The Ever-Changing Self
Whilst I intended to blog fairly regularly, I’ve rather neglected this space of late. This is partially due to general busyness, and partially as I’ve successfully self-hosted a quiet little Mastodon instance where I can freely fling short pockets of thought into the void. Nonetheless, it is a useful exercise to sit and force myself to sit down and focus on a longer form piece of reflection, if only to see what spills out.
Something I’m finding interesting is that though my previous posts are but two months old, I’m having to resist the urge to edit and tweak them. To expand upon specific points or change how I expressed certain thoughts. Convictions that felt absolute at the time now, with a little reflection, feel much more grey than glossy black-or-white. Yet I also think it’s a worthwhile endeavour to preserve the blog posts as originally written; if only as a time capsule to who I was at that moment. Am I the same person I was yesterday? Last week? Last year? There’s an oft-repeated line that our cells are completely renewed every seven years, making us a biological Ship of Theseus. What is it that makes us ‘us’? Is it the continual thread of consciousness inhabiting the ever-changing vehicle? Does falling asleep sever this nightly, birthing a new, slightly changed person each morning?
All this evokes a desire to read some Bhuddist philosophy.
On that note, I recently received a free Kindle. I will likely not connect it to the internet, preserving the unintrusive, advert-free nature of the device. I hope to jailbreak it eventually, but unfortunately the MTP nature of the device has hampered this desire for now. I’ve poked around on the 0.43s race condition before the daemon launches but even if I catch it at that brief UMS PID state, it appears the necessary folders are simply filtered out by the object enumerator. An interesting little exploration, but ultimately not one that seems to lead anywhere. For now, I continue to sideload via USB.
It is a source of frustration that it is so difficult to install your own software on a device you own. I appreciate that many devices come with software-as-a-service and by purchasing the device and using that software, you must abide by their terms of use. But I do not intend to use that software at all. I don’t intend to use the Amazon ecosystem. I own my device. I accept that I am creating my own security risk. But I find it sort of philosophically outrageous that I own device outright and yet the manufacturer is allowed to determine what software I can and cannot use? Imagine a builder imposing a restriction on how you decorate your home after purchase. It’s absurd.
— Frost