vc-git-stash-pop'. With two prefix arguments call
`vc-git-stash-delete'."
  (interactive "P" vc-dir-mode)
  (cond ((= (prefix-numeric-value pop-or-delete) 4)
         (call-interactively #'vc-git-stash-pop))
        ((= (prefix-numeric-value pop-or-delete) 16)
         (call-interactively #'vc-git-stash-delete))
        (t (call-interactively #'vc-git-stash))))

As you can see, C-u z issues vc-git-stash-pop while C-u C-u z runs vc-git-stash-delete.

One thing that Magit really shines at for me is interactive rebasing (r i). I haven’t had the opportunity so far to check how I can handle this with VC. I guess a combination of shell-command and something I have yet to discover would do, probably.

Anyway, I’ll keep using VC in the next days and report back if I manage to adapt more of my Git workflows to it. I suspect Magit will outshine the humbler Emacs built-in eventually, but who knows. Reading on the emacs-devel mailing list that some wild Emacs developers prefer VC to Magit seems to confirm that the world is still full of surprises.

Well, only the ones related to Git of course. ↩︎

On Eglot and VC

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I have been pretty busy since my last update here, but that does not mean I haven’t had the time to explore a couple of things for my everyday Emacs usage.

Lately I had to deal with some Java and some JavaScript. No fancy libraries on top of them, no languages built upon them, just plain, old Java and JavaScript. I took that as a chance to familiarize myself with LSP and especially with Eglot, one of the two (to my knowledge) packages that add LSP support to Emacs. Why Eglot and not lsp-mode? Easy: I like how Eglot leverages project.el and Flymake, tools I heavily rely on, and I also like how quickly it enabled me to type Java and JavaScript code. I mean, it’s just a matter of M-x eglot. It does not get any easier than that, if you ask me.

Eglot works well with Company, Xref, and ElDoc, so coding in Java finally makes sense in Emacs. Granted, I haven’t used it on a big project and I am sure the likes of IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse do wonders, but none of them has the editing capabilities or the openness to infinite customization that Emacs offers.

Another tool that entered my day-to-day computing is the built-in version-control system, or VC for short. My love for Magit is well-known, but on my way to a vanilla Emacs appreciation I thought I could give VC a try. It turns out most of the things I need to do with my Git-versioned projects can be done from vc-dir. This means that instead of C-x g for magit-status I have been using C-x p v for project-vc-dir. When it’s time to get my hands dirty with some advanced Git-fu, Magit is always next to me.

One thing should be obvious here: Magit is more powerful and feature rich than the built-in VC, so I do not intend to drop Magit as quickly I dropped Projectile and Flycheck. Why don’t I just use Magit, then, you ask. For the same reason I tried Eglot instead of installing Eclipse, I’d reply. Curiosity will not kill any cat in my house.

He won, didn’t he?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s easy to cast a disparaging look at the state of my country from the comfort of my desk, and yet it has been a while since hope took a different road from mine. Have Italians ever been so lost that nothing seems capable of distracting them from their cynic detachment from reality? Most of the time our reactions translate into sarcasm, which soon stagnates in a quest for social interaction where the exchange of opinions amounts to little more than vain lamentations.

However, obliging to self-involvement does not mean that we forgot about the cult of personality. Ever present in my teenage years with the seemingly unstoppable rise of Silvio Berlusconi, today it’s up to the likes of Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni to keep its flame alive. I usually blame Berlusconi for the cultural and political decay of Italian society because Salvini and Meloni are the obvious side effects of Berlusconism, but with Vincere Marco Bellocchio has taught me that I am too young to understand when everything started.

Vincere (Marco Bellocchio, 2009)

Vincere moves on two tracks: one is Bellocchio’s attempt to understand a lesser known side of the “Duce” of Italian Fascism; the other is a study on the dangerous effects of a winning personality on the masses. Inevitably, the two tracks will collide and Bellocchio uses this collision to highlight how little has changed in this country since the fall of Fascism and eventually questioning the viewer: did Fascism actually fall? Has anything really changed?

From the very beginning, Ida Dalser eyes are enamoured both with the person and the personality of Benito Mussolini. She gives herself to him completely, always balancing the fascination of a groupie with the mad passion of a restless lover, blind to consequences. She is not irrational like a foolish individual. She is irrational because the more she loves Mussolini the more rational means of communication stop working with her. Considering what Mussolini put her through, whatever form of love she feels for him becomes increasingly inexplicable. The audacity of her belief in Mussolini stands strong even when she knows that the man is making everything in his power to hide her away as something to be ashamed of. She looses her life and her son to him and only in the end she seems to be battling for her cause instead of his husband’s. Definitely too late for her, but for us it’s a hint of feeble resistance that could spark something more if we understand how to treasure it.

Bellocchio avoids the biopic pitfalls by working on perspectives. The story is that of his characters but the large context of History cannot be avoided, especially when the context throws such a heavy load on Italy’s shoulders. Bellocchio’s style reminded me of Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), where the point of view shifts sweetly between the hardships of Lucia Mondella and Renzo Tramaglino and the social and political turmoil around them from one chapter to another. Like Manzoni, Bellocchio enters and exits historical facts via archival footage in order to never forget where Ida Dalser’s quest is happening, while focusing on her experiences throughout years as complicated for Italy as they are for her.

However, Bellocchio does not stop at an obscure tragedy for memory’s sake. He is not even content with the lesson we can infer from it alone. Dalser’s son, Benito Albino Mussolini, died in a psychiatric institute just like her mother. Before ending Vincere with written remarks about their deaths and that of Mussolini, thus leaving the last words to History, Bellocchio makes Benito Albino do a couple of impressions of his father. The first one is somehow imposed on him by his friends, who are looking to make fun of the Benito Mussolini they have just seen on television. Benito Albino unwillingly portrays his father in an overtly exaggerated way, but the scene does not make the viewer laugh along with Albino’s friends, because we know where Albino comes from. More importantly, when one thinks of Italy today they know every politician is an actor living off the charisma-building skills Mussolini left us with. The acts and words are different, but the rhetorical power is just the same. Hence, the joke Albino enacts is on his friends and, if we do not stay alert, on us.

The second impression is an uncontrollable feat triggered by another appearance of Benito Mussolini on television. Mussolini speaks German, and so does Benito Albino, but by now tuberculosis has destroyed his mind and body, so he probably does not even understand a word of what he is saying. Bellocchio not only refuses humour but does not even try to put a hint of irony in this scene. This is the plainest image of what Mussolini and, by extension, Fascism did to Italy. This is the extent of his victory in the long run.

Grep’s good rep

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Look around this blog and you will find nice words about ripgrep. I especially enjoy how I can plug it into Emacs, like the time when I devised my own Helm commands for it.

However, roughly a year ago I started my journey to a more vanilla Emacs experience. During this time I have been slowly moving away from the niceties of ripgrep in order to stick to a couple of built-in tools: rgrep and vc-git-grep. Now, technically speaking, both this commands rely on external tools, grep and git grep. Why should I use these instead of ripgrep? Personal preferences, of course: grep is readily available on Ubuntu and git is the first tool I install when upgrading to a new LTS from Canonical.¹

Furthermore, I rarely need the power of ripgrep. Your experience may be different on this, but the size of my projects does not scare neither grep nor git grep. For instance, I regularly use vc-git-grep on Emacs sources, which amounts to something like 2,755,361 lines of code,² and the performances are just fine for me.

The only thing I usually do not need from these commands is the prompt for the file types to look into.

(defun mu-recursive-grep (search-term search-path)
  "Recursively search for SEARCH-TERM in SEARCH-PATH."
  (interactive
   (progn
     (unless grep-command
       (grep-compute-defaults))
     (let ((search-term (grep-read-regexp))
           (search-path (expand-file-name
                         (read-directory-name
                          "Directory: " nil default-directory t))))
       (list search-term search-path))))
  (if (vc-root-dir)
      (vc-git-grep search-term "*" search-path)
    (rgrep search-term "*" search-path)))

I combined the two commands to make it simpler. When I am in a Git-versioned project (i.e., vc-root-dir is not nil) mu-recursive-grep runs vc-git-grep; otherwise, it’s time for rgrep to shine. As trivial as it might look, the fact that the last two lines of mu-recursive-grep look similar is what made it easier for me to devise a common wrapper. Emacs describe system is always invaluable for discoveries such as this.

One last thing. When in a project, if I want to find where the thing at point is used I do not need mu-recursive-grep. For this task project-find-regexp (C-x p g) is enough,³ but mu-recursive-grep is still helpful when I want to narrow the search down to a specific path.

I use Ansible Playbooks to set up the new system. ↩︎
That’s what scc tells me today, anyway. ↩︎
C-h v xref-search-program shows that ripgrep can be used instead of the default grep. Hence you can keep ripgrepping if that’s what you prefer. ↩︎

Package report

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I like to monitor my Emacs configuration to see if it is growing out of control due to my penchant for experimenting with ELisp and new packages. This led me to a simple question: why not have a command that can produce a summary of the installed packages? Specifically, I want to know the total number of packages installed and I’d like to list the packages for every archive set up in package-archives.

(defun mu-package-report ()
  "Report total package counts grouped by archive."
  (interactive)
  (package-refresh-contents)
  (mu--display-package-report
   (let* ((arch-pkgs (mu--archive-packages))
          (counts (seq-sort-by #'cdr #'> (mu--archive-counts arch-pkgs)))
          (by-arch (seq-group-by #'car arch-pkgs)))
     (concat
      (format "Total packages: %s\n\n" (apply #'+ (mapcar #'cdr counts)))
      (mapconcat
       (lambda (archive)
         (concat "• "
                 (format "%s (%s)" (car archive) (cdr archive))
                 ": "
                 (mapconcat (lambda (ap-pair) (cdr ap-pair))
                            (alist-get (car archive) by-arch)
                            ", ")))
       counts
       "\n\n")))))

Now, let’s unpack it.

I want my report buffer to be displayed in a new window, so this is what mu--display-package-report does:

(defun mu--display-package-report (output)
  "Display OUTPUT in a popup buffer."
  (let ((buffer-name "*package-report*"))
    (with-help-window buffer-name
      (with-current-buffer buffer-name
        (visual-line-mode 1)
        (erase-buffer)
        (insert output)
        (goto-char (point-min))))))

Next, I want to know from which archive (e.g., GNU ELPA) a package is coming to my system:

(defun mu--archive-packages ()
  "Return a list of (archive . package) cons cells."
  (seq-reduce
   (lambda (res package)
     (let ((archive (package-desc-archive
                     (cadr (assq package package-archive-contents))))
           (pkg (symbol-name package)))
       (push (cons archive pkg) res)))
   (mapcar #'car package-alist)
   nil))

This is nice because now I can also have the number of packages for every archive.

(defun mu--archive-counts (arch-pkgs)
  "Return a list of cons cells from alist ARCH-PKGS.
The cars are package archives, the cdrs are the number of
packages installed from each archive."
  (seq-reduce
   (lambda (counts key)
     (cons (cons key (+ 1 (or (cdr (assoc key counts)) 0)))
           (assoc-delete-all key counts)))
   (mapcar #'car arch-pkgs)
   nil))

The rest of the code in mu-package-report deals with formatting the output. For example, I am using seq-sort-by to have the archive with the highest number of packages on top. As for the mapconcat producing the actual bullet points, the Emacs community came to the rescue on Emacs Stack Exchange.

Finally, this is how M-x mu-package-report RET looks like:

Have I been good?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Back in January, I stated as frankly as I could my plans for the rest of 2021. Namely:

More books and less films
More philosophy and less fiction
Running

Now that we are approaching the end of August I think it makes sense to check on myself and see how I have behaved so far.

More books and less films

I track everything I read and watch on my Bujo so let’s see actual numbers:

books: 33 (not including strictly university material)
films: 132 (not including a couple of series)

It doesn’t look promising, does it? In my defense, among the books there have been heavyweights like Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy which I took my time to read slowly and carefully. Still, there is room for improvement here.

More philosophy and less fiction

philosophy and philosophy-related books: 15
fiction: 15
non-fiction: 3

Oh well, it has been going better here! I have been keeping fiction for the evening and that splendid time in bed before turning the lights off. Otherwise, a great deal of philosophy courtesy of Alasdair MacIntyre, Jürgen Habermas, Terry Pinkard, Emmanuel Levinas, Emanuele Severino, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Etty Hillesum, Søren Kierkegaard and Baruch Spinoza.

Running

And now the sad note: I have neglected proper exercise and not only running this year. I did walk a lot in the wild on holiday, that’s true, but it isn’t enough. One could be on my side and try the “You are such an avid reader!” card, but we all know that that is just a lame excuse for being comfortably lazy on the couch. Work has to be done here.

Conclusion

Honestly, despite the need to leave the desk and the couch more, I cannot complain. Philosophy has proved to be an exceptional exercise for the mind and so somehow I have actually been involved in great training during these months. I will check myself again on December to see if new year’s resolutions do in fact make sense after all.

Switching buffers (Take 3)

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The more I remove code from my init.el to rely on Emacs defaults, the more I am getting used to it. This means I stopped using the likes of nswbuff and counsel-projectile, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for small tweaks.

The basic switch-to-buffer (C-x b) does exactly what it says: it lets you switch to a buffer of your choice. Now, if you play around in Emacs for a while you end up with many open buffers such as *Messages*, *Flymake log*, *Help*, *Ibuffer*, etc. Usually when I want to switch to a buffer I start typing and fido-mode gets me there, but the output of vanilla switch-to-buffer is still a bit cluttered with buffers I never jump to.

(defvar mu-ignored-buffers
  '("\\` " "^\\*Async" "^\\*Compile-Log" "^\\*Completions" "^\\*Flymake"
    "^\\*Messages" "^\\*eldoc" "^\\*envrc" "\\*tramp" "^\\*xref")
  "A list of predicates for buffers to ignore.")
  
(defun mu-switch-to-buffer (buffer-or-name)
  "Switch to BUFFER-OR-NAME but ignore specific buffers."
  (interactive
   (list (read-buffer "Switch to: "
                      (other-buffer (current-buffer))
                      (confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer)
                      (lambda (buf)
                        (not
                         (seq-contains-p
                          mu-ignored-buffers (car buf) #'string-match-p))))))
  (switch-to-buffer buffer-or-name))

The key point in mu-switch-to-buffer is the fourth argument passed to read-buffer.

Optional arg PREDICATE, if non-nil, is a function limiting the buffers that can be considered. It will be called with each potential candidate, in the form of either a string or a cons cell whose `car’ is a string, and should return non-nil to accept the candidate for completion, nil otherwise.

Note that I am using mu-ignored-buffers only in mu-switch-to-buffer. Ibuffer still shows the ignored buffers to me. If I’ll ever get particularly angry at those buffers, I could hide them in Ibuffer as well by adding them to ibuffer-never-show-predicates. These days, though, teenage angst is far behind myself.

Trust me, I complete

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Not too long ago I wrote about my pleasant experience with icomplete-vertical-mode, a recent addition on Emacs master which gives a vertical spin to the good old Icomplete. But now Emacs also comes with fido-mode, which enhances icomplete-mode with ido-mode powers.

The question is: can I combine fido-mode and icomplete-vertical-mode to have the best of both worlds? Yep, it turns out I can and it is simple and easy.

(fido-vertical-mode 1)

And this is basically it. The only other thing I did was setting icomplete-matches-format to nil because I don’t have a particular need for the match count at the prompt.

Whether or not one uses fido-vertical-mode, fido-mode enables nice features such as icomplete-fido-delete-char (C-d), which deletes the current character or calls dired on the current directory, and icomplete-fido-kill (C-k), which kills the current line or, for instance, if we are completing files asks if we want to delete the selected one. Check icomplete-fido-mode-map for more details on the available key bindings.

Inspecting icomplete--fido-mode-setup reveals that fido-mode also uses the flex completion style,¹ but nothing forces us to stick with it or try something like Orderless instead. As always with Emacs, the power is in our hands.

One more thing. The “Trust me” in the title aims to be a pun on the word “fido”. In Italian “fido” is the form for “I” of “fidare” which means “to trust”: “Mi fido di te” becomes “I trust you” in English. “Fido” is also a famous dog in Italy that came to public attention because of his strong loyalty. Thus using fido-mode implies that my love for dogs is sincere and trustworthy.

C-h o completion-styles-alist RET to know more about it. Specifically, search for flex in the Value: section of the documentation. ↩︎

A dictionary in Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I explained my need for an English dictionary when I wrote about my own [helm-wordnut]({% post_url 2020-06-13-helm-wordnut %}). To sum it up: my English is good but it’s not David Foster Wallace good, so a dictionary is mandatory.

Last October Torsten Hilbrich added dictionary-el to Emacs master so, in my quest for a Vanilla Emacs appreciation, I decided to give it a try. According to the first line of dictionary.el this library is a client for RFC 2229 dictionary servers, which as the RFC says, rely on the DICT protocol:

The DICT protocol is designed to provide access to multiple databases. Word definitions can be requested, the word index can be searched (using an easily extended set of algorithms), information about the server can be provided (e.g., which index search strategies are supported, or which databases are available), and information about a database can be provided (e.g., copyright, citation, or distribution information). Further, the DICT protocol has hooks that can be used to restrict access to some or all of the databases.

This is very useful because it means that one can collect different definitions from various dictionary and possibly compare synonyms.

This is how I set up dictionary.el in my init.el:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c d") #'dictionary-search)
(setq dictionary-server "dict.org")

dictionary-search cleverly picks up the word at point which means that when I hit C-c d RET on a word I don’t know I get a *Dictionary* buffer with entries coming from:

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English
WordNet
Moby Thesaurus II

There is much more in dictionary.el, though. I counted 17 defcustoms for starters, so go on and tweak it like any Emacs hacker would do. As for me, the couple of ELisp lines above are adequate.

Reuse Dired buffers

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This is going to be a real quick one, mainly a “thank you!” to Lars Ingebrigtsen. Lars has recently added a new option on the Emacs master branch: dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer. I will let the documentation speak for itself:

dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer is a variable defined in ‘dired.el'.

Its value is t
Original value was nil

You can customize this variable. This variable was introduced, or its default value was changed, in version 28.1 of Emacs. Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 28.1.

If non-nil, kill the current buffer when selecting a new directory.

Setting this new option to t means that pressing RET or ^ in a Dired buffer will reuse the existing buffer. This is something I required a while ago (#20598) and that up until today I had been hacking up poorly in my .init.el.

I know the Emacs developers have more urgent bugs to work on, but this is such a nice improvement I am pretty sure you can see me happily smiling right now.

I complete. You?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Tracking the Emacs development by building its master branch may not be a smooth experience for everyone, but for the average enthusiast is the perfect way to see their favourite tool evolve, trying experimental things, and reporting back to the core developers to help them. Sure, one has to deal with occasional build failures, but with Git at one’s service it’s always easy to reset to a working commit and find happiness again.

Recently a shiny new mode has been implemented on master: icomplete-vertical-mode. Now, if you had the chance to read this blog in the past you know that when it comes to candidate completion I am a gangsta jumping back and forth among packages with excessive self-satisfaction. But you should also already know that I like to use as many Emacs built-ins as possible. Hence, I could not wait to give icomplete-vertical-mode a try.

Turning it on is trivial:

(icomplete-mode 1)
(add-hook 'icomplete-mode-hook #'icomplete-vertical-mode)

Since other completion systems have spoiled me, I prefer scrolling over the rotating behaviour of the standard icomplete:

(setq icomplete-scroll t)

Furthermore, I always want to see the candidate list:

(setq icomplete-show-matches-on-no-input t)

This is pretty much it. I use icomplete-fido-backward-updir to move up one directory and I have exit-minibuffer bound to C-j for convenience.

I have been using icomplete-vertical-mode daily for a while now and everything has been working as expected. For the record, this mode works seamlessly with your favourite completion-styles settings, so moving from, say, Vertico to icomplete-vertical-mode is simple and easy.

Let Soderbergh talk

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes it takes a peculiar turn of events to shine a new light on a film that did not hit me at all the first time I watched it. The more dramatic the events are, the more the film is able to dig its own way through me on the second time. And if the film manages to catch me off guard as well, it simply means that I did not have a clue before and that I was, once again, ignoring the brilliant capacity that cinema has to enter my life unexpectedly.

There is a lot going on with my family at the moment, but to put it briefly: a relative with health issues and another one without a job in a delicate moment. In the world of my family, reasoning together around a table on these problems is next to impossible, and if one is used to sit down and talk in order to better understand the situation, they are going to have a hard time getting honest replies and decent answers out of these mouths. Unless they are Steven Soderbergh, I guess.

Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh, 2020)

In Let Them All Talk, Soderbergh captures the dynamics and the intricacies of different kind of relationships with the eye of the adult back after many years where they were born. Like that adult, Soderbergh’s camera observes the development of stories that are familiar and distant at the same time. The adult knows where and how these stories began, but it is actually the child in them that is remembering, and so the memories are vague and partly filled with the audacity of imagination. The adult has not followed the development of these stories if not remotely and by chance, and thus the intimacy with them is now lost. This feeling is strengthened by the position in which the viewer is constantly put by Soderbergh, a position where they think they know more than the characters, but it is a knowledge which does not inform them enough to derive neither the correct nor the wrong conclusions. Just like the adult that has to reacquaint with his family, the viewer needs time to process where the images are leading them to.

This is not to say that Let Them All Talk is out to play with our minds. Soderbergh shows more than he conceals, and the death of Alice, as shocking as it is, is in fact slightly anticipated by her anxiety. She desperately wants to reconnect with the most important people in her life, and yet we sense that there is more to it in this trip. Throughout the crossing on the ship she struggles to find the time and the emotional space to sit down and fix what went wrong in what seems like a previous life, but she is not ready to give up on her work and her swimming to do that, a sign that there is more at stake than a friendship here. The same is true for Tyler and his infatuation with Karen. As much as they build a bond on board, the reasons why it does not turn into a romance are on plain sight. Karen uses Tyler for her own ends at first, but as they get closer to each other they share and connect on a different level. Most of the time, say in a romantic comedy or a sit-com, this level is the prelude of a happy love story. However, Karen is not attracted to Tyler and she never suggests that she is. Tyler naturally falls for her, he takes the risk of a timid and messy confession, and Karen does not know how to react to that. We can only guess she realises that she must have given him the wrong impression, but the viewer is not entitled to enter the privacy of her emotions. Soderbergh hides only what is respectful to hide.

Furthermore, Let Them All Talk is not shy when it comes to humour, with its main target being the literary world, but again Soderbergh approaches the matter from a hide and seek angle. Alice makes fun of best-selling author Kelvin Kranz, despising the poor quality of his hugely popular books and laughing at his semi-automatic writing process. The fictional Kranz mirrors the likes of Wilbur Smith, a beloved writer in my family, and so I can relate to both Alice’s criticism and Susan’s appreciation. Whereas Wilbur Smith may not conquer my taste in literature, after decades he still is a staple in my parents’ house, and something of my passion for books must come from all those evenings with my parents on the sofa completely absorbed by his pages. This is one of the things Let Them All Talk is really good at. It dwells on mixed feelings while acknowledging the apparently simple fact that every situation is bound to be charged with emotions well beyond our reach. Its characters share a common background. Sometimes it works for them, and other times, it is set against them. They cannot assume friendship and family ties, however strong, to be the only means for their relationships to survive.

This is why Roberta is such an important character. She is not able to let go her belief that her life has been ruined by Alice’s most popular book. Roberta is sure that Alice used her and her life as the basis for the book, thus what she seems to be after is monetary compensation for all the troubles she had. However, right at the very end, when getting money out of Alice’s death requires more effort on Roberta’s side, she lets go. Does she do it because she cannot be bothered to fight any more? Or has she finally realised that she, and only she, can press the button to put change in motion? I like to think that only she knows the answer, and I like to think that anyone facing the same decision would act differently. Like Kierkegaard said, humans are possibility, and within the possible everything is possible.

Would Alfred Hitchcock use Emacs?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

First you have to excuse the awful title, but a cinephile cannot resist the temptation of an easy reference when the Emacs package he is going to write about is called Vertico.

Daniel Mendler has become such a prolific contributor to our Emacs world. His work with Omar Antolín Camarena and Clemens Radermacher (to name a few!) has been showing me how much can be done with little improvements on Emacs default completion system. Actually, “little” is a bit unfair to them because they have been putting a lot of effort in their packages and contributions. What “little” stands for instead is the amount of code I had to add to my init.el to get a superb completion UI. I combine Vertico with Orderless and I didn’t have to do much beside this after the installation via package.el:

(require 'orderless)
(setq completion-styles '(orderless))

(require 'vertico)
(vertico-mode 1)

Well, to be fair I did something more, like binding vertico-exit-input to C-j and setting orderless-matching-styles to orderless-regexp, plus I am using Daniel’s consult to extend Vertico capabilities, but I guess you see where I am going by now. The combination of small packages makes for a modular system that I can interact with more easily. For instance, Daniel can go berserk and forget about the lovely 500 lines of code limit he set himself to with Vertico. Why should I trust this criminal mind, then? I can switch to Selectrum and keep using Consult and Orderless with it.¹

The beauty of Vertico is that it is not about reinventing Emacs completion once again. By sticking to Emacs built-in commands and completion facilities, Vertico succeeds in staying close to the source without losing the chance to improve on it. On the one hand, moving to Vertico means it is up to the user to configure extra niceties. That is what packages like Consult, Orderless, Embark, and Marginalia aim for, but again, the user is in charge of the right setup for their needs, while a solution such as Helm offers a lot of functionalities out of the box. On the other hand, tools such as Helm, Ivy, and Selectrum are more complex than Vertico and may bring in code you do not necessarily need, which is something even Emacs itself doesn’t shy away from.²

I find it amazing that a seemingly simple and yet so central feature in my everyday Emacs such as the completion system has pushed people to create all these amazing packages. It seems to me that Helm has helped pave the way for a more powerful experience when it comes to completion and that by studying Emacs internals carefully one can achieve similar benefits with a different approach. As humble end-users of all this we really are a lucky bunch.

The irony should be obvious. ↩︎
I don’t really need games in my text editor. ↩︎

Back to the roots

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I left straight for the built-in package.el, a choice I have not had the pleasure to regret so far. Now I am going to reason about a more ambitious change in my Emacs configuration: I am not using use-package any more.

Before answering your concerned why!? let me just say that if you are happy with use-package you should stay with it. By wrapping all the settings for a built-in feature or an external package with use-package you can easily notice what you are doing wrong when tweaking something, while having control over the installation and the loading of your favourite library as well. Despite some unhappiness around the web,¹ use-package is just a great tool that any serious Emacs hacker should consider when digging deep into their .emacs.d.

As for my choice to move away from it, it all started as an experiment. I wanted to see if I could have the same amount of control and readability over my init.el without an extra package. You see, most of the recent changes to my setup involved trying to rely on Emacs own facilities to answer my needs, and I am glad to say vanilla Emacs has been really a surprise in this regard. My liaisons with project.el and Flymake are nice examples of this.

Removing use-package has meant rethinking the way I install packages, especially if I want my setup to be ready to go any time I upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu. My solution was adding the packages I use to package-selected-packages and have a check on startup to make sure they are installed. This works very well combined with package-autoremove: if a package is not listed under package-selected-packages, Emacs takes care of the mess.

All the use-package blocks have been replaced with a combination of with-eval-after-load, define-key, and add-hook, which was not as complicated as it might sound, and more often than not was similar to what I had in my days before the use-package takeover. True, I lost the nice readability of use-package with this massive edit. For example, its keywords have the benefit of grouping settings together and clearly indicate when a new group starts, but on the other hand now there is less macro-magic masking package-related operations. As a result I have a more detailed insight of what is really going on with my Emacs Lisp. For instance, I have gained a better knowledge of what run-with-idle-timer actually does.

Again, it is a matter of personal preferences. By now the beauty of use-package is well-known in the Emacs world and all the praises are well-deserved. Let me stress it again: use-package makes your configuration simpler to manage and easier to read. Those were the main reasons I switched to it years ago, anyway.

However, if you know what you are doing you can achieve a clean and pleasant init.el with what Emacs already offers. Does it take more effort? Yes, it probably does. Is it really worth it? It’s up to you, mate. Am I just showing off? No, come on, don’t be rude.

See for instance here or here. ↩︎

Quick starting is a bendy road

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

After more than a year with straight as my package manager, recently I have decided to sit down and look closely at how I handle my Emacs packages.

For all the interesting design choices and splendid documentation straight offers, I have never used neither its version freezing capabilities nor the chances to edit the source code of a package to try possible fixes before sending patches upstream. Two reasons, mainly:

I update my packages on a daily basis, accepting the risk of breakages in order to signal them to the maintainers and offer some help;
when I want to send a patch, I have the source code of the package I am working on outside of my Emacs configuration to avoid leaving something messy around.

These are not issues with straight, of course. It all depends on what one needs from their package manager.

One of the major benefits that straight brought to my setup is a boost in startup speed. However, why don’t give package-quickstart a try? Setting package-quickstart to t instructs package.el to pre-compute an autoload file so that the activation of packages can be done much faster, resulting in a faster startup. And indeed it does, resulting in more or less the same 0.4 seconds that I was getting with straight.

One thing to be aware of is that, as the documention of package-quickstart suggests, “the use of ‘package-quickstart-refresh’ every time the activation need to be changed, such as when ‘package-load-list’ is modified” is required. Hence, I added an :after-while advice to package-menu-execute (bound to x in Package Menu) to make sure package-quickstart-refresh is run after every upgrade.

Again, mine is not an argument against straight. It’s still a great package manager and a fantastic alternative to the built-in package.el. However, these days my Emacs interactions do not need the fine-grained control straight provides.

Punching masculinity

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

When I first watched Watchmen, I felt like Zack Snyder was playing the most cruel of jokes on me. Since the difference between arts was still eluding me at the time, I went in looking for the comic book that I love, wrongly assuming Snyder would tell me what I already knew about its awesome pages. As a result, I removed Snyder from my radar.

Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder, 2011)

As usual, when trustworthy film critics write about a director I hate it’s time to approach that director again, and this blog has witnessed this experience many times. I am even prepared to kick my own self for misjudging a film and pretending to know what I am writing about. When it comes to Zack Snyder, the film that opened new perspectives on him for me has been one of his most poorly received and generally hated efforts, squeezed in between Watchmen and his deep dive into DC Comics. Namely, Sucker Punch.

Sucker Punch establishes quickly its focus, which is the psychological and physical dominance of men over women. Opening with Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics sang by Emily Browning is not a simple pop choice to underline the abuse on the screen. Instead it immediately sets the viewer in the mind of Browning’s Babydoll character. Beside a voice over, Snyder stages the event leading to the confinement of Babydoll in a psychiatric hospital with only images and music. The lack of words is not casual and has nothing to do with the video-music style Snyder’s been often accused of. We are trapped in Babydoll’s nightmare as are her words. Silence is a natural reaction to shock and trauma after all and certain events cannot be easily explained. The commentary is stuck in our head as we are bound to relive them sooner or later. Thus the multi-layered narrative of Sucker Punch starts way before we enter Babydoll’s fantasy world.

Were it not for the clothes and the abrupt change in the cinematography, would we really have noticed the switch from a hospital to a brothel? The twisted reality of both worlds is much the same, with the girls forced in one way or the other to act according to someone else’s plans. If the brothel functions as another impossible cage, it is also the place where Babydoll can find within herself the comfort of dancing and retire in the freedom of her own visions. Dancing is her way to open herself to a world where she is free to decide what is best for her, where her actions and words are what matters because they matter to others as well. In the action sequences which translate the dances Babydoll is the leader of her own will.

The fact that the outfits that the girls wear in the brothel reveal just as much as the ones in the combats mirrors what a typical male gaze is looking for: reification. It does not matter whether the girl is dancing on a stage or facing giant monsters as long as it is all a performance that the men in power can appreciate from a safe distance. Snyder clearly stated that Sucker Punch is an explicit critique of sexist geek culture, but he is subtler than, say, Paul Verhoeven. Whereas Showgirls never ceases to arouse the viewer and hit them hard as soon as they are too much involved with the female bodies on the screen, Sucker Punch implies more than it suggests knowing well that sexual fantasies need little to start with. Considering that Spring Breakers came out only a year later, Snyder built the perfect bridge from Verhoeven’s men-eating women of the 1990s to Harmony Korine’s reckless teens, joining Paul W. S. Anderson in the creation of complex, strong and at the same time fragile female leads in a male-dominated world.

Moreover, Snyder shares with Anderson the ability and the tenacity to build unique visuals. While every other work of his comes with a solid background set by others (George Romero, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, well-known superheroes), Sucker Punch lives on its own and must take extra care to win the viewer’s confidence. Snyder succeeds in this by skipping premises and wordily explanations and trusting his images. The richness of details is overwhelming and with no reason offered for seemingly random elements we are left to our own sense of wonder, which is exactly what I expect from the cinema that I need. Every dream sequence expands on the previous in size and scope, paralleling the attempts at escaping the brothel and matching their increasingly higher stakes. Yet Snyder knows that with novelty comes pleasure as much as boredom. Therefore he anchors his settings to obvious albeit generic references to pop culture, such as mechas, zombies, dragons, and samurais. Again, the lack of context lets one’s imagination run wild, making for potentially infinite and thus living connections beyond the screen.

Sucker Punch remains a perfect example of how mainstream US cinema can still be inventive and personal in spite of giant battles of industries competing to standardize every image. Rumours of a director’s cut have been thrown around, but according to Snyder it looks like it’s going to take a while. Either way, the extended cut provides enough material to experience one of the most personal and vital works of the last decade.

Re-solutions

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been studying philosophy at Ca’ Foscari for about a year and half now, devoting most of my spare time to wonderful and wonderfully difficult books, and enjoying every part of this journey. There is still a lot of ground to cover because I see many gaps to fill and thoughts to process, but there is one thing that I am sure of: it’s going to be the journey of a lifetime.

I’ve not been so deeply fascinated and involved with something in a long while. Ask my wife and she is going to tell you that perhaps my love for cinema can match this passion for philosophy. I could agree, but cinema has not really been on my side lately. Beside few exceptions, 2020 will not be remembered for the films or the directors that inspired me to write.

The last days of 2020 were dedicated to planning new year’s resolutions. To be perfectly honest, I am not a great fan of new year’s resolutions. Most of the time I forget about them in a couple of months. To circumvent my poor will, I decided to keep the resolutions simple, small, and practical. This is what I wrote down on my Bujo:

More books and less films
More philosophy and less fiction
Running

The first two are easy to adopt side by side. I watched way too many forgettable films last year, leaving the couch with the horrible feeling of time wasted. I do not want to repeat that. If there isn’t a film to watch, I want to turn off the TV, forget about my Blu-ray collection, and grab the book next to me.

As for the kind of book to pick up, I want to avoid contemporary fiction. There is nothing wrong with contemporary fiction, of course, but most of the contemporary books I read in 2020 proved to be little more than decent entertainment. There is so much to read, and it’s not just philosophy. I want more classics on my bedside table, and I want to read more from authors I love. Consider it a sabbatical. I intend to come back to contemporary fiction next year.

Finally, running. Let’s just say I stopped for no good reason and I am waiting for my contact lens to start again. As simple as this resolution looks, it’s also the most necessary one. Between work and studies the time I spend at my desk has become unhealthy, and I know how fresh air and exercise make me feel.

For all the good things in this planning, I see a couple of drawbacks here. If I manage to stick to these resolutions, computing is going to play a different role in my life. I will still be in front of my Emacs five days a week, but that’s about it. Whereas this means less tinkering and less githubbing, it also means less writing for my blogs. Nevertheless, for the sake of my priorities, I am willing to sacrifice writing just as I am willing to put cinema aside.

Happy new year.

Embarking in a new affair with completions

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

What a year this 2020. Beside the pandemic changing our lives in unpredictable ways, from the perspective of my Emacs usage much was going on in my init.el until I felt that a temporary break was necessary.

Most of my tinkering concerned the minibuffer and its completion mechanisms. I finished last year and started this one with Helm, but I am about to close 2020 with the built-in minibuffer completion and Embark providing candidates. A solution that Protesilaos Stavrou explored and which has been really suiting me.

Before detailing how I adapted his approach to my preferences, though, let me give you a bit of rationale. First, Helm rocks and it rocks hard. Its power is evident after a couple of hours with it. I briefly used Icomplete tweaked to display its results vertically, but I didn’t find it responsive enough to stick with it. Then I found out about Selectrum, which fixed the responsiveness but eventually was not adding a significant difference compared to Helm. True, Selectrum has a simpler codebase, but were I only to look at my daily interactions with Emacs, only the user interface can tell Helm and Selectrum apart.

Protesilaos took a different path. He wants to understand the code in front of him, so the less changes the better. In this regard Helm, Selectrum, and even Icomplete add a layer of indirection between him and the minibuffer. He is right in this. The minibuffer is more capable than the plethora of completion frameworks may suggest, and one can leverage its strength without forcing it to behave in a totally new way. Protesilaos’ reasoning got me thinking. Once again, am I looking for a solution from the outside before having really understood what lies underneath my beloved text editor?

Following Protesilaos’ steps, I set up the minibuffer to rely only on orderless and Embark, with Consult chiming in for a some of operations like better history in shell-mode and an improved apropos. What I added to Protesilaos’ code is the only thing that I felt was missing: a command to search for the symbol at point in my project, with the results displayed in an embark-live-occur window in order to quickly jump to a specific entry. Over at the Consult’s GitHub there are talks about a consult-rg utility which would serves this purpose, and there has been suggestions of using project-find-regexp as well.

(defun mu-project-find-refs ()
  "Use `project-find-regexp' to search for thing at point."
  (interactive)
  (if-let (tap (thing-at-point 'symbol))
      (project-find-regexp tap)
    (message "Nothing at point to search for")))

Easy enough to understand. However, if you, like me, set up Embark like Protesilaos does you’ll notice that this command doesn’t show any candidate unless you type something at the Jump to definition prompt. The candidates are there already, though, so I have to avoid waiting for an input and display the candidate list immediately.

The solution is straightforward: just remove embark-live-occur-after-input from minibuffer-setup-hook and use embark-live-occur-after-delay instead. I added a :before advice on mu-project-find-refs for this. The beauty of this advice is that it works elsewhere as well. For instance, I have been using it for consult-flymake and flyspell-correct-at-point too.

Note that this advice requires a little change to the original minibuffer-setup-hook I have lifted from Protesilaos. Instead of adding embark-live-occur-after-input to it I am using this to ensure only embark-live-occur-after-input is present.

(defun mu-embark-live-occur-after-input ()
  "Ensure only `embark-live-occur-after-input' is active."
  (remove-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook #'embark-live-occur-after-delay)
  (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook #'embark-live-occur-after-input))

Without a dedicated completion framework the minibuffer may feel rather basic at first, but do not let it deceive you with its frugality. Like project.el, all it needs is love.

Restricting Flymake to my projects

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My recent move from Flycheck to Flymake has proven to be a solid choice because the Emacs built-in syntax checker has yet to let me down. And since by now I am sure my love for project.el is absolutely obvious, could I miss the opportunity to make these two underappreciated gems shine together?

Honestly, though, the credit here goes all to Protesilaos Stavrou. His Flymake setup made me aware of a neat way to limit the use of Flymake to the places I actually need it.

All I had to do was adapt it to my preferences:

(defun mu-flymake-mode-activate ()
  "Activate `flymake-mode' only in my projects."
  (project--ensure-read-project-list)
  (let ((known-projects (project-known-project-roots))
        (pr (or (locate-dominating-file "." ".git")
                default-directory)))
    (if (and (eq buffer-read-only nil)
             (member pr known-projects))
        (flymake-mode 1)
      (flymake-mode -1))))

I then hooked this little function to prog-mode-hook and text-mode-hook and everything was good to go.

Note that project.el must be required before running mu-flymake-mode-activate, otherwise Emacs will complain about project--ensure-read-project-list not being available.

Extending project.el

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In my first appreciation of project.el I wrote about a patch for project--files-in-directory. It’s a working solution, I won’t deny that, but patching code always feels hacky. It’s like a dirty workaround you cannot avoid to look at every time you visit your Emacs configuration.

