It's time for another slightly political post.

During my lifetime so far, I have heard two statements several times: One is, that communism and socialism have lost against capitalism, and the other one is that capitalism will collapse sooner or later. And in fact, the breakdown of the Soviet Union suggests the first one, the current financial crysis suggests the second one. In my opinion, however, both statements are not directly wrong, but they miss a certain point: Liberal capitalism is not the presence, but the absence of a system. Similar to night being the absence of light, and cold being the absence of heat. Capitalism is more like economic anarchy.

Now, what can happen is that some model of social market economy collapses – because it is the presence of a system. It can happen that the patent system collapses – because it is the presence of a system. But saying capitalism can collapse is like saying darkness can go away: It is a mere metaphor for something filling the gap that we named.

And whenever a real system collapses, it defaults to the absence of a system, which is capitalism. This is why it seems like capitalism is the superior strategy to everything else: It is simply the thing that is there when nothing else is there.

This is, of course, not an argument against capitalism. Laissez faire capitalism is like evolution: Good things can evolve from it. But so can very bad things. It is up to us to find ways to cope with it, and make the best out of it.

External Content not shown. Further Information.

Popular Culture:

• Hass Hilft ~ die unfreiwillige Spenden-Aktion.
• Bundeswehr verschickt Sturmgewehre mit Hermes ~ schon etwas älter die Meldung, aber immernoch genauso absurd.
• Wal-Mart nimmt Sturmgewehre aus dem Sortiment ~ „Wir konzentrieren uns stattdessen auf Jagd- und Sportgewehre.“

Nerd Culture:

• Goats Discover The Joys Of A Trampoline

Science, Software, Hardware:

• World’s first floating wind farm to be built off Scottish coast
• Windows 3.1 legt Flughafen in Paris lahm ~ wenn das der erste solche Zwischenfall ist, würde ich sagen, die Software ist Stabil. Auch: ich mochte Windows 3.1.
• Engineers develop 'killer cells' to destroy cancer in lymph nodes (via)

Zeroth World:

• Memories of the future of the past

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos/Games:

• SEO Expert
• Studies Show…
• Bed on time
• There is no app for this.
• Stepped in shit
• Be like Bill

Quotes:

• If I had a Dollar for every time I was racist… …black people would rob me.

Popular Culture:

• Fordite (via)
• Eine Milliarde DAUs füllen Facebooks Kasse ~ es ist immer gut, mit DAUs geld zu verdienen.

Science, Software, Hardware:

• comb uses plasma to kill lice
• Let's Encrypt Gets Automation ~ "including silently invoking sudo and installing quite a few development packages" ~ now that sounds trustworthy and secure…
• Sony trägt Betamax endgültig zu Grabe ~ "Die letzten Abspielgeräte wurden 2002 verkauft" ~ wat? Wieso?
• Unicode Math
• Nintendo PlayStation
• Die Tesa ROM ist garnicht tot. Die Erfindung wird nur für etwas anderes verwendet.
• Friction Welding Wood
• Bandwurm wanderte ins Gehirn eines Studenten ~ grusel.
• Baby durch Designerzellen von Blutkrebs geheilt

Zeroth World:

• Essbare Elektronik der Kepler Uni ~ wie viele Gigapixel hat dein Müsliriegel?

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos/Games:

• Happy Peak Day
• Wired
• Modification
• Isolation
• Plastic Love
• The Ten Commandments
• Die CDU Kuh
• Grandmothers of the future

External Content not shown. Further Information.

Unfortunately, Common LISP support in NixOS is worse than one would expect (and unfortunately I do not have the time to change this) – nothing comparable to the common-lisp-controller, as far as I see. In NixOS, I do not want to install sbcl globally when I don't need it for anything else but developing my lisp projects, which is something that should be done inside a nix-shell.

As probably many lispers, I like getting my packages through QuickLisp. According to the FAQ, it is possible to install packages into other directories, so it would be possible – in theory – to have different nix-shells with a different quicklisp package directory; but then, I would probably install the same software multiple times, and the compile-cache would not work as desired. The directory structure of QuickLisp looks like it should be possible to have different branches, but I do not know of such a mechanism, and for my use case, one QuickLisp directory is sufficient. It would, though, be nice to have something like Cabal2Nix for QuickLisp.

