| title | author | first published | updated | feedback |
|---|---|---|---|---|
whoami |
ℵancym |
2015-11-10 |
2016-01-18 |
First, I am a privacy nut so it’s always hard for me to figure out what to publicly say about myself, but here goes.
I’m a nerd and the title of this page is a reference to the nerdy Unix whoami command. What kind of nerd am I? Mainly a mathematics nerd. I 💜 💙 💚 ❤️ math, and when I was young my goal was to teach math at a university. I achieved that goal and was shocked to discover that that wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I shifted to technical writing, which seemed to be a way I could still learn and teach nerdy things but not have to deal with the low pay and frustrations[1] of teaching. Still, many years later, I think that my path is to teach nerdy things.
Another part of me that may help you to understand what I do on the internet is that I am a natural born evangelist. When I’m enthusiastic about something I do what I can to get you to join in. I do this because I think it will be good for:
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you,
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the world, and
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the thing I’m evangelizing.
Here are some of the things I’ve been evangelistic about:
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Usenet and NNTP
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Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Open Standards
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Asynchronous messaging, especially public standards-based asynchronous messaging
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Communication tools and services that do not require you to give any personally identifiable information (PII), such as your real name, real birth date, or phone number.
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Email filtering
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Pine (POP, IMAP, NNTP, & ESMTP client), which was renamed Alpine
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Antirealism[2] in academic philosophy
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Privacy and security
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Git and GitHub
I’m still enthusiastic about most of the things on this list (but not Usenet 😱), and the last four bullets are what I’m most into at the moment (2016).
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Note
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I’m not evangelistic about everything I care about. For example, I’ve been lacto-ovo vegetarian for more than 30 years and I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that someone else become vegetarian. |
I took a Myers-Briggs test and it said I had an ENFP (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perception) or “Champion” personality type.[3] This rang true to me, which is why I’m mentioning it here. Over the years, random internet people who don’t know me IRL have accused me of promoting something for financial gain, but that’s never been the case. Instead I was trying to make the world (or the internet) a better place. My guess is that those random accusers were not ENFPs and do not understand ENFPs:smiley:.
On the internet, I’m a lot of places, including:
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deflexion.com (old, needs to be updated)
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www.ii.com (really old, really needs to be updated)
If a public internet space requires a real name, real birthday, or any PII, you can be pretty sure I’m not there.
On planet earth, I’m a digital nomad and have lived a lot of places including Austin, London, New York City, Palo Alto, Paris, and Seattle. I’m thinking about moving back to NYC and I’d appreciate any tips about finding a place to live there. I think I want to live in Manhattan again, but I’m not sure.
You can leave NYC thoughts, or any thoughts, on the GitHub Issues page for this document.