By inspecting the code of project.el I noticed that project-files is a generic function. In Emacs Lisp parlance, a generic function specifies an abstract operation with the actual implementation provided by methods. This simply means that I can devise my own implementation of project-files.

(cl-defmethod project-root ((project (head local)))
  (cdr project))

(defun mu--project-files-in-directory (dir)
  "Use `fd' to list files in DIR."
  (let* ((default-directory dir)
         (localdir (file-local-name (expand-file-name dir)))
         (command (format "fd -t f -0 . %s" localdir)))
    (project--remote-file-names
     (sort (split-string (shell-command-to-string command) "\0" t)
           #'string<))))

(cl-defmethod project-files ((project (head local)) &optional dirs)
  "Override `project-files' to use `fd' in local projects."
  (mapcan #'mu--project-files-in-directory
          (or dirs (list (project-root project)))))

project.el has to be made aware of my local type now.

(defun mu-project-try-local (dir)
  "Determine if DIR is a non-Git project.
DIR must include a .project file to be considered a project."
  (let ((root (locate-dominating-file dir ".project")))
    (and root (cons 'local root))))

mu-project-try-local just needs to be added to project-find-functions to make sure my non-Git projects become known and remembered across sessions when I hit C-x p p. This is way more elegant than the previous patch.

Since I also never use Git submodules, I can push my extensions a little further.

(defun mu--backend (dir)
  "Check if DIR is under Git, otherwise return nil."
  (when (locate-dominating-file dir ".git")
    'Git))

(defun mu-project-try-vc (dir)
  "Determine if DIR is a project.
This is a thin variant of `project-try-vc':
- It takes only Git into consideration
- It does not check for submodules"
  (let* ((backend (mu--backend dir))
         (root
          (when (eq backend 'Git)
            (or (vc-file-getprop dir 'project-git-root)
                (let ((root (vc-call-backend backend 'root dir)))
                  (vc-file-setprop dir 'project-git-root root))))))
    (and root (cons 'vc root))))

mu-project-try-vc now replaces project-try-vc in project-find-functions.

Emacs and Emanuele Severino

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The recently available Emacs User Survey made me think, once again, about the status of the technological world around me. The survey was painstakingly discussed on the emacs-devel mailing list, and generated some interesting reactions among people outside the core developing team as well. More interesting for the perspective of this writing are the reactions to the discussions on emacs-devel, because they reveal how great the distance between me and some members of the Emacs community has been getting.

You see, I am a failed Free Software supporter. I stopped campaigning in its favour as soon as my wife’s school closed. There I had set up everything with Free and Open Source software, and watching the teachers effectively do their job with technological solutions they were not accustomed to made me happy. They did not really care about the reasons behind my choices, but they respected my contribution and were willing to overcome the first weeks of adaptation as long as I could guarantee a comfortable working environment. When all of this ended and I went back to software development, Free and Open Source software became only a private concern. While still set on Linux,¹ I left Debian for Ubuntu because I didn’t want to spend time tinkering with my operative system to get the best out of my Dell XPS. My distro-hopping days had come to an end. I just wanted a system that would let me code, write, and browse the Web. I chose the easy way.

However, I have never stopped paying attention to the world around me and behaving consciously. For instance, I hate wasting technology. The 3-and-a-half-year old Dell XPS where I am writing now replaced my 8-year old Dell Inspiron, and my 7-year old HP server is still rock-solid and here to stay. I have a 4-year old Fairphone, my first and only smartphone, that I intend to keep for as long as possible. Beside gadgets, I’ve been on a vegan diet for almost seven years and I consider it one of the best and most important choices I’ve ever made regarding the ethics of what I eat. Come to think of it, as bad as the Coronavirus crisis is turning out to be, it “fixed” the problem of getting to the office every day, cutting my car usage down to once a week for groceries² and thus decreasing my impact on the environment.

This is why mixing technocraticism with pragmatism bothers me. The words “pragmatic” and “pragmatism” have been kind of a constant in the IT world I live in since “The Pragmatic Programmer” passed on my shelves. As every word in every language, “pragmatic” and “pragmatism” are complex words and their actual meaning is not trivially describable. Immanuel Kant distinguishes between “practical” and “pragmatic”, but without asking him we can quickly see what the dictionary tells us. According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, “pragmatic” means “solving problems in a practical and sensible way rather than by having fixed ideas or theories”. Treccani, however, is closer to how “pragmatic” is known nowadays: “what is being characterised by the prevailing of practical interests over theoretical ones and ideal values”. I won’t digress on the multiple meanings of “ideal” to keep it simple and because “values” is actually the key word for me here.

“Pragmatic” and “pragmatism”, in common parlance, imply a separation between theoretical thoughts and practical action, but it is actually impossible to draw a line between the two. Every action is informed by a thought and every thought shines a light on the action. We can act automatically without thinking about it, sure, but that has nothing to do with voluntary actions. When we act, we act according to a line of reasoning, and it’s that line of reasoning that determines the value of the action. Take my choice of using Ubuntu on this Dell XPS. A deliberate decision born out of my desire to prefer a comfortable option instead of spending time to value more Free Software-compliant solutions. I acted with a plan just as I acted with a plan when I chose my vegan diet. Which choice is more pragmatic? Which one tells you more about my ethics?

For years now I’ve been seeing the IT world as self-involved and rarely eager to discuss larger issues. Problems such as the environmental crisis become material for self-congratulatory speeches at conferences around the world, while in fact the day after the conference we resume our lives as if nothing other than ourselves mattered. We do that because, as Emanuele Severino says, we are scared of what is beyond ourselves. We have replaced religious myths with the myth of technology to find the immediate answers to deep and life-changing questions that we do not want to investigate any further.

It’s not easy to understand the weight of words like “pragmatism” and “pragmatic” in a technocratic world. We live in an age where we believe that technology is our ultimate saviour. We are driven to accept technology as it is because of the benefits it brings to ourselves. We trust our technology because not doing so would result in the effort of questioning it, which in turns may unveil the details that the technocratic world goes a long distance to hide. More importantly, questioning technology could disclose what we really are and need to be, something that takes will and courage to face. In a time like this, Emanuele Severino’s claim that technique is the dominant power of our time sounds as forceful as ever.

Yes, I didn’t write GNU/Linux. ↩︎
Yes, I am a bit of a recluse. ↩︎

Reliable REPL switching and buffer loading with CIDER

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As a Clojure developer one of the most important packages in my everyday Emacs usage is CIDER. There are many things to love about it, chief among them the great interactive code evaluation and a sweet integration with popular Clojure tools. I still haven’t played with its debugging facilities, but yes, I know I should.

However, there is something that has been bothering me for quite a while: REPL switching and buffer loading. I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when these seemingly simple operations have become so unreliable, but I still remember when switching to the correct REPL buffer according to the file in front of me used to work as expected and loading a buffer didn’t require dealing with sessions first.

Let me give you more details before this writing starts to look like a random rant. My projects are usually web applications, which means I have to write both Clojure and ClojureScript. The Clojure side can be backed by leiningen or a deps.edn file, and we are set on shadow-cljs for ClojureScript. The first thing I normally do is jack-in with C-c C-x j j and then bring up the dedicated ClojureScript REPL with C-c C-x j s. Opening the browser and navigate to something along the lines of localhost:3000 finalises the process of setting up the ClojureScript REPL. That’s it, another good day of coding can begin. And soon enough frustration follows.

I tend to move from Clojure to ClojureScript files and vice versa quite a lot, and hitting C-c C-z frequently results in an unpredictable behaviour. Sometimes the REPL of the expected type pops up, sometimes the other one appears, sometimes I get a message about a missing REPL in the current session. Manually linking the current buffer to the correct REPL with C-c C-s b seems to fix the problem, but it’s only a matter of time. It takes a couple of buffer switching operations to bring the issue back. It is as if the link between the buffer and the REPL has vanished. Even worse, without that link I can forget about C-c C-k to load the buffer.

To overcome my frustration, I sat back and looked at how exactly I interact with CIDER:

I only deal with one project at a time
I need at most two running REPLs
I don’t really care about firing up dedicated REPLs for other projects. If I change project, I simply close every buffer of the current one and start afresh

This made me realise that the whole CIDER session management is too much for my basic needs.

(defun mu--cider-repl-regex (type)
  "Return the regexp to get the CIDER REPL based on TYPE."
  (if (eq type 'clj)
      "\`*cider-repl .*clj[*]"
    "\`*cider-repl .*cljs"))

(defun mu--cider-repl-buffer-name (type)
  "Get buffer from `buffer-list' according to TYPE."
  (let ((regex (mu--cider-repl-regex type)))
    (car (seq-filter (lambda (s) (string-match-p regex s))
                     (mapcar #'buffer-name (buffer-list))))))

(defun mu-cider-switch-to-repl (&optional type)
  "Open a CIDER REPL for TYPE.
If TYPE is not passed, open a Clojure REPL."
  (interactive "P")
  (let ((type (or type 'clj)))
    (if-let (buffer (mu--cider-repl-buffer-name type))
        (pop-to-buffer buffer)
      (message "No CIDER REPL available"))))

(defun mu-cider-switch-to-cljs-repl ()
  "Open a CIDER REPL for ClojureScript."
  (interactive)
  (mu-cider-switch-to-repl 'cljs))

Note that I changed the value of nrepl-repl-buffer-name-template to *cider-repl %j %r:%S*, so you may have to change mu--cider-repl-regex according to the value in your setup.

C-c C-z is bound to mu-cider-switch-to-repl in clojure-mode-map and clojurec-mode-map, and to mu-cider-switch-to-cljs-repl in clojurescript-mode-map. This of course means that in .cljc files I always get to a Clojure REPL, but that’s fine. The code in there has to be tested on both REPLs anyway, so it doesn’t matter which one comes up first.

Now, let’s fix C-c C-k as well.

(defun mu--cider-session-by-type (type)
  "Return the current CIDER session by TYPE."
  (let* ((regex (mu--cider-repl-regex type))
         (system (sesman--system))
         (sessions (sesman-current-sessions system '(buffer))))
    (car
     (seq-filter (lambda (s)
                   (string-match-p regex (buffer-name (cadr s))))
                 sessions))))

(defun mu--cider-load-buffer (session)
  "Load the current buffer according to SESSION."
  (if session
      (let ((system (sesman--system))
            (buf (current-buffer)))
        (sesman--clear-links)
        (sesman-link-session system session 'buffer buf)
        (cider-load-buffer buf))
    (message "No CIDER REPL available")))

(defun mu-cider-load-clj-buffer ()
  "Load the current Clojure buffer."
  (interactive)
  (mu--cider-load-buffer (mu--cider-session-by-type 'clj)))

(defun mu-cider-load-cljc-buffer ()
  "Load the current ClojureC buffer."
  (interactive)
  (let ((clj-session (mu--cider-session-by-type 'clj))
        (cljs-session (mu--cider-session-by-type 'cljs)))
    (if (and (null clj-session)
             (null cljs-session))
        (message "No CIDER REPL available")
      (when clj-session
        (mu--cider-load-buffer clj-session))
      (when cljs-session
        (mu--cider-load-buffer cljs-session)))))

(defun mu-cider-load-cljs-buffer ()
  "Load the current ClojureScript buffer."
  (interactive)
  (mu--cider-load-buffer (mu--cider-session-by-type 'cljs)))

Just like for C-c C-z, C-c C-k is now bound to these commands according to the mode map. For the sake of completeness, I have also disabled both C-c C-k and C-c C-z in cider-mode-map in order to avoid any kind of overshadowing by CIDER.

Note that this approach works well with my intended CIDER usage. It may not be what you are looking for if you are experiencing the same problems with REPL switching and buffer loading. Still, I have been using these commands for a while now and I am happy with them. CIDER has become my trusted Clojure IDE again.

We can fly with what we have

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There was a time when I just didn’t trust Emacs. This lack of confidence was the result of mixing good and evil: listening to other reliable Emacsers’ opinions while being too lazy to see for myself what Emacs could do. The outcome of this endeavour was a frenetic copying-and-pasting of code snippets in my init.el, blindly dragging in more and more external packages.

Don’t get me wrong, external packages made Emacs what it is today for me. I can’t even imagine using it without the likes of Magit or CIDER. However, ignoring what is already there and reaching for MELPA every time I have an itch to scratch has made me overlook built-in niceties like project.el.

Flymake did fell prey of this line of reasoning. Flycheck has always seemed like the way go, so much so that I have barely registered João Távora’s and other Emacs developers’ efforts to improve Flymake. Since my recent experiments with project.el have turned my eyes inwards again, I wanted to see if I can live without Flycheck.

There are three places where I need on-the-fly syntax checking:

Emacs Lisp package files with package-lint
Clojure files with clj-kondo
Markdown files with proselint

Kind people took care of Emacs Lisp and Clojure for me: package-lint-flymake comes with package-lint and flymake-kondor is a valid alternative to flycheck-clj-kondo. But I wasn’t able to find an existing integration with proselint, so I decided to provide one.

My first tries with flymake-easy didn’t go very well. I asked for help on Emacs StackExchange, before realizing I could use flymake-quickdef like flymake-kondor does and answer to myself. The next step was making the solution available to everyone in the form of a package, and so I published the little flymake-proselint.

Flymake may not have the extensive support for checkers that its bigger brother has, and it doesn’t seem to have the same huge community behind, but it’s still a great library to play with. There is a comparison between the two projects on the Flycheck website, so have a look there before making your choice. Note that the comparison doesn’t mention flymake-quickdef, which I find easier to use for extending Flymake.

As for me, my requirements for on-the-fly syntax checking are met by Flymake. At the end of the day it’s good to know that after all these years together Emacs can still surprise me.

It’s never too late

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In his article What’s new in Emacs 27.1? Mickey Petersen wrote that the built-in project.el¹ is a library “not widely used” and “about 20 years too late”, concluding that it is “a missed opportunity”.

From what I can tell project.el has been around since 2015. As everything else in our Emacs world, it’s an effort from volunteers offered back to the community. I see no reason to avoid it because it has been lacking the attention of other well-known alternatives such as Projectile. On the contrary, I believe that the more users try it and report what is missing back to the developers or perhaps contribute with lines of code, the more chances this tiny library has to grow and to get better.

Instead of replacing helm-ls-git with project.el, I decided to leave Helm aside for a moment and try my luck with Icomplete. I trust Protesilaos Stavrou’s opinion on it, anyway, so that’s another good point to give it a shot. If you want a detailed setup for Icomplete be sure to follow his lead. I limited myself to installing icomplete-vertical and orderless to make my life easier.

The entry point in project.el is the prefix C-x p. You can hit C-h after that to see the available key bindings. If you press C-x p p a list of known projects will appear. You will see that an option to select a new project is always available, so it’s trivial to add new elements here.

Once you land on your candidate hit RET to be presented with a customizable list of commands to act on the selected project. The keys to activate the commands are highlighted so, for instance, you can press f to start exploring your project files.

The defaults key bindings provided by project.el suit me well enough, but I did apply some changes to tune its behaviour to my needs.

First, I don’t want to rely on find for project--files-in-directory when the faster fd is around the corner.

(el-patch-defun project--files-in-directory (dir ignores &optional files)
  (el-patch-remove
    (require 'find-dired)
    (require 'xref)
    (defvar find-name-arg))
  (let* ((default-directory dir)
         ;; Make sure ~/ etc. in local directory name is
         ;; expanded and not left for the shell command
         ;; to interpret.
         (localdir (file-local-name (expand-file-name dir)))
         (command (el-patch-swap
                    (format "%s %s %s -type f %s -print0"
                            find-program
                            localdir
                            (xref--find-ignores-arguments ignores localdir)
                            (if files
                                (concat (shell-quote-argument "(")
                                        " " find-name-arg " "
                                        (mapconcat
                                         #'shell-quote-argument
                                         (split-string files)
                                         (concat " -o " find-name-arg " "))
                                        " "
                                        (shell-quote-argument ")"))
                              ""))
                    (format "fd -t f -0 . %s" localdir))))
    (project--remote-file-names
     (sort (split-string (shell-command-to-string command) "\0" t)
           #'string<))))

Then I had to tweak project-kill-buffer-conditions for buffers in cider-repl-mode to ensure project-kill-buffers catches them.

(add-to-list 'project-kill-buffer-conditions '(major-mode . cider-repl-mode) t)

The last customization was adding quick keys for magit-status, project-shell, and ripgrep to project-switch-commands. You don’t need my Elisp for that.

As little and work-in-progress as it is, project.el already covers everything I usually need to handle my projects. It’s good to know that right within our beloved text editor comes a tool like this. And no, Pat Benatar, this time is not too little too late.

Note that project.el is also available on ELPA. ↩︎

The vast relativity of trauma

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As anyone approaching their twenties ravaged by hormones and victim of outbursts of devastating infatuations, I did some crazy things. Acting foolish just to fit in, neglecting family reunions to feel like a rebel, weekly looking for the right clothes to show off my new personality with. The usual. I don’t regret being that kid, but one thing I do regret is doing something the full extent of which would hit me much later in my life.

Still Processing (Sophy Romvari, 2020)

One day, absolute certain of my feelings, I grabbed a photograph of me around the age of five and gave it to the girl that I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. The picture was a matter of playful anecdotes in my house, displaying me with a nice red hat, colourful shirt and fancy shorts playing the drums left unattended at a town festival. My parents and my grandparents had always remembered that day as clearly as I’ve never been able to. Nobody noticed the absence of the photograph for a long while. Some years later, my grandmother was arranging old pictures to display in her living room and asked me for the drums one. I stood silent first, then I invented random words about not being sure where my mum could have put it, and left the room to hide somewhere. I cried, as I am practically doing right now while I relive this episode in my head.

I am thrown back to that photograph and to what it meant to my grandmother by Sophy Romvari’s latest short film Still Processing. The film starts with a box of previously unseen family photos and videotapes which brings Romvari to confront herself with memories that were waiting to be awakened. A fairly simple premise, probably something that can happen to anybody, but Romvari does not limit herself to filming how photographs inform the recollection of our family’s past.

Still Processing is how the Canadian director reacts at being reminded of the trauma of losing two of her brothers. Understanding the pictures in front of her implies absorbing the loss through the process of film-making. In making sense of the images and filming how she does it, Romvari makes her, her family, and everyone else willing to be there with her short film, a part of a process that is bound to be perpetual. We can learn to live with a loss of a dear one and go on with our lives, but can we really let it go? Someone or something could trigger memories unexpectedly, and how we face those memories is up to us.

Romvari chooses to put her camera in front of the photos and the videotapes, presenting them along with her reaction and that of her brother. The past is alive again, the present never really free from it. It’s as if for her the images alone were not enough to comprehend the memories. Only by processing them she is finally able to connect with her family, see how it was and what is lost. The fact that the images are as new to us as they are to her places us closer to where she stands. We are not her family, but we are as near as possible to what she feels while working on the objective necessity of the past.

At some point in Still Processing Romvari says that trauma is relative, which is true if we consider the specificity of it. After all, I have never experienced something along the lines of what she has been through. However, Still Processing shows that trauma stops being relative whenever we are able to share how it affects us. Romvari opens the wounds for us to see with a grace that refuses commiseration and asks for empathy.

The end of an era?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I noticed it has been a while since I wrote something here. I can easily blame the lack of time and concentration, point the finger at my cinema obsession, or even rant against Plato and Hegel for the energy-draining efforts they require from me. Or I can simply be honest and say the truth out loud: my journey with Emacs has come to a halt. Before calling me names and put the GNU police on my back, hear me out.

After years on a constant tinkering diet, my configuration has reached a point where everything I need from it is covered. The key word in the previous statement is everything. What is this everything I use Emacs for? Well, contrary to the popular Emacs-centric workflows of many fellow Elisp lovers, everything is just prose (Markdown, LaTeX) and Clojure programming with some Elisp on the side. What happens outside of my beloved text editor is up to Firefox, Thunderbird, GNOME Terminal on some occasions, Slack for work and Gajim for personal use, and KeePassXC. 99% of the times this is what my computing is about these days.

Although Emacs can be used for some of the things the aforementioned external programs do, I am fine with this setup for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I like to keep my configuration as simple as possible. It used to sport over 200 packages, but refinement after refinement has taken me to half that number. It’s even a smaller total if I don’t count the package dependencies for which there is no use-package snippet in my init.el. I am still far from minimalism but maintenance is much easier now, because I know what I want from Emacs and I want it to do just that.

Secondly, but maybe more importantly, I don’t want any kind of distraction in my text editor. This may be just me, but most of the times the Web, reading emails, and messaging interfere with my concentration without adding real value. Emacs is my peace of mind. I turn to it just for writing, knowing well it is not ready to fetch emails or chatting with my wife or a co-worker because that’s how it is set up. There is no technological secret here. It’s all about the psychological pleasure of a maximized Emacs window with little more than my precious text in it.

This line of reasoning has led me to an Emacs configuration that does not require that much fiddling with any more. I have to admit that not seeing buffers from my .emacs.d always presented by helm-mini feels a bit strange. At the same time, though, I am sure they will pop up again as soon as the next irresistible package will reach ELPA or MELPA. Until then, Elisp can go on a well-deserved holiday and have a couple of drinks on me.

The experience of watching

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 29 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am never aware of the amount of hours I dedicate to a director I am in love with, although the actual number would probably scare me, leading me to think about the time spent in front of a screen. Like in any love relationship, the first days are frenetic. Everything seems to be happening right outside of one’s reach, the mind wrapped into dreams and thoughts that are now slowly withdrawing to leave enough room for new dreams and thoughts. Time makes no sense and it takes days, weeks even for the fog that the mind is happily struggling through to clear away.

Paul W. S. Anderson (by The Star)

Recently I’ve enjoyed a similar situation when I discovered what I had been missing in Paul W. S. Anderson for many years. I was already familiar with some of his work and I knew most of my favourite critics agree on the qualities of his film-making skills, but I couldn’t see these qualities. I couldn’t see that the man behind the films has always been a passionate and dedicated author since his beginnings, firm in his belief of what matters in the cinema he wants to do.¹ Once again, I was reading films instead of watching them.

Reading a film, in my case, means focusing on certain aspects. Due to the lack of a proper education in film studies, books help me explore cinema and film criticism: biographies give me background context, while monographs provide me with some necessary tools to dig deeper. These books usually come recommended by reliable sources (i.e., the aforementioned film critics), otherwise I just move by instinct and read about a director or a genre at any given moment. Such an approach has been proving useful since I started showing an interest in cinema beyond entertainment, but it’s a narrow vision. By limiting my analysis to the connection between the images on the screen and the words on paper I was missing a crucial facet: the experience of watching.

Anderson’s career makes for a great candidate to understand the experience of watching because within the confines of specific genres (science fiction, horror, and action), the English director has been consistently pushing for an aesthetic of the senses. Anderson is primarily a visual artist, all of his films living in their own world in terms of how they are perceived by the viewer’s eyes. This is true in general in Anderson’s filmography, but it is noticeable on a smaller scale too, such as in the Resident Evil series where each chapter has its decisively distinct look.

The architecture of indoor and outdoor spaces is key to the eloquence of Anderson’s style. Fascinated by mazes, he traps the characters in perpetual displacement. Extra-dimensional forests, roads to nowhere, shape-shifting rooms, claustrophobic tunnels, and impending natural disasters constraint people and force the action to develop itself in places where escape, if any, comes at a high cost. Never in Anderson the background functions perfunctorily as a container for the action in the foreground. Whether controlled by an artificial intelligence or a corporation, propelled by nature’s uncompromising power or just waiting to be set in motion by human intervention, stages are as much of a tangible presence as anything and anyone inhabiting them.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Paul W. S. Anderson, 2016)

The move to digital from Resident Evil: Afterlife onwards has not only increased the opportunities for Anderson to expand his architectural designs.² Digital has opened Anderson’s style to a contrast with analogue forms. This contrast is already present in Alien vs. Predator, where computer-generated imagery extends the possibilities of suits and miniatures. However, the complete upshot of digital power would come to life later, when everything can be extended with the new technology. Artificiality does not simply become the new organic. Anderson preserves the organic through its changes via the artificial, in a dialectical interplay reminiscent of Hegel’s sublation. In Resident Evil: Retribution, Alice is a human-created clone that discovers the instinct of motherhood by caring for a manufactured daughter. Worlds do not collide: it is necessary to comprehend them in their unity with their mutual relationship.

In placing life and death at the centre of the interaction between natural and artificial, Anderson has been revealing a humanitarian philosophy underpinning the entire span of his career. In this regard, Pompeii is his most poetic accomplishment. A profoundly personal project, Pompeii is a narration of lives divided by social conflicts and clashes of powers eventually obliterated by death, the greatest equalizer. Since the tragedy of the city of Pompeii is well-known, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is cathartic only insofar as it liberates everybody from their personal struggles. Anderson again stretches and maintains the contradiction until its unity is revealed, only this time the two opposites are absolute dissolution and relative preservation instead of analogue vis-a-vis digital. The ending of Pompeii is precisely this difference removed. Life as a romance is no more, death as the unassailable destroyer is no more. Romance and thus life carry on after death, as temporary as they are never-ending.

His dedication is evident on the commentary tracks and the making-ofs included in the Blu-rays. ↩︎
Even though some of the Blu-rays come with a 3D option I don’t have the hardware to enjoy it, hence I am not going to comment on it. ↩︎

Fifty shades of criticism

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Often when I read about films I bookmark the great writings I find. I like to re-read my favourite film criticism just to see how it is done by real critics. Sometimes here on this blog I single out pieces I consider beautiful, but what I am not in the habit of doing is pointing my finger at the bad ones.

Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015)

What this piece aims to do is subverting a writing which can barely call itself a review. Let’s call it a short-review to hide its blatant rant side. It’s a write-up on Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey which I am going to take apart paragraph by paragraph because I want to offer another opinion, mostly an opposite one, on each and everyone of them. By the way, I wrote the words I am about to destroy.¹

First things first: I know nothing about the book, I know nothing about the director, and I didn’t even notice this film when it came out. There, my ignorance on display.

The problem with a start like this is that one feels that they have to make sure the reader will not be offended or at least should enter prepared. Why retreat from the challenge with a poor display of humility? More importantly, why should the reader care about my knowledge of the book? Does my ignorance have any relevance to the words that follow? As we can see from the next paragraph I took a completely different road, so there doesn’t seem to be any relation at all with the rest of the comment.

My problem with this kind of picture is that intimacy is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, thing to get right in cinema. It’s not a matter of showing off genitals, it’s a matter of chemistry. You must find the right actors, you have to understand how the choice of words and the delivering of those words come into play, you have to balance artificiality with natural instincts. Eyes closed, you can feel it coming from the screen when it’s done right. A sex scene to me is only interesting when it conveys intimacy, otherwise is soft porn for the masses. Even a violation of that intimacy can be a worthy subject, but it takes an even apter hand to impress me with that.

As much as the meaning of the word intimacy is relevant to a film like Fifty Shades of Grey, this paragraph touches little of what Taylor-Johnson actually captures on the screen and it fails to read the images for what they offer. Intimacy is a beautiful thing, but it’s exactly what is missing in the lives of Anastasia and Christian, and Taylor-Johnson works on this with her characters from various angles.

Anastasia is pure, virginal frailty, searching for the intimacy she has yet to experience. At every step of her relationship with Christian she moves further into what intimacy means for her, deluded by the illusion of a romance that is never going to happen. On the other hand, Christian twists his version of intimacy aroused by the power of control. He imposes closeness while keeping it at a distance, just as Anastasia wants to skip the distance and grab the closeness once and for all.

Fifty Shades of Grey fails on intimacy from the very beginning. The stiffness of the dialogues makes it impossible to connect with the events, and the actors play the mutual attraction with such coldness that it’s equally impossible to accept the sex scenes as the power struggle they aim to be. I can fake my interest in a rich guy with sadomasochistic tendencies, but I cannot fake my interest in a bonding that never feels possible.

There are two issues here, the first being really obvious. There is no “stiffness” and the supposed “coldness” was blindness to the subtleties in the acting. Jamie Dornan is the arrogant prick who lives in a world so far and away from our everyday one that it takes a forceful act to tear it down. His smug conveys a self-assurance built on money and little else. The shifts in emotions which Dornan translates with cracks on his face near the end are more effective than the thousand words he could have used to explain his behaviour.

Dakota Johnson goes even further. She starts by displaying on her face and with her body a seemingly total lack of confidence, but what lies beneath comes out through her voice, her lips, and her eyes. And it’s there on the screen from the very first meeting with Christian, where Anastasia battles against the awkward feeling of being on another planet and the will to preserve the control of her action. She doesn’t know where she is and yet she does know where she is. The more she falls for Christian the more she lets down her guard, and Johnson lets her body run along with it, being it drunk or trapped in a dance.

The second problem I was referring to is the power struggle in the sex scenes. There is no power struggle here. We can see from the beginning where the power is, so it’s not about power at all until the final moments. Sex in Fifty Shades of Grey is about controlling passion and passionate control. It’s about pushing the limits knowingly until the veil is stripped and the limits are exposed for what they are. The statement about class is to be found in everything but sex.

Moreover, it doesn’t help framing everything in an expensive music video style, unless you want to highlight the artificiality of it. Artificiality comes with a cost, though, and it’s not enough to toy with smooth lights to build it. Even artificiality craves for believability, and from the helicopter drive to the spotless rooms lushly decorated, everything looks simply lifted from a trendy furniture catalogue.

I am glad I moved beyond this simplistic view of artificiality. Taylor-Johnson is so much more than “smooth lights”, like in the incredible meeting scene, where the playfulness of love intersects with anxiety and lust, fear and curiosity, all cast under a dark orange light which shows and conceals at the same time. This scene alone is enough to trash any accusation of “music video style”.

Moreover, believability is not about how I can relate to the furniture. Taylor-Johnson builds spaces which reflect the emptiness of Christian. He uses objects as he uses women, and he discards them oblivious to their meaning and the reason of their presence. Cleanliness is coldness and that is what Christian is, framed in rooms so impersonal and detached from the reality of his mind. He is a stranger in warmer places as in, for instance, his parents’ house, just like Anastasia never really fits in large spaces with no sense of humanity in them.

Ōshima Nagisa and Bernardo Bertolucci paved the way for portrayals of sex and intimacy beyond trite erotic fantasies. They grabbed the fantasies and pull them on the screen without masks of fake prudery. Nobody has followed, and Fifty Shades of Grey surely hasn’t learned their lesson.

Ōshima Nagisa and Bernardo Bertolucci did exploit prudery, but to reduce Taylor-Johnson’s work to a “trite erotic fantasy” is misreading it to say the least. It’s missing the meaning of fantasy entirely. Fifty Shades of Grey takes the fantasy of erotic pleasure and purges it of any satisfaction up to the point where it becomes unbearable. Not because of what Taylor-Johnson chooses to show and not to show when portraying sex, but because what matters is the grey and not the shades.

The comment was originally published on Letterboxd. ↩︎

Paper Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Since I moved to bullet-journaling, most of the time I have been writing on paper. Even though I’ve not restricted my Emacs time to Clojure programming, paper and fountain pen have changed the way I approach my favourite text editor for prose.

As I was writing articles for my blogs, I’ve discovered that I wanted my text-editing environment as close as possible to the beautiful, distraction-free feeling of a blank page. There are plenty of themes and modes out there to suit this particular need, but the combination of settings and packages I am about to describe has proven to be the most satisfying so far.

Theme

A light theme is the obvious choice to mirror the paper look. Since I have been using modus-operandi for a while now, there is no reason to look for something else. Everything in markdown-mode is supported, and with a variable-pitch font (FiraGO in my case) the buffer stops resembling code for once.

Editing modes

I write all my articles in Markdown, but to achieve the desired distraction-free effect I rely on Protesilaos Stavrou’s tips, slightly adjusted to my preferences: “Focused editing tools” for Emacs and Emacs: configuring mixed fonts in Org mode. I am using a variant of Olivetti like him, the only difference being the use of text-scale-increase to increase the text size and text-scale-decrease to restore it back to normal when leaving the mode.

On top of that I use freeze-it, which is like having someone slapping my hands away from the text before the current paragraph. Harsh, yes, but for the obsessive-compulsive writer an effective way to keep the mind focused on one thing at the time. I can always review the previous paragraphs later, and with the big picture in front of me editing often becomes deleting.

Mode-line

Once again, I find myself tweaking the mode-line. Setting modus-operandi-theme-3d-modeline has been enough thus far, but something less prominent can be closer to the no-frills of my Bujo. Luckily William Rankin, the author of Olivetti and freeze-it, shared his magic tricks and I followed his lead. I merely threw in coloured indicators for modified, read-only, and remote buffers. Sorry, I can’t resist a little bit of fanciness.

Final notes

There is more than this to my writing environment. For instance, I wrote about spell-checking before and I use Artur Malabarba’s suggestions on paragraph movements. Not to mention the default Emacs facilities for marking, killing, yanking, and moving around the buffer. Nonetheless, this should be enough to write prose in a quieter and more fruitful way.

Notes on my digital consumption

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been more than a year since I decided to try my best at Digital Minimalism and recently I’ve found myself discussing my efforts with non-believers. Reviewing the resolutions described in the afore-linked article, I noticed a considerable level of progress on two of them in particular:

I don’t use RSS feeds any more
I check Letterboxd sparingly

The first one may come as a surprise considering how highly I think of Elfeed. The problem is not the tool one uses to collect updates, of course. The problem is how pervasive they had become. I felt irresistibly attracted to the news provided by my collection of RSS entries, pulled into my Elfeed buffer over and over again. But was it worth it? How many times I was just marking an entry as read before reading it fully? This can be very subjective, sure, and the beauty of an update speaks more about my taste in RSS feeds than the actual content. Not to mention the simple fact that one could just learn to set their priorities and schedule feed-checking at precise times.

Nonetheless, this is why I dropped Elfeed entirely and subscribed to a handful of weekly and biweekly newsletters. I still want to be informed and I still like to read about Emacs, philosophy, literature, cinema, and music, but the information should not overwhelm me and be a distraction.

As for Letterboxd, it has sadly become another digital addiction which in return has been giving me little. Partly because one of my favourite film critics has vanished from the website and partly because most of the recent films I watched barely moved me, I’ve been neglecting my cinephilia in favour of books. As a result, constantly browsing Letterboxd has developed into seldom visiting the website to register my viewings. Unfortunately this also means my other blog misses me, but the love for cinema is still strong, so it’s only a matter of time.

For someone working in IT it’s kind of ironic to write about detachment from technology, I know. Rest assured, I am not working my way to the life of a farmer. At the same time, though, I’d be lying if I say that having more time for other things isn’t what I was really looking for after all.

My reliable English dictionary

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Despite my best efforts, my English needs constant work.¹ I mostly write in this language when I am online, but good prose is a matter of trying, failing, trying again, failing again, and never give up. A bloody battle of words.

An ever-present companion during my writing sessions is the dictionary. Since I don’t want distractions of any kind, I want the dictionary to be offline and easy to use. The more time I spend away from my text, the easier it is for my mind to drift off.

WordNet meets my expectations almost exactly. It’s quickly installable on my Ubuntu machine, a breeze to use, and it comes with a command-line tool (wn) and a graphical one (wnb) which are simple and fast.

However, I don’t want to leave Emacs for a task like this. I want to be able to search for the word at point or to type something and see if what I have in mind makes any sense at all. Why not taking advantage of the power of Helm? That’s why I wrote helm-wordnut.

As I explain in the README, using WordNet within Emacs was already possible through helm-wordnet and wordnut, but in both cases it doesn’t look like there is much maintenance going on. I liked the idea of the former and the nice output of the latter, and so I devised a package with what in my opinion is the simplest and ideal Helm interface for WordNet. I can type what I want or just hit M-n to pick up the word a point. Pressing RET on the desired candidate opens a buffer with a detailed definition of the word. How much detail one needs is customizable through helm-wordnut-cmd-options, but the default covers more than enough already for my usual writings.

Given the existence of helm-wordnet and wordnut, I have not published helm-wordnut on any package archive at the moment. If somebody else finds it a better alternative to the existing solutions, do reach out and let me know. I’ll see what I can do about convincing the MELPA masterminds to accept yet another WordNet front-end.

The same can be said for my Italian, but let’s not dig too deep into my shortcomings please. ↩︎

Search only in visible buffers

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Among the things that I dropped when I moved to Helm, Swiper was one of the first ones to go. Actually, the built-in Isearch replaced Swiper first. Then I found out about CTRLF, and now I have the best of both worlds: I can use CTRLF for no-fuss searches and I can rely on helm-occur for a Swiper-like feeling.

However, I often find myself with two buffers in the same window, and sometimes I want to restrict my searches to just those two buffers. CTRLF and helm-occur are not suitable for this task, because they both work on a single buffer. And mu-helm-rg is way too much for this, because it is best used in specific directories or project-wise.

Luckily enough, Thierry Volpiatto has recently introduced helm-occur-visible-buffers in Helm. Like the name says, this command runs helm-occur on all visible buffers. The results are grouped by buffer, making them really easy and clear to navigate. When run in one buffer, helm-occur-visible-buffers behaves just like helm-occur, so if you have a key binding for the latter you can safely point it to the former and retain the functionality you were accustomed to.

I don’t know if my use-case is a niche one, but it’s good to know Helm got me covered once again.

A machine in the ghost

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 22 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When cinema decided to make full use of the digital power at its disposal, I was among the sceptics eager to jump at the screen whenever they noticed an apparent lack of faith in more analogical means. Ironically enough, more than twenty years later some of my favourite films are one-hundred percent digital.

Lake Mungo (Joel Anderson, 2008)

My most used critic back then was the supposed falseness in front of me. In linking digital technology with artificiality, I was relegating a promising tool to the role of trick, seeing its potential already fulfilled by special effects. This is why Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo is such a fascinating film. By exploiting digital technology as a trick, Anderson exposes and enhances the limits of his images, forcing the viewer to accept visual shifts while coping with the content within.

Lake Mungo defeats the horror genre just like it defeats what one can expect from a ghost story. Anderson doesn’t use the mockumentary as a momentum-builder: he avoids building a momentum entirely. Lake Mungo unfolds as what at first looks like a television programme, one of those shows where every effort is made to ensure that the audience experiences the tragedy of others in all its reality.¹ The talking heads of Alice Palmer’s family recollect past moments and feelings whereas friends corroborate their integrity. Except that Anderson makes use of empty spaces early in the film, inviting the viewer to face loneliness before they realize that loneliness is ultimately the most haunting of presences.

The digital camera heightens the clarity of these spaces, their sheer beauty a powerful contrast to the solitude that inhabits them. Moreover, the preciseness of their appearance is everything that is missing from the increasingly unsettling footage revealing who was Alice Palmer and what she has really seen. These videos break the continuum of the interviews with distorted images, dismantling the fiction in the perceived reality fictionalized in the interviews. On the one hand, the footage shows the never-ending influence of technology, its pervasive reach into our lives, and the easiness with which it breaks privacy, like eyes unaffected by moral boundaries. On the other hand, technology alone cannot suppress grief, because whatever the range of its capabilities, technology still needs human intervention to operate, and that control is bound to be emotionally driven. Digital technology stops as soon as an analogue emotion outruns it.

Furthermore, Anderson pushes forward and displaces the viewer. A mockumentary is usually a function of something else. It’s in its nature to play with a set of rules and show the possibilities beyond them. Lake Mungo is in fact very much attracted to the rules of the documentary, but it bends them to reduce the distance between the viewer and the facts. Instead of unmasking the fake truth, it covers the real lie until the very end, while acknowledging the charms of fiction and how it can influence our thoughts. Lake Mungo knows that it is telling a story, and yet it takes no obtuse pride in this knowledge, because Anderson shares it with the viewer. For example, when the ending credits start to roll we are shown further sightings of Alice’s ghost. Anderson is not making fun of us for not having noticed her ghost before. He is telling us she has always been a part of the story that we have just witnessed. A story after all.

Lake Mungo is the rare film that positions itself among genres, crafting a new one just for itself. Unnerving and terribly sad, Anderson’s work reasons about trauma and the subsequent sorrow without looking for possible explanations. Eventually, everybody is alone in their intimacy, and in that precious place they rely only on themselves. A place so safe that even the smartest technology hasn’t been able to reach. Yet.