Anyway, for my use case, I need SLIME and the CFFI, and some other packages. One of my Nix expressions, for example, is

with import <nixpkgs> {};
runCommand "bash"
{
  buildInputs = [rlwrap stdenv bash emacs php sbcl imagemagick gnome3.eog git geoip libressl lispPackages.cffi emacs24PackagesNg.markdown-mode];
} ""

The problem is that the CFFI appears not to follow the Nix environment when loading dynamic libraries. However, the variable $NIX_LISP_LD_LIBRARY_PATH is set automatically, and it is sufficient to append it to the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$NIX_LISP_LD_LIBRARY_PATH rlwrap sbcl

Now, through my global installation of QuickLisp, I can install swank. In the QuickLisp directory, there will be the files for SLIME. My custom emacs configuration, which I save in a file emacsconfig.el in this nix-shell's directory (where the default.nix is stored), looks like

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/quicklisp/dists/quicklisp/software/slime-2.14")
(require 'slime-autoloads)
(setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl")
(add-to-list 'slime-contribs 'slime-fancy)

Now I can run

$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$NIX_LISP_LD_LIBRARY_PATH emacs -q -l emacsconfig.el

and start SLIME as usual via M-x slime.

External Content not shown. Further Information.

Popular Culture:

• Salt handgun

Nerd Culture:

• Neue "Star Trek"-Serie kommt 2017
• Tubular Tape Gun

Science, Software, Hardware:

• Do Not Rely on STARTTLS to Automatically Encrypt Your Sensitive E-mails
• Dechoker
• The S stands for Simple
• Isso ~ a commenting server similar to Disqus.
• A Whole-Cell Computational Model Predicts Phenotype from Genotype

Zeroth World:

• OpenWorm ~ Building the first digital life form. Open source.

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos/Games:

• Attention Surplus Disorder
• Was fehlt
• Refugees drowned in the Aegean sea
• Trick-or-traitor
• Git
• Kapitalismus. Kommunismus.
• Super Villain
• Have To
• candy man
• cute animals
• dead batteries

I added the functionality of Disqus-comments to my blog software. Because why not.

However, the comments are not shown normally, to protect your privacy. They are only shown on single-entry-pages, and only when you actively pass &disqus=yes (or follow a link that does so), that is, as long as you do not click on the corresponding links, there should be no difference (well, except for the links, of course).

External Content not shown. Further Information.

Popular Culture:

• Jugendliche absolvieren Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr digital
• Bild geht rechtlich gegen Erklärungen zur Umgehung der Adblocker-Sperre vor ~ "Wirksame technische Maßnahmen zum Schutz eines nach diesem Gesetz geschützten Werkes oder eines anderen nach diesem Gesetz geschützten Schutzgegenstandes dürfen ohne Zustimmung des Rechtsinhabers nicht umgangen werden" sagt das Gesetz … aber wenn man sie umgehen kann, sind sie doch nicht mehr wirksam, oder?
• Neues Jugendschutzgesetz sieht Alterskennzeichnung für Websites vor ~ bla.
• U.S. Officials Worried About Russia Cutting Undersea Data Cables
• Christliche Hilfsorganisation spionierte in Nordkorea ~ "We sent Bibles in as a test run" ✝

Nerd Culture:

• This Is What Happens When You Combine Ferrofluids and Glowsticks
• Unicode Toys

Science, Software, Hardware:

• Kopierer sind ein potentielles Sicherheitsrisiko im Büro ~ was ist eigentlich nicht fundamental kaputt an moderner Technik?
• Windcatcher Airpad 2 Air Mattress Amplifies Your Breath, Inflates In Seconds
• Boeing’s New Microlattice, Now the Lightest “Metal” Ever ~ and it doesn't even use carbon nanotubes!
• Thanks to Wi-Fi Assist, Apple's In a $5 Million Lawsuit ~ what a kindergarten.
• Neue Software nutzt CPUs rasend schnell ab ~ On The Metal™.

Zeroth World:

• Die Seen-Zone
• The Hashtag Halloween Costume
• Regimekritiker bekommt keine Lego-Steine

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos/Games:

• Books
• Hunting
• Airplane
• Broom
• Family Planning
• Immigrants
• CIA, FBI, and KGB ~ old joke…
• Sea cucumbers
• Never Born
• Robin Hood

Quotes:

• Yo mama's so fat… …she can't save files bigger than 4GB
• My girlfriend said she wants me to treat her like a princess… …So I forced her on a marriage with an unknown guy just to make alliance with Poland.
• NSFW Saying Java is good because it works on all operating systems… …is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders.