#+title: My feed
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| [[https://skylarcloud.xyz][🌎 Home]] | [[https://skylarcloud.xyz/feed.html][📡 My feed]] | [[https://searx.skylarcloud.xyz][🔭 SearXNG]] | [[https://git.skylarcloud.xyz][⚙️ Git Repos]] |

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When my orbit allows me, I'll beam out various notes or longer posts about the things I'm interested in. I'm still experimenting with how to structure them.
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* Moving away from writing this site in org-mode :note:

I've been writing this website in Org files, and exporting them to HTML. This is easy to get working, but working with raw HTML and CSS seems like a better opportunity for learning, and will let me do more customization without a bunch of org-export knowledge.

I've rewritten the homepage with just HTML, and started working on my own CSS style. I've been using org features for creating the RSS feed, so I'll have to figure that out before I change all pages.

Org-exported HTML also has many many features, including many that I don't need, and generates larger file sizes than I need.

* Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse :note:book:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       22138706-ea97-4202-8c7f-a50511f31237
:PUBDATE:  2025-04-05 Sat 00:54
:END:

(This post contains spoilers)

This book has been rattling in my brain since I read it a couple month ago. I wanted to share two of my favorite passages, where Siddhartha is at his wits end, and within a few pages his suffering is reframed as the best possible news: a new start. Full forgiveness of yourself.

#+begin_quote

"A hang bent over the bank of the river, a coconut-tree; Siddhartha leaned against its trunk with his shoulder, embraced the trunk with one arm, and looked down into the green water, which ran and ran under him, looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to let go and to drown in these waters. A frightening emptiness was reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness in his soul. Yes, he had reached the end. There was nothing left for him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of mockingly laughing gods. This was the great vomiting he had longed for: death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! Let him be food for fishes, this dog Siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten body, this weakened and abused soul! Let him be food for fishes and crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits by the daemons!"

(a few pages later...)

"Wondrous indeed was my life, so he thought, wondrous detours it has taken. As a boy, I had only to do with gods and offerings. As a youth, I had only to do with asceticism, with thinking and meditation, was searching for Brahman, worshipped the eternal in the Atman. But as a young man, I followed the penitents, lived in the forest, suffered of heat and frost, learned to hunger, taught my body to become dead. Wonderfully, soon afterwards, insight came towards me in the form of the great Buddha’s teachings, I felt the knowledge of the oneness of the world circling in me like my own blood. But I also had to leave Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the art of love with Kamala, learned trading with Kamaswami, piled up money, wasted money, learned to love my stomach, learned to please my senses. I had to spend many years losing my spirit, to unlearn thinking again, to forget the oneness. Isn’t it just as if I had turned slowly and on a long detour from a man into a child, from a thinker into a childlike person? And yet, this path has been very good; and yet, the bird in my chest has not died. But what a path has this been! I had to pass through so much stupidity, through so much vice, through so many errors, through so much disgust and disappointments and woe, just to become a child again and to be able to start over. But it was right so, my heart says “Yes” to it, my eyes smile to it. I’ve had to experience despair, I’ve had to sink down to the most foolish one of all thoughts, to the thought of suicide, in order to be able to experience divine grace, to hear Om again, to be able to sleep properly and awake properly again. I had to become a fool, to find Atman in me again. I had to sin, to be able to live again. Where else might my path lead me to? It is foolish, this path, it moves in loops, perhaps it is going around in a circle. Let it go as it likes, I want to take it."

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* [[https://skylarcloud.xyz/music/spinning-combing-waiting-waiting.m4a][Spinning, combing, waiting, waiting - draft]] :song:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       51652c89-25a8-40b6-9344-6b5a1d7e3ee6
:PUBDATE:  2025-04-04 Fri 23:24
:END:

* [[https://skylarcloud.xyz/posts/tor-browser.org][The Tor Browser]] :post:tor:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       0ebb418d-f15f-4379-8343-a4c5a9054d7a
:PUBDATE:  2025-04-05 Sat 07:47
:END:
How to use the Tor Browser to escape censorship and browser/publish on the internet without being surveilled.
* 3 Browser extensions I almost always install :note:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       b366ef4e-8747-49af-ba35-a088163c7623
:PUBDATE:  2025-04-03 Thu 05:40
:END:
- uBlock Origin
  - Perhaps the most ubiquitous content/ad blocker, reliable as ever. I recommend this to anyone and everyone.
- Vimium C
  - This lets do basic navigation in your browser with vim-like keybindings. You can click links, scroll, go back and forth between tabs and through your history, select/copy/search text and more with your keyboard.
- Dark Reader
  - Makes all websites default to a dark mode, and provides an easy toggle bound to Alt-Shift-d.

* Prepping for v2 of my salt repo :note:qubes:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       04b2c85d-8339-46b5-a123-180ed526bb25
:PUBDATE:  2025-04-02 Wed 22:34
:END:
I've massively restructured my salt repo and added enough features that I'm going to make a new repository and release it again in full, as a 2.0 version. This should be done within the next week or two.

* [[https://skylarcloud.xyz/posts/install-pkgs-w-saltstack.html][Examples of installing software in QubesOS with Saltstack]] :post:qubes:
Some demonstrations of installing software in 3 different ways in qubes via Saltstack.
* [[https://skylarcloud.xyz/posts/torrenting.html][Convenient torrenting with qBittorrent]] :post:
:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       13adfc33-4537-4010-aeb5-06b84c451fbd
:PUBDATE:  2025-04-05 Sat 08:09
:END:
Quick guide for searching and downloading media with qBittorrent.