In Italy we have Chi l’ha visto?, for instance. ↩︎

Lockdown Beam: volatile-highlights

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In the middle of a frantic editing session one can use some help. You are there sweating, firing key bindings with a smugness you can barely keep at bay, with buffers and windows appearing and disappearing. Point is visibly tired of your powerful skills because, let’s face it, jumping around is not always pleasurable.

In situations such as this, you may find yourself killing a paragraph or a block of code in order to yank it somewhere else. If that “somewhere else” is another buffer (e.g., a Clojure file others worked on), I for one don’t want to make a mess. This is precisely where Keitaro Miyazaki’s volatile-highlights finds its place.

Keitaro’s package adds a temporary highlight to the yanked text which makes the addition stand out briefly, and so I get a sense of what I am doing in a buffer I’m not entirely familiar with yet. There are other commands that benefit from it, as the volatile-highlights README explains. For instance, I find the highlights around undo operations and occur-mode occurrences very helpful.

Although I didn’t play with it, volatile-highlights can be extended to support other packages and commands. Check out vhl/define-extension and vhl/install-extension if you want to go down that road.

This is the last entry in my “Lockdown Beam” series. I was hoping to outlast the lockdown, but I lost the battle eventually. Anyway, do give these packages a chance. It’s easy to overlook a little gem in the ever-growing Emacs ecosystem.

Lockdown Beam: native-complete

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you have followed this blog long enough, you know it’s been a while since I embraced shell-mode. I even have a nice setup to handle its windows and to apply better colours to it.¹

However, before Troy Hinckley’s native-complete fixed it for me, tab-completion in shell-mode wasn’t quite the same experience as the one on a separate terminal emulator. To be honest, I didn’t investigate far enough to understand whether this was due to my Bash configuration or to Emacs itself. The only thing I know is that Troy’s package got me where I wanted to be.

On MELPA you will find two packages: native-complete and company-native-complete. I use both, but if you are not a Company user you can live with the former alone.

Anyway, I set up native-complete with a hook to shell-mode that runs native-complete-setup-bash, then another hook adds company-native-complete to company-backends. Tom explained everything you need to start and other useful details in the package README, so head over there for more details. The only thing I can add is that I have TAB bound to company-complete in shell-mode-map.

Now that there is a libvterm integration for Emacs, staying with shell-mode may sound anachronistic, because proper terminal emulation with your favourite shell is just a package away. But if you, like me, are happy with Bash in shell-mode, I can’t recommend native-complete and company-native-complete enough. By the way, Troy’s work supports csh and other fancy things too, so you’re not strictly limited to Bash.

Next time we will see highlights disappear suddenly. Is the Evil Genius operating my Emacs? Who knows.

Stay safe.

Note that the Modus Themes have built-in support for that, so I don’t customise xterm-color-names and xterm-color-names-bright any more. ↩︎

Lockdown Beam: mark-thing-at

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Until I noticed that I was hardly using everything it has to offer, Leo Liu’s easy-kill was one of the packages I used the most. Specifically, I wasn’t really taking advantage of its capability of repeating mark commands, nor its keys to modify the current selection. Although it doesn’t seem actively maintained this day, check it out if you want to extend your mark/kill actions.

As for me, Paul Landes’s mark-thing-at has become my best pal when it comes to marking. Granted, it’s way less powerful than easy-kill, but combine it with Emacs regular key bindings for killing and there is nothing more that I need.

You will find mark-thing-at on MELPA, and if you follow my lead, you can enable mark-thing-at-mode and be happy with it. Note that if you do not configure mark-thing-at-keymap-prefix you end up with C-x m as a prefix for all the mark-* commands now available at your fingertips. This means that you will lose the key binding for compose-mail, but I’m fine with it.

Whatever the prefix you end up with just append C-h to it and you will see the many commands at your disposal. You probably won’t need them all, but it’s good to have a nice way to leverage these marking facilities.

Next time we will explore a better completion system for shell-mode.

Stay safe.

Lockdown Beam: hide-mode-line

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Fun fact: the mode-line is the one Emacs thing I’ve probably spent most of my tinkering time on. Why? Hard to tell. I consider it a place for useful information, but the only interaction I have with it is looking at it. It’s not like some of those fancy packages offering you all manners of interactive commands and assorted key bindings.¹ It’s a, well, it’s a line.

Among the several iterations, this one has lasted the longest. But then again, not too long ago I felt the irresistible call of minimalism, and so I ended up with this other one. And yet, despite the immoderate amount of care I spent on it, there are times where I just want it out of my way.

For instance, I have no use for the mode-line in shell-mode or when I am reading the latest news via Elfeed. Luckily, Henrik Lissner’s hide-mode-line is out there for this kind of messy work.

Provided the mode you don’t want to see the mode-line in has a hook, you can add #'hide-mode-line-mode to it with add-hook. For Elfeed, however, a different solution is needed:

(defun mu-elfeed-open ()
  "Open elfeed and hide the mode-line."
  (interactive)
  (mu-save-window-config-then-call #'elfeed)
  (hide-mode-line-mode 1))

Have a look at Passing the prefix argument around if you want to know what mu-save-window-config-then-call does.

Obviously you can go berserk and hide the mode-line everywhere with Henrik’s package. But would you really do that? Don’t be cruel and think about it.

Next time we are going to mark things, so keep your markers around.

Stay safe.

M-x ^mode-line actually gives me ten entries, so what do I know? ↩︎

Lockdown Beam: git-identity

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The situation doesn’t seem to get any better, does it? We are still confined in our homes, still wary about our movements and contacts. Since not even running outside is allowed, I am getting lazy, to the point that I’ve never thought I’d miss the gym so much. It’s time to resort to in-house crunches and push-ups, I suppose.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget about Emacs. Last time I hinted at a Git-related package, but at this point wouldn’t writing about Magit again be out of fashion?¹

When it comes to Git repository, the only thing I am not using Magit for is checking and setting my identity. I’m not sure this is a common problem, but I have to handle two Git identities on the same machine, one for personal repositories and one for work projects.

Without Akira Komamura’s git-identity this situation was leading me to confusion, because more often than not I found myself committing and pushing work stuff with my personal identity. One could manually edit .git/config every time or use Git own commands to deal with this, but to me these are both cumbersome alternatives compared to the simplicity of Konamura’s package.

The only configuration needed for me after the installation was binding I to git-identity-info in magit-status-mode-map. Now once I cloned a new repository I can easily check whether the identity is correct or not.

Furthermore, git-identity can help even if for some random reason I didn’t rely on git-identity-info. With git-identity-magit-mode enabled, git-identity makes sure that on magit-commit a global or a local identity is actually set.

Next time we are going to play hide and seek with the mode-line.

Stay safe.

I am kidding, Magit is always stylish. ↩︎

Comrades, it’s a love story

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I feel old and boring whenever I talk or write about Hong Kong cinema, which is weird because I wasn’t there at the beginning. I was too young back when Italian film nerds were exchanging obscure VHS tapes feeling like underground warriors. My eyes were still set on Hollywood and little else from Europe, so it wasn’t until a decent internet connection arrived that the gates finally opened.

Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan, 1996)

When the time came, I experienced my own kind of magic. Armed with a cheap region-free DVD player I ransacked yesasia.com and other, now defunct online stores, driven by insatiable euphoria. I just couldn’t stop. The more I read, the more I wanted to watch. The more I watched, the more I collected piles of DVDs. A flow of images, titles, directors became one indistinct mass of data, impossible to keep up with. Honest pleasure was much more important than the analytical approach.

Those wild years of endless viewings seem a bit distant now that Hong Kong cinema has definitely distanced itself from what it was. On the one hand, today we have lavish productions, bombastic blockbusters good for a popcorn and Coke combo. On the other hand, some directors and actors from the golden age are pushing the nostalgia effect to its extreme consequences, struggling to keep the old spirit alive, revisiting tropes that made them heroes amongst cinephiles all over the world. In either case, something precious got lost along the way, as if Hong Kong hasn’t really been able to cope with the handover yet.

There is a moment in Peter Chan’s Comrades: Almost a Love Story which captures this sense of loss and bewilderment so well. We are near the end, Lai Siu Kwan (Leon Lai) and Lee Kiu (Maggie Cheung) are in New York, a city whose crowded and chaotic streets resemble those they left back in Hong Kong. Lee Kiu is working as a tourist guide now, taking a group of Chinese mainlanders around the Big Apple. Tired of taking pictures at the Statue of Liberty, a couple of women turn to Lee Kiu, trying to understand when she is taking them to shopping. One of the them asks about her home town, Guangzhou, and more importantly, points out the mere fact that many Hongkongers are moving to China these days where they are finding better jobs. Confronting these remarks with what has meant for Lee Kiu and Lai Siu Kwan to leave mainland China and try to get by in Hong Kong is devastating. Why leave China for another place if that is really where the opportunities are up for grab? How can they stand the pace of a country growing at a speed which is inevitably leaving many behind?

Chan seems to believe that Hong Kong has never been the land of opportunities for mainlanders with little hope to survive where they were born, and extends his disillusion to New York by blending the differences between the two cities. Eventually, all that Lee Kiu and Lai Siu Kwan are working for is to remain in the same place after all. As immigrants in the United States as they were in Hong Kong, they are looked down and confined to the isolation of the unknowns, rejected by societies where solipsism has become the only means of survival. Alone with their dreams of escape, Lee Kiu and Lai Siu Kwan have only their work to hang on to.

Right before the dramatic handover, Chan used romance to spell out the problems of a city that has failed to deal with contemporaneity. The capitalism which separated Hong Kong from China’s own brand of the same economic system, and which ironically made most of its vibrant cinema possible, wrapped the city obfuscating the reality outside, making it oblivious and totally unprepared to what was about to come next. Comrades: Almost a Love Story suggests that as long as Lee Kiu and Lai Siu Kwan have each other, there is a way out. But what happens when love is missing? Like Lee Kiu facing the inquiring tourist, Chan doesn’t offer an answer. And as for Hong Kong cinema, the question still remains open.

Lockdown Beam: eldoc-eval

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As mentioned briefly at the end of the previous entry, today we are going to play with Emacs' Eldoc. Sometimes I forget about it, but eldoc-mode is one of those subtle things which improve my daily Emacs routine. Besides giving me useful information in Elisp, eldoc-mode is always helpful when I am programming in Clojure thanks to its integration with CIDER.

However, there is another place where Eldoc comes in handy. You surely know that when you press M-: you can type an expression in the minibuffer and then evaluate it by pressing RET. But wouldn’t it be great to have Eldoc for these quick runs to?

The answer is not “Well, yes!”, but “Hey, there is a mode for it!”, which is what an Emacser regularly replies when asked about any matter whatsoever. This time the mode comes with the package of the day: Thierry Volpiatto’s eldoc-eval.

Once installed, activating eldoc-eval is easy. Turn on eldoc-in-minibuffer-mode and everything is set.

Nice and simple. You may not like the Eldoc information appearing in the mode-line, but Thierry got you covered with eldoc-in-minibuffer-show-fn. If you use tooltips, try setting this to #'tooltip-show. There are other features in eldoc-eval worth of notice, so be sure to check out its README if you want more juice.

As for me, I am happy with just enabling eldoc-in-minibuffer-mode. I patched eldoc-show-in-mode-line to fit the help message properly in my custom mode-line, but that’s it. If you are using your own mode-line too, I am leaving that as a little exercise.¹

Next time we will meet a Git-related package which doesn’t include the letters “m” and “a” in its name.

Stay safe.

I used el-patch for this. ↩︎

Lockdown Beam: bm.el

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I guess there is no need to explain the choice of the word “lockdown” in the title. I don’t know about you, but here in Italy things are getting worse and worse. Every time I look outside the window I see desolation, and for a George Romero fan this is getting scarier and scarier. I am lucky, though. I can work from home (thank you, 7bridges) and study from home (thank you, Ca’ Foscari). But I can also take the time to spread words of love about some Emacs packages I rarely talk about.

Lockdown Beam aims to be a series of small articles on packages that deserve more attention, but I can’t tell now how long this series is going to run. I tend to use all the packages configured in my init.el, and most of them are fairly popular, so it’s not like digging obscure entries from the dust of my setup. However, out of more than 100 packages, I am pretty sure I can find a decent amount of poor neglected things in there.

Let’s start with Jo Odland’s bm.el.

There are many great ways to bookmark things in Emacs,¹ but sometimes a visual clue just adds a good feeling of immediacy one (e.g., myself) can find pleasant. The README says this is a feature from Visual Studio that the author was missing in Emacs, but you will have to check for yourself whether this is something Visual Studio does. You know there is no such thing as a different text editor for me.

Following the documentation, setting up bm.el is easy. If you use use-package, there is a nice example ready for copy-and-paste at Configuring bm.el with use-package. I started from there, but I replaced the hook on vc-before-checkin-hook with a hook on magit-pre-refresh-hook.

I find bm.el really useful when studying source code from others, or when I want to quickly set jumping points in a log file cluttered with stacktraces. It’s quicker then moving around with Isearch or helm-occur, and unlike avy it’s not limited to what is currently visible on the screen.

That’s all for today. Next time a little friend will help me exploit Eldoc.

Stay safe.

Check out what Protesilaos Stavrou has to say about registers. ↩︎

Light is right, alright?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

For a long, long while I was a happy Solarized Light user. Then, somehow, I switched to Steve Purcell’s version of Tomorrow Night, and no other theme has been able to take me away from that colour scheme. There were times where I found myself looking for a new light theme, but the lack of a pleasant one¹ left me in the comfortable palettes of Tomorrow Night. I even put on MELPA what at first looked like the light I needed, but the dark side still kept me within its reach.

Why didn’t I go back to Solarized Light if the experience had been so joyful? I guess getting older distanced me somehow from the pleasures of a yellowish background. Don’t get fooled by my grumpiness, though. It’s still one of the best Emacs themes out there, so be sure to check it out if you are after a light theme.

As for me, I’ve recently seen the light again. Protesilaos Stavrou open sourced a couple of beautiful themes, modus-vivendi and modus-operandi, both available at modus-themes, on ELPA, and on MELPA. I am sure the apt readers remember that modus-vivendi first appeared on these pages right at the end of Ripgrepping with Helm: the mode-line, but since then modus-operandi has become the default.

What I found intriguing in Protesilaos’ work is the reasoning behind the themes. I have never cared about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is a shame considering how poor my eyesight has been since I was a kid. The Modus Themes are built with those guidelines in mind and it shows immediately. The text is always readable, it doesn’t matter what face is applied over it. It’s not only a matter of being able to read, but to always distinguish specific contexts. For instance, comments are clearly separated from the rest of the code without sacrificing legibility. I know this sounds reasonable and it may already be the case for the theme you are currently using, but for my eyes it has never been so easy. And yes, I did tend to prefer beauty over accessibility.

Another remarkable thing about the Modus Themes is that both variants cover a wide range of Emacs packages, something not so axiomatic in the Emacs theme world. Admittedly, I bothered Protesilaos with some issues about Helm and few other packages, but he quickly tamed my wild sensibility. “If a compromise is ever necessary between aesthetics and accessibility, it shall always be made in the interest of latter”, the README points out. So far no complaints from the aesthetics department, though.

Protesilaos explained his ideas in My accessible Emacs themes, a valuable presentation which you should watch before My Modus Themes are in ELPA. Considering that I came from years with a dark background, the switch to a light one has been less traumatic than it may seem. It could be due to the fact that Solarized Light was there way before the dark age, why not? Nevertheless, the new colour scheme is as simple and beautiful as it is effective. See you around, Sith Lord.

An obvious matter of personal taste. ↩︎

A better approach at searching with Helm

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When I wrote about how I use ripgrep with Helm in Ripgrepping with Helm, I overlooked something. Actually, let’s be honest. I didn’t study my usual search habits like I should’ve had to.

Looking closely at my per-project searches, there are two patterns I tend to follow:

searching for the thing at point in the current project;
searching for something in the current project.

The first pattern is somehow addressed by the previous incarnation of mu-helm-rg, but it can be improved by leveraging helm’s :input option.

For the second pattern helm-sources-using-default-as-input needs to be temporarily disabled, otherwise helm would start with the thing at point as :default and would run an initial search that most of the times is not what I need. I can still pick up the thing at point with M-n if needed, but in this case I prefer typing what I want to find.

To achieve this, I decided to reimplement helm-grep-ag-1 according to my needs:

(defun mu--helm-rg (directory &optional with-tap type)
  "Build the Helm command for `mu-helm-rg'.

For DIRECTORY, WITH-TAP, and TYPE see `mu-helm-rg'. This command
disables `helm-sources-using-default-as-input' temporarily to
avoid the automatic search which starts when :default is set to
`thing-at-point' (the default behaviour). The search starts
automatically only with WITH-TAP."
  (let ((helm-sources-using-default-as-input nil)
        (command (helm-grep--ag-command))
        (input (when with-tap
                 (thing-at-point 'symbol 'no-properties))))
    (setq helm-source-grep-ag
          (helm-make-source (upcase command) 'helm-grep-ag-class
            :header-name (lambda (name)
                           (format "%s in %s"
                                   name (abbreviate-file-name directory)))
            :candidates-process (lambda ()
                                  (helm-grep-ag-init directory type))))
    (helm-set-local-variable 'helm-input-idle-delay helm-grep-input-idle-delay)
    (helm :sources 'helm-source-grep-ag
          :keymap helm-grep-map
          :history 'helm-grep-ag-history
          :input input
          :truncate-lines helm-grep-truncate-lines
          :buffer (format "*helm %s*" command))))

Now mu-helm-rg must be updated, but the changes are trivial. I only need to consider a new parameter, with-tap, and call mu--helm-rg properly.

(defun mu-helm-rg (directory &optional with-tap with-types)
  "Search in DIRECTORY with RG.

With WITH-TAP, search for thing at point. With WITH-TYPES, ask
for file types to search in."
  (interactive "P")
  (require 'helm-adaptive)
  (mu--helm-rg (expand-file-name directory)
               with-tap
               (helm-aif (and with-types
                              (helm-grep-ag-get-types))
                   (helm-comp-read
                    "RG type: " it
                    :must-match t
                    :marked-candidates t
                    :fc-transformer 'helm-adaptive-sort
                    :buffer "*helm rg types*"))))

Finally, let’s see the new mu-helm-rg in action:

(defun mu-helm-project-search (&optional with-types)
  (interactive "P")
  (mu-helm-rg (mu--project-root) nil with-types))

(defun mu-helm-project-search-at-point (&optional with-types)
  (interactive "P")
  (mu-helm-rg (mu--project-root) t with-types))

(defun mu-helm-file-search (&optional with-types)
  (interactive "P")
  (mu-helm-rg default-directory nil with-types))

Spell-checking and Helm

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Helm provides so many great commands I am still discovering new gems in it, like the useful helm-regexp, which lets you build your regular expression pattern, see the results of your search live in the Helm buffer, and optionally pass the query to query-replace-regexp. So neat.

This is why I haven’t written a Helm command of my own until recently. To be fair, as I am going to show there is not even the need for this command to exist, but coding it has been a fun exercise anyway.

When it comes to spell-checking my buffers, I have been relying on mu-cycle-ispell-languages to change dictionaries and flyspell-correct-helm to pick the correct word I happened to misspell. Since I am already using Helm with Flyspell, then, why not using it to select the dictionary too?

First, the actual dictionaries.

(defvar mu-dictionaries '(("en_GB" . "English")
                          ("it_IT" . "Italian")))

Note that I use hunspell for spell-checking as I explained in Spell-checking with Hunspell and flyspell-correct.

Next, my new command.

(defun mu-select-dictionary ()
  "Select the dictionary for the spell-checker."
  (interactive)
  (helm :sources
        (helm-build-sync-source "Dictionaries"
          :candidates (map-values mu-dictionaries)
          :action (lambda (candidate)
                    (let ((dict (car (rassoc candidate mu-dictionaries))))
                      (ispell-set-spellchecker-params)
                      (setq ispell-dictionary dict
                            ispell-local-dictionary dict
                            ispell-local-dictionary-overridden t)
                      (ispell-internal-change-dictionary)
                      (setq ispell-buffer-session-localwords nil)
                      (run-hooks 'ispell-change-dictionary-hook))))
        :preselect (map-elt mu-dictionaries ispell-dictionary)
        :buffer "*helm select dictionary*")
  (flyspell-buffer))

I merely followed the guidelines on the Helm wiki, but let’s break it down.

(helm :source
      (helm-build-sync-source "Dictionaries"

The source of my Helm command comes from the simple alist defined before (mu-dictionaries), so helm-build-sync-source is enough.

:candidates (map-values mu-dictionaries)

Here I am using the excellent map.el to get the clearer “English” and “Italian” labels as :candidates for the Helm buffer.

:action (lambda (candidate)
          (let ((dict (car (rassoc candidate mu-dictionaries))))
            (ispell-set-spellchecker-params)
            (setq ispell-dictionary dict
                  ispell-local-dictionary dict
                  ispell-local-dictionary-overridden t)
            (ispell-internal-change-dictionary)
            (setq ispell-buffer-session-localwords nil)
            (run-hooks 'ispell-change-dictionary-hook)))

The anonymous function for :action is a small version of ispell-change-dictionary, containing only what I need for this operation to complete successfully. Note the use of rassoc: this is how I get the key corresponding to the value of candidate in mu-dictionaries. I didn’t find a similar facility in map.el, but rassoc and car get the job done.

:preselect (map-elt mu-dictionaries ispell-dictionary)

Here I am using the current dictionary as the preselected element in the Helm buffer. I could use :input to have it offered on the prompt, but I prefer to have the prompt empty in this case.

If you look closely at ispell-change-dictionary source code, you can understand the triviality of mu-select-dictionary: ispell-change-dictionary uses completing-read, so in my case it already pops up a Helm buffer. But I am still happy with this solution, and not just because I prefer “Dictionaries” instead of “ispell-change-dictionary” as the source name displayed in my Helm buffer. (Yes, of course it’s mostly because of it.)

As a bonus, thanks to flyspell-buffer the current buffer is spell-checked right after the new dictionary is selected.

Ripgrepping with Helm: the mode-line

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I tailored my own helm-do-grep-ag to show you how I use ripgrep within Helm. However, I missed something: the mode-line.

The default mode-line Helm offers for helm-do-grep-ag doesn’t fit well with my custom one, which is a minimal¹ version of the excellent doom-modeline. It’s a two-fold issue: my mode-line is bigger than the default one and I don’t need all the information usually printed by helm-do-grep-ag.

By inspecting Helm source code one can easily find out what helm-do-grep-ag does on mode-line-format. Basically, among other things helm-grep-ag-init sets up the value for mode-line-format according to the number of results. Very well, then, it’s time to bring el-patch back in the game.

First, though, aesthetics.

(set-face-bold 'helm-grep-finish t)

I am just making helm-grep-finish bold, nothing serious.

(el-patch-defun helm-grep-ag-init (directory &optional type)
  "Start AG process in DIRECTORY maybe searching only files of type TYPE."
  (let ((default-directory (or (el-patch-swap
                                 helm-ff-default-directory
                                 (mu--project-root))
                               (helm-default-directory)
                               default-directory))
        (cmd-line (helm-grep-ag-prepare-cmd-line
                   helm-pattern (or (file-remote-p directory 'localname)
                                    directory)
                   type))
        (el-patch-remove
          (start-time (float-time)))
        (proc-name (helm-grep--ag-command)))
    (set (make-local-variable 'helm-grep-last-cmd-line) cmd-line)
    (el-patch-remove
      (helm-log "Starting %s process in directory `%s'"
                proc-name directory)
      (helm-log "Command line used was:\n\n%s"
                (concat ">>> " cmd-line "\n\n")))
    (prog1
        (start-file-process-shell-command proc-name helm-buffer cmd-line)
      (set-process-sentinel
       (get-buffer-process helm-buffer)
       (lambda (process event)
         (let* ((err (process-exit-status process))
                (noresult (= err 1))
                (el-patch-add
                  (proc (concat " HELM " proc-name))))
           (el-patch-swap
             (cond (noresult
                    (with-helm-buffer
                      (insert (concat "* Exit with code 1, no result found,"
                                      " command line was:\n\n "
                                      (propertize helm-grep-last-cmd-line
                                                  'face 'helm-grep-cmd-line)))
                      (setq mode-line-format
                            `(" " mode-line-buffer-identification " "
                              (:eval (format "L%s" (helm-candidate-number-at-point))) " "
                              (:eval (propertize
                                      (format
                                       "[%s process finished - (no results)] "
                                       ,(upcase proc-name))
                                      'face 'helm-grep-finish))))))
                   ((string= event "finished\n")
                    (helm-log "%s process finished with %s results in %fs"
                              proc-name
                              (helm-get-candidate-number)
                              (- (float-time) start-time))
                    (helm-maybe-show-help-echo)
                    (with-helm-window
                      (setq mode-line-format
                            `(" " mode-line-buffer-identification " "
                              (:eval (format "L%s" (helm-candidate-number-at-point))) " "
                              (:eval (propertize
                                      (format
                                       "[%s process finished in %.2fs - (%s results)] "
                                       ,(upcase proc-name)
                                       ,(- (float-time) start-time)
                                       (helm-get-candidate-number))
                                      'face 'helm-grep-finish))))
                      (force-mode-line-update)
                      (when helm-allow-mouse
                        (helm--bind-mouse-for-selection helm-selection-point))))
                   (t (helm-log
                       "Error: %s %s"
                       proc-name
                       (replace-regexp-in-string "\n" "" event))))
             (if noresult
                 (with-helm-buffer
                   (setq mode-line-format
                         `(""
                           mu-mode-line-bar
                           " "
                           (:eval
                            (propertize
                             (format "%s [no results]" ,proc)
                             'face 'helm-grep-finish)))))
               (with-helm-window
                 (setq mode-line-format
                       `(""
                         mu-mode-line-bar
                         " "
                         (:eval
                          (propertize
                           (format "%s [%s results]"
                                   ,proc (helm-get-candidate-number))
                           'face 'helm-grep-finish))))
                 (force-mode-line-update))))))))))

Let’s break down my changes:

(default-directory (el-patch-swap
                     (or helm-ff-default-directory
                         (helm-default-directory)
                         default-directory)
                     (or (mu--project-root)
                         (helm-default-directory)
                         default-directory)))

This has nothing do to with the mode-line, actually, but why not re-use mu–-project-root here? Exactly.

I also removed all the helm-log references, because I am confident my Elisp-fu will not need debugging.² Anyway, I want the buffer identification to look like the rest of the Helm buffer identifications in my mode-line:

(proc (concat " HELM " proc-name))

I am going to use only ripgrep for my searches, so proc-name is usually rg here, but one never knows what will come next.

When there are no results to be shown, I don’t want a message in the Helm buffer, just a clean feedback:

(setq mode-line-format
      `((:eval mu-mode-line-bar)
        " "
        (:eval
         (propertize
          (format "%s [no results]" ,proc)
          'face 'helm-grep-finish))))

The same goes for one or more results:

(setq mode-line-format
      `((:eval mu-mode-line-bar)
        " "
        (:eval
         (propertize
          (format "%s [%s results]"
                  ,proc
                  (helm-get-candidate-number))
          'face 'helm-grep-finish))))

mu-mode-line-bar is what makes my mode-line bigger and I borrowed it from doom-mode-line, so go check its fantastic code to find out about this magic trick.

Finally, this is how the mode-line looks after M-? when the ripgrep process finishes:

And for the sake of completeness, this is how it looks when I move through the results with C-p and C-n:

By the way, the colours are courtesy of modus-vivendi, a great theme by Protesilaos Stavrou I’ve recently switched to.

As in “what is enough for me?”. ↩︎
It’s not that I am that good, it’s just that I can worry about debugging later. ↩︎

Burn, baby, burn

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am always conflicted when it comes to Japanese animation. Talents such as Hideaki Anno and Satoshi Kon are absolute masters to me, but I’ve never really gone beyond the most popular names. My knowledge is limited because I want it to be limited. It sounds like a silly paradox, but it’s true. As much as I love works like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Paprika, I stop at the entrance and somehow refuse to understand the immense universe that Japanese animation is.

Promare (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2019)

Sometimes, though, a new name manages to break through my nonsensical walls. In 2010 I met Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Dead Leaves and immediately fell in love with it. Its fifty minutes of pumping music and characters screaming their way through deranged mayhem are the complete opposite of what makes Neon Genesis Evangelion so special, and maybe just for this reason alone, what makes Imaishi’s madness so irresistible.

Since I heard the first words about Promare expectations have been mounting up, despite the fact that everything Imaishi did in between Dead Leaves and Promare is of moderate interest to me. His worlds live through action and movement, and when he stops and lets something else on the front his power on me decreases (e.g., Gurren Lagann). Even when he sustains the fury of Dead Leaves, as it often happens in the series Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, he is actually stretching a technique that gains much of its strength from the short timespan it was deployed in.

Promare starts with a quick, precise prologue before almost twenty minutes of Imaishi showing how much he has learned throughout the years. The relentless action explodes with details and pastel colours, testing the viewer’s willingness to keep up with chaos. One can see where Imaishi is coming from, because he seems to sum up his career, but at the same time he is introducing a renovated style. He builds a world out of polygons and angles, which eventually will prove to be animation tools as much as elemental parts of a universe plagued by their rigidity. Their precision comes at a cost, but it’s not until the very end that we learn what is at stake here. Amidst the bedlam, characterization begins to take place, and the specific traits of each character emerge through movements and reactions to events impossible to control.

Along with the protagonists, a plethora of themes rise up to the surface. Although Imaishi doesn’t seem to be interested in exploring them in depth, Promare hints at least at fascism, racism, human experimentation, and technocratic failures. It’s not easy to understand the social and political implications of the issues on display, because the film deliberately chooses chaos before words, but Promare’s world still boils with details. There is also room for irony and sarcasm. Imaishi points his fun gun against Japanese pop culture, in a mix of self-referential pose and funny remarks, like Galo Thymos' insisting on announcing himself before moving to action or applying awkward labels to machinery and fight stances. However, the dark cynicism of Dead Leaves and its twisted taste for the obscene are long gone, probably a sign of the kind of public Imaishi is aiming for this time.

The epic scale of the action sequences makes up for what Promare lacks in sex and degradation. Furious flames in the form of a dragon blast through the city in a feast of lights, while gigantic robots wreck havoc among skyscrapers, picking up where Gurren Lagann stopped. Imaishi pushes the boundaries of his animated sense of wonder, intersecting different animation techniques to render new possibilities on the screen. Imagination runs wild in every minute of Promare, which is what I expect animation to always do anyway. Imaishi knows there is no point in limiting oneself where the means at one’s disposal allow everything the mind conceives. The sky is not the limit. The sky is way below us now.

Ripgrepping with Helm

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes curiosity leads me to use alternative packages for built-in solutions which I should have explored better. For instance, it took me moving through helm-ag and helm-rg¹ before realising Helm already comes with a functionality suitable for my needs: helm-do-grep-ag.

By now I expect you to be familiar with the wonders of ripgrep. I was heavily relying on counsel-rg back in my Ivy days, and I needed a similar command in Helm. Truth be told, helm-do-grep-ag is not the replacement I was looking for, but understanding its code helped me devise my own utilities for super fast searches.

First of all, let’s use ripgrep instead of ag:

(setq helm-grep-ag-command (concat "rg"
                                   " --color=never"
                                   " --smart-case"
                                   " --no-heading"
                                   " --line-number %s %s %s")
      helm-grep-file-path-style 'relative)

Note that the string for helm-grep-ag-command comes from its documentation. I chose relative for helm-grep-file-path-style because I find relative file paths in the search result buffer more useful than their base name.

Now, helm-do-grep-ag defers to helm-grep-ag, which in turns defers to helm-grep-ag-1, and this is the Helm facility I can leverage for my own ripgrep variant.

(defun mu-helm-rg (directory &optional with-types)
  "Search in DIRECTORY with RG.
With WITH-TYPES, ask for file types to search in."
  (interactive "P")
  (require 'helm-adaptive)
  (helm-grep-ag-1 (expand-file-name directory)
                  (helm-aif (and with-types
                                 (helm-grep-ag-get-types))
                      (helm-comp-read
                       "RG type: " it
                       :must-match t
                       :marked-candidates t
                       :fc-transformer 'helm-adaptive-sort
                       :buffer "*helm rg types*"))))

It’s basically helm-grep-ag with minor aesthetic changes, but you know me. Note the with-types parameter. If I use this command with C-u I get to pick one or more file types to narrow the search down to. I don’t remember if this is possible with counsel-rg, but in large projects it is an absolute must have. Furthermore, the symbol at point, if any, is the default search parameter. Why is this awesome? Keep reading.

With mu-helm-rg in place, I can build a couple of commands to make my life easier.

(defun mu-helm-project-search (&optional with-types)
  "Search in current project with RG.
With WITH-TYPES, ask for file types to search in."
  (interactive "P")
  (mu-helm-rg (mu--project-root) with-types))

(defun mu-helm-file-search (&optional with-types)
  "Search in `default-directory' with RG.
With WITH-TYPES, ask for file types to search in."
  (interactive "P")
  (mu-helm-rg default-directory with-types))

In case you are wondering, mu–-project-root is a trivial function to figure out the current project’s root directory.

(defun mu--project-root ()
  "Return the project root directory or `helm-current-directory'."
  (require 'helm-ls-git)
  (if-let (dir (helm-ls-git-root-dir))
      dir
    (helm-current-directory)))

I don’t need mu-helm-file-search as often as mu-helm-project-search, which is why I’ve bound the latter to M-?. I use this key binding so much it must be a quick one. And this is why having the symbol at point automatically picked up by mu-helm-rg is so important: it just makes the whole search operation as simple as possible.

Oh wait, the symbol at point is not what you are after? No problem, you can start typing whatever you want and have Helm ripgrepping your files.

Both packages seem hardly maintained these days. ↩︎

Words are never enough

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

No matter how many films I’ve seen since the first time I watched Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden, I’ve never really been able to stop thinking about it and the impact it had on me, its images lingering in my mind day after day. Considering how low my expectations for contemporary Italian cinema usually are, this is all the more surprising.

Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, 2019)

Jack London’s Martin Eden is one of my absolute favourite books, so close to who I am, who I supposed I wanted to be, and what I have always been afraid of. When I learnt about an adaption I cringed a bit. Pietro Marcello was a new name for me, but that didn’t matter anyway. The real issue is that I am pretty hard to satisfy when it comes to transposing literary works into films. Sure, it can work on me sometimes, such as in the case of Carol or Salem’s Lot, but most of the times I just get angry at the screen after a few minutes (e.g., The Lord of the Rings). How could I approach Pietro Marcello’s take on a so pivotal book without letting London’s beauty inform my opinion on Marcello’s rendition?

This is actually where the Campanian director pulls off his most magical trick. I could never let go of London’s words while watching Martin Eden, but instead of comparing the images with the pages in search of errors and betrayal, I was tracing all the details in front of the camera back to the book with the utmost admiration. Not only do Marcello and his co-writer Maurizio Braucci show a deep understanding of Jack London, but because of that they are able to adapt themes of class struggles and individualism from the American writer to different settings and a different time period, without losing an inch of the book power. Inevitably they are forced to condense episodes and characters, and yet they display a remarkable tenacity in capturing the essence of Martin Eden while avoiding the temptation of letting the words speak for themselves.

Martin Eden’s narrative is a product of the eponymous character. We see the world through his eyes, and we witness his reactions on different levels. Among these, there is the use of colour-tinted footage which takes the viewer back to specific episodes of Martin’s youth and childhood. We see him as a kid dancing with his sister, we see his father leaving the house, and him experiencing the little schooling he could afford. Marcello uses archival footage to contextualise the world of his Martin Eden too. The film opens with images of the Italian anarchist Enrico Malatesta, referencing the historical moment (Savona, 1921) and pointing at Eden’s own story.

He was an anarchist and believed that persons, individuals, people, are not to be neglected, but at the same time are not to become megalomaniac.¹

Martin Eden gives us an idea, but not the exact moment this Martin Eden’s life unveils. Like a recollection which loses details years after years, Marcello’s Italy is a reminiscence, a set of experiences filtered through the eyes of a man who praises individualism only to find the failures in it. But there are also the failures of Italy’s left in Marcello’s vision. The dream and promises of socialism many around Martin so fervently believe in don’t take into account what would become of the individual once the power is overthrown. More importantly, they mislead their followers in thinking that power can be replaced with a different form of power. Power is and always will be power, and until there is power there will always be a difference between the strong and the weak. The real issue is knowing who the strong and the weak actually are.

However, nobody listens to Martin Eden, and instead of fighting for his cause, he retires into literature. He wants to be the eyes and ears of the world, but what starts as vivid prose about episodes of his life around the world, soon becomes rhetoric tools for brutal social commentary. When he reads from his books near the end, it’s him against the world, against everyone who wasn’t able to understand him before and is still not able now. Again, he refuses to fight, worn out by what he sees and what he hears. The words he has come to master are not worth the peace of mind he is looking for and eventually cannot save him.

Italy cannot afford to ignore talents such as Pietro Marcello and Luca Marinelli, simply because I don’t know how many Italian directors and actors are this good right now. These are young talents, people who deserves money, time, and space to create more and more. So why do I have the feeling that this is another of those precious films that my country will forget much too soon?

See: No God But the Unknown: Pietro Marcello and Maurizio Braucci on Martin Eden. ↩︎

Helmify some completion mechanisms

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last year I wrote about making Company completion popup appear on demand. There I also briefly mentioned dabbrev-expand and dabbrev-completion, but I have never mentioned hippie-expand, and that it has been pretty much covering my completion needs.

However, moving to Helm prompted me to give helm-dabbrev a try. helm-dabbrev works similarly to dabbrev-completion, but when you hit helm-dabbrev-cycle-threshold (which defaults to 5), it takes you to a Helm buffer with all the benefits that come with it.

Two settings are necessary to have helm-dabbrev behave like I want to. First, I turned off Helm’s show completion, a feature which displays candidates in the current buffer. I don’t like popups, as you may have noticed, and I prefer Helm to always show candidates in the same position of the screen.

(setq helm-turn-on-show-completion nil)

Then, I made helm-dabbrev look for completions in all the available buffers.

(setq helm-dabbrev-related-buffer-fn nil)

By default, helm-dabbrev scans buffers with the same major mode as the current one, but this doesn’t help when, for instance, I am writing a commit message and I want a symbol to be completed. Binding helm-dabbrev to C-. is all that’s left to do.

Moreover, Helm improves on Company too. With the help of helm-company¹ is possible to narrow down the candidates through Helm smart UI. C-TAB is my go-to key binding for helm-company.

Since Helm has become a great companion during my Emacs sessions, it makes sense to rely on it for everything concerning completion.

I used to maintain helm-company before discovering Ivy, and now I’m back to it. The Emacs world is full of surprises. ↩︎

Developing Helm actions

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

One of the central pieces of my recent return to Helm is helm-ls-git, which empowers helm-browse-project with everything I need to move through my Git projects smoothly. Combine that with helm-projects-history, and you can see why I don’t need Projectile any more. Well, sort of. It’s true that I’ve stopped using Projectile since Helm took over my Emacs configuration, but it’s also true that I had to code the “helmified” version of a couple of features I was heavily relying upon.

In Helm, you can leverage actions to extend the available utilities.

(defun mu--candidate-directory (candidate)
  "Find the directory containing CANDIDATE.
Default to `helm-current-directory' when none can be found."
  (if (fboundp 'helm-ls-git-root-dir)
      (let* ((dir (cond ((stringp candidate)
                         (file-name-directory candidate))
                        ((and (bufferp candidate)
                              (buffer-file-name candidate))
                         (file-name-directory (buffer-file-name candidate)))
                        (t default-directory)))
             (root-dir (helm-ls-git-root-dir dir)))
        (if root-dir
            root-dir
          (helm-current-directory)))
    (helm-current-directory)))

(defun mu-helm-project-dired ()
  "Open Dired buffers at project root from a Helm session."
  (interactive)
  (dolist (cand (helm-marked-candidates))
    (dired (mu--candidate-directory cand))))

(defun mu-helm-project-shell ()
  "Open shell buffers at project root from a Helm session."
  (interactive)
  (dolist (cand (helm-marked-candidates))
    (let* ((default-directory (mu--candidate-directory cand))
           (buffer (concat "*shell "
                           (file-name-nondirectory
                            (directory-file-name default-directory))
                           "*")))
      (mu-shell-open buffer))))

The actions are self-explanatory (see Passing the prefix argument around for mu-shell-open). I often need to jump to a Dired or a shell-mode buffer of a project different from the current one, so I want the possibility to use the current candidate in helm-projects-history as a starting point.

To be fair, mu--candidate-directory does a little more than what I need here. That’s because I use mu-helm-project-dired and mu-helm-project-shell in helm-mini and helm-browse-project too. The latter lists special buffers (e.g., *scratch*) as buffers of the current project. Since they do not live in any specific directory, default-directory is the obvious choice.

Now I have to plug the actions into helm-projects-history. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a keymap to extend, so I need another solution.

(defvar mu-helm-projects-history-map
  (let ((map (make-sparse-keymap)))
    (set-keymap-parent map helm-map)
    (define-key map (kbd "C-c d") (helm-exit-and-run! (mu-helm-project-dired)))
    (define-key map (kbd "C-c s") (helm-exit-and-run! (mu-helm-project-shell)))
    map)
  "Keymap for `mu-helm-projects-history'.")

(defun mu-helm-projects-history (arg)
  "A `helm-projects-history' with custom actions."
  (interactive "P")
  (require 'helm-ls-git)
  (helm :sources
        (helm-build-sync-source "Project history"
          :candidates helm-browse-project-history
          :action (lambda (candidate)
                    (with-helm-default-directory candidate
                      (helm-browse-project
                       (or arg helm-current-prefix-arg))))
          :keymap mu-helm-projects-history-map)
        :buffer "*helm browse project history*"))

mu-helm-projects-history adds only two things to the original helm-projects-history. I require helm-ls-git early because I need its capabilities inside my actions, and I use my own mu-helm-projects-history-map to make them available in the Helm buffer opened by this command.

Last but not least, helm-exit-and-run! is a helpful macro to avoid dry repetitions:

(defmacro helm-exit-and-run! (&rest body)
  "Define an action with BODY to be run after exiting Helm."
  (declare (doc-string 1))
  `(lambda ()
     (interactive)
     (with-helm-alive-p
       (helm-exit-and-execute-action (lambda (_candidate) ,@body)))))

Note that in my actions I am ignoring the _candidate parameter on purpose. Since helm-marked-candidates grabs the current candidate when none of them is selected, I can use my actions on multiple candidates if I feel wild enough. Yeah, sometimes I can be crazy like that.

An open connection

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Listing my favourite films of this closing decade would be a daunting task, because I have only recently started to log my viewings. What I can do, though, is picking one of them, the one which stands out not as the most revolutionary of the lot, but as the best example of what film-making is all about for me. And that would be Todd Haynes’ Carol.

Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

Carol is seemingly simpler than other relevant candidates to my number one spot on the best of the 2010s list. It is not a culmination of stylistic explorations like Michael Mann’s Blackhat or Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart. It is not a new way of narrating the social disaster we live in like Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, nor another push to the cinematic form like Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme. The closest work I can think of is Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, because both films understand the pages of the books they come from without compromising what cinema means to their respective auteurs.

Carol begins with a man interrupting a conversation between two women, Carol Aird and Therese Belivet. The women are sitting at a table, apparently having a casual conversation. By the end of the film we will have understood the weight of this exchange, but for now we can only register the effect of the man forcibly imposing his presence. Carol is visibly annoyed, she is trying to keep her cool before leaving the table and the scene. Only later we will know the turmoil behind the façade. Therese is embarrassed, in her eyes the reflection of the fight within her because she realizes, and it will happen again, that she has no control over the situation. This is just the first of many instances where women’s intimate space is invaded by men. Repeatedly over the course of Carol and Therese’s story, they face male gaze and male ire, men trying to make them reason according to male logic. With the exception of Harge Aird, Haynes does not show us how low men can get when they fail to take a relationship between two women into consideration. The male characters cannot accept a thing such as two women in love, and Haynes makes no effort to explore the dark side of more than one man. One is enough for him. Considering some of the comments I hear in my everyday life on gender-related topics, Haynes has all the reasons to be cynical.

However, this is a cynicism that does not need to be shouted at the viewer. Most of Carol takes place between silent reactions. Therese acknowledges the world around her with feeble tilts of her head, slight changes on her face, hardly using words to express what she feels. Her personality seems contained in her gestures. Haynes does not seem interested in a silent film performance, though. He is simply trying to make sense of a world where love has to be feared and needs to be hidden away. It’s a world of few words spoken freely. Even Carol, with her strong personality and her commanding wisdom, does not really know what to say to Therese much of the time if not through her body. Maybe she is afraid to lose her, but she also knows the consequences of her desire. The two women do not perceive their relationship as something inherently wrong, because there is nothing wrong with love, but at the same time everyone blames them for what they are doing. Love is there from the beginning, but Therese battles to accept it, because the conventions of imposed masculinity are always in her way. Carol and Therese want, but they cannot. They only can if they abandon everything and live among themselves.

Carol explores the discovery of love and the progress of the relationship through senses. The viewer feels the surfaces as if touching them, not because the sound design is great, which it is by the way, but because the grace of the characters’ movements is matched by the delicacy of the camera capturing them. The gentleness of a photograph, the softness of a sweater, the coldness of a gun: objects are alive without getting in the way. And yet Haynes avoids the objectification of commodities. In spite of the evident comfort in Carol’s life and the modest state of Therese’s one, Carol offers few glimpses of this difference, because it is irrelevant when it comes to what the women’s hearts crave for. When on the road, their love deepens unhindered by how cheap or expensive the room they are in is. As long as men are not around, the issue is not where or how.

Sight is another important and richly covered sense. Carol lives thanks to eyes and looks. The first lunch Carol and Therese have together is all about how they perceive each other and how this perception informs them. There is already passion underneath those looks, but it’s more of a systematic and yet gentle search for a possible kindred spirit. Is it there? Am I reaching out for something real? Carol’s and Therese’s eyes tentatively inspect what is in front of them, telling more about the affection they are trying to conceal than the mind would want to reveal. On the other hand, men look down on women as if to constantly remind them of their social position. Men’s eyes are angry and disparaging, but they are at their worst when they become condescending, manipulating sympathy to remind the women who is in charge after all.

In posing love as the central node of a web of questions and answers, Carol refuses to make sense of the connection it creates between two people and prefers to live it open. And rightly so. Love is the reason we unreasonably fall for someone, and it’s not often that a film can capture so well the poor chances we have to explain what is happening to us. The more I look at Carol, the more it seems like the peak of Todd Haynes’ career, something he is going to come to terms with for the rest of his life.

Once Upon a Time

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I remember the first time I saw Pulp Fiction quite well. I was a sixteen-year old already settled on my path to becoming a proper nerd, which means I was your regular outsider in a valley of farmers and carpenters, far from any big city, and without a reliable internet connection. I relied on magazines to inform my cinephilia, and at that time some of those came with a VHS attached. That is how Pulp Fiction entered my life.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

Fast forward fifteen years, and after Inglourious Basterds I lost interest in Quentin Tarantino. I didn’t particularly like Django Unchained and though I enjoyed The Hateful Eight, I’ve never gone back to it. The only one of his works I was willing to revisit is Death Proof, because there our love for images met, danced, and kissed amiably.

This could partly explain why Once Upon a Time in Hollywood hit me so hard. I simply wasn’t expecting a great film from Tarantino, and I certainly wasn’t expecting him to be able to tell me something new. I’ve always had the feeling he had little to say, albeit he had been saying it mostly convincingly, film after film. The themes, the references, the dialogues, the violence, the objectification of pop culture: his cinema has been a reiteration of his own obsessions. An enjoyable endeavour if you go along with it, a trite exercise when you don’t.

In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino has finally understood that geeky quotes, fan-service, and homages can live within a much broader context. Instead of amusing the audience and himself with pop references and obscure trivia, he uses nostalgia as a platform to deliver punches at a world that is actually not the dream we used to believe in. And so we have an ageing actor who is forced to accept subpar roles, merely a pawn at the disposal of producers and directors who just want to profit from his once glorious fame. Next to him a stuntman who, in spite of his easygoing attitude, sees his future perilously attached to a movie star’s highs and lows. All dark sides of an industry that swallows you in as quickly as it can throw you out from the back.

However, Tarantino is too much in love with his idea of Hollywood to let go nostalgia once and for all. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood brims with the culture of the period, every set carefully devised to convey the feeling of a long gone era. The joy of re-creation is evident: leaflets, signposts, accessories, wallpapers, posters, everything mirrors an insane love for those years. In his previous films, this would be a sign of attention to minute details for the sake of it, a perversion for popular paraphernalia one has to show off, but here Tarantino finds the grace of George Lucas’ American Graffiti. The camera moves patiently from a billboard to a neon sign, caresses a drive-in and indulges on a cocktail with lover’s eyes. The surroundings blend in with the individual stories being told. Instead of keeping track of the pop nods, the viewer can actually feel in another place and another time, and they are forgiven when they miss the umpteenth clue.

Key to this smooth balance between time-travelling fun and functional environments is what lies beneath the surface. Tarantino’s cinema is one of individuals, men and women who more or less coincidentally cross paths which usually end in violent confrontations. Here we have long stretches where nothing relevant seems to happen. Just when one is about to ask whether there is a point or not, one realizes the isolation the characters live in and how much of everyone’s distinct isolations Tarantino intersects at precise points of the story. The pleasure Sharon Tate finds in the people appreciating her performance on the screen of a movie theatre is the pleasure Rick Dalton discovers in being able to act greatly in a hackneyed western. The nonsensical world Cliff Booth flashbacks into while on Dalton’s rooftop gives him the same happiness Sharon Tate dwells in when home alone she listens to her favourite music. For a director so in love with his dialogues, there are plenty of beautifully silent moments in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Moreover, this film marks the first time in almost thirty years Tarantino has replaced irony and complacent jokes with self-irony. I remember vividly when, at the peak of his popularity, he ended up on the covers of DVDs recommending the latest Asian film director he put his eyes on. His words become religion among film viewers, and I too started digging through B-movies shelves to discover the hidden gem he had just mentioned in another interview. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Tarantino has eventually come to terms with this, lightly mocking the pretentiousness of all but forgettable productions. He invests so much time in making the less than memorable stints of Rick Dalton look real that one may believe he really thinks they are great stuff. Thanks to DiCaprio’s hilarious overacting, though, the mimicry is exposed as brilliantly as it is achieved.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could very well be the surprise of the year for me. I hope Quentin Tarantino moves further from here, and begins to apply the lenses he used to analyse the world of the Hollywood that was to the Hollywood that we have right now.

The aesthetics of patching

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In describing my move to Helm I quickly mentioned another package from Thierry Volpiatto: psession. psession is a light session saving mechanism and it comes with built-in integration for Helm among other things, which of course renders it a valuable improvement to my setup. The installation instructions are pretty clear, so there is no need to bother you with obvious code snippets.

Instead, I want to bother you with my obsessive-compulsive disorder. You see, I am fond of how my beloved text editor looks, especially after boot. I disabled every message, toolbar, scrollbar, menu, and buffer Emacs can throw at me on startup, and the theme is applied as late as possible to ensure nothing obstructs my way to another great day of text editing.

What’s “wrong” with psession then? In order to make the previous sessions available, psession loads some compiled files when Emacs starts. This is what I expect it to do, because there would be no point in saving sessions without restoring them. My only “problem” with this behaviour is the file loading itself.

(cl-defun psession--restore-objects-from-directory
    (&optional (dir psession-elisp-objects-default-directory))
  (let ((file-list (directory-files dir t directory-files-no-dot-files-regexp)))
    (cl-loop for file in file-list do (and file (load file)))))

The code is not hard to understand. What constitutes a rude attack at my delicate aesthetic feelings is that (load file) right before the good-looking closing parentheses. Calling load in this manner causes a bunch of messages to “interfere” with a clean Emacs boot: they show up in the echo area during the loading of my init.el and they hurt so bad!¹

Let’s examine the documentation of the function load:

load is a function defined in lread.c.

Signature

(load FILE &optional NOERROR NOMESSAGE NOSUFFIX MUST-SUFFIX)

Documentation

Execute a file of Lisp code named FILE.

[…]

Print messages at start and end of loading unless optional third arg NOMESSAGE is non-nil (but force-load-messages overrides that).

[…]

Perfect. Now I just have to hack psession--restore-objects-from-directory and make sure load is called with a non-nil value for NOMESSAGE. Usually when I want to silence a command I rely on inhibit-message. Let’s say I want to silence the activation of helm-adaptive-mode:

(let ((inhibit-message t))
  (helm-adaptive-mode 1))

However, psession--restore-objects-from-directory is sort of a private function, so I need something else to change it according to my plans. There are probably several good ways to patch psession--restore-objects-from-directory, but my go-to package in these situations is Radon Rosborough’s el-patch.

(el-patch-feature psession)
(with-eval-after-load 'psession
  (el-patch-cl-defun psession--restore-objects-from-directory
    (&optional (dir psession-elisp-objects-default-directory))
    (let ((file-list (directory-files dir t directory-files-no-dot-files-regexp)))
      (cl-loop for file
               in file-list
               do (and file (el-patch-swap (load file)
                                           (load file nil 'nomessage nil)))))))

Only nine lines of code to please my sense of aesthetic. Beauty is always within reach when we are dealing with Emacs.

Note that at the moment of this writing, el-patch-cl-defun is on the develop branch of el-patch.

I know this is silly, but I hope the double quotation marks and the light tone make the irony clear enough. The point is having fun at hacking Emacs, not insulting Thierry. ↩︎

At the helm of my configuration

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 16 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It was a cold winter back in December 2014. If memory serves me well, it was time spent at tinkering with old hardware and obscure window managers, reading my first books on functional programming, and dealing with something about text editors I can’t quite put my finger on.

I was also reading about Helm and the praises everywhere in the Emacs community for this package: it can do this, it improves that, it will take you closer to Emacs Nirvana. So yeah, I believed the hype, because it came from trusted sources, especially the Nirvana-guy. Soon Helm took over my configuration and I was using it for everything: switching buffers, selecting bookmarks, in-buffer and per-project searches. Anything involving candidate completion was in the wise hands of Helm.

After a while Ivy came along, and the rest is history. I have been using Ivy/Counsel for such a long a time I might as well say they have become the central drivers of my Emacs setup. Along with the likes of counsel-projectile, these are the packages I use the most during the day.

Lately I’ve been following some conversations about completion-styles, and when I learned that Thierry Volpiatto was working on leveraging Helm for this I just could not resist. Note that Thierry is still devising the implementation, so there is no need to rush at opening issues and scream at him. Anyway, Helm was back in my radar now, and so I took the chance to see if I could come up with a setup which would mirror my everyday workflow with Ivy/Counsel.

I immediately noticed that the theme I use lacked proper support for some Helm faces, but nothing stopped me to do something about it. Much like Ivy/Counsel, Helm provides its own version for common operations such as helm-M-x, helm-find-files, helm-mini, helm-recentf, helm-bookmarks, helm-show-kill-ring, and helm-resume. These are the core features for me, and they work as expected. I also enabled helm-adaptive-mode and helm-autoresize-mode, fixing the Helm window height to my preferences.

As I did with Ivy/Counsel, I made buffer switching (i.e., helm-mini) ignore some files:

(require 'helm-buffers)
(setq helm-ff-skip-boring-files t)
(dolist (regexp '("\\`\\*direnv" "\\`\\*straight" "\\`\\*xref"))
  (cl-pushnew regexp helm-boring-buffer-regexp-list))

My projects are all Git-versioned, hence I installed helm-ls-git, which superseded Projectile and the related helm-projectile in an instant. In order to make per-project lookups with Helm as easy as they were with Ivy/Counsel, I went with helm-ag and helm-xref. To make it even better, I added psession and configured it to persist the things I need from my Emacs sessions. The only goodies I put on top of this setup are helm-bibtex and helm-tramp.

Back in the day, Helm felt heavier and more bloated than Ivy/Counsel, but that is nonsense and was probably due to me being still young and inexperienced at Emacs tweaking. In fact, it still takes less than one second for my Emacs to boot, and so far there is nothing in terms of functionalities I have been missing from my previous configuration. We could argue about UI minimalism and design choices as long as we want, or we could simply try what the Emacs ecosystem offers and decide for ourselves what suits our text editor best.

Thirty straight days

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It’s already been a month since I moved from package.el to straight.el, and if it wasn’t for the constant fiddling with my Emacs configuration, I would have hardly noticed the differences in package management. A proof of the solid work behind straight.el, sure, but also a demonstration of how painless package management can be for someone who bypasses the provided UI and relies on use-package snippets to install and setup their packages.

However, with straight.el a new approach to updates is needed. First of all, I compulsively track the state of the packages I have installed, and I tend to update all of them every morning. This is an operation that follows the pulling of the latest developments on the Emacs master branch.

On the one hand, this approach could lead to breaking changes and tears of sadness. On the other hand, I like to report bugs as soon as I discover them, and hopefully help the great developers out there who make my text editing a wonder.

Considering how vital to my computing Emacs is, this may sound like complete madness, I know. In my defence, I mostly rely on stable and long-term support software on my computer. Emacs is just the special kind of madness that drags me to it in spite of the risks. Furthermore, as I wrote last time, straight.el makes it easier to revert to a previous unbroken version of a package, so I can find a functional environment without too much of a hassle.

In my package.el days, package updating was handled by Paradox. In a matter of a couple of key bindings, it took care of notifying me about new versions and installing the selected updates. straight.el is less fancy, though. It provides the necessary commands to install and update a package, as well as the big brother that will pull every package in, but all the UI it offers is the user’s completing-read framework—ivy-read in my case.

Well, like the first line of the README says, straight.el is a tool for the Emacs hacker, so let’s play with it. All I had to do to get a more interactive user experience when updating packages was devising a small wrapper around straight.el’s facilities.

(defun mu-straight-pull-or-prune (&optional prune)
  "Update all available packages via `straight'.
With PRUNE, prune the build cache and the build directory."
  (interactive "P")
  (if prune
      (when (y-or-n-p "Prune build cache and build directory?")
        (straight-prune-build-cache)
        (straight-prune-build-directory))
    (when (y-or-n-p "Update all available packages?")
      (straight-pull-all))))

(bind-key* "<f7>" #'mu-straight-pull-or-prune)

Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? (Pun intended.)

The essence of kinesis

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Without going too deep into Aristotle’s Physics, the Greek term kinesis can be translated as both change and movement. It’s a fascinating word, because it implies that every transformation is in fact a motion. It’s also a concept which popped up in my mind over and over again as I was sitting through Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! for the first time.

Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

Much like Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! starts with a sheer attack on the viewer’s senses. It took me a while to get accustomed to Luhrmann machine-gunning frames. The pacing is hysterical with multiple characters constantly overlapping each other, unable to stop moving and talking, surrounded by music and colours aimed at obliterating the smallest hint of finesse. The screen struggles to contain the barrage of action and words, and even the editing department feels exhausted while it desperately tries to save up energy for the next sequence of events. It’s impossible to follow all that is happening in front of us and making sense of it in one go. The film demands other viewings to be fully appreciated.

This is an approach that can lead the untrained eye to fatigue, because it takes solid skills to master such an emotional assault to the mind. Play it too loud, and you will not fit in the viewers’ attention span; instead you will contribute to its progressive erosion. On the other hand, work on the safe side and you will miss the potential of your images’ energy, leaving the script or the actors in charge of avoiding a lacklustre effort.

Luhrmann, however, understands the limits of his mise-en-scène and knows exactly when he is about to stretch it too far. He stops at the right time, takes a step back, and lets everything in between movements speak. The control is all the more remarkable considering the places where the events occur. They are all confined spaces which shorten the distance between people, hastening their encounters almost as quickly as it would take an editing cut to do the identical thing. The viewer is unnaturally constrained, but at the same time they gain a deep level of intimacy with the characters even amidst the restless chaos.

Moulin Rouge! seems to agree with Aristotle about time. According to the great philosopher, time is a measure of change, hence time itself cannot exist without it. In Moulin Rouge! the illusion and the lavish artifice of the spectacle are the stopwatches bound to end their run as soon as the characters give up changing. If they hid their passion, they would never be happy; but if they unmasked their lies, they would put an end to a show that must go on in spite of everyone’s fate. Thus their relationship lives both in the dark and in the open, kept alive by a vibrant tension between the two worlds.

The tension is between Luhrmann’s world and cinema as a spectacle as well. Not only the director breaks the illusion of a period drama as soon as the pop songs blend starts, he also plays with the musical form interspersing quotes and homages along the way, asking us to be permanently up to speed. Moreover, he wants over-the-top reactions from his leads, who exaggerate their performances and get close to unnatural acting, albeit never quite there. We are left in between credulous and incredulous feelings, always on the verge of losing our mind right before we find faith in the images again.

Almost twenty years later, Moulin Rouge! is still an unidentifiable object from the outer world. Films like Speed Racer played with kinesis and cinema’s own artifice to wonderful results, but ever since Luhrmann’s pop extravaganza nobody has been able to master the essence of kinesis with such lush awkwardness.

Straight ahead

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I have never found Emacs appealing without external packages. From the colour theme to the best Git UI one could ask for, I can’t imagine using Emacs without external packages. The built-in package.el has served me well for a long time. Configured with the usual package archives, it has offered me easy access to new packages and updates for the currently installed ones.

However, digging a little deeper reveals some of its shortcomings. For instance, downgrading has to be done manually, because package.el gives access only to the latest version of a package. This also means it is impossible to get a specific version of said package without getting the source and loading it by yourself.

As you install and configure more and more tools to enhance your Emacs experience, you are adding layers of complexity. Dependencies are pulled in and new releases could bring breaking changes: either you never upgrade your packages, or you learn to live on the bleeding edge. I love that edge as much as your next Emacs hacker, but to approach it with steadiness I need more control over the packages I use.

This is where straight.el fits in. I have to admit that Radon Rosborough played dirty with my feelings: by describing straight.el as purely functional he knew perfectly well a developer in love with functional programming could not resist. But there is more to it, of course.

First of all, I love the documentation. The effort put into explaining the rationale behind it, the comparisons with other package managers, and the basics to get started is simply amazing. Even the process of reproducing bugs is documented. It may seem like a lot to take in, but it’s clear and it’s something I want to know before changing one of the key features of my text editor.

Moreover, it takes a few lines of code to bootstrap straight.el. It would probably take fewer lines to set up package.el, that’s true, but straight.el is far more customisable. It also works seamlessly with use-package, so I didn’t have to reinvent my Emacs configuration just to try a new package manager.

Finally, you can freeze your package state at any time with straight-freeze-versions. This creates a lockfile with the current versions of your packages, meaning you can reproduce your exact configuration with a simple straight-thaw-versions. Stability is just a couple of commands away.

There must (should?) be a moment when the Emacs hacker knows they exploited their beloved editor as much as possible, the eureka light bulb leading the way through a thick fog of setq and defun. Valhalla is there, Emacs hacker, you know it. As for me, I decided to accept the murkiness for now, and look for the bulb that will get me out of here eventually another time.

Grounding expressionism

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Every time I grab a Tony Scott’s film from my shelves and put it on is a reminder of how much I miss him. Periodically revisiting their favourite directors is something all film lovers do, of course. When the director is dead, and his or her passing happens to be recent, it’s almost as if a close friend is gone. I do miss Charlie Chaplin, but he was a like a long gone grand-grandfather. A friend is a different thing altogether.

Unstoppable (Tony Scott, 2010)

I was fourteen when The Last Boy Scout appeared in my life, and for every new film from him I watched, only lukewarm reviews or negative analyses would be available to me.¹ The vulgar auteurism wave of some years ago took me by surprise. Critics were finally acknowledging the qualities of Scott’s works and put him into perspective. I didn’t like all the directors avidly called vulgar auteurs, but it was still a pleasure to read informed and not biased pieces.² I felt much less alone in my love. Recently I went back to some of Scott’s late period films, and Unstoppable revealed itself under a new light this time.

More so than The Taking of Pelham 123, as Sam Redfern acutely points out, Unstoppable never loses its poetry for an iteration of its thematic foundations. Scott removes the need to morally justify the events with a simple and yet absolutely functional expedient: there is no villain in Unstoppable. Or to phrase it another way, the real villains are men’s short-sightedness and arrogance.

There are always silly mistakes by main or secondary characters in Scott’s films. More often than not, they cost lives, and to a varying degree they can all be traced down to ignorance or stupidity. Ego plays such a pivotal role in moving individuals’ actions that they forget to be aware of the situation and to fully understand the consequences of their decisions. As a result people die, but Scott is not cynic enough to stop and judge. He leaves it there as a viewer’s responsibility, allowing himself the moments to indulge in aesthetic developments. These stylistic choices didn’t appear out of nowhere. Instead they were the results of Scott’s constant explorations from the 2002 short film Beat the Devil onwards. Film after film, Scott kept building on the tension between expressing feelings through editing, camera movements, lights, shadows and colour palettes, and the realism upon which the events were grounded.

This is where Unstoppable really shines, because it positions itself at the opposite of the form of Domino, representing Scott’s more balanced approach to a material that could easily escape control. In Domino, the director takes his chances to play with a malleable narrative rhythm, setting aside the good versus evil battle that usually underpins his efforts. He lets himself lose the connection with the viewer unexpectedly, forcing him to follow through events that just seem to pop out of Domino Harvey’s mind at her own will.

On the other hand, Unstoppable packs in about one hour and half a tight series of set pieces, with such a precise arrangement that we can be sidetracked by the constant action before noticing the firm hand holding it all together. Minutes of details to inform us and make us care about the leads leave soon space to speed and danger, juxtaposed with phone and radio calls that contribute to the adrenaline crescendo. In between crashes and chases, the clash of generations, the passing of experiences from the older generation to the younger, nepotism and incompetence, economic concerns and lives as collateral damage to keep the system alive, media insolence and old fashioned heroism.

Since the 80s through the 90s, Tony Scott has often been deemed too attached to a polished and depthless method operating with never good enough scripts. As soon as he moved on to transform his vision, he has been attacked for the courage to renounce the conventional forms of the action genre and for playing too close to illegibility. However, the middle way between expressionism and realism has never been found with such a convincing strength as in the work of Tony Scott.

See: Action! Forme di un transgenere cinematografico by Giona Nazzaro. ↩︎
See: Smearing the Senses: Tony Scott, Action Painter and Tony Scott: A Moving Target. ↩︎

A pen and a notebook

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 25 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism has really changed my perspective on a lot of things in my life. Since I started my decluttering process I’ve noticed several benefits. In particular, I’m less prone to distractions and leisure has become time for engaging activities.

This new approach has prompted me to reconsider how I organise my days, weeks, and months. For a couple of years I’ve been using my custom variation of GTD, tracking everything with Org files in Emacs, and using Syncthing and Orgzly to keep it all synced with my phone. However, as I already explained when I wrote about Cal Newport’s book, my smartphone is not my best friend, and so the whole setup is actually of little use. And let’s be frank: sometimes I can leave Emacs alone.

I also write a lot, everyday. I write about films, note my ideas on the music I listen to and the books I read, and I write for this blog too. Hence I need a place which can be useful both for organising my life and for my basic urge to write. Enter Bullet Journal.

I recently rediscovered the pleasure of pen and paper when in Leuven for Heart of Clojure. Since I left the laptop at home on purpose, I spent almost every spare moment on my notebook, and much of the article on the conference came straight from its pages. As Ryder Carroll, the man behind Bullet Journal, points out in his book, the connection our brain establishes with pen and paper is completely different from the one with keyboard and monitor. For me it’s mostly been a feeling I sensed when writing on my notebook. My thoughts just came out with a spontaneity I’ve rarely enjoyed with the digital counterparts.

I won’t bother you with the details about Bullet Journal. The website has tutorials, videos, there is a book about it, so everything you need to know is out there. I picked this system because I find it simple and clear, modular and practical. Starting next month, I am going to fully migrate my GTD setup to Bullet Journal and once again step back to distance myself from pervasive technology consumption.

Open Magit from Ibuffer

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It’s amazing how many packages for our beloved editor exist out there. ELPA and MELPA keep growing and growing, and curiosity is always pushing me out to look for a new package to try.

Last year I wrote about Eyebrowse, a cool workspace manager that has proven to be a reliable friend until recently. Eyebrowse is a helpful extension, but as it turns out the built-in Ibuffer is enough to make sense of all of the buffers available. I open it with `C-x C-b, which is one of the most used key bindings in my everyday Emacs interactions.

Ibuffer presents a customizable list of buffers on which, much like Dired, we can apply different kinds of operations: filter, sort, group, mark, delete, bury, visit. Just press h in Ibuffer to get an idea.

Since I mainly work on projects versioned on Git, ibuffer-vc helps with grouping the buffers in a project-based fashion and operate on them. For instance, to quickly close a project and its related buffers, mark the project header for deletion with d and then press x.

One thing I was missing in Ibuffer was an integration with Magit. I wanted to open magit-status in the project the current buffer (i.e., the buffer where point is on) belongs to.

(defun mu-ibuffer-magit ()
  "Open `magit-status' for the current buffer."
  (interactive)
  (let ((buf (ibuffer-current-buffer t)))
    (magit-status (cdr (ibuffer-vc-root buf)))))

I’ve bound this function to v in ibuffer-mode-map. Note that v was previously calling ibuffer-do-view, so you may want to pick the key that suits you best.

The people’s conference

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I have still to properly unpack my luggage and yet here I am, eager to make sense of the enthusiasm of experiencing Heart of Clojure. I tried my best to pin down on my diary everything that the conference had to offer, because at first I wanted to write a round-up similar to the one I did for Dutch Clojure Days 2018. However, summarising Heart of Clojure seems like an unimaginative exercise. And this is because a summary is by definition a cursory look. Considering what I’ve had the pleasure to enjoy, it doesn’t feel right.

So, what was Heart of Clojure like exactly? After one day and a half in and plenty more to do, I came up with a definition: the people’s conference. Fragments of this definition were already floating around my head as soon as I was in front of Hal5, the incredibly cosy space the Heart of Clojure team set up as the main location for the event. It’s not easy to put it clearly into words, but just take a look at the registration process. You reached a desk, they gave you a badge, you picked the holder of the right colour for you (i.e., green meant you were fine appearing in pictures taken during the conference, pink you were not), you were given pens and markers to write your name on the badge and add whatever customisations you feel like adding to it. Now, go back and count how many you and they there are in the last sentence, and you’ll start getting an idea about the general approach of Heart of Clojure.

The more I think about it, the more I find the effort to make everything safe and nice for the attendees remarkable, especially because it looked like nobody was actually controlling anything. I wasn’t expecting surveillance cameras and SWAT teams, of course, but the simple fact that the responsibility of looking after everyone appeared invisible made for a peaceful environment. And you always had kind and smiling Heart of Clojure’s staff members around ready to help you out or have a chat with you. The results were in plain sight. Everybody looked calm, serene, and even without asking you could tell they were having a great time just being there.

Unsurprisingly, the wide range of topics in the program left me with an impossible amount of thoughts. Teaching programmers to draw, Clojure in fashion, empathy and resilience, inclusiveness and climate change, open source sustainability and fragment shaders, compilers and arcade games. In a two-day span, the selection of talks leveraged topics of such a pervasive power that it was basically impossible not to constantly connect and be moved. With the entertaining work of the hosts and unforgettable MCs Saskia Linder and Bozhidar Batsov there was no such thing as boredom in the air.

At the same time, though, I have to admit I was a bit sceptical about the extra activities. Again, the Heart of Clojure’s masterminds put the people in charge, and so anyone could devise an activity covering the spare time in the evenings, during the long afternoon break on Saturday, or on Sunday morning. Before leaving for Leuven, my overtly paranoid brain asked me: how could they trust everybody like this? What if a too fervid attendee can’t manage it well? Wouldn’t it spoil the fun for the rest of us? It turned out there was too much joyfulness around to be paranoid, a well-deserved lesson for that silly brain of mine. I will never be able to thank the awesome Malwine enough for the sketchnote workshop, and I’ll have to find a way to be at another of her workshops sooner or later.

Probably co-opted by the aforementioned brain, my mind wandered in similar doubts when it came to the lightning talks, but in five minutes Connie silenced both my brain and my mind. I think I’ve held my breath and stood still throughout her entire session, struck in my seat by the genius of an eleven-year old’s crafts. More than anything else, she was the heart at the Heart of Clojure.

I have to stop now, because it’s time to rest and see if I can soothe the intense emotions of the past three days. Did I mention the couple of tears on the My Heart Will Go On karaoke? You cannot play with a sentimental fool like this, people, there are feelings at stake. Come on.

But before turning off the lights:

Thank you Arne and thank you Martin: you conceived the impossible and made it happen. Please make it happen again.

Thank you Heart of Clojure’s program committee and reviewers: Arne and Martin couldn’t have made it without you.

Thank you speakers: singling out one of you would be unfair and completely pointless. You all inspired me, in one way or the other.

Thank you Saskia: you taught me the beauty of reaching out, and I will treasure the words on emotion management for a long while.

Thank you Bozhidar: no, not for just CIDER this time. For everything, including the unparalleled dancing skills.

Thank you Carlo, Davide, Fabrizio, and Kleopatra: I’m still not sure of how you did it, but you made me forget sociability is an issue for me. For a while, at least.

Thank you Marco and thank you 7bridges: I just couldn’t have managed it by myself.

Thank you James Cameron: yes, I still cry with that film, why are you doing this to me?

Format XML like a pro

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Years ago I wrote about a custom function that uses shell-command-on-region to run xmllint on an XML buffer.

There is nothing wrong with this function, but a simpler approach is using reformatter, a nice tool from the prolific mind of Steve Purcell.

Once installed, defining a new formatter is trivial:

(reformatter-define xml-format
  :program "xmllint"
  :args '("--format" "-")
  :mode nil)

Now I can add a key binding for xml-format or simply type M-x xml-format in an XML buffer to have it nicely printed.

Note that setting :mode to nil tells reformatter-define to not create a minor mode, which I don’t need in this particular case. The minor mode could be useful if you want your formatter to be called automatically when you save a buffer. For instance, without changing the default setting for :mode you could set up the formatter in a project via .dir-locals.el with:

((nxml-mode
  (mode . xml-format-on-save)))

You can also specify other options when creating a formatter, so be sure to check the documentation of reformatter-define (C-h f reformatter-define).

Motivate yourself

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 06 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Life is such an ephemeral thing. When you really think about it, the time spent on the planet we are destroying day after day is not that much, especially compared to the entire history of humankind. Luckily enough, I can allow myself to indulge in thoughts about life and time. I tend to avoid laziness as much as possible, saving spare time for gratifying leisure: morning runs and basic workout, books, cinema, collecting vinyls, occasional cooking. I like to think of myself as someone who is not set on a predictable path for the rest of his life.

Lassi Kortela’s memento-mori has recently appeared on MELPA. It’s a small package which aims to display your age in the mode-line. The age is displayed with two decimals and it gets updated after a few days once you turned on memento-mori-mode. Thus you have a reminder of how long you have been on Earth, a somehow inspirational indicator to question the time at your disposal. We are entering philosophical worlds here.

However, I don’t like having too much stuff in my mode-line. I want it simple and with only the information I need. That’s why I use minions to hide all the minor-modes. But I can still use memento-mori to display a message on Emacs startup.

(defun mu-display-memento-mori ()
  "Display my current age by leveraging `memento-mori-age-string'."
  (interactive)
  (let ((first-name (car (s-split-words user-full-name)))
        (age (s-trim memento-mori-age-string))
        (msg "%s, you are %s, don't waste your time!"))
    (run-with-timer 2 nil
                    (lambda ()
                      (message msg first-name age)
                      (run-with-timer 3 nil
                                      (lambda ()
                                        (message nil)))))))

I am using s facilities to manipulate strings, but more importantly the trick is using run-with-timer as explained on Emacs.StackExchange. After two seconds, the message is shown, and three seconds after being visible it will disappear.

Provided you set memento-mori-birth-date and activate memento-mori-mode, adding the function to after-init-hook does the rest.

Note that you need to activate lexical binding in your init file to use mu-display-memento-mori.¹

Thanks to Martin Buchmann for pointing this out. ↩︎

Questioning the future

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A work of art is ever-changing. It never ceases to approach you in unexpected ways and, even when you know what is coming, a work of art knows that it can surprise your mental agility in an instant. It’s as living as the artist, and just as the artist explores different directions, a work of art moves and challenges you constantly. If it doesn’t move or it stops fighting, then there is little art involved in it.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001)

A recent review of A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Alec Lane prompted me to reacquaint with a fundamental piece of my love for cinema. Lane’s write-up is not only the best commentary on A.I. I’ve ever read,¹ it also makes a convincing and beautifully thought point: there is more Steven Spielberg than Stanley Kubrick at play here, and only Spielberg could have taken the film to its incredible heights.

This is such a fascinating take for me, because I’ve always thought of A.I. as a film from two minds. I superficially attributed the first and third act to Kubrick, and the second, longish one to Spielberg. My error was the consequence of the limited knowledge of Spielberg’s career I had until recent years. I deemed him a somewhat too dully popular and happy-ending seeker, so my view on his works had been impeded by such unjustified snobbery.

However, A.I. felt immediately special. After the first viewing, it became a fixation. I devoured the special contents on the two-disc DVD edition, collected articles and books about and at the basis of it, bought the Blu-ray, repeatedly annoyed everyone around me over the years, and wrote about it on one of my long-lost affairs with blogging.²

Why do I feel compelled to revisit A.I. so much? It has to do with its nature. The more I grow old, the more I read and learn. The more I know, the more I find in the film. Surely this is a process applicable to many other films as well, but it’s particularly gratifying with A.I. because there seems to be no end at the angles from which it can be looked at. The fairy tale as an allegory is just the first step. As soon as you start peeling layers away, A.I. offers questions, more than answers, on pathos and ethos, immortality and spirituality, hierarchies and preservation, race and manipulation, science and technocracy, parenthood and childhood, the fallacy of memory and the poignancy of loss, the future and our responsibility towards it. The questions come viewing after viewing, the answers must be looked for elsewhere. The fact that a film can provoke thoughts on life and time, while pushing me to dig further to understand the topics it is covering, makes it instantly invaluable.

A.I. has changed over the years. At first it appeared to me as intelligent entertainment, a smart blockbuster from a popular cinema mastermind often misunderstood. Then it started raising philosophical issues, pointing its fingers at the viewers and the world around them, while long due appreciation for the craftsmanship eventually begun. Finally, it placed itself as a unique piece of science fiction, unparalleled ever since and standing firm as one of Spielberg’s most accomplished works—if not the most accomplished one.

I already explored the unpredictability of judgement, but there is more than a shift in opinions here. A.I. poses itself as a demanding work of art. It can never be completely grasped, because we are never an absolute. We face art at different points in time, just as art reflects the times when it comes to life. But it’s only when art grows old and overcomes the days immediately following its creation and reception that we are confronted with something more intimate than an expression of beauty. Art brings us to self-discovery and understanding, positioning itself as the necessary means to make sense of what is to come.

It outclasses Jonathan Rosenbaum’s famous The Best of Both Worlds too. ↩︎
I archived a copy of it. Feel free to contact me if you want to read it. ↩︎

Getting ready for Heart of Clojure

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Quick announcement.

I’m going to be in Leuven from 1 to 3 August, ready to enjoy Heart of Clojure.

I’ve been following the development of the conference since the first announcements, and the awesome team behind it has been keeping me really excited along the way. The incredible variety of topics in the program is already enough to skyrocket my expectations.

As I did with Dutch Clojure Days last year, I’ll take notes diligently and report my experience here as soon as I get back.

If you fancy wise Clojure chats or wild Emacs ramblings, get in touch. There is a dedicated #heartofclojure channel on Clojurians which I’ve already joined, or you can always rely on good old emails.

See you there, Clojurists!

Bury shell buffers

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I refactored my windows restoring configuration in order to pass the prefix argument around. This is a nice solution to leverage my wrappers for commands like shell, but I can push it a little further.

