Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com $£ Sponsor €¥ 中国独裁统治 China Dictatorship 新疆改造中心、六四事件、法轮功、郝海东、709大抓捕、2015巴拿马文件 邓家贵、低端人口、西藏骚乱
Ciro Santilli used to read books when he was younger (Harry Potter up to the 4th, Lord of the Rings), but once you are reading code, technical articles and news the whole day, you really just want to watch videos of people doing useless things on YouTube to rest, enough text.
Books are slow. No patience. Need faster immediate satisfaction.
Paradoxically Ciro feels like he's becoming a writer of sorts though, one semi independent section/answer/piece of knowledge at a time.
Writing is not just giving out information. It is re-feeling it.

Literary genre

words: 253 articles: 21

Fable

articles: 2

Fantasy

words: 52 articles: 4

Lord of the Rings

words: 52 articles: 3
Way, way, way too much running and fighting.
Also way too idealistic :Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.
Also the good/evil is way too black and white.
If only everything was instead funny and charming and intelligent like the very first part in the Shire... that section and others interspersed withing the running are good film level.

Nonfiction

words: 124 articles: 2

Encyclopedia

words: 124 articles: 1
Ciro Santilli is old enough to remember his parents whispering its name with a respectful tone.
Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) mentions several times how Richard Feynman was a reader of the encyclopedia. E.g. in youtu.be/ivxkd98mDvc?t=50 Richard's sister also talks about it.
Then the Internet came along and killed it.
The motivation model for collaborators was simple: to get famous. To be able to be selected contribute an article meant that you knew something or two! There was some physicist Ciro read the biography of who was really glad to be able to write an article on the encyclopedia after having worshiped it for so long, TODO find the reference.
While this is somewhat a part of Wikipedia motivation, it is much less so because there is no single article authorship. This is something OurBigBook.com aims to improve.

Science fiction

words: 77 articles: 8
The impact of the work is greater when you examine what one single new technology would do to existing society, as in Primer (2004), rather than "start on a society with severl new technologies", like in Star Wars.
Isaac Asimov
articles: 2

The Final Encyclopedia (1984)

words: 41 articles: 1
Related concepts:
The Google Story Chapter 21. A Virtual Library mentions that Paul Allen was interested in trying to create something like the "Final Encyclopedia" from this book. This is somewhat the same motivation for Google Books and Google's activities more broadly, as shown in their organise the world's information mission statement.

Author

words: 776 articles: 20
See: Video "Your Life is Your life by Charles Bukowski".
Video 1. Something for the touts. Source.
We have everything and we have nothing
And some men do it in churches
And some men do it by tearing butterflies in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
Laying it into butter-blondes with Cadillac souls
This stuck to Ciro's mind for some reason. His brain just keeps completing the sentence, over and over:
Ciro Santilli does it in his computers and in his labs!

Ernest Hemingway

articles: 1

John Le Carré

words: 699 articles: 10

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974)

words: 548 articles: 5
Some key points that are a bit hard to grasp, at least in some versions:
  • How did Bill Haydon know Jim Prideaux was going to Prague if it appears to be organized as a closely guarded secret by Control?
    • the film suggests Prideaux must have told Haydon himself, his close friend, against Control's orders of secrecy, out of loyalty, and in order to protect his friend.
    • The series suggests it was a honeypot
    so which one is it?
  • How does Smiley deduce that the Witchcraft source, Merlin, is Poliakov? A key step is when top people at the Circus question him about Ricki Tarr, and appear to suggest that there is a link between Ricki Tarr and Merlin. And Ricki told Smiley that Poliakov as the link to the Mole. Smiley understands that it was Karla who tipped off London Center about Ricki's coming through Merlin. He also observers that Witchcraft gives ideological infiltration campaign intelligence after Ricki comes back, as a way to discredit Ricki. It is still all a bit indirect.
Bill Haydon
words: 25
Figure 1. Bill Haydon played by Ian Richardson in the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TV series).
Figure 2. Bill Haydon played by Colin Firth in the 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (film).
This is not bad, but some divergences to the better BBC miniseries, which presumably sticks more closely to the novel:
  • in the film Jim Prideaux is captured in a cafe in Prague, in the series it's in the woods. It is therefore much more plausible that he would have been shot.
  • in the film Peter Guillam is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who feels a bit young to be Ricki Tarr's boss. Not impossible, but still.
  • the series is much less chronological, and more flashback based, as new information becomes available. The film is more chronological, which makes it easier to understand, but less interesting at the same time.
  • in the film they shoot the Russian girl Irina in front of Jim, in the series the fact that she was shot is only known through other sources. The film has more eye candy, which weakens it.
  • Toby Esterhase is not threatened in an airfield, only in a safe ;house in London.
Related:
We need a TV adaptation of this, urgently!!!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honourable_Schoolboy#Adaptations mentions:
Jonathan Powell, producer of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979), said the BBC considered producing The Honourable Schoolboy but a production in South East Asia was considered prohibitively expensive and therefore the BBC instead adapted the third novel of the Karla Trilogy, Smiley's People (1979)