I have already discussed a couple of functions to restore my windows configuration when I exit a fullframed buffer.

(defun mu-restore-window-configuration (config)
  "Kill current buffer and restore window configuration in CONFIG."
  (interactive)
  (kill-this-buffer)
  (set-window-configuration config))

(defun mu-pop-window-configuration ()
  "Restore previous window configuration and clear current window."
  (interactive)
  (let ((config (pop mu-saved-window-configuration)))
    (if config
        (mu-restore-window-configuration config)
      (if (> (length (window-list)) 1)
          (delete-window)
        (bury-buffer)))))

However, with these functions the buffer I am leaving gets killed. This is fine when moving away from, say, Ibuffer or Paradox, but it’s less than optimal for shell buffers which may be running a long-run process.

Once again, the prefix argument can help:

(defun mu--restore-window-configuration (config &optional bury-buffer)
  "Kill current buffer and restore the window configuration in CONFIG.
With BURY-BUFFER bury the buffer instead of killing it."
  (if bury-buffer
      (bury-buffer)
    (kill-this-buffer))
  (set-window-configuration config))

(defun mu-pop-window-configuration (&optional bury-buffer)
  "Restore the previous window configuration and clear current window.
With BURY-BUFFER bury the buffer instead of killing it."
  (interactive "P")
  (let ((config (pop mu--saved-window-configuration)))
    (if config
        (mu--restore-window-configuration config bury-buffer)
      (if (> (length (window-list)) 1)
          (delete-window)
        (bury-buffer)))))

Now that the functions can make use of the prefix argument, I just need to call them properly from a shell buffer:

(defun mu-shell-bury ()
  "Bury the shell window."
  (interactive)
  (let ((current-prefix-arg 4))
    (call-interactively #'mu-pop-window-configuration)))

I’ve bound this to C-c C-q, so I can still kill a shell buffer using C-x k (kill-this-buffer in my configuration) if needed.

What Is Democracy?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It would take you probably about five minutes to figure out how poor my knowledge of politics and philosophy is. In terms of politics, I know what is happening in my country and in the rest of the world thanks to RSS feeds that track a little selection of online newspapers among other things, but that’s it. And when it comes to philosophy, I only have a couple of books from Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Singer to display.

What Is Democracy? (Astra Taylor, 2018)

Nevertheless, Astra Taylor reaches me. Through the pages of her wonderful last book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, she reveals the history of democracy and whatever has happened to it through ages of enormous changes. She makes every topic accessible, every argument clear, and every ramification of politics and philosophy a lucid fact even an untrained mind like mine can comprehend. I am not sure she intended the book to be read before or after the accompanying film What Is Democracy?,¹ but together they form a compelling and vital reflection on today’s world.

While the book covers a wide range of issues and matters, What Is Democracy? focuses on the United States and Greece, using their current situations to reason about the state of democracy today. The rise of Donald Trump and the fall of Alexis Tsipras are not explained matter-of-factly. On the one hand, we are shown the poor understanding of society within the US middle class which paved the way for Trump. On the other, we see Tsipras promising a new era for Greece before surrendering to Europe demands. While condemnation could come easy, Taylor prefers to question causes and consequences with the help of scholars and activists such as Wendy Brown, Angela Davis, Efimia Karakantza, and Cornel West to name a few.

Moreover, she balances highbrow ruminations with voices from the streets. Hence we get to understand the annihilating prison environment of the US and the inhumane treatment of Syrian refugees by first-hand witnesses. These are the victims of everyday democracy, and their experiences are further proofs of the state of the world we live in. Obviously they are a few among many, but Taylor is singling out the prison system and immigration, rightly pointing her finger to some of the most complex and misunderstood aberrations of recent history.

Quotes from Plato’s Republic introduce the investigations as much as questioning them, and as Taylor guides us through the origins of democracy in ancient Greece, we are left marvelling at the vision that the Greeks carved out of their imaginations. The director seems to offer a probably obvious, but ever so relevant, answer to the crisis of democracy: we need to rediscover what was done in the past to grasp the present and work for a better future. The various inquiries of What Is Democracy? are also interspersed by discussions² between the director and scholar Silvia Federici on the frescoes The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, which makes for an impressive parallel with much of what is happening around us nowadays.

Astra Taylor quotes Gramsci’s famous words on optimism and pessimism³ in her book, and the film feels much like an exploration of pessimism and optimism. We have every reason to be pessimists, because unless we are purposely blind we cannot negate the inequalities within states and among peoples. And yet we can and should be optimists as well, because something can be done and we have the means to right the wrongs. Taylor’s images and words place a mirror in front of our conscience. What we see is what we get.

Depending on where you live, the film is available for streaming here. Since I couldn’t stream it, I bought the digital copy from the same website. ↩︎
Updated and expanded in Silvia Federici in Conversation with Astra Taylor. ↩︎
“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” ― Gramsci’s Prison Letters. ↩︎

Passing the prefix argument around

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last year I blogged about a solution to a common problem I had with windows in Emacs. I wanted to be able to exit particular fullframed buffers and restore the windows as they were before opening those buffers.

The core of my solution is the following function:

(defun mu-save-wins-then-call (func &optional args)
  "Save current window configuration, then call FUNC optionally with ARGS."
  (interactive)
  (push (current-window-configuration) mu-saved-window-configuration)
  (cond
   ;; We have arguments for the function
   ((bound-and-true-p args) (funcall func args))
   ;; The function requires exactly one argument, and we want it to be nil
   ((equal args "nil") (funcall func nil))
   ;; The function does not expect arguments
   (t (funcall func))))

This function works fine for most of my cases, but it doesn’t take the prefix argument into account. Since I rely heavily on shell-mode, at times I need to open more than one shell buffer, and the documentation of the shell command specifies that the prefix argument can be used to open new buffers on demand:

Run an inferior shell, with I/O through BUFFER (which defaults to `shell'). Interactively, a prefix arg means to prompt for BUFFER.

Hence, I need to mimic C-u M-x shell in mu-save-wins-then-call:

(defun mu-save-wins-then-call (func &optional args)
  "Save current window configuration, then call FUNC optionally with ARGS."
  (interactive "P")
  (push (current-window-configuration) mu--saved-window-configuration)
  (cond
   ;; We have the prefix argument
   ((= (prefix-numeric-value args) 4)
    (let ((current-prefix-arg 4))
      (call-interactively func)))
   ;; We have arguments for the function
   ((or (bound-and-true-p args) 
        (stringp args)) 
    (funcall func args))
   ;; The function does not expect arguments
   (t (funcall func))))

Now I can open as many fullframed shell buffers as I want with C-u F1:

(defun mu-shell-open (&optional new-buffer)
  "Save window configuration and call `shell'.
With NEW-BUFFER open a new buffer."
  (interactive "P")
  (mu-save-wins-then-call #'shell new-buffer))

(with-eval-after-load 'shell
  (fullframe shell mu-pop-window-configuration))

(bind-key "<f1>" mu-shell-open)

mu-pop-window-configuration is detailed over at Restoring the window configuration in Emacs.

Breaking the balance

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

M. Night Shyamalan is a peculiar subject in contemporary cinema. He helms his films most of the times, controlling writing, direction, and production, while often relying on the help of recurring collaborators. He devised his own recognizable style, and he has been showing interests in different genres with developing fascination for the psychological and the spiritual.

Interestingly, Shyamalan’s career is one of highs and lows. The box office has usually proved the director right on his path, but popular criticism seems to think otherwise.¹ Most of his efforts, especially the ones where he tries to approach new material (e.g., The Happening and After Earth), have been panned by critics.

Glass (M. Night Shyamalan, 2019)

Glass is the third chapter of Shyamalan’s Unbreakable trilogy, and arguably the most complex in terms of narrative, style, and themes explored. It’s here that Shyamalan unravels the ties between David Dunn, Kevin Wendell Crumb, and Elijah Price, but Glass is not content in offering a quick solution to the enigma that started twenty years ago. On the contrary, Shyamalan uses the platform of his own creation to subvert the superheroes cinematic universe. It does so not by pointing out the failures of other films, but by showing the way to an alternative kind of writing and directing.

One has to look no further than the beginning to appreciate Shyamalan’s effort to find something new. The Overseer (Dunn) and The Beast (Crumb), the hero of Unbreakable and the villain of Split respectively, meet and fight each other without the time to process the fact that Shyamalan is deliberately avoiding the setup for an epic, final battle between good and evil. And if this isn’t enough, he ends the fight abruptly and shuts his heroes in a mental institution for the rest of Glass, opting for a slow investigation of their psyche instead of abandoning them to a relentless action feast.

Glass is roughly divided into three acts. The first ends with the aforementioned capturing of Dunn and Crumb, the second ends with Mr. Glass ingeniously setting himself, Crumb, and Dunn free, and the third is the final confrontation.

The first act seems to be only a prologue, and apparently it doesn’t offer the psychological nuances of the second one and the twists of the third, but it’s not so simple. Joseph Dunn, David’s son, has become a grown-up and yet he is still profoundly attached to his father, one co-dependent on the other. The death of Audrey Dunn removed the figure of the mother and the wife from the family, and despite being only hinted at the consequences on the relationship between David and Joseph cannot be underestimated. The bond is stronger because they only have each other to rely upon, but it also lacks the feminine rationality that could help ground imagination and dreams of virile justice. Then we have Casey Cooke, the only survivor of the collective sacrifice Kevin Crumb and his personalities were devising for The Beast in Split. The trauma of abuse in her private life reflects the history of abuses that has altered Crumb’s mind, and the powerful linkage between the two that ended up saving Cooke before turns out to be unbreakable in spite of the horror she has witnessed. As in the case of Audrey’s death, Shyamalan only hints at Cooke’s attachment to Crumb, but again it will prove pivotal.

Glass engages the viewer in a long, overtly critical, deconstruction of myth and belief. Albeit a subterfuge for a bigger plan, the second act is a constant push to hold one’s true nature back. Psychiatry is used as a means to suppress inner abilities, because the possibility of something so out of the ordinary is inconceivable much like an extraordinary truth. By subjugating her patients Dr. Ellie Staple is exercising control over unnatural forces, hence playing the role of God that science frequently allows humans to enact. Shyamalan turns this critical observation against us, making both the doctor and the protagonists look at the camera in medium and medium close-up shots. The point of view keeps shifting between observers and observed, analyst and patient, hunter and prey, complicating relations and sympathies by juxtaposing good and evil without clear distinctions. This circularity is mirrored in the acts of coercion we see: superheroes are forced to be humans, humans are pressured to be superheroes, victims are manipulated to confuse other victims. The freedom of choice is mined by reasonable doubt until the urge to control reveals itself as the supreme power in the third act.

The third act is where all the pieces come together. It’s a showdown, but as deceitful as anything the trilogy has showed us so far. We understand what Mr. Glass had in mind, but more importantly we realise that heroes and villains are one and the same. Shyamalan reflects on the privacy deprivation of our technology-aided age and on the abilities in terms of communication it grants. Eventually, technology proves to be both fatal and a chance of hope, a man-made super power capable of multiplying the eyes of the oppressor and the mouths of the rebels at the same time. Technology is the tool that makes connectivity possible. Through connections we can overcome our inner barriers, find each other, and consequently ourselves.

See the critical reception as reported on Wikipedia. ↩︎

Better colours in Emacs shell

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I have ve been using shell-mode regularly for almost two years now. It has helped me a lot in staying focused on what I’ve been doing in Emacs instead of switching back and forth between the buffer and GNOME Terminal.

A recent discovery made shell-mode even snappier and more pleasant to use: xterm-color.

By simply following the guidelines in the README you get a working setup for shell-mode. Note that there are also examples for EShell and compilation buffers, so it’s up to you to decide where you want to use xterm-color.

Honestly I complied. I only changed the default colours to match those of my favourite theme:

(defvar mu--tomorrow-night-colours ["#1d1f21" "#cc6666"
                                    "#b5bd68" "#f0c674"
                                    "#81a2be" "#b294bb"
                                    "#8abeb7" "#c5c8c6"])
(setq xterm-color-names mu--tomorrow-night-colours
      xterm-color-names-bright mu--tomorrow-night-colours)

By the way, the ls alias I was using is not needed any more.

Reducing a book and enlarging TV

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 28 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

No film has ever had a more traumatizing impact on me than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I remember fondly the day I found a lousy Italian DVD, because it felt like a smart and lucky move. Two cents for the forbidden fruit. The 14" CRT television in my bedroom could not contain the power coming from that rotten and perverse images.

That’s why I’ve stayed away from Tobe Hooper for such a long time and have hardly registered his death in 2017. Then I stumbled upon occasional praises for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on Letterboxd, which took me back to that infamous day. A sign, I thought. I bought the fortieth anniversary restoration Blu-ray and let Hooper take care of my nightmares once again. The film’s power is still intact, but this time I was able to appreciate it for the incredible work that it is. Furthermore, it urged me to explore Hooper’s career.

Of his many efforts, I want to single out the mini-series Salem’s Lot as the centre of this writing. It ranks among the best Hooper had to offer and it develops themes and stylistic choices that either would come up later in his films or represent variations on the director’s regular obsessions.

Salem's Lot (Tobe Hooper, 1979)

Salem’s Lot is Hooper’s first attempt at finding his place in a made-for-television production, and it remains the best example of his struggle to find a good compromise between his vision and the limits of the medium. The script was handed to him, adapted from Stephen King’s book by Paul Monash, who had already worked on De Palma’s Carrie, and heavily modified by producer Richard Kobritz, who wanted Hooper behind the camera after a screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Kobritz also had his hands on the casting, the special effects, and the score, building boundaries for Hooper along the way to the final cut.¹ However, it’s precisely in this enclosed environment that watching Hooper operate becomes fascinating, especially considering how inferior his subsequent encounters with television have been and the troublesome relation with the producers on Eaten Alive two years before. He had only his craftsmanship and his understanding of King’s novel to work with.

The book takes its time to get the reader acquainted with ‘Salem’s Lot and its inhabitants. There is a constant friction between who everyone appears to be and what really happens in their life. This layer of secrecy is carefully attacked by the most beloved hobby practised anywhere in the world: gossip. Gossip spares nobody, and King devotes pages to let us know the poor privacy anyone can get in his imaginary town. Salem’s Lot’s script overlooks this subject, but Hooper does not. In place of the omniscient narrator and the chats over the telephone of the novel, Hooper uses his camera as a curious eye, an eye which misses nothing and oversees everybody and everything. It’s as if we are entering uninvited the townspeople’s lives, witnessing adultery, alcoholism, school play rehearsals, dinners with guests, and new-born romances.

Monash and Kobritz conflate different characters into few individuals, reducing complexities to accommodate the 3-hour duration. This functions on a narrative level only insofar as we do not expect characters such as Mike Ryerson and Ned Tibbets² to be something other than victims. They get little screen time, and there is no room for Hooper to develop them. The Norton family loses much of its appeal too, leaving us with bits of Ann Norton’s conservatism. The script rushes to introduce the vampires, and it’s up to Hooper to ensure the mystery surrounding Richard Straker and Kurt Barlow is a primary concern for everyone in ‘Salem’s Lot. Hooper resorts to an eerie awkwardness that levitates between two characters as they talk of seemingly simple matters. He used this device before, and here he obviously could not push it to the extremes of his two previous works, but it’s enough to make some conversations memorably weird (e.g., the exchanges between Richard Straker and Constable Parkins Gillespie).

The most striking difference between the mini-series and the book can be seen in the complete transformation of the main villains. Except for the violent killing of Bill Norton, the powerfully menacing Richard Straker becomes a witty old man rarely scaring as he should be. Hooper plays with the black of his clothes and the shadows of the night to remind us of who Straker really is. Straker works in spite of the script, and it’s only because of Hooper. Kurt Barlow, on the other hand, undergoes a great turn. He becomes a silent, overreaching entity, the incarnation of evil as the greater unknown.

Even if it takes more than a viewing to appreciate the subtle, personal touch of Hooper in Salem’s Lot, the design and pretty much all the scenes in the Marsten House uncover him leaving no traces of doubt. From the floors and the skeletons of dead animals to the camera movements when Susan Norton and Mark Petrie enter the building, the Marsten House is lifted from King’s pages and reinvented through the imagination of a director who would always be interested in ambiguous spaces.

One can only wonder what Salem’s Lot could be were Hooper given the chance to run amok. Nonetheless, it remains a fine example of a work imposed on a director whose resourcefulness could barely be contained by a non-strictly art-related mind.

Richard Kobritz is the first name to appear as the ending credits start. ↩︎
Floyd Tibbets and Matt Burke are strangely renamed for the mini-series. ↩︎

It never occurred to me

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 14 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Years of Emacs, and I am still learning something new that improves my daily workflow.

Recently I’ve had to deal with CSV files, generated by a little Clojure program using data from different databases. The CSV files are then imported in another database through a new shiny application bought by our customer. Data integration, exactly.

While the data extraction is just a matter of SQL queries, the CSV files must match the stringent requirements of the new application. We ended up with messy CSV files, close but not that close to the expected results. Needless to say, sometimes we have to edit the files manually, and this is where Emacs once again shines.

The problem is simple: how can I list only the matches I am looking for in a CSV file, without printing the whole lines the matches belong to? I need a clean list of occurrences, nothing more, because debugging these files is already painful as it is.

I am so used to swiper-isearch and counsel-rg that I tend to forget Emacs built-in occur. As per the documentation:

When NLINES is a string or when the function is called interactively with prefix argument without a number (`C-u' alone as prefix) the matching strings are collected into the *Occur* buffer by using NLINES as a replacement regexp.

Hence, I just need to:

press C-u M-s o (or the equivalent but longish of C-u M-x occur)
type the string I am looking for
hit RET

It doesn’t get easier than this.

Visualising music

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A work of art reveals an artist ego just as much as it uncovers her persona. Since 4 in 2011, there is more of Beyoncé’s ego and persona in every song she creates. Free from the ties with the father-manager Mathew Knowles, she has looked inward for intimacy and outward for influences. She has found a mature voice, but she has also brought out traits of her identity that stardom can easily garble.

With Beyoncé two years later, she continued down the intimacy path exploring darker corners and another set of musical references. The secrecy surrounding the recording sessions was a self-imposed compartmentalization to explore sides of herself her public persona had obscured by then. She was not the first artist seeking privacy, but considering the degree of exposure fame imposes on a star this big, it felt like the natural approach to developing creative freedom. Beyoncé is also the album where she began building and expanding on the themes of her music by way of visuals. As compelling as they were, they still feel like try-outs compared to 2016’s Lemonade.

Musically, Lemonade is Beyoncé at her most eclectic to date. The span of styles is greater than ever before, but everything fits together so nicely you would think of a concept album even if nobody told you that it was thought as one. As if not happy with an already outstanding effort—a whole record instead of a collection of Spotify-ready tunes, are you serious!?— Beyoncé pushes the music video experience to the next step of its evolution.

A music video is a strange object. In my MTV-fuelled teenage days, I remember skimming through music video channels numbly, partially aware of the music, partially aware of the visuals. It would be hard now to remember the ones that really left a mark on me, and little I understood back then of the marketing effect of these products and the difference between self-promotion and the art in it.

The visuals for Lemonade are more than beautifully produced video-companions of singled-out tracks. It’s a complete film, a stand-alone experience in which Beyoncé uses the poetry and prose of Warsan Shire to articulate eleven chapters of her own history. She pays homage to folklore, traditions, and black power, while leveraging blackness and femininity. At the same time, she is displaying respect for what came before her and what is out there right now, transforming the cracks in her marriage into starting points for several possible stories, the whole greater than the single parts. No other popular music artist has ever reached this far in terms of understanding the film medium and working with it instead of letting it work for you. It’s both the end of the music video era as we knew it and the last nail on the rock’n’roll coffin.

However, Beyoncé is not done with writing history. Enthusiasm about her revolutionary performance at last year’s Coachella was still flying high on the Web when Homecoming landed on Netflix on April 17. The next day lists of the greatest concert films of all time were being updated to include it, and rightly so.

A concert film is a strange object. In my music-charged teenage days, I used to buy live concert DVDs. Some of them are still here, and I’d pick Björk’s Live at Royal Opera House if you asked me to show you the one I watched the most. Then came Stop Making Sense and Sign o’ the Times, and I eventually came to understand the difference between a recorded performance and the art of producing it.

Homecoming is a concert film like nothing before it. It lacks the visceral precision of Stop Making Sense and the controlled grandeur of Sign o’ the Times, but this doesn’t mean Beyoncé is carefree and amateurish. Homecoming, which she wrote, directed, and executive produced, is all about control, albeit not the technical control of Jonathan Demme or the creative control of Prince. Beyoncé is controlling the narrative, and she is articulating her story once again by putting a mirror in front of herself. The vanity of a pop star bathing in the joy of her fans, the giants that shaped her body of work, the personal struggles and the achievements. She doesn’t shy away from anything, but she obviously unveils only what she considers valuable to the understanding of her project. Homecoming is about birth, but it’s about rebirth too. Much in the same way she explored a black woman’s identity in Lemonade, here she is questioning the opportunities and the outcomes laid out in front of the same black woman. Where is she from? How did she arrive here? More importantly, where is she now?

This is where Homecoming offers itself as the missing piece of the concert films realm. Beyoncé doesn’t need to reinvent marketing solutions to sell more albums, nor has she to prove to anyone the strength of her live performances. She could actually just sit and collect the money from the hits created in more than twenty years. Instead, she’s still asking the same question that opened Crazy in Love, the beginning of her solo career: “You ready?”.

Digital minimalism

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I reached a point in my life where it’s necessary to rethink my digital habits. It happened before, of course, but in some way or another I’ve never done something useful to actively tackle my tech-addictions.

In my defence, a smartphone entered my life only by way of a birthday present in 2016. I had resisted until then for two reasons: I spend most of the day in front of a screen already, and sociability is not my strongest skill. Three years later, I am still far from being a smartphone enthusiast. Besides occasional phone calls, I seldom check it during the day. I keep messaging at a bare minimum, and there are only a couple of applications nudging me with notifications.

Therefore, the smartphone is not to blame for my compulsively click-driven life. The big giants like Facebook and Twitter don’t matter either, because I stopped using them a long while ago. The problem is everything else. Aggregating RSS feeds seemed like the right move at the beginning, but checking them everyday has turned out to be a time-consuming experience much like browsing news websites to keep up to date. Reddit lures me in constantly, even though the small percentage of valuable content just reminds me of Twitter. GitHub usually offers more click-worthy updates, but the repositories I deem interesting are far less than the uninteresting ones. Letterboxd, a staple of my cinema obsession, may be the worse in this regard; its Activity tab is the drug I can’t resist, and yet I usually find no more than a couple of beautiful reviews a week.

All these considerations are the outcome of reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Newport’s writing style is at times too pedantic and close to spoon-feeding, but his book highlights potentially effective solutions to escape the miring web of my networking routines. The decluttering process Newport suggests is a difficult task. Depending on the depth of your online addiction, it requires several levels of confidence and willpower, because you know that fighting your own vices is a painful endeavour.

I experienced something similar when I left Twitter behind. I had always valued Twitter more for the network of like-minded people than the chance to share how I feel in a precise moment, and so Twitter had become my go-to reference for film and technology updates. After I deleted my account, I remember asking myself over and over again: am I missing something important? Will I be able to keep up with everyday trends? These questions were always in the back of my head, poking me every time I heard Twitter mentioned somewhere. It took a couple of weeks, maybe three, to realise how much time and peace of mind I gained from a life without Twitter. And I did find the answer to those questions eventually: who cares?

With this precious experience in mind, I treasured Newport’s tips and followed these key steps:

cut down my RSS feeds to twenty entries and check them only twice a week
remove Reddit from my computer and from my phone
remove GitHub from my phone and use it only for work and open source projects
access Letterboxd for my writings and check the rest of the community once a week

The trick, as Newport points out, is not just understanding what you value most and whether technology helps you get it or not, but occupying the spare time with something else, possibly unrelated to technology. And so, in my case, it means more time with my wife, longer walks with our dog, more writing, more cooking, and more books. Rewarding leisure, and it’s just the beginning.

Note that I am simplifying Newport’s pages for the sake of brevity, because there is more to his idea of decluttering. Bluntly put, if you are reading this on your phone start looking for Digital Minimalism now.

As daunting as it may look, minimizing our digital consumption is the best way to really and deeply connect with the world around us.

A soldier of cinema

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I remember quite vividly how I ditched Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers at the 69th Venice International Film Festival. My job was writing a reportage on the Asian films selection, but that’s a poor excuse for my behaviour, because I could have easily organised my schedule to catch it. But I didn’t trust the “enfant terrible” label thrown around whenever the name Harmony Korine came up, and I wasn’t particular interested in Disney starlets. The fuss was too much for me, and instead of titillating my curiosity, it made me look away.

Years passed, times a-changed. Last month, I found the Blu-ray of Spring Breakers at a cheap price, and I remembered how much I had been learning from my cinephile mistakes in the last couple of years. I bought it, convinced that I was now ready for whatever Harmony Korine had planned for me. I stood corrected.

Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)

There are two separate occasions where Harmony Korine defines himself as a “soldier of cinema”. One is in the Spring Breakers making-of,¹ and the other at the film Q&A in London on April 2013. It’s an interesting choice of words, because it takes the bravery of a soldier to never give up one’s own idea of cinema. It also implies a broader battle with an industry that favours conformism in place of experimentation, a war with a machine that eats talents and spews standards. Finally, it casts a bold light on Spring Breakers and Korine’s career.

Since his days as a scriptwriter for Larry Clark’s Kids, Korine has been particularly fascinated by characters unable to cope with the world around them. Outcasts, misfits, marginalized teenagers. His favourite films are telling of his background and what he looks for in cinema: the cracks in the society around him. However, truth doesn’t interest him. He favours a style which relies heavily on improvisation and gut-feeling, and which indulges in spur-of-the-moment events instead of linear narrative. He doesn’t shy away from intimacy, but it’s not for voyeuristic pleasure. Intimacy is linked both with tenderness and suffering, and he’s at his highest when he strikes the balance between the two.

This is a balance he had been looking for up until Spring Breakers. He leaned on the suffering side in Gummo and julien donkey-boy, and he exploited tenderness maybe a bit too much on Mister Lonely. The anarchy of Trash Humpers covers the suffering with mayhem, but the pain is still there albeit in deviant form. It’s only with Spring Breakers that the pieces he had been collecting for twenty years² finally fit together.³

These pieces come from everywhere and relate to anything: exposed and manipulated beauty reminds me of the bodily provocations of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls; Disney stars and specific Britney Spears references bring back the pop-cynic time-machine of Joseph Kahn’s Detention; drug abuse comes from the social punches of Alan Clarke’s filmography; bigger-than-you lives on the edge embrace the abstract hedonism of Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish; the relation between Alien and the girls summons the dangerously vibrant affair of Bernardo Bertolucci’s La Luna; and the much desired escapade is just like the impossible dream of Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud. With compassionate love, Korine clashes his influences altogether, mashes them up, and finds the peculiarity of his voice.

Nonetheless, Korine doesn’t stop at savvy nods and nerdy winks. Actually, he is not interested in pushing quotations down the viewer’s throat, because, by his own admission, he is not a video brat. The difference between Harmony Korine and Quentin Tarantino, or between Harmony Korine and Kevin Smith, is that the cultural context plays both a relevant and an irrelevant part. In 2012 everything from popular culture that inhabits Spring Breakers was fashionably around us. Korine picked the trend-setters of the time and had fun with them. He did not, however, insert the film into a precise time-capsule. For instance, Clerks cannot be looked at without thinking of the 90s. In this respect, Korine reaches out for the timelessness of Michael Mann or Terrence Malick. He is in the present just as much as he is in the future. Watch Spring Breakers now for the first time and you may loose the relevance of the celebrity discourse, but you sure won’t miss the degeneration of disillusioned youth.

Part of what makes Harmony Korine one of the most relevant American directors today is his unwillingness to compromise. He seems determined to pursue his fantasies without receding once, facing both praises and critiques with eyes that are already thinking about the next step. Or maybe not. Maybe he is just enjoying the ride and not really thinking about it at all.

Not the one on the Blu-ray, but the one on the DVD contained in the 2 disc special edition. ↩︎
Kids was released on 1995, but Korine wrote the script in 1993. ↩︎
I haven’t seen The Beach Bum yet. ↩︎

Switching buffers (Take 2)

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last month I wrote about the neat nswbuff, but there is another way to implement buffer switching without introducing a new package.

Since I already use counsel-projectile, why not leverage it to my needs?

(defun mu-switch-to-project-buffer-if-in-project (arg)
    "Custom switch to buffer.
With universal argument ARG or when not in project, rely on
`ivy-switch-buffer'.
Otherwise, use `counsel-projectile-switch-to-buffer'."
    (interactive "P")
    (if (or arg
            (not (projectile-project-p)))
        (ivy-switch-buffer)
      (counsel-projectile-switch-to-buffer)))

(bind-key* "C-x b" #'mu-switch-to-project-buffer-if-in-project)

Pretty self-explanatory. By default, when not in a project counsel-projectile-switch-to-buffer asks you for the project to switch to.

However, if I am not in a project chances are I want to switch to a buffer that doesn’t belong to a project, especially since I usually enter a project before switching to one of its buffers.

nswbuff has previews and back-and-forth navigation, so it still offers a nicer solution to buffer switching. This is Emacs, of course, so you know the deal: endless possibilities.

The Thin Apocalypse

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When I was a kid, my grandfather was always watching westerns and war films. I remember fondly the day when he asked for my VHS of Saving Private Ryan, because it was a bit of a laugh. He took the VHS, went back downstairs, and put it on as loudly as possible. The house turned into Omaha Beach.

We used to disagree on our favourite war film. The Longest Day was his number one, while Full Metal Jacket was mine. He couldn’t stand Full Metal Jacket, and he never did come to appreciate Apocalypse Now which, as soon as I discovered it, replaced Kubrick’s work in my heart.

The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)

I don’t know now if my grandfather has ever watched Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, but we would probably disagree about it too. Well, now anyway, because when Malick’s come back occurred, I was still under the spell of Saving Private Ryan. Young and naive, I didn’t even notice The Thin Red Line, and when I approached it for the first time, Saving Private Ryan was already gone for good from my mind and Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam was my new religion.

Predictably, The Thin Red Line didn’t click at all for me. I didn’t understand what Malick was trying to say about the war, nor the reason behind his method. It didn’t help knowing nothing about his previous two films, and it didn’t help entering The Thin Red Line looking for Apocalypse Now. So long, Terry, said the slightly less naive than before—but still very much without a clue—cinephile. Since then, I have skipped his new releases dumbly grinning every time, so convinced that he was not and never could be a part of my idea of cinema. Once again I was wrong.

I always go back to the holes in my cinephilia, especially on the ones I created on purpose. Last December, I finally came to appreciate Malick thanks to The New World. It wasn’t enough, though, so recently for a couple of weeks I have immersed myself in his cinema. Starting from Song to Song, because I had to start somewhere, I spent those nights and many days after thinking and dreaming about Malick’s images and themes. The Thin Red Line came out on a totally different light, but, to my utter surprise, Apocalypse Now came out on a different light too.

As pointed out in a beautiful discussion on The Thin Red Line, there is an issue of “othering” which is rarely taken into account when works of art are discussed. That is to say, I’ve never encountered it before in the film criticism I regularly read.

“Othering” is a term that not only encompasses the many expressions of prejudice on the basis of group identities, but we argue that it provides a clarifying frame that reveals a set of common processes and conditions that propagate group-based inequality and marginality.¹

Seen through the lenses of othering, Apocalypse Now shows its cracks. The film focuses its and our eye on Captain Willard and his quest for Colonel Kurtz, therefore deliberately ignoring the essential component of the conflict: the Vietnamese people. Relegated to mere background of the main events, they are always seen from the point of view of the US soldiers. Marginalized both physically and psychologically, they have no voice. We are left with how they are perceived instead of how they really are. The inequalities are hidden away, and there is no question of identity because there is no identity to question.

The Thin Red Line begins operating on almost the same level. The monologues reveal the inner fights of the soldiers, the voice-overs claim our attention on the words before the images. The long, intense battle sequence mainly concerns the US soldiers’ perspective. It’s not until the C-for-Charlie Company conquers the Japanese bunkers that we see the enemies faces and understand their sense of the events. This is where the film starts flipping the position of the spectator. From our privileged position as viewers, we see what’s on the other side of the battle. We see human beings as desperate as the C-for-Charlie Company members, torn down by fatigue and absolutely unable to cope with everything around them in a rational way. Whatever the cause of the war, it’s irrelevant by now.

The effect is somehow even more devastating due to Malick’s choice of rendering these sorrowful moments in complete silence. Aside from the ever-present music, the carefully chosen sounds, and the bits of voice-over punctuating the scenes, we are left with our own devices in front of a horror that is universal, and not confined to the mind of a single character. We are shown an attachment to life and a belief in a greater hope that few other war films grant to the enemy. Gratuitous acts of violence then become not a display of power, but the only way to erase the guilt and the wounds. Even the teeth taken as souvenirs from the victims turn out to be a pointless reminder and have to be thrown away to remove the memory.

The Thin Red Line, like every other film by Terrence Malick, is much more complex than this, and cannot be easily reduced to a statement for othering. However, by exploring the effects of the war on everyone involved, Malick annuls the egocentric view of the heroes and puts forth the inhumanity in all its compelling nightmares.

See: The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging. ↩︎

Jump around

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I shared my preferred choice for buffer switching, so let’s keep jumping around. The House of Pain reference is a bit tacky, I know, but 90s nostalgia is still flying pretty high from what I’ve heard.

Quickly moving in a buffer is something every Emacs knight do multiple times a day. I distinguish in-buffer jumps in two tags:

jumps that encompass all the buffer content
jumps limited to what is currently visible

The first movements are covered by Oleh Krehel’s Swiper, but I am more interested in the second kind of jumps this time. There are plenty of solutions both bundled in Emacs (e.g., pop/mark commands) and in the wild. My favourite is Avy, again from Oleh Krehel.

(use-package avy-jump                   ; Jump to characters in buffers
  :ensure avy
  :bind (("C-j" . avy-goto-char-in-line)
         ("M-j" . avy-goto-char)))

As it always happens with Oleh’s packages, avy is well-documented, easy to extend, and full of useful commands. I only added bindings for the ones I use the most, and I really use these two all the time.

avy-goto-char allows me to move anywhere following the character I am after. It’s quicker than typing the whole candidate in Swiper, and obviously better than manually moving point with C-p/C-n or, worse, the arrow keys.

avy-goto-char-in-line behaves in much the same way, but it is limited to the current line. If you remember iy-go-to-char mentioned years ago on Emacs Rocks, this is Oleh’s own variant.

Both commands push point to the mark-ring, so the default Emacs key binding C-u C-SPC takes you back to your original position.

However, there is an even quicker alternative when I want to jump between occurrences of the symbol where point currently is, which turns out to be pretty handy when coding.

(use-package symbol-overlay             ; Highlight symbols
  :ensure t
  :bind (:map symbol-overlay-mode-map
              ("M-h" . symbol-overlay-put)
              ("M-n" . symbol-overlay-jump-next)
              ("M-p" . symbol-overlay-jump-prev))
  :hook ((conf-mode . symbol-overlay-mode)
         (html-mode . symbol-overlay-mode)
         (prog-mode . symbol-overlay-mode)
         (yaml-mode . symbol-overlay-mode)))

Symbol Overlay not only highlights all the occurrences of the current symbol, but it lets you move quickly among them with symbol-overlay-jump-prev and symbol-overlay-jump-next without asking for a character to look for.

Moreover, Symbol Overlay works on all the buffer content, so in this particular case is quicker than Swiper too.

Retelling is not for everyone

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Bohemian Rhapsody reminded me of how difficult it is to tell a story more or less well-known. Questions of accuracy, respect, and fan-service are inevitable, as inevitable is the pressure behind a work that must deal with a popular figure. Bohemian Rhapsody follows the conventional biopic path, unfolding mechanically like a Wikipedia entry. It limits itself to bits and pieces of a subject too complex to be tamed, and it fails miserably at showing us that there is more to Queen than a greatest hits collection.

Nonetheless, biopics have always fascinated me, especially since I am an avid reader of biographies and autobiographies. I enjoyed Control and Love & Mercy, and I loved Bird and I’m Not There. None of these has had the overwhelming power of Ivan the Terrible on me, but that’s because Sergei Eisenstein was not from this planet. Had he heard me calling his unfinished masterpiece a biopic, I am pretty sure he would have slapped me. The last biopic capable of shaking me up in a manner similar to Eisenstein’s was Michael Mann’s Ali. What takes Ali closer to Ivan the Terrible than to the other above-mentioned films is where the focus is.

Ali (Michael Mann, 2001)

Most of the time, biopics take few liberties. In the worst cases, they tend to resemble documentaries. Too close to the source material, too constrained in their view, they add little to nothing to the formulaic one-man show. It’s a pattern so obvious it has been mocked many times (e.g., Walk Hard). Ali defies this schema right from the start. In ten minutes of brilliant montage, with juxtapositions of music, boxing training, and episodes of the champion’s life, Mann avoids the “once upon a time…” cliché, contextualises his character, and then jumps straight into Ali’s turning point: the glorious fight with Sonny Liston. The fact that the film opens without a single word from Ali, a man as powerful with his voice and words as he was with his fists, feels like Mann immediately stating his position against the biopic genre.

But there is more on this beginning. In a conversation with Bilge Ebiri, Michael Mann singled out Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties by Mike Marqusee as the best book on Ali. Not so surprisingly, the book begins with the same Clay-Liston fight Ali does. I don’t think this is a geeky touch. On the contrary, I feel like Mann connected on more than one level with Marqusee’s pages, and decided to portray a complex figure without losing sight of the significance of the events that surrounded it. And that is why Ali deals with only ten years of Muhammand Ali’s life. With the cultural and historical era at the centre of the picture, we have a deeper sense of the nature of Muhammad Ali’s choices in the most important timespan of his life.

Mann never steps back from the possibilities in front of him. The afro-camera, as it is ironically referred to in the Making Of, is as simple as it is ingenious: placed on the head of the fighter, it puts the viewer in between the punches, augmenting our sense of participation in the drama called boxing. The trick is not to abuse of such a device, and Mann knows when to stop. And the same goes with the political implications: Mann hints, without confirming it nor denying it, at the FBI plot behind Malcolm X murder. It’s enough. It’s up to us, now. If only Freddie Mercury sexuality could have been treated with this cleverness.

This is the kind of personal involvement most biopics lack. Ali could not have been done by someone other than Michael Mann. His vision, his composition, his realism, his hero, his moments of tenderness. It’s all here. Never for a second you feel like these images come from a book, or like there is a documentary that tells it the same way but in a different style.

And then comes Will Smith. I won’t question Rami Malek preparation for the role of Freddie Mercury, although those ridiculous fake teeth still keep me up at night sometimes. I know Freddie Mercury’s voice is unique, but he was a unique persona too. Much like Muhammad Ali, which is why Will Smith’s performance is something Malek’s should have studied closely. True, Smith had the chance to have Muhammad Ali on the set, but instead of arbitrarily hiding sides of his vibrant personality, Smith and Mann bring everything out in subtle ways. His braggadocio, the complete transformation from Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali, his religious belief, his humour and his charm, his adultery. By the tonal shifts in the voice and the studied movements (the walk, the eyes), all the controversial traits of Ali emerge without compromising the nature of the film. At his best, Malek mimics Mercury’s flamboyant stage presence and mercurial temperament, but he stops there. There is one idea of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, and that’s all we get.

While Bohemian Rhapsody adds nothing to a trite custom, Ali redefines the biopic and it offers itself as one of the few, real alternatives to an annoyingly standardised approach to biographical material.

Switching buffers

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most valuable packages I rely on everyday is counsel-projectile. Combining the power of counsel and Projectile, this great work from Eric Danan has been governing my project management in Emacs for quite a while.

One nifty feature of counsel-projectile is counsel-projectile-switch-to-buffer, bound to C-c p b, which lets you pick the buffer to switch to from the current project’s open buffers.

However, old habits never die. Years and years of Ctrl-TAB and Ctrl-Shift-TAB in my web browser window are hard to forget. And so enters Joost Kremers’ nswbuff.

(use-package nswbuff                    ; Quick switching between buffers
  :ensure t
  :bind* (("<C-tab>"           . nswbuff-switch-to-next-buffer)
          ("<C-S-iso-lefttab>" . nswbuff-switch-to-previous-buffer))
  :config (setq nswbuff-buffer-list-function #'nswbuff-projectile-buffer-list
                nswbuff-display-intermediate-buffers t
                nswbuff-exclude-buffer-regexps '("^ .*" "^\\*.*\\*")))

~~I am loading it from a specific path, because at the time of this writing the package is not on MELPA.~~

The key setting here is the value of nswbuff-buffer-list-function. Using nswbuff-projectile-buffer-list activates nswbuff integration with Projectile, and so I can quickly move between my project buffers hitting the good ol’ Ctrl-TAB.

Make your company behave

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes it just takes a little thing to make your day.

I have been using company-mode for ages, becoming accustomed to the list of candidates popping up whenever the automatic completion kicks in.

However, more often than not what I need is in-buffer, context-aware completion, and in this case dabbrev-expand or dabbrev-completion, which I have bound to C-, and C-. respectively, are enough.

It’s pretty simple to turn off company-mode automatic completion:

(setq company-idle-delay nil)

That’s it.

To get the list of candidates back when I need, I have company-complete bound to C-c c.

Nice and easy.

Arrivederci Soavi, Ciao

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It’s always been hard for me to cope with Italian cinema. I am not talking about obvious masters such as Roberto Rossellini, Elio Petri, and Federico Fellini here. I am talking about the most recent output of my country’s film world, which makes me wonder what those masters would think of Italian cinema today.

La Befana Vien di Notte (Michele Soavi, 2018)

Luckily enough, there are exceptions to my bias. Michele Soavi’s Arrivederci Amore, Ciao is one of them, although it’s a work so criminally underrated it feels like me being the contrarian again. No wonder, then, that last night I had mild expectations for Soavi’s latest effort: La Befana Vien di Notte. The trailer looked like fun, and I entered the theatre expecting an enjoyable adventure to start the new year with a smile on my face.

Sadly it all started to go bad after a few minutes in. All the jokes that matter are in the trailer, and everybody around me must have seen it too because nobody was laughing. This not only shows how poor the jokes are, but it strategically conceals the overall awful acting, to my mind some of the worst ever seen in an Italian film. Lines mechanically delivered, no rhythm nor traces of passion whatsoever. As it generally happens with Italian dubbing, there are exclamations no one uses in real life (“Chi diavolo sei?”) and needless abundance of pronouns (something fine in English but redundant in Italian). Are decades of dubbed US films to blame for this? Who knows.

The trailer hides the atrocious action too. There is a sequence, way too long, with the kids running around visibly not scared of the ridiculous drones shooting at them. Maybe Soavi told everyone “run, scream, just do something for a while” and then went to grab a bite. No other explanation off the top of my head.

These are all marginal details compared to a script with no memorable characters and incapable of building the sense of wonder necessary for an adventure based on folklore. Paola, the Befana of the title, would fit well in one of the latest seasons of Doctor Who, since she is nothing more than a tool to move the plot forward. Cortellesi, the only one in the cast with a hint of talent, strolls along with the aplomb of a tired actress, a genuine “it’s just a job anyway” echo in her voice.

The kids are insufferable, an accretion of stereotype upon stereotype which probably wished to remind us of the Goonies lot but fails miserably at doing so. They don’t work as a group of friends, there is nothing playful about them, because there is no connection between them. They are random people thrown on the set and left there to the best of their capabilities. I don’t know why Soavi felt the need to show us the bully as a pervert spying on naked women in all this, but hey, let’s shock the audience with something wild.

Kind of pointless, though, because the shock comes as soon as the villain enters the scene. A character so ill-conceived and ill-portrayed it shows a complete disregard for the history of villains and the viewer’s patience. He tries so hard to be the bad guy you want to laugh at that he ends up insulting your intelligence with a dull mockery of the idea of evil. Not for a second I suspended my disbelief watching him menacing our heroine and planning to conquer the heart of the children. The supreme failure of La Befana Vien di Notte.

I don’t think I was prepared for a Soavi’s like this. True, I wasn’t expecting another Arrivederci Amore, Ciao either, but a flop such as this hurts more.

Playing hide-and-seek with my REPLs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Emacs users know their beloved editor has a penchant for throwing windows and buffers around. Smart Emacs users know how to make Emacs behave with a careful configuration of display-buffer-alist. For instance, I like to have all of my REPLs in a bottom side window, taking up half of the screen size.

(setq display-buffer-alist
      `((,(rx bos (or "*cider-repl"     ; CIDER REPL
                      "*intero"         ; Intero REPL
                      "*idris-repl"     ; Idris REPL
                      "*ielm"           ; IELM REPL
                      "*SQL"))          ; SQL REPL
         (display-buffer-reuse-window display-buffer-in-side-window)
         (side . bottom)
         (reusable-frames . visible)
         (window-height . 0.50))))

I then have a couple of custom functions, lifted from Sebastian Wiesner’s archived configuration, to quickly close the REPL and go back to the buffer I was editing.

(defun mu-find-side-windows (&optional side)
  "Get all side window if any.
If SIDE is non-nil only get windows on that side."
  (let (windows)
    (walk-window-tree
     (lambda (window)
       (let ((window-side (window-parameter window 'window-side)))
         (when (and window-side (or (not side) (eq window-side side)))
           (push window windows)))))
    windows))

;;;###autoload
(defun mu-quit-side-windows ()
  "Quit side windows of the current frame."
  (interactive)
  (dolist (window (mu-find-side-windows))
    (when (window-live-p window)
      (quit-window nil window)
      ;; When the window is still live, delete it
      (when (window-live-p window)
        (delete-window window)))))

(bind-key "C-c w q" #'mu-quit-side-windows)

All of this usually works fine. However, CIDER has recently introduced a new session system which doesn’t play well with this setup. Basically, using quit-window on a CIDER REPL results in a buffer without its related REPL available.

The solution is trivial.

;;;###autoload
(defun mu-hide-side-windows ()
  "Hide side windows of the current frame."
  (interactive)
  (dolist (window (mu-find-side-windows))
    (when (window-live-p window)
      (delete-window window))))

(bind-key "C-c w h" #'mu-hide-side-windows)

Now I just hide the side windows of the current buffer, and the linked REPL is always a key binding away.

Notice that if you are only visiting one buffer and a REPL, pressing C-x 0 in the REPL window or C-x 1 in the buffer where the REPL window was opened has the same effect of C-c w h.

My 2018 in films

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 12 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In terms of cinematic experiences 2018 has been an amazing year. Although I have a couple of titles among this year’s finest already added to my all-time favourites, 2018 will be remembered as the time when my cinephilia expanded in incredible and inspiring ways like never before. The key game-changer has been Letterboxd.

When it comes to social networks, I am sceptical to say the least. For a while I have enjoyed Facebook, Twitter, and Mastodon as much as anybody else, but early in 2017 I decided to put an end to my social-networked life. Privacy concerns, yes, but also the obnoxious feeling of time wasted.

Letterboxd is a community of cinephiles sharing their love, and as such I rarely encounter endless off-topics and pointless discussions. More importantly, it conceals in plain view treasures of film criticism. The writings and the opinions of Mallory Andrews, Neil Bahadur, Jake Cole, Filipe Furtado, Willow Maclay and Michael Sicinski—to name a few!—have served as my guiding light in the realms of cinema. By and large thanks to their contributions on Letterboxd, I discovered a proper appreciation of Brian De Palma and George Lucas, fell madly in love with Abel Ferrara and Charles Chaplin, embraced Jean-Luc Godard and Samuel Fuller, reconsidered Martin Scorsese’s and Michael Mann’s turn of the century efforts, and now have a better understanding of Chantal Akerman and Claire Denis. Not to mention the hundreds of films already in my watchlist, plus the sheer willingness to write about cinema as an enjoyable outcome.

Moreover, Letterboxd helps me make sense of the unstoppable flux of images on my screen. I have kept track of the best of 2018 in a dedicated list on Letterboxd, an undeniable improvement to my plain text files technique. And if you are into statistics and data, something worth every penny is provided to. Addictive to say the least.

As I mentioned above, there are two films that stood out from the rest of the 2018 pack: An Elephant Sitting Still and Ready Player One. I wrote at length on the former, and only hinted at the latter aggressive combination of nostalgia and juvenile fun. What’s more, they have something in common. Hu Bo’s masterpiece is a desperate look at a world in which traces of optimism are scarce and therefore more precious than ever, while Steven Spielberg’s adventure is full of fervent belief in a greater good despite the growing distance between the rich and the poor. Both films acknowledge the need, now more than ever, for a change. They use different means to the same end: hope.

Since the latest Jia Zhangke’s and Wang Bing’s are still outside of my radar, I consider the rest of 2018 output moderately interesting. Padmavaat is a heartbreaking tragedy from the director of the superb Bajirao Mastani, while First Reformed is easily the most puzzling Paul Schrader. Tsui Hark and Steven Soderbergh, albeit not at the top of their abilities, proved again able to surprise me in unexpected ways. Much the same can be said of Spike Lee, even though he did not bite like he used to, but I am confused about Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris. Not sure what to do with it. On the other hand, Paul Feig finally met my taste with his playfully sexy A Simple Favor.

Contrary to popular criticism, I enjoyed Terminal just as thoroughly as I wanted to enjoy Red Sparrow and Upgrade. Scott Adkins played the role of his acting career in Accident Man, but I stand firm in my conviction that Amy Johnston is the martial artist we deserve. Braven in all its predictability is simply the action film The Predator fails to be. Shockingly, it was even more entertaining than The Night Comes for Us. I’ve already forgotten about Ocean’s Eight, and I did not connect neither with Sorry to Bother You nor with American Animals. I preferred the bleakness of River’s Edge to the one of Burning, but they will both be remembered for the darkness within.

A couple of horror films this year spoke about technology better than almost anything cinema has ever tried in this regard: Cam and Unfriended: Dark Web. They are a bit rough around the edges, but they convey the terrifying preoccupations contemporary society keeps missing. No Daniel Goldhaber, I am sorry: there is nothing of Showgirls in Cam.

Then, the outsiders: Jean-Marie Straub’s Gens du Lac is a reminder of how much meaning a camera pan can ultimately have, while Jean-Luc Godard dropped Westerly Wind as the true warrior he is. They both conquered me in ways Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Blue did not, but he moved me anyhow like he always does.

I cannot leave 2018 without a couple of words on Bernardo Bertolucci. He taught me cinephilia and love for cinema with The Dreamers, and much of my passion comes from the pivotal experience of him entering my life before I was twenty years old. Not even with his best work, and yet here I am. Thank you, Bernardo.

The present is the past is the future

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Funny how volatile judgement is. I remember enjoying Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One while reading it, and then time has almost entirely overturned my appreciation for it. I was still dealing with the rise of my negative opinion about Cline’s work the first time I saw Steven Spielberg’s adaptation this year, hence no surprises my bias ruined my enjoyment. Upon watching Ready Player One again last Sunday, a totally different film unfolded on the screen. I refused to oblige the bias, and sat in ecstatic amusement while Spielberg built a world of wonders in front of me.

Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg, 2018)

I instantly connected my feelings of joy to the ones I experienced when Star Wars entered my life as a kid and set my love for cinema ablaze. This is not coincidental, because Ready Player One is the closest Spielberg has ever come to match the visionary of visuals that is George Lucas.

However, I had kind of forgot about George Lucas. When the prequels came out I was one of those fans who felt betrayed and insulted. I went in looking for something the prequels are not: the original trilogy. As a result, nostalgia played the same role my opinion of Cline’s book played with Ready Player One. After Revenge of the Sith, from time to time I revisited the original trilogy for nostalgia sake, but my love for George Lucas was weakening, and even those three films were losing my devotion year after year. Cinema changed, I changed, and by now that galaxy was literally far, far away.

Ready Player One left me with the desire of revisiting George Lucas’ works. I took the experience of the second viewing as a sign. The Star Wars prequels needed another chance. If it happened with Spielberg, it could happen with Lucas as well. It just felt like I owed it to him.

The Phantom Menace surprised me the most. The weakest chapter among the prequels and the one that sparkled my delusion back then, The Phantom Menace lays the grounds for all the politics to come. The pod race is as amazing as I remembered, pure kinetic power at barely controllable speed. The Wachowksis surely memorized this race before devising the absolute madness of Speed Racer. On the other hand, Lucas is not ready to fully embrace the CGI like he wishes, or maybe it’s the CGI not ready for him yet, because The Phantom Menace doesn’t always look as beautiful as some of its best images. The fantasy of its author is impeded by the technological limits of the time.

It’s only with Attack of the Clones that he finally gets what his heart deserves. Lucas has now everything he needs to elaborate an imaginary universe, and he understands what it takes to go beyond the mere creation of spaces for the action to occur. He experiments with colour shifts, crafting backgrounds that intensify the psychological warfare within Anakin. There is no manichean distinction between light and shadow any more, a stylistic choice which reflects the blurred distinction of good and evil typical of Eastern philosophies. The most experimental episode of the saga in terms of formal achievements, Attack of the Clones also starts posing the question further explored in Revenge of the Sith: what does it mean to be a Jedi Knight? Star Wars has never explored so deeply the moral ambiguity of its heroes.

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)

Reinvigorated by the first two chapters, I approached Revenge of the Sith with even more curiosity. Of the three, it’s the only one that the younger me ended up moderately liking, but what would I think now that my perspective on The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones has changed?

Lucas pulls you right into a furious battle in space. It’s already clear he is now dominating the resources at his disposal. The CGI is slick, and he can now stage impossible acrobatics, invention after invention, like he has always been trying to do. This is the dream come true of a kid possessed by the spectacle of images moving on a screen. Here Lucas is creating the defining epic war for its saga, moments unparalleled in proportion and unique in technique. Amidst the grandeur of the fights, the pivotal drama of Star Wars reaches its peak. Anakin falls prey of the Dark Side, he sacrifices everything for the promise of untamed power.

Moreover, Anakin eventually has to deal with the political dilemma built up so far by The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. He struggles to find hope in democracy because it appears to be no democracy when everyone is above you. He fails to comprehend the implications of a ruling government because he wants immediate answers to his questions and immediate actions to benefit from. All that matters has to be within his reach, everything else is simply marginal. The fear of losing what he has is exploited by Darth Sidious and in the end takes Anakin to the point of no return.

It’s the same fear Darth Sidious works with to obtain the position of leader of the soon to be Empire. Fear is the actual phantom menace. It attacks and wins over the minds of a great Master Jedi such as Yoda. He suspects but can’t act, he waits and can’t see, stopped by a feeling greater than his belief in the Force. His exile is the supreme failure of the Jedi Knights. Revenge of the Sith reveals itself as George Lucas most ambitious masterpiece.

The Star Wars prequels present a past the original trilogy struggles to confront with. The scale of the universe designed by George Lucas here is indeed too much for the possibilities cinema offered in the late seventies and throughout the eighties. When they came out, the prequels had fans lacking the sane distance needed for an appreciation devoid of misconceptions. Now may be the right time to revisit The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith, and at last understand the mighty vision of George Lucas.

Moving to deps.edn and shadow-cljs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last summer I moved boodle from Figwheel to Figwheel Main. I was pretty satisfied with this setup, but the rise of shadow-cljs in the Clojure community has been tickling my curiosity over and over again. While configuring shadow-cljs I took the chance to set lein aside and finally explore clj and deps.edn, another thing on my to-do list that has been waiting for me for some time.

Let’s start with deps.edn:

{:deps
 {
  ;; … Clojure dependencies …
 }

 :paths ["src/clj" "resources"]

 :aliases {:run {:main-opts ["-m" "boodle.core"]}
           :test {:extra-paths ["test/clj"]
                  :extra-deps {lambdaisland/kaocha {:mvn/version "0.0-266"}}}
           :outdated {:extra-deps {olical/depot {:mvn/version "1.4.0"}}
                      :main-opts ["-m" "depot.outdated.main"]}}}

One thing worth of notice here is :paths. I included the resources directory in it because I serve it via compojure/http-kit and that’s where I put the static assets used in my main index page. This solution works when I run mount.core/start via REPL and when I use the :run alias from the command line.

Speaking of aliases, they are invaluable. With :run I can use clj -A:run instead of lein run, and with clj -A:outdated -a outdated I can easily check for outdated dependencies in my deps.edn thanks to depot. Unit tests are now handled by Kaocha, and as per its instructions I have a bin/kaocha file which picks up the :test alias and runs all my tests.

I love the simplicity of deps.edn, it feels like a de-cluttered project.clj.

Configuring shadow-cljs was a bit more complicated. It took me a while to understand how to properly integrate it with CIDER. However, the manual is great and the fine people on Slack’s #shadow-cljs (thanks Ryan Haywood and Thomas Heller!) made it all nice and smooth.

This is my shadow-cljs.edn:

{:source-paths ["src/cljs"]
 :nrepl {:port 8777
         :middleware [refactor-nrepl.middleware/wrap-refactor]}
 :dependencies [
                 ;; … ClojureScript dependencies …
               ]
 :builds {:boodle {:target :browser
                   :output-dir "resources/public/js"
                   :asset-path "/js"
                   :modules {:main {:entries [boodle.core]}}}}}

Basic setup, straight from the manual pages. Notice that :output-dir refers to the same resources directory configured in deps.edn. This tells shadow-cljs to place the build output exactly where I need.

The other important change is in the CLJS libraries I use. shadow-cljs does not support CLJSJS, so I had to install pikaday and moment via yarn.

$ yarn add pikaday moment

Since boodle relies on re-frame, I had to install three other libraries to make shadow-cljs build my code happily:

$ yarn add react react-dom create-react-class

In the namespace where I use them, the :require had to be changed:

(:require ;; … other requires …
          ["react-dom" :refer [findDOMNode]]
          ["pikaday" :as pikaday])

And the code had to be adapted:

(let [default-opts {:field (findDOMNode this)
                    ;; … other options …
                   }
      instance (pikaday. opts)]
    ;; … other ClojureScript code …
)

However, a project setup is not ready unless I can work on it via Emacs. These are the steps I made to have a working CLJ/CLJS development environment. When this issue will be fixed some of it may become unnecessary.

First, I added a couple of dependencies in shadow-cljs.edn:

:dependencies [;; … other dependencies …
               [cider/cider-nrepl "0.18.0"]
               [refactor-nrepl "2.4.0"]]

Then I removed everything Figwheel Main related from the .dir-locals.el file located in the root directory of boodle:

((nil
  (cider-default-cljs-repl . shadow-select)
  (cider-pprint-fn . zprint)
  (cider-preferred-build-tool . clojure-cli)
  (cider-known-endpoints . (("hathaway" "localhost" "8777")))
  (cider-ns-refresh-after-fn . "mount.core/start")
  (cider-ns-refresh-before-fn . "mount.core/stop"))
 (emacs-lisp-mode
  (flycheck-disabled-checkers . "emacs-lisp-checkdoc")))

I ran cider-jack-in-clj to have a CLJ REPL and check I didn’t break something on the Clojure side of boodle.

From a terminal, I used shadow-cljs watch boodle to have shadow-cljs build boodle and offer me a nice nREPL server listening on port 8777, the one I specified in shadow-cljs.edn.

Back in CIDER, cider-connect-cljs brought up a REPL connected to shadow-cljs nREPL server, and let me select the build I want it operating on (default is dev, I just typed in boodle). Connecting to boodle via the browser finalized the connection between my code and the CLJS environment.

A great journey. Once again, boodle proved fertile ground to understand the Clojure ecosystem and play with it to learn something new. If you want more details, the project is on my SourceHut.

Hu Bo and the country that sits still

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Cinema is a mixed bag of aesthetics, a complex blend of visual art, technology, sound design, and theatre. It encourages an infinite set of ideas and ideals, whether hidden or in plain sight. It doesn’t matter if there is a powerful company or an independent artist behind a film. Moral and ethic values, political dynamics and concerns are all always at play.

An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

Like every other film industry in the world, China’s invests tons of money in blockbusters which more often than not resembles tests of the latest discovery in special effects. Just as Hollywood has been capitalising on comic book heroes in the last years, China has found wuxia to be a lucrative genre. Exceptional authors like Tsui Hark and Stephen Chow have been deliberately limiting themselves, constraining their art into predetermined boundaries. Chow is now one of the most powerful man in China’s film establishment, so maybe everything is going fine for him.

However, China, again like the rest of the world, has its fair share of independent directors who have been telling a different story since the late 90s. Jia Zhangke, Diao Yinan, and more recently Wang Bing are names that score big at film festivals, but they are a nuisance to their country’s film realm. They show the uncomfortable faces of China, the cities, the streets, and the outcasts nobody wants to see. The failures the central government refuses to acknowledge are as part of China’s history as everything else. Somebody must tell of these failures. Someone has to care.

I can only guess Hu Bo felt as a nuisance for his country too, although it’s hard to tell from a safe distance what has led him to end his life. The short film Man in the Well and the outstanding An Elephant Sitting Still undoubtedly place him in the group of artists China chooses to cast aside, but they also show Hu Bo’s inner battles. Is there a place for me here? Will this country ever move forward for everyone and not just for a few? What will it cost? What am I supposed to do in China, here and now?

Intersecting four different stories, An Elephant Sitting Still poses these questions without offering answers. They are left open because it takes too much to reply, even though the chance of an answer eventually is an hopeful sound. The two final static shots culminate with the sound the characters are waiting for. Too little, because they don’t get to see what they are looking for. And yet something to look forward to, like the flash of a light in a never-ending tunnel.

Except that this is a light that doesn’t come easy. It takes almost four hours to Hu Bo to bring his protagonists there. They have to endure a day in which they are constantly confronted with the weight of their decisions. They are at turns victims and oppressors, predators and preys, unable to truly escape a system so far above them to be properly understood and dealt with. There is a sense of impeding catastrophe every time we see them walking down a street, but the war is in their heart more than anywhere else. They know what has to be done only because there is nothing left to be done. Circumstances they cannot handle, accidents out of proportion. Everything eludes their control.

The intimacy of the long takes is absolutely stunning. Not only we are physically closer to these people, we are facing their reactions to the events on the front line. With the exception of the two above mentioned ending shots, the camera narrows everything down to a limited space. We can then sense the claustrophobic buildings, the unstoppable decay, the solitude that never leaves anyone in this world. Editing makes these sensations even stronger, since it rarely concedes room to breathe. To digest what has just happened, we can only wait until the next portion of the story starts.

Hu Bo shots everything smoothly, avoiding a shaking, hand-held camera and opting for a gentle Steadicam instead. This solution eschews the diary and the found-footage mood, whilst striking the perfect balance between the personal take on the events (we see what Hu Bo wants us to see) and the objective truth (no embellishment, this is exactly how it goes). Hu Bo is paying homage to the masters of the Sixth Generation of Chinese Cinema and at the same time moving away from them, following a path we will never know where it would have led him to.

Ultimately, An Elephant Sitting Still represents what China is now. A contradictory clash of realities, where the overbearing economy of the capitalist side of communism is destroying everyone who isn’t able to keep up. China cannot afford to sit still unless it’s ready to accept the lives of its people. Hu Bo knew it much too well.

Handy sudoing in Fish

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been more than a year and a half now since I moved from Zsh to Fish, and I am still amazed by how smooth and simple it made my everyday workflow.

One little trick I’ve been taking with me from my Bash days is aliasing sudo to _. There are a lot of commands I need to run via sudo, and typing one character instead of four makes it obviously quicker. But what if I already started to write a command which needs proper privileges and forgotten about that precious sudo?

Lukas Stabe fixed it for me, years ago. First, let’s add his prepend_command to ~/.config/fish/functions/prepend_command.fish:

function prepend_command
    set -l prepend $argv[1]
    if test -z "$prepend"
        echo "prepend_command needs one argument."
        return 1
    end

    set -l cmd (commandline)
    if test -z "$cmd"
        commandline -r $history[1]
    end

    set -l old_cursor (commandline -C)
    commandline -C 0
    commandline -i "$prepend "
    commandline -C (math $old_cursor + (echo $prepend | wc -c))
end

Then, it’s only a matter of adding a key binding to ~/.config/fish/functions/fish_user_key_bindings.fish:

function fish_user_key_bindings
    fish_default_key_bindings

    # Prepend sudo with C-s
    bind \cs 'prepend_command sudo'
end

Now hitting Ctrl-s anywhere in the command I am typing immediately adds sudo at the beginning of the line.

prepend_command comes with the benefit of mimicking the sudo plugin of Oh My Zsh. Fish doesn’t support history expansion, but sometimes I just press Enter before remembering to hit Ctrl-s, and that’s where I’d love some history expansion. I can hit Ctrl-s right after the malevolent Enter, and have my previous command with sudo automatically prepended ready to go.

If you are accustomed to the Zsh key binding, you can have it in Fish too:

# Re-run previous command with sudo using ESC-ESC
bind \e\e 'prepend_command sudo'

Time savers, believe you me.

Ferrara and the Straubs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I found myself deeply immersed in Abel Ferrara’s and Straub-Huillet’s cinema thanks to Neil Bahadur’s writings. While Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet are new artists in my radar, Ferrara is not a new entry. He is kind of an old friend I had lost track of, and approaching it now after many years felt like discovering a different man.

I entered Ferrara’s world via New Rose Hotel and The Blackout almost twenty years ago, which is not the most brilliant thing to do if you are a teenager grown up with action films and bad television. New Rose Hotel came because of my love for William Gibson, and The Blackout was highly recommended by a friend. The latter failed to amuse me, but I was instantly mesmerized by New Rose Hotel. And yet, somehow I have steered clear of Abel Ferrara until recently. All considered, I did the right thing back then. Time has only deepened my passion for cinema, and I can now approach Ferrara with a reinvigorated mind.

On the other hand, I had never heard of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet up until last summer. Surely a shame, but also wisdom in disguise. Just as with Ferrara, I would have never understood all the implications and the reasoning behind Straub-Huillet’s films with my poor knowledge of the historical context they started working in. Why the horizontal camera pans? Why are the characters standing and declaiming lines? Is this even narration? From the Clouds to the Resistance, the first one I saw, moved me instantly and prompted me to reach further in their career. Some questions are still unanswered, but one film at a time I have been discovering two of the most important film makers I have ever encountered.

There isn’t much in common between the Straubs and Ferrara in terms of stylistic choices. What they do share is a relentless eye on the many ramifications of history and how everything that has happened still resonates with us today.

Where the Straubs radicalise the construction of images using landscapes and surroundings as silent yet durable spectators of history and their characters' reasoning, Ferrara moves his works by what Nicole Brenez describes as lack. This absence has had multiple faces throughout his career.

In Napoli, Napoli, Napoli it wears the humanism mask. By using it to tell us about the city and all its contradictions, Ferrara mirrors society back to us in the same way the Straubs return contemporaneity by exploring others’ texts. In Go Go Tales the camera swings delicately through the ruins of capitalism, putting us in the same position Huillet and Straub do in Antigone. We are the hesitant watchers as history plays the inevitability game in front of us. We don’t move, we don’t intervene. We undergo.

Moreover, we hardly learn. Both Fortini/Cani and Pasolini not only plainly describe what went wrong, but question what is going on right now. The Straubs, by way of Franco Fortini’s book I Cani del Sinai, deplore everything from modern political systems to fascism and racism. Democracy is at stake, we have to act and make it right since evidently it didn’t turn out to be what we hoped for.

Similarly, Ferrara’s delicate ode to Pier Paolo Pasolini captures Pasolini’s prescient words about the dangers in front of us. Somehow he knew we shouldn’t have gone down the road Italy was about to take. He knew, much as Franco Fortini and the Straubs, the need for an immediate change. Sadly, he was right.

Abel Ferrara and Straub-Huillet are pure, rare breed. They invest all of themselves in their cinema, believing in it with lucid stubbornness, and paying the price for it too. They are neither marginal nor at the margin. They are right in the middle of the storm, pointing their eyes at us.

Rollerland

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Much as any cinephile out there, I have my ugly share of preconceptions. I try to hide them most of the times, but describing my approach to cinema as immaculate would be flat-out lying. For instance, it takes a good number of trustworthy reviews to get me to watch a Sundance Film Festival winner. Possibly worse, it’s nearly impossible to convince me to sit and enjoy the latest hyped TV series.

A similar bias has kept me away from Drew Barrymore’s Whip It for a long time. Without even giving Barrymore a chance, I skipped her directorial debut in 2009 with a smug glow of irony on my face, and forgot about it until recently. Not being a particular fan of Barrymore’s acting career, I thought Whip It would be a far less than spectacular work. Gladly, it turns out I’d better overcome my stupid ideas soon, and let cinema speak for itself.

Whip It is the story of the hopes and chances of Bliss Cavendar, a teenage girl feeling out of place and out of time. Since I know the feeling very well, this is immediately relatable, so it’s easy for Whip It to pull me in and never let me go. I chose cinema and computing to deal with reality in my younger days, but since Bliss is braver and smarter than me, she opts for sport and teamwork instead.

I can relate to Bliss just by looking at her marvelling when she first sees some girls skate-rolling their way to a shop counter. Barrymore captures on Ellen Page the exact feeling of wonder that conquered me when I coded simple animations in Turbo Pascal back in secondary school. Right there with you, Bliss.

This is where Whip It really shines. Not in the conventional, albeit lovable plot. Not in the furious matches, although the way Barrymore handles the tension and especially the failures is really captivating. Whip It does its best pretty much in the same field Greg Mottola’s Adventureland, the other great coming of age of 2009, does. Both films, in wonderfully different ways, explore what it means to become adult and independent. By means of sport passion and romance respectively, Barrymore and Mottola use a light dose of humour to place the heavy burden of adulthood on their protagonists’ shoulders.

Mottola’s James Brennan is too young to be adult, and too adult to be young. Socially inept, James finds a role model in Mike Connell, the park maintenance man that everyone loves. He looks up to him, opens up to him, and keeps admiring him even after the pretty mask starts showing its cracks. The failure of Connell’s macho act is vital to James’ experience. He is now confronted with one of the many bad faces of a grown-up, and eventually he resorts to be as different as possible from it. Mottola works the virile bonding between James and Connell with subtlety, infusing tenderness to the very end. The last time James looks at Connell flirting with a bunch of girls, his eyes reveal everything we need to know about his opinion of his role model. James knows who he will not want to be, now.

Bliss has her own role models too, but she is apparently the only one regarding them with admiration. It’s interesting to notice that the Hurl Scouts act tough to hide something in their life, much as Connell does in Adventureland. Also, the Hurl Scouts are misfits, and they become popular only on the roller derby track, something similar to Connell’s popularity within the boundaries of the park. Both the Hurl Scouts and Connell are older than our protagonists, but not as older as their parents. This is crucial, because the Hurl Scouts and Connell represent an ageing step closer to Bliss’ and James’ age, which means they can see what life is going to hand them in the next few years if they follow their models much too close.

Whereas the relation between James and Connell always shows an intangible distance, Bliss fits naturally among the skate-rollers. This probably tells more about teamwork than of the strengths of Bliss’ and James’ social skills, but there is an alpha male component in James and Connell which plagues their way to Emily Lewin’s heart and keeps them hopelessly apart. The Hurl Scouts share a passion that can be as brutal and painful physically as love hurts psychologically, and yet agonistic competition never poses a threat to their friendship. Another valuable life lesson here: leave the pedestal if you want honesty from the people around you.

In the end, Bliss convinces her parents of the sincerity of her passion, and James finds his way to Emily. These happy endings conclude two incredibly formative experiences, and more importantly take some of our characters' innocent youth away from them. They are not adult yet, but they had a glimpse of what it means to be one.

Rachel Getting Married

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of days ago, I had the Blu-ray of Rachel Getting Married on while cooking dinner. It kept me company, and, even though I know it pretty well by now, it often took me away from the kitchen just to enjoy a particular sequence one more time. The next day I went back to Willow Maclay’s piece for The Film Stage and The Cinephiliacs’ episode on Jonathan Demme to revisit the thoughts of my favourite film critics on my favourite Demme’s.

Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008)

For a film-maker as prolific and accustomed to different genres as Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married still stands out as one of a kind in his oeuvre. Demme is not new to family drama and traumatic events in one’s life (e.g., Clarisse Starling’s past in The Silence of the Lambs), or to strong but vulnerable women (e.g., Lulu in Something Wild). He explored his characters minds and the ways we can relate and cope with them by let them facing the camera and opened up to us. Willow Maclay writes about Demme’s humanism in the above mentioned essay, and that is a trait of his cinema that spans over his entire career.

However, in Rachel Getting Married Demme reaches out for a new form of his humanism. Aided by the outstanding cinematography of Declan Quinn and the turbulent script of Jenny Lumet, Demme digs deeper than ever in the psyche of his female lead. Kym, portrayed by the best Anne Hathaway to date, is the subject of constant observation and judgement everywhere she goes. This is not only a modern mirror of our privacy-deprived lives, but to a certain extent is the peak of Demme’s psychological explorations of his characters.

The camera in Rachel Getting Married invades spaces, inquisitively moves in and out of rooms and buildings, capturing and exposing actions and thoughts. It asks, even demands, attention from everyone. Secrecy is nowhere to be found, because the camera is a fierce and poignant extension of the spectator. It is as if we are rushing in with no desire of missing anything, while perfectly at ease with the fact that we will surely lose something on our way.

Demme holds us closer to the lives on the screen like he has never done before. Here conversations, confessions, and reactions are not displayed in terms of an actress seemingly talking to us. They literally happen around us, just a turn of the head away. And there is always something going on at the periphery of our eyes and ears in Rachel Getting Married. Everywhere in the Buchman’s house people are getting ready for the wedding and playing music, talking, and laughing. According to the Q&A on the Blu-ray, sometimes they don’t even know the camera is there. This adds a level of uncompromising truth to the general video-diary vibe that makes it possibly more personal and familiar than it already feels.

The resulting experience becomes especially hurtful when we recognise Kym’s desperate attempts to gain back the love of her family, and realise that we can do nothing. No matter how close to her we are put, we can never give her the much needed comfort. On the other hand, it’s an experience that enhances those precious moments of joy which rarely appear but prove fundamental at keeping everybody together. Including us.

Like in any other Jonathan Demme’s film, music is itself a character in the story. Various cultures meet in a clash of races and genders, culminating in a showcase of music and dance that encompasses different styles. Nevertheless, this is not a tentative approach at portraying folklore and heritage with a humanist touch, since there is a documentarian side of Demme that deals with it. In Rachel Getting Married he lets the musicians speak for themselves, leaving them in front of the camera apparently in full control of their playing. Their emotions are honestly genuine, and every musical burst looks as natural as anything else in this film. Demme loves his music just as much as he loves engaging with issues of reconciliation and forgiveness. He has always used great music in his films, but the mere fact that musicians in Rachel Getting Married are caught in the act of playing live is telling of his respect and appreciation for them.

Now that he is no longer with us I like to imagine him with a camera still following the lives of the people he cares about, with music always in the air and that contagious smile of his. Somewhere, somehow, he is telling a story I wish I could see.

Time and Hat

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

After watching Michael Mann’s Blackhat again last night, I looked around the internet to check what other people think about it. I remembered some were utterly disappointed by it, even frustrated, but others seemed to share my passion.

As it often happens in film criticism, critics draw comparison with other works when writing on a specific film. For instance, Keith Uhlich on Reverse Shot notices similarities between Blackhat and Eyes Wide Shut in terms of unsettling dialogues.

Performance-wise this is one of Mann’s strangest movies, cultivating a dead-air hesitancy in almost every dialogue exchange, the likes of which I haven’t experienced since Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

David Ehrlich on Letterboxd points at Johnnie To:

BLACKHAT is Michael Mann’s Johnnie To movie.

However, nobody, at least to my knowledge, links Blackhat to Tsui Hark’s Time And Tide. This is not to say that Mann had Tsui in mind when devising his superb cyber-thriller, but there are interesting aspects of Time And Tide that Mann seems to explore with his style.

Both films abstract the narrative away, using it only to provide a model upon which building a complex interplay of camera movements, editing and sounds. Characters have little to no background, dropped in occasionally for context sake. Relationships are a thin layer, and romance though a driving force is instrumental to the courses of action and not the ultimate ending.

Mann and Tsui use the camera to deconstruct the action instead of creating it. Our eyes are placed under the keys of a keyboard in Blackhat and inside a washing machine in Time And Tide. And yet we always know where we are, we never lose the sense of what is happening inside and outside the frame. We follow the camera and not the characters, we are moved by the editing and not by the plot.

Sounds are the last piece of the puzzle here. Clicks, footsteps, ambient noises, collateral damages. We are surrounded not by the blast of the guns, but by a vibrant environment. A living, breathing space with its voices and its echoes. The scene embraces us, the images are constantly interrogating us.

Blackhat and Time And Tide rank among the most experimental works of Michael Mann and Tsui Hark respectively. If it’s true that Tsui was already trying new paths in his 1995 masterpiece The Blade, it’s also true that he has gone down different roads eventually. Mann, on the other hand, has been perfecting his abstractions over and over again, finally reaching the point where he is able to leave us only with an interface to his model of cinema.

Moving to Figwheel Main

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If you are a Clojure/ClojureScript programmer, you know Bruce Hauman and chances are he is one of your personal heroes. If you are not already in love with him, just watch his awesome talk on Figwheel and join the club.

Figwheel changed the way I work with ClojureScript with prompt live code reloading and REPL interaction, greatly enhancing my web-application development.

Bruce pushed Figwheel further when he unveiled Figwheel Main, a complete re-write of Figwheel compatible both with Leiningen and the new Clojure CLI tools. I have resisted the urge to try it for a while, but then I remembered I have my own battleground for experimenting and learning Clojure wonders: boodle.

I have decided to stay with Leiningen for now, but I may move to a full clj and deps.edn setup in the future.

The first thing to change in order to accommodate Figwheel Main is my project.clj. A new version of ClojureScript is necessary:

:dependencies
[ ;; … more dependencies …
  [org.clojure/clojurescript "1.10.312"]
  ;; … more dependencies …
]

Then, new values for :source-paths and :resource-paths:

:source-paths ["src/clj" "src/cljs"]
:resource-paths ["target" "resources"]

As the Figwheel Main README suggests, let’s add a couple of useful aliases:

:aliases
  {"fig" ["trampoline" "run" "-m" "figwheel.main"]
   "build" ["trampoline" "run" "-m" "figwheel.main" "-b" "boodle"]}

And the actual Figwheel Main dependencies:

:profiles
  {:dev
   {:dependencies [[binaryage/devtools "0.9.10"]
                   [cider/piggieback "0.3.8"]
                   [com.bhauman/figwheel-main "0.1.4"]
                   [com.bhauman/rebel-readline-cljs "0.1.4"]
                   [figwheel-sidecar "0.5.16"]]
    :repl-options {:nrepl-middleware [cider.piggieback/wrap-cljs-repl]}}}

I still want lein-cljsbuild for a production-ready build, so I can just simplify the :build map:

:cljsbuild
  {:builds
   {:min
    {:source-paths ["src/cljs"]
     :compiler {:main boodle.core
                :output-to "target/public/cljs-out/boodle-main.js"
                :asset-path "target/public/cljs-out/boodle"
                :optimizations :simple
                :pretty-print false}}}}

With project.clj ready, I move to boodle.cljs.edn. This is what Figwheel Main needs to know the entry point of my application:

{:main boodle.core}

Following the instructions, I also customize some options in figwheel-main.edn:

{:watch-dirs ["src/cljs"]
 :css-dirs ["resources/public/css"]
 :open-url false}

Refer to the documentation to see what other options are available.

The last change I have to make is in my index page. Figwheel Main outputs the compiled JavaScript file in target/public/cljs-out/boodle-main.js, so I only need to modify the reference to it:

(hiccup/include-js "cljs-out/boodle-main.js")

Now it’s enough to run lein build and lein run from the project root directory.