Smiley's People (1979)

words: 98 articles: 2
This is perhaps slightly worse than the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but still amazing.
Some difficult points:
  • how did the general deduce that the old woman's daughter had a link to Karla? It must be linked to the fact that the Russian agent who made the offer was a Karla-man.
  • some things are hard to understand without having seen the previous Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, e.g. they say nothing clearly who Toby Esterhase is, he now works on art sales
  • but others are inconsistent, e.g. they changed the actor for Peter Guillam...
Video 2. Alec Guiness interview on his role in Star Wars. Source.
Alec Guiness
words: 5
This dude is the best.

William Shakespeare

words: 5 articles: 3

Quote by Shakespeare

words: 5 articles: 2
From Henry V: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56972/speech-once-more-unto-the-breach-dear-friends-once-more
Related quotes:

Book

words: 104 articles: 12

Library

words: 104 articles: 7

Library classification

words: 104 articles: 4
ISBN
words: 104 articles: 2
Why was this so rarely used as of 2020s compared to ISBNs? It would have been perfect for helping find obscure records from Chinese traditional music and Indian classical music!
But instead we have Discogs, which is not too bad.
discogs.com
The IMDb of music! They actually have a reputation system apparently. And sneaked in a vinyl marketplace as well.
The website name sounds like play on words: disc + hog, with hog in the sense "memory-hog", i.e. something that consumes all your computer's memory.
Video 3. Everything you need to know about discogs.com by Vinyl for Miles (2019) Source. Gives a good overview of the website.
Video 4. AnalogPlanet Interviews Discogs Founder Kevin Lewandowski (2019) Source.

List of libraries

articles: 1

List of books

articles: 2

Harry Potter

articles: 1
Basically a synonym of trope, but without the negative connotation.

Trope

words: 110 articles: 19
A recurring narrative device, i.e. a cliche that has been used endless across stories.

Memento mori

words: 10
Figure 3. Braque Family Triptych. Source.
Figure 4. "Vanitas" by Philippe de Champaigne (c. 1671) Source.

TV Tropes

words: 17
tvtropes.org
Classifies clichés in storytelling.
Every page is highly intelligent and interlinked to other pages.
It is incredible.

List of tropes

words: 70 articles: 15
Most of them use titles from TV Tropes.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DamselInDistress
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EverybodyWasKungFuFighting
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GunsAreWorthless
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LotusEaterMachine

Fan service

articles: 1
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fanservice
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShirtlessScene
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustifiedCriminal
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonsterOfTheWeek
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism
Ciro Santilli is fond of cynicism, see also ciro Santilli's film tastes.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SupernaturalMartialArts
Shame that the Chinese in the lat 20th early 21st like that bullshit so much. It just weakens everything. Just imaginge those works with more realistic fighting! Would be amazing.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItsPopularNowItSucks on TV Tropes.
This is true: high budget movies are shit. Just TV Trops can articular it infinitely better than Ciro Santilli can.
Related:
Hipster
words: 9
Video 5. The Death of the Hipster Subculture by JimmyTheGiant (2023) Source.

Rethoric

words: 13 articles: 3

Fallacy

words: 13 articles: 2

Hand-waving

words: 13
First we hand-wave some intuition. Then we prove. That's the way to teach.

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Ancestors

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