However, since CIDER is a vital component of my daily workflow, I set it up in .dir-locals.el to run figwheel-main on C-c C-x j m. This will automatically launch a Clojure REPL and a ClojureScript REPL when CIDER starts:

(cider-default-cljs-repl . figwheel-main)
(cider-figwheel-main-default-options . ":boodle")

That’s it. Welcome Figwheel Main and, of course, a huge “thank you!” to Bruce Hauman for the superb work.

If you want to know more, boodle is available on SourceHut.

Re-implementing boodle database layer

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When I wrote boodle, I didn’t think the database layer thoroughly. The model was simple enough to figure out: one namespace for each table. However, I stuck the queries at the top of these namespaces, using plain strings to compose them.

A working solution, yes, but far from being optimal. Let’s be honest: it’s just plain ugly and prone to error. White spaces, characters to escapes. Not a mess, but neither a smooth ride.

At 7bridges I recently had the chance to play with Honey SQL. At first I wrongly mistook it for syntactic sugar. A DSL on top of SQL? The horrors of ORM sprang to mind in a rush of anxiety, but I set aside my fears and gave it a chance anyway.

It took me ten minutes to fall in love with honeysql. And turning to boodle for a proper refactoring was the following thought.

A quick example of how prettier queries are now:

(defn select-aims-with-transactions
  []
  (-> (hh/select :a.id [:a.name :aim] :a.target :t.amount)
      (hh/from [:transactions :t])
      (hh/right-join [:aims :a] [:= :a.id :t.id_aim])
      (hh/where [:= :a.achieved false])
      hc/build
      db/query))

No strings, no white spaces, no escaping characters and quoting values. Heaven.

honeysql is also extensible, which makes it simple to add support for operators.

(:require [honeysql.format :as fmt])

;; … other code …

(defmethod fmt/fn-handler "ilike" [_ col qstr]
  (str (fmt/to-sql col) " ilike " (fmt/to-sql qstr)))

During the refactoring process, I noticed something else that needed a better solution: dates.

I was relying on PostgreSQL TO_DATE to format my dates in the queries. honeysql is database-agnostic, so it pushed me to look for a better option.

(:require [java-time :as jt])

;; … other code …

(extend-protocol jdbc/IResultSetReadColumn
  Date
  (result-set-read-column [v _ _]
    (-> v
        jt/local-date
        ud/format-date))

  Timestamp
  (result-set-read-column [v _ _]
    (-> v
        jt/local-date
        ud/format-date)))
        
(extend-protocol jdbc/ISQLValue
  java.time.LocalDateTime
  (sql-value [v] (jt/sql-timestamp v))
  java.time.LocalDate
  (sql-value [v] (jt/sql-timestamp v)))
        
;; … other code …

format-date is just a utility function:

(:require [java-time :as jt])

;; … other code …

(defn format-date
  "Return `date` in dd/MM/yyyy format."
  [date]
  (jt/format "dd/MM/yyyy" date))

If you have any experience with Java, you know dealing with dates and times had not been a piece of cake before Java 8. I briefly mentioned LocalDate when reporting on my experience with Java 8.

Now that I am working with Clojure, dates and times strike back. And thanks to Vadim Platonov, I can safely use Java 8 Date-Time API with clojure.java-time.

Through the lands of static typing

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last December I started my own trip towards Haskell, jumping in with much enthusiasm and curiosity. The Haskell Book has been the perfect companion, and since chapter 12 just ended I would like to write about my progress with this wonderful programming language.

A new house and everything that comes with it gleefully slowed me down on my studies, but Haskell has never left me alone during these months. The Haskell Book is really excellent at guiding me one concept at a time, and I am finally beginning to understand the benefits of static typing.

Coming from Clojure made the first chapters pretty straightforward. This is not to Haskell detriment, of course. It just felt good to be able to reason about lists, recursions, and folds without too much of an effort. Types and typeclasses is where the real fun began, and I can say so far so good. Specifying the type of every function, even when it can be safely omitted, is simple and useful, and it is helping me get a better grasp of the power of static typing.

I must admit writing datatypes scared me at first. Years of Java developing spoiled me on classes and objects, and I swear those datatypes seemed classes to my object-oriented eyes. Shame on me. Kinds and higher-kinded types deserve further study, though. I can write my on datatypes now, albeit trivial ones, but types of type constructors deserve deeper inquiries.

There is one more thing I am really enjoying: the syntax. I know you would expect otherwise from a Clojurist, but Haskell syntax is just lovely. It’s maths all over again, and I am in love with it just as much as I love my parenthesis.

That’s it for now. Monads, here I come.

What’s the theme?

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I explained how to display your Emacs version with extra useful details. I closed the article saying that there could be more interesting stuff to display, and here I am with something new.

Sometimes I happen to report missing font-locking or other small issues with faces in a mode I use. Why not have my current colour theme name displayed along with the bits and pieces gathered in the previous article?

As Steve Purcell explained on StackExchange, the concept of current theme is a bit fuzzy in Emacs. You can have multiple themes on at the same time, just have a look at M-x customize-themes. Moreover, activating a theme means applying its settings to the faces and variables it specifies.

Thus I came up with this little function:

(defun mu--colour-theme ()
  "Get the currently applied colour theme."
  (replace-regexp-in-string
   "[\t\n\r ]+" ""
   (let* ((command (concat "rg load-theme " user-emacs-directory))
          (res (shell-command-to-string command)))
     (nth 1 (split-string res "'")))))

Basically I run ripgrep in my .emacs.d to get the lines containing load-theme. Obviously this will return the line in mu–-colour-theme as well. However, since I use split-string with ' as separator I can get the element I need from the result of ripgrep. nth 1 gives me what I am looking for: sanityinc-tomorrow-night.

Now I can have the active colour theme displayed in my environment details buffer:

;;;###autoload
(defun mu-env-info ()
  "Display Emacs version and system details in a temporary buffer."
  (interactive)
  (let ((buffer-name "*env-info*"))
    (with-help-window buffer-name
      (with-current-buffer buffer-name
        (insert (emacs-version) "\n\n")
        (insert "Repository revision: " emacs-repository-version "\n")
        (when (and system-configuration-options
                   (not (equal system-configuration-options "")))
          (insert "Configured using:\n"
                  system-configuration-options))
        (insert "\n\nEmacs uptime: " (emacs-uptime) "\n")
        (insert "Colour theme: " (mu--colour-theme) "\n")
        (insert "Operating system: " (mu--os-version) "\n")
        (insert "Window system: " (getenv "XDG_SESSION_TYPE") "\n")
        (insert "Desktop environment: " (mu--gnome-version))))))

A fancy Emacs version

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 25 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If you like to play diligently and kindly with the Emacs community, you will end up reporting bugs or asking for new features to your favourite package maintainers.

My skills at bug reporting have improved over the years. From the angry “it doesn’t work, man!!1!” to more polite questions, I am always looking for better reports to help debug and solve the problems I encounter.

Usually, package maintainers ask you to reproduce the bug in a clean emacs -Q environment. And that’s good. But they are also happy when you provide as much information as possible about the system you are using.

That’s why I came up with a custom function to gather details about my Emacs version and where I am running it. It all started with this answer from Drew Adams on Emacs StackExchange. His code does way much more than I need, though, so I stripped down the inessential and turned everything into this:

(defun mu--os-version ()
  "Call `lsb_release' to retrieve OS version."
  (replace-regexp-in-string
   "Description:\\|[\t\n\r]+" ""
   (shell-command-to-string "lsb_release -d")))

(defun mu--gnome-version ()
  "Call `gnome-shell' to retrieve GNOME version."
  (replace-regexp-in-string
   "[\t\n\r]+" ""
   (shell-command-to-string "gnome-shell --version")))

;;;###autoload
(defun mu-display-version ()
  "Display Emacs version and system details in a temporary buffer."
  (interactive)
  (let ((buffer-name "*version*"))
    (with-help-window buffer-name
      (with-current-buffer buffer-name
        (insert (emacs-version) "\n")
        (insert "\nRepository revision: " emacs-repository-version "\n")
        (when (and system-configuration-options
                   (not (equal system-configuration-options "")))
          (insert "\nConfigured using:\n"
                  system-configuration-options))
        (insert "\n\nOperating system: " (mu--os-version) "\n")
        (insert "Window system: " (getenv "XDG_SESSION_TYPE") "\n")
        (insert "Desktop environment: " (mu--gnome-version))))))

By using M-x mu-display-version I now get a handy temporary buffer with all the details I want.

A simple q will close the buffer, and I am pretty sure I can add more useful stuff in there. For now, it suffices.

Dutch Clojure Days 2018 round-up

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As you may recall, I had enthusiastic expectations and resolutions for Dutch Clojure Days. My first Clojure-only conference, my first proper face-to-face with the community. How could I not be excited?

On Saturday 21st at 8:30 am sharp we were at the TQ building reception, greeted by Carlo Sciolla, one of the organisers. A couple of words on the venue: a simple but elegant building, close to Dam Square and right in front of a fascinating flower market. The conference happened on the fourth floor, with a balcony to enjoy the outstanding view on the city, and food and drinks for everybody. My first, huge “thank you, DCD!” goes to the vegetarian option which was palatable for a vegan, but let’s keep the cheering and the hand-clapping for the end.

Eleven speakers were waiting for us. Vijay Kiran set the stage and the playful mood of the day, leaving soon room to Alex Yakushev. “Embrace the JVM” was a talk to treasure. Observability, performance profiling, memory inspection. I am by no means a JVM expert, however the tools Alex showed us will definitely help me get a better understanding of the machinery behind Clojure.

Simon Belak was up next talking about transducers and statistical analysis. This was probably the hardest one for me. I haven’t found a way to appreciate the value of transducers yet, and statistical analysis is not my strongest skill. But I still appreciated the concept of sketch algorithms and I will hunt histograms pretty soon.

Srihari Sriraman with “Practical Generative Testing Patterns” blew my mind and, if you fancy ratings and such, was the highlight of the day. We all know test.check is good, but the approach of Srihari to automation, seeding relevant data and testing plausible behaviours left me eager to grab my keyboard and implement something similar.

After lunch we were treated to one more talk before the lightning sessions. Wilker Lúcio explained the beauty and easy-of-use of GraphQL, an interesting alternative to REST for better APIs.

The lightning talks kicked off with some magical REPL-debugging from Valentin Waeselynck. His scope-capture looked promising, and I can only hope for an integration with CIDER. Dr Roland Kay reminded us of the usefulness of clojure.spec, although if I had to base my opinion of clojure.spec on his talk, it roughly looked like the type-system Clojure is missing. No trolling intended. Thomas van der Veen hit the MQTT broker pedal, mixing Java and Clojure, but I am still not sure I got the purpose of the experiment aside from the sake of learning. Ray McDermott closed the lightning sessions with an amazing browser-driven, multi-user REPL he is devising which can make live pair-programming scattered around the world a breeze.

The last three talks reflected experiences of using Clojure for business. Josh Glover, Philip Mates and Pierre-Yves Ritschard shared with us the journeys of their companies and projects and how designing, developing, and testing have only improved since their move to our beloved language.

Drinks followed before a bit of REPL-driven comedy courtesy of Ray McDermott. Suffice it to say we sang the Clojure version of Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” aptly entitled “REPL REPL”. If you weren’t there, well, you don’t know what you missed.

Dutch Clojure Days left me with the impression that the Clojure community is alive and hard-working, and its heart is in the right place. Ideas flourish, projects boom, boundaries get stretched. We can only be thankful to the DCD staff for being able to set up such a pleasant event, asking us only to join them to share our passion.

Second Sight Films’ Breathless

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I wrote about appreciation on a personal level. Although a similar reasoning could be applied to Jim McBride’s Breathless, it’s a well-known fact that Quentin Tarantino blessed this film in the pantheon of cult cinema.

Breathless (Jim McBride, 1983)

However, despite not being alone in my devotion to McBride’s most accomplished work, Tarantino stamp of approval has nothing to do neither with my first viewing of Breathless, nor with the insane love I experienced.

The truth is: it’s all Giona Nazzaro’s fault. Among the precursors of Hong Kong cinema studies in Italy, Nazzaro collected his thoughts on the evolution of Hollywood action cinema in Action! Forme di un transgenere cinematografico. That book led me to Breathless, which in turn made me reconsider Richard Gere and gain a better understanding of American Gigolo. And I still believe Richard Gere has never been this good in his entire career.

The only Blu-ray available before Second Sight Films came into play was the region A one from Shout! Factory, so I was in dire need of a proper European release. Breathless is full of vivid and powerful colours, and it pumps images as energetic as the marvellous soundtrack. It practically begs for high-resolution and deafening loudness.

Second Sight Films revamped the Blu-ray artwork with a cover that gets Breathless essence more than any words I could use. It puts Jesse at the centre, because he is the film: narcissistic, cocky, naive, loco. The colour palette is also a perfect choice, since it naturally conveys the hotness of the rock’n’roll adventure ready to unfold before our eyes.

The disc contains a couple of special features: a nearly 30-minutes chat with Mark Kermode, and an interview with Valérie Kaprisky.

Kermode is awesome. He first saw the film when it came out in 1983, so he was there in the beginning, debating the ups and downs of McBride’s work while avoiding insults from the gang of “film snobs” (his words). It’s a conversation worth checking out, and I am clearly ready to stand by his side, sword in my hand, defending Breathless until the very end.

The interview with Kaprisky adds a good nostalgic touch, and some insights on the film from the too often criticized actress. Not an absolute must, but still something funny to complete my Breathless experience.

Granted, a making-of and an interview with the director would have been fantastic gifts. Nonetheless, Second Sight Films took what is usually regarded as laughing stock, and packaged it in a much deserved, great format. I can hardly be any happier.

Elements of Clojure

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Few days ago, Zach Tellman published a complete draft of his upcoming book Elements of Clojure.

This is a work I have been following closely for a while. I purchased an early draft and have been there at every update from the author, ready to read it all over again. Furthermore, Zach’s talks at various conferences¹ reinforced my belief that he is on a path I am eager to follow.

This kind of devotion is not easy to explain, but I will do my best. Since my first Java 1.2 guide through my experiences with C, SQL, Scheme, Scala, Clojure and now Haskell, IT books have been a constant in my life.

Most of them, unfortunately, became outdated soon, and now serve only as dust support. Some of them, however, stood the test of time and proved to be a reliable source of invaluable knowledge. Structure and Intepretation of Computer Programs, for instance, is still next to me, still teaching me how to be a better programmer.

Why is that? Because a book like SICP is not teaching a programming language in particular. It’s not trying to be the ultimate reference on Scheme inner details, nor it wants to be a guide to improve your Scheme skills. SICP is about the how, not the what. And that is exactly where Elements of Clojure fits.

Much like SICP, Elements of Clojure uses a specific language to convey its points. It’s the common ground, the starting point from where Zach anchors his reasoning and expands his thoughts about software development. What at first looks like a collection of best practices gradually morphs into a deep dive in the realms of indirection, abstraction and composition. Therefore, this is a book about the grain of my everyday programming.

I admire the writing style of Elements of Clojure. Sharp, terse, it challenges the reader at every turn of the page. You are invited to look for what is missing or left between the lines somewhere else. Zach helps you by leaving a decent amount of footnotes with literary references for further inquiries, and I am confident the final version of the book will have a precise bibliography.²

These literary references are particularly interesting. They diverge from the IT way and end up in literature, philosophy, architecture, social politics and economics. From what I have read so far, this is a totally mind-stretching, enriching journey, all the more because these are works outside my comfort zone.

At every step of the writing process, Zach has questioned his own experiences and studies with his open attitude towards feedback and discussion.³ It all reflects in his prose, and this is a testament to the honest quality of his writing.

Elements of Clojure is always a few clicks away from me, and it’s not even complete yet. I already know it will stay by my side for a long time.

Start with On Abstraction, but I hope to see more recent videos before long. ↩︎
There is already a shelf with recommendations on the author’s Goodreads profile. ↩︎
A book club has recently popped up on ClojureVerse. A specific mailing list to discuss the book has also been around for a while, courtesy of the author himself. Moreover, he set up workshops around his work at conferences, but I haven’t been able to attend one yet. ↩︎

Beauty lies in the segments of the mode line

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Since I basically spend much of my computing in Emacs, it’s no surprise I have come to love customizing it. One Emacs facet I keep returning to is the mode line.

To be honest, it’s hard to remember everything I tried on this little but very useful tool. For a long while smart-mode-line has been my go-to package. I considered powerline briefly, but even spaceline didn’t last long. Eventually, I rolled my own spin and never looked for an external solution again.

Recently, Jonas Bernoulli — of Magit fame — unveiled two new packages expressly dedicated to the mode line: minions and moody.

Ever being annoyed by the long list of minor modes taking up precious space? Or are you just tired of adding :diminish every time you install a new package via use-package? minions to the rescue.

minions replaces the minor mode list with a customizable lighter, which upon click reveals a menu with an entry for every minor mode available. You can enable or disable a specific mode or explore its settings in a breeze. minions reduces the clutter while making it easier to check on your minor modes.

On the other hand, moody is for the true artist. I love sparkling Emacs with some beauty, but as much as sanityinc-tomorrow-night helps me with that, I haven’t been able to accomplish something really satisfying with the mode line before trying moody.

Now look at that. It feels awesome.

The number 2 on the left is my little variation on the Eyebrowse segment I found in spaceline.

Refactoring my windows restoring solution

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Following my last article on restoring window configurations with custom functions, Clément Pit-Claudel got in touch with me and suggested a little improvement. Clément pointed out the built-in Emacs command winner-undo, which I promptly used to simplify my solution.

Let’s enable winner-mode, first, because winner-undo comes with it.

(use-package winner                     ; Restore old window configurations
  :init (winner-mode t))

winner-mode automatically takes care of storing window configurations, thus I can safely remove functions like mu-ibuffer-open:

(defun mu-ibuffer-open ()
  "Open Ibuffer after storing the current window configuration."
  (interactive)
  (mu-push-window-configuration)
  (ibuffer))

Now I only need to call winner-undo when I exit the desired, fullframed buffer.

(defun mu-pop-window-configuration ()
  "Kill current buffer and restore the previous window configuration."
  (interactive)
  (kill-this-buffer)
  (let ((inhibit-message t))
    (winner-undo)))

I wrapped (winner-undo) with (inhibit-message t) to get rid of the superfluous message about the restored window configuration number.

This is a much cleaner solution. I still have to use fullframe, of course, but by reusing an inner Emacs functionality I get the same result with less code.

However, this code has a problem. winner-mode does not save the configuration of a frame with a single window. In this case winner-undo has nothing to undo and it usually takes me back to a completely different buffer than the one I started from.

Therefore I revised my functions and made them a bit more general. Basically, I removed mu-push-window-configuration and added mu-save-wins-then-call.

(defun mu-save-wins-then-call (func &optional args)
  "Save current window configuration, then call FUNC optionally with ARGS."
  (interactive)
  (push (current-window-configuration) mu-saved-window-configuration)
  (cond
   ;; We have arguments for the function
   ((bound-and-true-p args) (funcall func args))
   ;; The function requires exactly one argument, and we want it to be nil
   ((equal args "nil") (funcall func nil))
   ;; The function does not expect arguments
   (t (funcall func))))

The "nil" check is kind of a hack just for paradox-list-packages, which expects one non-optional argument. Since &optional args evaluates to nil when non present, I need the check to avoid calling (funcall func) in this particular case. I am sure there is a better solution, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Nonetheless, functions like the previously mentioned mu-ibuffer-open becomes cleaner.

(defun mu-ibuffer-open ()
  "Save window configuration and call `ibuffer'."
  (interactive)
  (mu-save-wins-then-call 'ibuffer))

(defun mu-elfeed-open ()
  "Save window configuration and call `elfeed'."
  (interactive)
  (mu-save-wins-then-call 'elfeed))

(defun mu-paradox-open ()
  "Save window configuration and call `paradox-list-packages'."
  (interactive)
  (mu-save-wins-then-call 'paradox-list-packages "nil"))

With the help of funcall I have a generic wrapper that can be applied wherever I need.

Thanks again to Clément Pit-Claudel who helped me dig further into my idea and explore new paths.

Restoring the window configuration in Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I explained how I customised Magit to kill its buffers upon quitting magit-status. My solution uses magit-restore-window-configuration, which does exactly what the name suggests. Wouldn’t it be great if a similar handy trick could be applied to any Emacs functionality?

Specifically:

I’d like to run some modes in a window that takes up the whole frame
I’d like to quit them with the previous window configuration completely restored

Two modes that I use daily would definitely become more pleasant: ibuffer-mode and org-agenda-mode. Fortunately, the Emacs community has already devised everything I need.

First, I have to save the current window configuration.

(defvar mu-saved-window-configuration nil)

(defun mu-push-window-configuration ()
  "Save current window configuration."
  (interactive)
  (push (current-window-configuration) mu-saved-window-configuration))

I can now create a command to open the desired mode.

(defun mu-ibuffer-open ()
  "Open Ibuffer after storing current window configuration."
  (interactive)
  (mu-push-window-configuration)
  (ibuffer))

A buffer can be visited in a single window per frame with fullframe.

(with-eval-after-load 'ibuffer
    (fullframe ibuffer mu-pop-window-configuration))

The first argument to fullframe indicates that I want the function ibuffer to be executed in a single window of the current frame. The second argument is the command[^1] invoked when quitting Ibuffer, which will have to restore the previous window configuration.

(defun mu-restore-window-configuration (config)
  "Kill current buffer and restore window configuration in CONFIG."
  (interactive)
  (kill-this-buffer)
  (set-window-configuration config))

(defun mu-pop-window-configuration ()
  "Restore previous window configuration and clear current window."
  (interactive)
  (let ((config (pop mu-saved-window-configuration)))
    (if config
        (mu-restore-window-configuration config)
      (if (> (length (window-list)) 1)
          (delete-window)
        (bury-buffer)))))

These little functions are just my personal take on the awesome gems I discovered in John Wiegley’s Emacs configuration.

Nothing can stop me now from applying the same pattern to any mode I want. Once again, Emacs shows a degree of customizability second to none.

Exterminate Magit buffers

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Some say that Emacs users rarely kill buffers. Instead they smoothly dance away to another buffer using their preferred switching mechanism, and just keep on working with no hiccups whatsoever. In my case ivy-switch-buffer is usually doing all the the dancing, with Ibuffer coming in when the situation gets out of hand.

However, I do not enjoy having more open buffers than what I really need. Call it obsessive-compulsive disorder, call it whatever you like, I want my buffers list clean and on point.

Magit has a penchant for open buffers. Jonas Bernoulli already explained the reasoning behind this behaviour, but he also suggested a solution to clean up Magit-related buffers when the work is done.

Following Jonas’ tip, this is what I devised:

(defun mu-magit-kill-buffers (param)
  "Restore window configuration and kill all Magit buffers."
  (let ((buffers (magit-mode-get-buffers)))
    (magit-restore-window-configuration)
    (mapc #'kill-buffer buffers)))

(validate-setq magit-bury-buffer-function #'mu-magit-kill-buffers)

The function is simple: first it collects the available Magit buffers, then restores the window configuration as it was before calling magit-status, and finally applies kill-buffer on the buffers previously collected. kill-buffer will not ask for confirmation, so now pressing q in magit-status has the desired effect.

Something is weird in that function, though. Why pass param to mu-magit-kill-buffers if there is no need for it in the function body?

Let’s break this down. The value of magit-bury-buffer-function is a function.[^1]

(defcustom magit-bury-buffer-function 'magit-restore-window-configuration
  "The function used to bury or kill the current Magit buffer."
  :package-version '(magit . "2.3.0")
  :group 'magit-buffers
  :type '(radio (function-item quit-window)
                (function-item magit-mode-quit-window)
                (function-item magit-restore-window-configuration)
                (function :tag "Function")))

Looking at the code of magit-restore-window-configuration, we can see that it accepts an optional argument.

(defun magit-restore-window-configuration (&optional kill-buffer)
  "Bury or kill the current buffer and restore previous window configuration."
  (let ((winconf magit-previous-window-configuration)
        (buffer (current-buffer))
        (frame (selected-frame)))
    (quit-window kill-buffer (selected-window))
    (when (and winconf (equal frame (window-configuration-frame winconf)))
      (set-window-configuration winconf)
      (when (buffer-live-p buffer)
        (with-current-buffer buffer
          (setq magit-previous-window-configuration nil))))))

Thus param in mu-magit-kill-buffers is only there to match the signature of the function passed to magit-bury-buffer-function. If I leave it out, I will get this error message:

magit-mode-bury-buffer: Wrong number of arguments: ((t) nil "Kill all Magit buffers." (let ((buffers (magit-mode-get-buffers))) (magit-restore-window-configuration) (mapc #'kill-buffer buffers))), 1

If you’re wondering why I am using the sharp quote (#') when setting the value of magit-bury-buffer-function, you can simply trust the sage advice of Artur Malabarba.

There is still one problem to solve. Setting magit-bury-buffer-function this way makes q always kill every Magit buffer. This is not what I need when I am using, for instance, magit-log-buffer-file.

Hence it’s better to make my custom function interactive and apply it only for magit-status-mode-map:

(defun mu-magit-kill-buffers ()
  "Restore window configuration and kill all Magit buffers."
  (interactive)
  (let ((buffers (magit-mode-get-buffers)))
    (magit-restore-window-configuration)
    (mapc #'kill-buffer buffers)))

(bind-key "q" #'mu-magit-kill-buffers magit-status-mode-map)

Bonus point: the unused param is gone.

Refactoring power-ups

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 10 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Any programmer knows the importance of refactoring. It’s even hard to believe a programmer can live without it. There are plenty of use cases for refactoring, but the following happens often enough that I am glad Emacs sits next to me every day.

Imagine you are working on a medium-to-big size project. You have functions everywhere, maybe constants here and there to make your life easier. Functional programmers have no time for variables, so I won’t go down that road.

At one point you discover a function that could use a different name. Clarity, readability, or just mere kindness towards your fellow co-workers prompts you to come up with something better. Naturally, the function is used in many places around the codebase, so it’s time to bring out the heavy guns.

There are plenty of ways to solve this problem, especially in Emacs, but this is how I approach the situation:

C-c p s r brings up counsel-projectile-rg
If point is on the function name, I just hit M-n to use it as the search term, otherwise I type it in
C-c C-o now runs ivy-occur and all the candidates end up in a dedicated buffer
C-x C-q, bound to ivy-wgrep-change-to-wgrep-mode, makes the new buffer editable. It’s easy to remember because it’s the same key binding to enable Wdired from Dired
C-s invokes counsel-grep-or-swiper and I type in the function name
M-q takes me to swiper-query-replace, and I just need to enter the new function name, hit RET and then C-c C-c to confirm my modifications
C-x s followed by ! is all it takes now to save the files involved in my refactoring

If it looks like a lot to remember, well, it is. Only the first times, though. After a while it becomes second nature, and editing an occurrence in multiple files feels like a gentle breeze down your neck.

Projectile and Ivy/Counsel/Swiper are really invaluable tools.

Getting ready for Dutch Clojure Days

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As a functional programming jock, I have a confession to make: I have never been to a Clojure conference. There was a bit of Clojure in the now defunct LambdaCon, but the talks there were not as riveting as the ones I caught on YouTube from the likes of Clojure/conj, clojuTRE and Clojure/west.

No need to sound depressing, though. Thanks to 7bridges, I will happily attend Dutch Clojure Days 2018 on April 21st. As much as my enthusiasm is hard to contain, I plan to fulfil a bunch of resolutions without losing myself in total exuberance.

Learn something new

I know the list of speakers is not ready yet, but surely something new and good is waiting for me. This is usually what happens with the talks once the conference I missed makes the videos available, therefore I am pretty confident there is going to be a lot of food for my brain.

Learn something better

As far as my Clojure projects go, there is still plenty I have to master. Transducers? Spec? Design patterns? Performance? UX? Hit me, please. The amateur in me is eager to become a Clojure programmer worth his salt.

Join the community

Last but not least, I will set aside my never-ending fight with sociability and enjoy the Clojure community for real. I’ll be in Amsterdam from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening, so you will have enough time to join me in some healthy discussions about your favourite programming language. Or Emacs, if you fancy wild topics.

A year of functional programming

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

First things first: the title is a lie.

If you happen to be one of my passionate readers, you may recall I started working with Clojure on April 1. So yes, not every month of the year has been devoted to functional programming. I just needed something bold to pull you in, sorry.

Now, how does it feel having worked with Clojure for ~~almost~~ a year?

Here at 7bridges we had our fair share of projects. The open source ones are just a selected few: clj-odbp, a driver for OrientDB binary protocol; carter, an SPA to show how our driver works; remys, a little tool to interact with MySQL databases via REST APIs. I also had the chance to play with ArangoDB recently, and there were no problems building a sample project to understand its APIs.

At home, boodle was born to strengthen my ever-growing knowledge and do something useful for the family.

When I started in the new office, the switch from professional Java to professional Clojure was a bit overwhelming. New libraries, new tools, new patterns, new ways of solving the same old problems, new problems to approach with a totally different mindset. It all seemed too much.

Then, something clicked.

Having the same language on both client- and server-side helped me figure out the matters at hand with a set of ideas I could easily reuse. Once I understood the problem, I could look for the steps to solve it. Each step required a data structure and the function to handle this data structure. The first time I used reduce-kv because it was the most natural choice left a great smile on my face.

There is still much to learn, though. Due to lack of experience with JavaScript, my ClojureScript-fu needs to improve. I have come to appreciate unit testing, but it’s time to put this love at work on my .cljs files too. I also definitely want to know more about Clojure web applications security and performances.

2017 has been a great year to be a functional programmer. My recent liaison with Haskell is directing me more and more on my way. The functional programming way.

Learning Haskell

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Since my first baby steps in the world of Functional Programming, Haskell has been there. Like the enchanting music of a Siren, it has been luring me with promises of a new set of skills and a better understanding of the lambda calculus.

I refused to oblige at first. A bit of Scheme and my eventual move to Clojure occupied my mind and my daily activities. Truth be told, the odious warfare between dynamic types troopers and static types zealots didn’t help steering my enthusiasm towards Haskell.

Still, my curiosity is stoic and hard to kill and the Haskell Siren was becoming too tempting to resist any further. The Pragmatic Programmer in me knew it was the right thing to do. My knowledge portfolio is always reaching out for something new.

My journey began with the much praised Programming in Haskell. I kept track of the exercises only to soon discover this wasn’t the right book for me. A bit too terse and schematic, I needed something that could ease me in in a different way. I needed more focus on the basics, the roots of the language.

As I usually do, I sought help online. I don’t know many Haskell developers, but I know there are crazy guys in the Emacs community. Steve Purcell was kind and patient enough to introduce me to Haskell Programming From First Principles.

This is a huge book (nearly 1300 pages), but it just took the authors’ prefaces to hook me. Julie Moronuki words in particular resonated heavily with me. Unlike Julie I have experience in programming, but I felt exactly like her when it comes to approaching Haskell teaching materials.

So here I am, armed with Stack and Intero and ready to abandon myself to the depths and wonders of static typing and pure functional programming. I will track my progress and maybe report back here. I already have a project in mind, but my Haskell needs to get really good before starting any serious work.

May the lambda be with me.

boodle

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The usefulness of in-house accounting has become evident only in recent years. On different occasions, my wife and I discussed a solution for keeping track of expenses and available budget for short- and long-term goals. Simply put: the bank statement was not enough any more.

In the past we relied on ledger, knowing too well the power of plain text. For a while we succeeded in our money management, because ledger is really that good. However, soon we started thinking about savings and goals, about a custom user interface to have a better understanding of our financial situation.

Naturally, I decided to use some of the experience I gained at work to develop our own application. I wanted a simple single-page application that would enable us to:

track expenses
query expenses to get reports
track short- and long-term goals

boodle (a synonym of money, in case you are wondering) has the following architecture:

client: re-frame
server: ring on top of HTTP kit
database: PostgreSQL

I have set up bidi for client-side routing, compojure for server-side routing and compojure-api to connect client and server via pleasant APIs.

Thanks to mount I have three main components that I can start and stop to make development and debugging easier: application configuration, database and HTTP server.

I decided to give dire a try, appreciating the separation between logic and error handling. I also took the chance to couple clojure.test with test.check, for some basic property-based testing, and lein-eftest to have fast and pretty test results.

The setup is completed by the continuous integration offered by Travis CI and Deps Versions to identify outdated dependencies. Everything is available on SourceHut, if you want to dig deeper into the details.

boodle is currently deployed on my home server, and in the last months it has proved to be a reliable tool. It also deepened my love for Clojure and ClojureScript. Long forgotten are the days where separation of concerns, both client- and server-side, seemed impossible and destined to fail.

Inspecting log files with Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As a software developer, I cannot avoid log files. Application servers and LAMP machines are always around the corner waiting for me, so I must accept log files and do my best.

There are two kinds of log files I work with:

static: the server wrote the content and never touched the file again
dynamic: the server keeps appending content as the monitored process continues

The log files could be on my hard disk or located on a remote machine. During my workflow, a “remote machine” can also be a Docker container.

I leave the math to you, but it should be clear that different combinations arise. Luckily, with Emacs everything goes smoothly and I can move seamlessly across any scenario.

When it comes to static files there are no surprises. If the log file is local, inspecting it with counsel-grep-or-swiper is pretty much all I need. Since I rarely need to modify a log file, I usually enable read-only-mode with C-x C-q to prevent accidental edits. For a remote static file, the same easily applies thanks to TRAMP.

Things get more interesting with dynamic logs. On local files, with auto-revert-mode I can see the changes in the buffer as soon as the underlying file changes. If I want something fancier, auto-revert-tail-mode behaves like the good old tail -f. Dynamic remote logs, however, require a different approach. Activating auto-revert-mode is not enough, I also need to set auto-revert-remote-files to t for the desired behaviour.

What if years of tail -f made you totally indifferent to such niceties? You can follow Michael Albinus suggestion and use dired-do-shell-command in Dired.

Actually, you can even improve a little on his tip. Leave the ending & out, and go straight with dired-do-async-shell-command which in Dired is aptly bound to &. Refer to the manual for further details: Shell Commands in Dired.

Magit, the one and only

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Nowadays it is basically impossible to land in a group of Emacs enthusiasts without someone talking rapturously about the wonders of Magit. If you listen closely, the words resemble a chant: “You wish you could do it with Git, until you experience the great Magit.”

Be warned: the following story goes along those magic lines.

Magit makes me look back at my experiences with CVS, SVN and Mercurial and laugh about my clumsiness with tools like Tortoise. Before Magit, I touched the regular Git command-line interface for simple tasks such as cloning a repository, always scared away by the large number of options at my disposal. I had to deal with Eclipse’s own Git client when I was working with Java, but please let me spare you the gruesome details.

Magit has never been so necessary and useful as it has been since I started my new job back in April. Git is our only version-control sytem, and the command-line is still the preferred tool in the office. Not for me, though. Magit has become a natural extension of pretty much all of my coding.

I regularly create branches, being it for an issue to fix or a new feature to implement. If the project is based on gitflow, we are covered in Magit thanks to magit-gitflow. Otherwise, rebasing and merging on master are just a few key bindings away.

Although impressive, it is not only a matter of speed. Magit taught me more about Git than every tutorial out in the wild. Especially when it comes to rebasing and cherry-picking, both of which are hard to get wrong now. Rewording a commit, exploring the repository history, dealing with submodules: it all makes sense through an interface that could not be more helpful.

The one thing against Magit I have for the haters is this:

(unbind-key "C-c C-w" git-commit-mode-map)

That binding is my prefix for Eyebrowse. Not much of a complaint, I know.

Magit brings order, balance and elegance to the powers of Git. It is the only version-control system I need.

On a personal level

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Today I want to expand on the rushed comment I made on Letterboxd about Xavier Dolan’s Mommy. That comment, which literally followed the ending credits, was an attempt at sorting out feelings too confused.

Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014)

I could have waited the day after and have a better understanding of my thoughts, of course. Still, I needed to write something down. I had to secure those precarious words somewhere, and at that moment Letterboxd was the right tool for the job.

Every now and then a film insinuates itself so deeply in me that judging it on a level other than personal is impossible. I would certainly fail to explain the greatness of Eyes Wide Shut, while I could bore you to death with what Stanley Kubrick’s last work means to me.

Mommy arrival could not have been more unusual. Occasionally around Halloween I indulge in a tradition I used to follow religiously as a teenager: watching horror films. This time I decided to catch up with the recent works of Miike Takashi.

It didn’t go as expected: Miike’s late output failed to impress me as much as his glorious past, so after a while I wanted something completely different. Home alone for the weekend, I went randomly through my watchlist. Well, more or less randomly, because I don’t have all the films in my watchlist. So I picked the first one available: Mommy.

The link between my emotions and my experiences with the ones on the screen appeared instantly. I don’t suffer of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but I was nervously active until the age of sixteen. I shifted between passive and aggressive behaviours, enraged by nonsense and oblivious to most of the lives around me.

My teenage years saw the gap between me and my father grow wider and wider. A distance I have somehow managed to shorten only recently. I know then what it means to spend the most precious years of one’s life without a dad.

Especially close to my life is the portrayal of Steve’s mother, Diane Deprés. The love for her son, the failures of her life, the eternal paradox of coping with age as she tries to grasp what is going on around her.

There is just too much of me in Mommy to even consider approaching it from the film criticism angle. I am going to leave it there. I will hold it dearest in my heart, knowing for a fact the power of cinema is never ending.

Laughable violence

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Watching McG’s The Babysitter and Chris Peckover’s Better Watch Out recently made me reflect on how cinema plays with violence and what the viewer is left with to think about.

Better Watch Out (Chris Peckover, 2016)

It’s not the first time that reflections such as this come to my mind. On a previous, now dead version of this blog, I wrote about the link between real violence and money-bait one. I argued about violence as a spectacle in Spectre and as a menacing device in Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. Violence has become a de facto in most blockbusters, and the boundaries within which it is depicted keep getting stretched back and forth.

The Babysitter and Better Watch Out stand as different takes on the home invasion horror. They try to defy genre conventions while simultaneously nodding at the slasher-savvy geek. Tentatively following the likes of Scream and Detention in the case of The Babysitter, pushing an easily predictable twist in Better Watch Out.

Albeit dissimilar in the intent, both films make large use of violence during their ninety minutes. The Babysitter makes a laugh out of it, with overtly obnoxious deaths and blood splattering everywhere as we are constantly reminded this is just a joke. Better Watch Out instead goes for the serious and scary way, even condemning the use of violence as a comic tool at one point. Unfortunately, it reassures its viewers that there is nothing to be afraid of by pleasing them in the end.

Aside from few exceptions (e.g., Paul Verhoeven), I find it difficult to tolerate violence as entertainment. Unless used as a means to something else, like satire or an inevitable part of dramatic events, indulging in gory details generally adds nothing to the whole film. On the contrary, it usually fails to hide a poor script and the lack of decent ideas. The thin line between futile gimmick and necessary evil is too often missed.

Worse than that, years and years of treating violence as something silly has brain-washed many viewers. If you have ever been annoyed by people laughing at the violence on screen at the cinema, you know what I mean. I remember some guys right behind my seat laughing and cracking jokes at the death of Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road, completely ruining the dramatic effect of the scene. Who knows, probably these are the same guys who will find the on-screen labels of The Babysitter smart and funny.

Simplify my Docker workflow with Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Up until a few weeks ago, I had never messed with Docker. Not that I had anything against it per se, but never before had I felt the need to isolate my work in containers that can be readily built up and torn down.

Docker and its helpful companion Docker Compose come with a rich command-line interface. Nonetheless, I don’t want to leave Emacs for simple tasks such as building a Docker image or preparing the containers with Docker Compose.

Fortunately, the Emacs ecosystem is ready to help. Four packages have improved my workflow with Docker:

The first two packages add syntax highlighting, completion and a bunch of useful key bindings to work with Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml.

The real magic, though, happens with docker-tramp. The beauty of interacting directly with the contents of a container is impressive. Combine docker-tramp with the handy completion of counsel and the power of Dired and you might feel like Henry Dorsett Case in his ecstatic hunt for the Neuromancer.

Through docker-tramp I can also run EShell on any available container and that is where eshell-bookmark shines. I just have to bookmark a remote EShell buffer and use counsel-bookmark to jump back to it. Managing containers hardly gets any faster than this.

A little advice if you use both counsel and eshell-bookmark: do not set counsel-bookmark-avoid-dired to t, otherwise selecting a bookmark with counsel-bookmark will take you to counsel-find-file instead of opening the desired EShell buffer.

To shell or not to shell

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As much as most of my daily workflow revolves around Emacs, I always have GNOME terminal ready to fly with Fish shell and tmux. I keep EShell next to me for quick tasks, but I have never relied on shell-mode or ansi-term for other CLI-intensive work.

I don’t know what happened to the lovely “Emacs Chat” series from Sacha Chua, but more than three years ago she interviewed Mickey Petersen. Mickey talked with great enthusiasm about shell-mode and at the time I admittedly made a mental note about giving it a try. Regretfully, I have only recently come back to that note.

My first M-x shell didn’t look that great. I haven’t debugged the compatibility issues with Fish, probably something related to my heavily customised config.fish. Anyway, falling back to Bash is enough.

(validate-setq explicit-shell-file-name "/bin/bash")

Note that I am using validate-setq as I have already explained

Another thing I have noticed is the lack of colours for the output of ls. Fortunately, Emacs StackExchange has an answer for that, so I have added this line to my .bash_aliases file:

alias ls="TERM=ansi ls --color=always"

The input echoing is easily turned off following the instructions on the manual. Also, the history is much cleaner and easier to navigate with counsel-shell-history.

(unbind-key "C-c C-l" shell-mode-map)
(bind-key "C-c C-l" #'counsel-shell-history shell-mode-map)

Note that unbind-key and bind-key are macros from bind-key.el, which is part of the fantastic use-package.

Last but not least, I like to have my shell buffer filling the whole window in the current frame. Thus, display-buffer-alist to the rescue.

(validate-setq
 display-buffer-alist
 `(
   ;; … other stuff …
   (,(rx bos "*shell")
    (display-buffer-same-window)
    (reusable-frames . nil))
   ;; … other stuff …
  ))

Taming closing delimiters in my s-expressions

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As I explained when I wrote about my daily Clojure workflow I rely heavily on Smartparens for my editing. With Lisp-like languages in particular, I enable smartparens-strict-mode to keep my s-expressions balanced even when I happen to use delete-char or kill-word dangerously near a closing parenthesis.

I have sp-kill-sexp bound to C-M-k, however out of habit I often use C-k to kill a line, which in my configuration is set up as Artur Malabarba explained. Doing that in the middle of an s-expression creates unnerving chaos.

Smartparens comes with a handy binding to temporarily disable the enforced balancing and let me insert a closing delimiter. Just pressing C-q followed by the desired matching parenthesis brings the order back.

Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy. Take this snippet which appears at the end of a ClojureScript function:

(when-not (empty? @data)
            [:div
             {:style {:padding "1em" :text-align "center"}}
             [graph]])]]))))

Carelessly hitting C-k near [graph] disrupts an otherwise elegant s-expression. I could undo, of course, but what if after C-k I do other kill-and-yank edits?

This is exactly why I have come to love syntactic-close.

(use-package syntactic-close            ; Automatically insert closing delimiter
  :ensure t
  :bind ("C-c x c" . syntactic-close))

As soon as I discover an unbalanced s-expression, I can use C-c x c as many times as needed to add back the right closing delimiters.

A better workflow with workspaces

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I am not a big fan of workspaces on my desktop environments, maybe because to me Alt-Tab is enough. To be honest, I was using workspaces back in my Ratpoison days, but that is not the case any more.

Nevertheless, my daily workflow in Emacs improved so much with eyebrowse I can’t imagine going back to a configuration without it.

(use-package eyebrowse                  ; Easy workspaces creation and switching
  :ensure t
  :config
  (validate-setq eyebrowse-mode-line-separator " "
                 eyebrowse-new-workspace t)

  (eyebrowse-mode t))

As you can see, I am pretty much leaving eyebrowse with its default settings. I removed the comma that was used as a separator between the workspace numbers and made switching to a new workspace start from the *scratch* buffer.

Now my daily workflow in Emacs is thus organised:

Workspace #1: this is dedicated to my GTD project, which simply follows the steps Nicolas Petton describes in Orgmode for GTD.
Workspace #2: this is for Clojure and ClojureScript development, so everything from CIDER to project specific Magit buffers and EShells ends up here. In the rare case I need to work on a different project, I create a new workspace.
Workspace #3: this is the “I need a break!” place. Elfeed is my preferred choice for a quiet and informative distraction. Otherwise, if I just want to hack on my Emacs configuration I do it here.

Combined with Projectile, eyebrowse is the definitive piece of the puzzle I was missing to have an optimised work environment.

Every feed in its right place

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Writing about Christopher Wellons’ elfeed is the least I can do to describe how thankful I am for this gem, especially since it’s one of the Emacs packages I use the most.

Up until last month, Twitter was useful to keep in touch with the IT and the film criticism communities. However, for a while I had been finding myself in dire need of a vacation from social media. The amount of time lost in pointless time-line scrolling looking for the latest hip comment screamed to be spent otherwise.

I have always been a fan of RSS feeds, because having the news aggregated in one place spares me the time of wandering the Internet. Twitter fought against my feeds, giving the impression it was offering more up-to-date content along with the false promise of an interaction that in fact was rarely happening.

Before elfeed, I tried my luck with different feed readers. Since a carefully tmux-ed terminal window is always part of my daily workflow, I fell in love with Newsbeuter a couple of years ago.

However, as any Emacs fanatic would tell you, why leave the comfort of your favourite text editor for something as mundane as RSS feeds?

elfeed is more than a Newsbeuter replacement, though. Tags, filters and the power of Emacs beneath its lean interface make feeds management easier than ever. It’s also trivially extensible. Look at this simple trick to mark all the feeds read when I am feeling too lazy.

(defun mu-elfeed-mark-all-read ()
  "Mark all feeds as read."
  (interactive)
  (call-interactively 'mark-whole-buffer)
  (elfeed-search-untag-all-unread))

(bind-key "R" #'mu-elfeed-mark-all-read elfeed-search-mode-map)

elfeed sorts feeds by time, with the most recent on top. This had been a bit confusing at first, as I was used to having the feeds grouped by items with Newsbeuter. Nevertheless, after a while this approach felt more natural, maybe because it reminds me of the Twitter time-line.

RSS feeds are an essential tool in this age of perennial distractions. Having them readily available at my fingertips is invaluable.

Keeping your .emacs.d clean

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

How often do you have a look at your .emacs.d directory? If you’re anything like me, not that often. It’s no wonder then that upon opening it I was horrified to see it cluttered with all sorts of files from all the packages I regularly use.

Jonas Bernoulli, of Magit fame, must be feeling similar concerns. Otherwise, why did he come up with a package like no-littering?

Installation is trivial, especially if you use the great use-package:

(use-package no-littering               ; Keep .emacs.d clean
  :ensure t
  :config
  (require 'recentf)
  (add-to-list 'recentf-exclude no-littering-var-directory)
  (add-to-list 'recentf-exclude no-littering-etc-directory))

No extra setup is required. Place this snippet somewhere at the beginning of your init.el file and you are set. Use Emacs for a while and then go back checking .emacs.d: nice, huh?

To be honest, I wiped out my .emacs.d directory and started from fresh with no-littering installed. Too much, maybe, but I was eager to see how good this package is. And yes, it is good.

House-cleaning has never been so easy.

The special effects of Tsui Hark

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 07 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It took me a while to understand and finally appreciate Tsui Hark’s output since 2010. Up until 2008’s All About Women I had always come to grips with his cinema, in one way or another. However, I still remember leaving the screening of Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame at Venice Film Festival with more concerns for his career than excitement for what I had just seen. Somehow I wasn’t able to buy his love for CGI and 3-D.

Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back (Tsui Hark, 2016)

Hindsight wisely taught me I was blatantly wrong. Tsui has always been fascinated by special effects. Just think about both Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and The Legend of Zu. And what is Green Snake if not his overtly personal exploration of the White Snake folk tale by means of graphic aids?

Tsui Hark loves his visuals. He loves portraying stories and characters with vibrant images and careful design. No wonder CGI has always interested him. It enables him to stretch his skills further and devise new styles.

Admittedly, his first takes on 3-D weren’t enough for him to convince me he was on the right path. The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate felt like an endless trick and Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon just didn’t work. Then came The Taking of Tiger Mountain which showed Tsui was still capable behind the camera despite 3-D moves of little interest to my eyes.

Sword Master (Derek Yee, 2016)

It’s only with Sword Master and Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back that Tsui eventually unveils his unequivocal mastery of visual effects. Sword Master looks like a series of paintings where charming wuxia plots unfold. Derek Yee is supposed to be the director, but it is clearly a Tsui Hark work with his themes, his penchant for swords and blades and those villains that reminded me of Seven Swords at every fight.

The second chapter of Stephen Chow’s own retelling of Journey to the West goes so far and above Chow’s first effort in terms of visual exaggeration that it is impossible to describe. Tsui transforms the regular Chinese blockbuster in an avant-garde fantasy where aesthetic drives the action.

Stephen Chow has always avoid CGI as a tool for mimicking realism. Tsui embraces this philosophy and lets the special effects build a vivid world out of the fervid pages of the Chinese classic text.

It’s hard to tell what Tsui Hark next move is going to be. He trespassed and reinvented the limits of cinema times and times again in his long career. He is cinema’s most special effect.

Daily Clojure workflow

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It’s already been a month since I started my new job. All is going well and just as expected, and it’s been interesting to see how my carefully tuned Emacs configuration dealt with everyday Clojure programming.

Truth be told, I’ve never used Emacs consistently for work. Before Clojure I mainly did Java and Emacs support for Java is not as good as what it offers for other programming languages. Yes, I kept Emacs around for other stuff, but it would be a dull lie to tell I was proudly using Emacs all day in the office.

Anyway, Clojure is the new kid in town now so it’s Emacs all the way. The obvious first choice is CIDER and I genuinely don’t have enough words to say how wonderful it is. I couple it with clj-refactor and Smartparens to get the most out of my coding experience.

I especially love how CIDER enables me to switch easily between Clojure and ClojureScript, with two REPLs ready to go and documentation just under my fingertips. clj-refactor enriches exploratory development with hot reloading of dependencies and handy change of missing requires.

Then there is Projectile. Even on small Clojure projects we are using to test available libraries there are plenty of files around. Mickey Petersen talks about tempo when it comes to using Emacs. Projectile guarantees you don’t lose your tempo while working on projects of different sizes.

What else? I don’t think Magit needs my over enthusiastic words. Ivy is proving to be the right tool at the right time, with Swiper ever so helpful. And now I am only waiting for the day we will need proper documents to bring out the almighty AUCTeX.

In the immortal words of Bozhidar Batsov:

Emacs is power.
Emacs is magic.
Emacs is fun.
Emacs is forever.

Clojure it is

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Last Friday I finally told my boss that I am going to leave his company for another job.

It’s not the first time in my working life that I want to move to greener pastures. For different reasons I changed jobs quite a lot in the last 10 years. However, this is the first time that I made my decision based on the programming language being used in the office.

As much as I had fun working with Java 8, in the last months there has been little of it. Bouncing back and forth between Java 7 and PHP 5.6 for legacy code maintenance is not exactly my idea of fun.

Both Clojure and functional programming changed the way I think about solving problems with code. I often found myself thinking outside the boundaries of OOP, craving for pure and higher-order functions, all of which are just out of reach in the aforementioned versions of Java and PHP.

The adoption of Clojure by Italian software houses is still close to none. It’s been a while since I started looking for a job with Clojure, but until now the only opportunities I found required moving to another country. I even tried to convince myself I was willing to pack my bags again, but family comes first and deep in my heart I knew I couldn’t ask my wife to leave everything behind.

Imagine my shock when I heard that 7bridges was hiring. Marco Dalla Stella, CTO and Co–founder of the company, is the man who guided me through my first steps with Clojure. It was him, 2 years ago, who pointed me to Programming Clojure and The Joy of Clojure. It was him who joined me for a trip to Bologna where LambdaCon happened. He’s also an Emacs user, which means he must be one of the good guys.

And now I can’t wait to start working with Clojure for real. I celebrated the beginning of this new adventure with a new Dell XPS 13 which will surely be perfect for what I have in mind.

Eventually, Clojure it is.

Dynamically change font size in Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I take my Emacs configuration with me on every computer I use. I also plug a big external display —and the awesome Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate— during long coding sessions, so it is only natural that I have to tailor my setup to accommodate different font sizes.

Being the customizable editor that Emacs is, it wasn’t hard to devise a neat trick to please my needs.

First, a simple function to set the default fonts.

(defun mu-setup-main-fonts (default-height variable-pitch-height)
  "Set up default fonts.

Use DEFAULT-HEIGHT for default face and VARIABLE-PITCH-HEIGHT
for variable-pitch face."
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil
                      :family "Source Code Pro"
                      :height default-height)
  (set-face-attribute 'variable-pitch nil
                      :family "Fira Sans"
                      :height variable-pitch-height
                      :weight 'regular))

Now I just have to call this function with the proper values for :height according to the screen size.

(when window-system
  (if (> (x-display-pixel-width) 1800)
      (mu-setup-main-fonts 150 160)
    (mu-setup-main-fonts 130 140)))

Of course, more specific settings for various display resolutions are just a cond away.

Automatic language detection for Flyspell

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I am always looking for new ways to improve my Emacs experience. Months ago, it happened to my spell-checking configuration thanks to the work of Nicolas Petton.

(defvar mu-languages-ring nil "Languages ring for Ispell")

(let ((languages '("en_GB" "it_IT")))
  (validate-setq mu-languages-ring (make-ring (length languages)))
  (dolist (elem languages) (ring-insert mu-languages-ring elem)))

(defun mu-cycle-ispell-languages ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((language (ring-ref mu-languages-ring -1)))
    (ring-insert mu-languages-ring language)
    (ispell-change-dictionary language)))

This handy code lets me cycle quickly through the languages I need in Flyspell. However, wouldn’t it be easier if Emacs was capable of automatic language detection?

That’s the hole the guess-language package fills.

(use-package guess-language         ; Automatically detect language for Flyspell
  :ensure t
  :defer t
  :init (add-hook 'text-mode-hook #'guess-language-mode)
  :config
  (setq guess-language-langcodes '((en . ("en_GB" "English"))
                                   (it . ("it_IT" "Italian")))
        guess-language-languages '(en it)
        guess-language-min-paragraph-length 45)
  :diminish guess-language-mode)

Notice how I set guess-language-langcodes. It has to be set this way to make guess-language work with my setup for Hunspell.

Support for different languages and language detection for multiple languages in the same document are provided out of the box. guess-language is still young, but it’s already making spell-checking in Emacs so much easier.

My 2016 in films

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Instead of a list of the best films I saw this year, I would like to take a different approach. I keep track of every film I watch, so it is easy to highlight what really matters. Be it a classic from the 40s or a lost gem of the 90s, cinema is always much more than a mere round up.

The first two films I watched in 2016 have lasted in my heart throughout the whole year: Buñuel’s Belle de Jour and Fellini’s 8½. Enough has already been written about these masterpieces, and I do not feel up to the task of exploring them critically. If I had to pick a word to describe the powerful feelings both of them left me with I would use “contemporary”.

I filled January and early February with other classics: Aguirre the Wrath of God, The Apartment, All About Eve, Bonnie and Clyde, Bride of Frankenstein, City Lights, Modern Times, Beauty and the Beast, On the Waterfront. For one reason or another, I had always put these masterpieces aside until the beginning of 2016. Shame on me.

Alongside these viewings, I caught the good Straight Outta Compton, the great White God and the interesting Anomalisa. 2016 has been a year of many deaths, so I mourned the loss of Alan Rickman with tears over Truly Madly Deeply and sad laughs with one of my all-time favourite Galaxy Quest.

During the first months of 2016, I discovered the works of Gina Prince-Bythewood, with Beyond the Lights heading the lot, before Hong Kong cinema nostalgia kicked back hard. Thus Peter Chan, Ching Siu-Tung, Wilson Yip, Johnny Wang, Patrick Leung, Wong Jing, Jeff Lau, Ringo Lam, Soi Cheang, Ann Hui, Kirk Wong and Tsui Hark sneaked right before I watched both the fantastic Johnnie To’s Office and Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid. Johnnie To came back later in the year with another hit: Three.

I did not manage to see them when they were out in 2015, but Listen to Me Marlon and Shaun the Sheep Movie deserve a mention. The former is one of the most fascinating documentaries I have seen, while the latter can easily make anyone laugh without uttering a word.

Following Citizenfour, I tracked down the other works of Laura Poitras. The director is investigating on our political and economical world with an eye of her own.

While Miles Ahead, Midnight Special and Snowden did not strike me as something I will remember, Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani is everything The Jungle Book is not, and Guzman’s The Pearl Button is what I hoped Fire at Sea could be.

I will soon return to Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, because it puzzled me more than any other film this year. South Korea and Japan delivered a couple of entries for the zombie horror genre that surprised me in lots of good ways: Train to Busan and I Am a Hero. Japan also left a mark on the monster genre with the outstanding Shin Gojira. Only Verhoeven’s Elle matched the same high expectations that drove me up to the screen before the viewing.

2016 saw Jia Zhangke once again stealing my heart with his mesmerizing Mountains May Depart. Why it is not near the top of all the best-of lists out there is beyond my comprehension.

Miss Okusai showed Japan animation is still one or two steps ahead the rest of the world, but it would not be fair to leave the beautiful Kubo and the Two Strings out of this recap.

A year in films is not properly summed up unless I mention my guilty pleasures. Wild Card is Statham like he has never been, and The Shallows overtook my doubts about another shark-attack film within ten minutes I was in.

I have not seen many critic’s favourite yet, but I cannot complain. 2016 proved to be a great year to be a cinema lover.

Format XML in Emacs

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Since I deal with many SOAP web services for work, I also have to deal with lots of XML files. In the application server log they usually appear on one line, which makes the reading unnecessarily painful. Fortunately, Emacs coupled with the handy xmllint comes to the rescue.

First, I installed xmllint with: sudo apt-get install libxml2-utils

Now I could format my XML buffers with: C-x h C-u M-| xmllint -format - RET

However, this is Emacs, so there is always a more productive way to solve problems. Why should I have to input the options for xmllint or remember the necessary key bindings all the times?

(defun mu-xml-format ()
  "Format an XML buffer with `xmllint'."
  (interactive)
  (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max)
                           "xmllint -format -"
                           (current-buffer) t
                           "*Xmllint Error Buffer*" t))

Since I only need this utility in XML buffers, I bound it for nxml-mode-map.

(use-package nxml-mode                  ; XML editing
  :mode "\\.xml\\'"
  :bind (:map nxml-mode-map
              ("C-c m f" . mu-xml-format))
…

Usefulnessless

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Unexpectedly, it took me more than usual to process Oliver Stone’s Snowden. It is not a convoluted film nor its craft stroke me as the more rewarding JFK. It is its inexplicable usefulnessless that kept tormenting my brain days after the viewing.

![](/images/2016-11-26-usefulnessless.jpeg “Snowden (Oliver Stone, 2016))

On various occasions, Edward Snowden referred to himself as being just a piece of the bigger picture, the least significant detail of an ongoing narrative. It is, and always has been, the bigger picture what we have to care about.

In this respect, Stone did surprisingly well. Snowden dodges the misleading trailer and carefully balances the man and the story. It delivers an on point drama not that much concerned with Edward Snowden’s private life. And for once, cinema treats computer culture with decency.

However, the same question I asked myself at the end of the film still resonates with me. Put it bluntly: what is the point of Snowden?

The vital importance of Edward Snowden’s actions should never be underestimated, nonetheless Laura Poitras’s outstanding Citizenfour is out there for everyone to watch and learn from. Edward Snowden himself is streaming talks and interviews from Russia regularly and looks alive and well on Twitter. Following the consequences of his disclosures is just a click away. This easily rules out my first thought: Stone is not aiming to spread the message, unless he thinks awfully low of his viewers.

Snowden fictionalizes many scenes from Citizenfour, staying as close as possible to the source material. Together these scenes turn out to be a fictional documentary that relies heavily upon an actual documentary, resulting in a trite exercise of style. It might serves the narration well, but it runs the risk of hiding the real work from the ones who have not seen it yet.

Then again, if Citizenfour already tells it the way it has to be told, what was Stone hoping to achieve? Of all the things we could have done after watching Snowden, speculating about its objective is the most trivial one.

Scala in Emacs with ENSIME

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

As an amateur Clojure developer, I am particularly fond of CIDER. It brings everything I need to program with Clojure right inside my favourite text editor.

Therefore, when I approached Scala one of the first things I did was looking for something similar to CIDER. I hate leaving Emacs for programming tasks, so having it ready for Scala was paramount. Fortunately, it did not take me long to find my way: ENSIME was right around the corner.

ENSIME supports the famous sbt build tool, and the documentation gently guides you through all the necessary steps to achieve a working setup. It is really a matter of minutes.

A nice trick I grabbed straight from Sam Halliday init.el is:

(remove-hook 'post-self-insert-hook
             'scala-indent:indent-on-parentheses)

(sp-local-pair 'scala-mode "(" nil
               :post-handlers '(("||\n[i]" "RET")))
(sp-local-pair 'scala-mode "{" nil
               :post-handlers '(("||\n[i]" "RET") ("| " "SPC")))

This code lets the awesome Smartparens take care of parentheses in Scala buffers. Another handy solution comes from Sebastian Wiesner:

(defun mu-scala-pop-to-sbt (new-frame)
    "Open SBT REPL for this project, optionally in a NEW-FRAME.

Select the SBT REPL for the current project in a new window.  If
the REPL is not yet running, start it.  With prefix arg, select
the REPL in a new frame instead."
(interactive "P")
;; Start SBT when no running, taken from `sbt:command'
(when (not (comint-check-proc (sbt:buffer-name)))
  (sbt:run-sbt))
(let ((display-buffer-overriding-action
       (if new-frame '(display-buffer-pop-up-frame) nil)))
  (pop-to-buffer (sbt:buffer-name))))

(with-eval-after-load 'scala-mode
  (bind-key "C-c m s" #'mu-scala-pop-to-sbt scala-mode-map))

I just started my journey with Scala but I can safely say ENSIME could be the perfect companion.

Reflecting on my Java 8 experience

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 22 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

After four months of being back to Java for work, I would like to share my impressions about Java 8. Mind you, this is my first time with Java 8 on a project, so I do not consider myself an expert on the subject. What I can promptly say, though, is this: I have never had so much fun using Java before.

One of the reasons I have been partly away from Java since 2012 is that I have been more and more dragged towards functional programming (FP from now on). It all started with my fascination with Emacs and Emacs Lisp, then Scheme and Clojure hit my curiosity harder. Recently, Scala has been insinuating in my brain. You can already see a pattern here, can’t you? FP stole my heart.

I knew Java 8 stormed the object-oriented (OO from now on) community with plenty of FP material, but it took a new, big project and the brilliant Java 8 In Action to convince me I could go more functional than I was hoping for.

The team I work with comes from a purely OO mindset, so I was a bit reluctant to introduce FP ideas and solutions. I jumped right in the middle of the development, with a large codebase already there before the time of my arrival. The only hint of Java 8 I found was a single use of forEach with a lambda expression in it.

I then began using lambda expressions, streams and the Optional class in utility classes and enumerators I could quickly write unit tests for. The benefits were immediately evident: my code was getting clearer and concise, and programming in a declarative fashion made it easier to read and understand. My aim exactly.

To the rest of the team it all looked like syntactic sugar at first. One team member advised me to spread lambdas as little as possible. Fortunately, he soon came to appreciate my efforts and suggested not to be afraid of refactoring code smells if I felt like it.

As much as I like working with lambdas and streams, not to mention LocalDate, the Java 8 feature that really shines in our codebase is CompletableFuture.

We have a bunch of operations that need to be asynchronous. Basically, they collect data from different web services to then build a composite response for the client. The first implementation of asynchronous operations was using Future and Callable. It was working fine, but the logic behind error handling was a mess of try {…} catch {…} copied and pasted in different places. Moreover, the Callable classes were just switch statements bound to get bigger and bigger.

CompletableFuture made everything better. I wrapped each asynchronous operation in a CompletableFuture, removing the unneeded Callable. It is not hard now to comprehend the logic behind the algorithm, because it is definitely simpler than before. Error handling is just a matter of dealing with three possible exceptions.

Java 8 is neither Scala nor Clojure, but as a functional programmer wannabe it makes me appreciate Java again.

Schema validation for my Emacs configuration

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Maintaining an ever-growing Emacs configuration is both fun and exhausting. It is easy to forget why I picked that value for a variable or how in the name of Elisp that weird snippet ended up in my init.el. The more packages I install to extend my beloved text editor, the harder it is to keep track of all the changes the prolific authors put out every day.

Artur Malabarba must understand my frustration pretty well, or at least that was my first reaction to his recent validate library.

The library has a pretty neat API, which I am sure will turn out to come in handy for all the Elisp developers out there. However, so far I have been focusing on the validate-setq macro only. validate-setq adds validation to the regular setq, making it super-easy to catch mistakes that can be surprisingly hard to find.

An example:

(use-package nrepl-client               ; Client for Clojure nREPL
  :ensure cider
  :defer t
  :config (validate-setq nrepl-hide-special-buffers 'yes))

If I evaluate this expression, I get a clear error message:

Error (use-package): nrepl-client :config: Looking for ‘(boolean)' in
‘yes' failed because: not a boolean

I was setting a lot of variables before the related package was required. I also found settings for variables that do not exist any more. Why Emacs was not catching these errors upon loading is still an ongoing investigation.

validate is available on GNU ELPA. Do not miss it.

Adding CHICKEN Scheme support to Flycheck

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

There is no need for me to tell you how great Flycheck is. If you do not trust me, at least trust Mickey Petersen on this.

Since I have been playing around with CHICKEN Scheme for quite some time now, it seemed only natural to wish for on-the-fly syntax checking. Why limit myself to wishing, though? Why do not push it a little further and try to help Flycheck maintainers?

Before starting any coding, I took the time to read the Contributor’s Guide. Like all of Flycheck documentation, the Contributor’s Guide is well-written and easy to understand. The guidelines about pull requests and commit messages, in particular, put me on the right track.

I forked the Flycheck’s repository and started going through the code in flycheck.el. The lack of experience brought me to shamelessly copying the Racket checker and trying to figure out how it worked. It was not too hard to understand, but maybe starting with the Perl checker — see here — would have been a better choice. Nonetheless, I stole the idea of having Geiser as a requirement from the Racket checker.

Anyway, it was not time to code yet. I needed to understand if on-the-fly syntax checking in CHICKEN Scheme would be possible at all. Flycheck gives you the power to work with different syntax checkers within the same interface, but I didn’t know of a similar checker for CHICKEN Scheme.

With some help on the #chicken IRC channel and from Vítor De Araújo on Twitter, I was able to devise my first attempt and create the proper pull request.

And that is when the real magic started.

I knew Flycheck maintainers are kind and helpful because I had already had some chances to interact with them, but I cannot remember the last time I worked on something with this kind of patient assistance.

Questions promptly answered, suggestions readily available. My code kept getting better and better. Useless lines were removed, documentation was added and the integration test felt like the right thing to do.

I learnt a lot and could not be happier with the result. I hope I will be able to contribute to Flycheck again. Moreover, I do hope every project I wish to contribute to can follow the Flycheck’s community example.

Now go enjoy your on-the-fly syntax checking with CHICKEN Scheme.

Spell-checking with Hunspell and flyspell-correct

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In order to simplify the portability of my Emacs setup, I devised a useful shell script to install everything my needs.

Recently I abandoned aspell in favour of hunspell, so the script has been updated accordingly. However, hunspell needs some dictionaries to work with and they are not readily available as Debian packages, but as LibreOffice Extensions. Therefore, I just need to copy the files over to /usr/share/hunspell.

A quick test with hunspell -D shows all is set up correctly.

$ hunspell -D
[…]
AVAILABLE DICTIONARIES (path is not mandatory for -d option):
/usr/share/hunspell/en_GB
/usr/share/hunspell/it_IT
/usr/share/hunspell/en_US
[…]

Emacs Lisp takes care of the rest.

(setq ispell-program-name (executable-find "hunspell")
      ispell-dictionary "en_GB")

I write both in English and Italian, so the spell-checker must be able to switch dictionary on demand.

(bind-key "C-c I"
          (lambda ()
            (interactive)
            (ispell-change-dictionary "it_IT")
            (flyspell-buffer)))

(bind-key "C-c E"
          (lambda ()
            (interactive)
            (ispell-change-dictionary "en_GB")
            (flyspell-buffer)))

To make things nicer, flyspell-correct makes Flyspell propose the suggested corrections via the always reliable Ivy.

(use-package flyspell-correct-ivy
  :ensure t
  :demand t
  :bind (:map flyspell-mode-map
              ("C-c $" . flyspell-correct-word-generic)))

Recentre the buffer when leaving Swiper

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 30 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I always talk enthusiastically about Ivy. As a once heavy Helm user, I remember being afraid of regretting the complete switch to Ivy after a few days. It did not happen, and since I made the move I have only found Ivy — and the related packages Swiper and Counsel — consistently getting better and better.

Swiper has soon become my preferred in-buffer searching tool. Only one minor thing was disturbing me. After selecting the right candidate with RET, the screen scrolled unpredictably at the top, centre, or bottom of the buffer.

This is due to calculations behind the scenes about windows size, as Oleh Krehel explained here. Fortunately, he was kind enough to introduce a handy defcustom.

;; Always recentre when leaving Swiper
(setq swiper-action-recenter t)

Now every time I leave Swiper the screen is left centred. Furthermore, it is possible to keep the screen centred even during candidate selection in Swiper by pressing C-M-n or C-M-p instead of C-n or C-p.

I do not mind the scrolling when Swiper is active, but I do like having my eyes focused on one point of the screen when I find what I am looking for.

Ignore some buffers in Ivy

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 23 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

If you use the great company-statistics to improve your experience with company-mode, chances are that you already noticed an entry called company-statistics-cache.el when you switch buffers with your favourite key binding.

Hitting RET on company-statistics-cache.el could result in unpleasant consequences. In my case, Emacs hangs indefinitely, distracting me from my work and forcing me to a horrible restart.

Fortunately, Oleh Krehel introduced a new value for ivy-use-ignore-default: 'always.

;; Always ignore buffers set in `ivy-ignore-buffers'
(setq ivy-use-ignore-default 'always)
;; Ignore some buffers in `ivy-switch-buffer'
(setq ivy-ignore-buffers '("company-statistics-cache.el"))

With the above setup, company-statistics-cache.el will never sneak in your buffer switching again.

Prince on film

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I refrained from writing about Prince right after his recent death. Not only because I did not want to put myself in the same position shared by most commentators, but mainly because I felt in no position at all.

Graffiti Bridge (Prince, 1990)

What sets me apart is the nature of my affection. I have come to love Prince’s music late in my life as an avid music listener. Rock’n’roll took over my teen days and Jazz filled my ears up to my thirtieth birthday. Of course I knew who Prince was. However, just like it happened with Brian Wilson, I barely noticed the depth of his genius. He did not have a special place in my coming of age, nor his music meant something to me.

There is some beauty in this late discovery, though. Had it not been for Jazz and how it opened my mind to complex and different sounds, I would have not dared to listen and understand Brian Wilson. Had it not been for Brian Wilson, I would never have put a Prince record on. I still do not know where Prince is going to lead me, and this uncertainty is poetry.

Moving on to Prince digression in cinema was just a matter of time.

If you leave the non-music bits out, Purple Rain is a fantastic video clip. As great as the music is, the story becomes interesting only when The Kid faces the family tragedy. When Prince and the Revolution play the title track in front of an astonished crowd, you wonder whether the power of the scene comes from the music alone.

Under the Cherry Moon is delicate and funny, a musical melodrama with more than one charm. This is where Prince really shines when performing as an actor. He twists his gigolo mask, bathing it all in a soft black and white palette. More character-driven than music-driven, Under the Cherry Moon captures the tenderness of a romance with the naivety of a first-time director.

Prince directed his own live concert before going back to the camera for another feature length film. With Sign O the Times he made one of the best live concerts I have ever seen, summing up both the quality of his musicians and the madness of his showmanship.

In his last directional effort, Prince puts himself behind the script in a film that really wants to take Purple Rain on another level of style and amusement. It fails in coherence, but Graffiti Bridge succeeds in its more outlandish dance sequences with a personal and unforgettable touch.

Even though his film works are not beautiful as his music, Prince was capable to interact with a different art. Displaying some of his many faces and masks, Prince distinguished himself from pretty much any popular music artist out there.

Better Living Through Criticism

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Anthony Oliver Scott – A. O. Scott as it is spelled on his Better Living Through Criticism – wrote a book that on almost every page seems to be pointing its finger at me. Incredibly, more often than not Better Living Through Criticism aims precisely at my cultural background, filling all the gaps my IT curriculum has left me with when I approach cinema and film criticism.

This is quite obvious from the very first pages. Scott opens quoting the same Oscar Wilde’s words that more than 15 years ago pushed me to go beyond simple matters of “taste”. I cannot think of a better call to arms, and from there on I devoured the book in a couple of days.

Which is probably the wrong thing to do, especially if you – just as myself – know little about the history of arts and criticism. However, I can easily justify my rush. Scott has the rare ability to guide you through centuries of knowledge with the delicacy of an intimate friend. He appears to understand why you are trembling in front of the vast ocean of culture he is about to unveil. So he chooses his words carefully, delivering his thoughts at a quiet, reasonable pace for you not to get lost.

Furthermore, Scott manages to be always on your side. I must admit I was partly put off by the title. Better living through criticism, seriously? Are you going to tell me what to do with my mind just because you think you can? If I had not read Scott’s film reviews before, yes, I might not have been here today writing my comments on his work. But I did read his film reviews, and I still do. I do not agree with him sometimes, but – as he explains – this is the difference between a casual critic and a great critic. Scott has his own voice, and all its idiosyncrasies are what make me go back to his writings again and again.

Better Living Through Criticism traces the path from art to criticism and from criticism to art. This back and forth relationship drives consensus and objections, argument and coffee break talks. Through the likes of Henry James, Samuel Johnson, Susan Sontag and Yvor Winters, Scott wanders in the land of the love and hate paradox that is criticism. There may be no end to his journey, albeit over and over an end of criticism has been declared and somehow hoped for.

Scott states that there is much demand for criticism today, even more than in the past. Our epoch of consumerism, digital abundance and readily available tools for crafting a piece of art has a desperate need for someone who can judge and value. Provided this someone cares about the object of her analysis, because lack of empathy is one of the most horrible sins a critic can commit.

There is some advice for the next critic-wannabe in this book, but more importantly there is a fresh and perceptive look at what is going on in the mind of the next person who lays her eyes on the latest work of art.

Film preservation and nostalgia

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A while ago, I had an interesting conversation on Twitter with film scholar and critic Rowena Santos Aquino. It all started from her pointing out a beautiful article by Grady Hendrix on, among other things, the lack of film preservation efforts in Hong Kong. Some days later, Rowena linked this article to me, in which Paul Fonoroff talks about a newly restored version of Clifton Ko Chi-Sum’s All’s Well, Ends Well.

Bullets Over Summer (Wilson Yip, 1999)

The conversation immediately fired up my never-ending love for Hong Kong cinema. So I went through my DVD collection and pulled out my copy of Bullets Over Summer. I couldn’t help but thinking of Grady Hendrix’s words while the closing credits where crawling bottom-to-top.

Bullets Over Summer probably doesn’t have the power of Fruit Chan’s best works when it comes to dealing with post-handover tensions. Nonetheless, Wilson Yip relates to the loss of Hong Kong’s identity in his own peculiar way.

The director explores time and its passing, focusing on relationships between people of different age and generations. It is really illuminating to notice how these relationships change day after day. They are never destined to last forever, but what they offer is precious moments of joy and playfulness. They can be relentlessly caring, tender and romantic, and they can also turn out to be something entirely unexpected.

However beautiful these interactions are, time moves on and slowly the characters lose everything: a friend, a lover, money, a purpose, a family. The old Granny exemplifies the inevitability of time and its consequences at best. Memory doesn’t serve her well any more, presumably due to some sort of Alzheimer’s disease. She seems to find a peace of mind in her motherly role, desperately believing that her surrogate reality is the only thing left to live by. Just as much as Mike believes until the very end he can provide for his new-found loved ones.

Bullets Over Summer acts like a lesson on the fragility of our dreams and has left me with a warning. There is a little bit of Granny’s reality in every Hong Kong cinema lover out there, including me. I remember back in 2014 at Far East Film Festival a whole weekend dedicated to Hong Kong, with talks and writings devoted to an industry that had necessarily transformed itself. Somehow, the naive nostalgia felt bigger than the actual certainty that Hong Kong will never be the same again.

Going back to Stanley Kubrick

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 02 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Lately I’ve found myself deeply immersed in Michel Chion’s work on Stanley Kubrick. I took it as a reason to go back to Kubrick’s oeuvre, connecting the dots and trying to figure out what the great director means today.

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

In particular, I’m thinking about what his works mean for me now. I remember being shocked by A Clockwork Orange at 14. I remember buying 2001: A Space Odyssey on VHS and watching it three times in two days struggling to understand the “what?” and the “why?”. I remember sitting alone with just two other guys in an empty movie theatre waiting for Paths of Glory to begin. I also remember comparing Full Metal Jacket to Saving Private Ryan in a conversation with my grandfather — and I’ll never forget his colourful defence of Spielberg’s effort.

Nonetheless, it’s been a while since my last revisiting of a film by Kubrick. Of course Chion’s book is not just a reminder, but an in-depth analysis of all Kubrick’s works. The French critic doesn’t hide his preferences. On the contrary, he is plain enough to say which films he likes less in the first pages.

I tried not to let Chion’s opinions interfere with my own conclusions. Two films had an unexpected effect on me: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut.

Young and with few clues in film criticism, I was the kind of film geek ready to come to my fists to defend 2001: A Space Odyssey. I praised the camera work, the editing and the use of music as if nobody better than me knew what I was talking about. Today 2001: A Space Odyssey has a different effect on me. The long stretch of visual tricks in the last part left my eyes tired and eager to move on. It felt more like a series of images to contemplate from a distance. As philosophers do, Chion says, but I’m not used to doing that with films.

On the other hand, Eyes Wide Shut turned out to be the one I love the most. I read Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle right after watching it and I watched Eyes Wide Shut again once I finished the novella. It’s such an inspired and inspiring film. Its elegant usage of words and sounds is only matched by the careful lightning and editing. There is so much going on in every silence, in every gaze. Kubrick never questions his characters actions, and characters do the same. As Chion notices, the only character who steps up and judges someone else — Milich — will end up showing no morality whatsoever.

Eyes Wide Shut plays like a modern tale of human beings that haven’t changed that much since Schnitzler captured them 90 years ago. However, it’s not a cautionary tale, but a quiet acceptance of the ordinary in all its impossibilities. Stanley Kubrick has never been so humane, and probably this is why Eyes Wide Shut will always stand for how I want to remember the great director.

The New Cinephilia

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s fair to say Girish Shambu’s The New Cinephilia is what pushed me out of my cavern. That and a mail from the author himself telling me “You should do it!”.

I have been following Girish’s blog for so many years. I’ve always liked the wide range of his reflections. He expands on his thoughts with links to further readings, therefore each of his posts often brings me out in the wild web to read new pieces of criticism.

The New Cinephilia reads exactly as one of his blog posts. It reaches out for new connections and new directions at every turn of the page. Not only it traces the origins of contemporary film criticism, but in doing so it analyses what makes modern cinephilia just as fascinating as the old school.

Social media have deeply expanded the possibilities we have nowadays to understand films. Girish points out the relevance that even a single tweet has and his acknowledgement is more than a hint to join the social network revolution. Scholars, but also passionate amateurs such as myself could deeply enhance their own experience if only they approached the Internet with open-mindedness.

This is the most important lesson The New Cinephilia taught me. A lesson to live by.

About

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000