5/ I wrote a longer post about why “headless Emacs in Docker” ended up making sense here, and why I think LLMs are especially good for building narrow personal software instead of generic SaaS-shaped products:
semyonsinchenko.github.io/ssinchenko/p...
4/ So yes, this was absolutely vibecoded. But not in the “one prompt and a miracle” sense. It was built with OpenCode + OpenSpec, a lot of specs, tests, and repeated auditing. I would never have written this amount of weird personal Lisp infrastructure by hand.
3/ The important part is that this is not an autonomous-agent setup. I assume LLMs always hallucinate, so all useful work happens inside strict contracts: validation, retries, DLQ, masked sensitive blocks, deterministic IDs, etc.
2/ The idea is simple: mobile captures, TODO normalization, semi-automatic planning, RSS digests, and link capture into org-roam -- all through shared Org files over WebDAV, with Emacs as the backend/runtime.
1/ I built a weird thing: a personal automation system on top of Org files, with headless Emacs running in Docker Compose and talking to LLMs through gptel.
27/ The empire here is not necessarily glorified; it can also be demonized. But in both cases it remains the only true subject of history.
26/ The paradox is that such an optic, while claiming to be anti-imperialist / anti-authoritarian, itself reproduces an imperial way of looking at the world.
25/ Campism emerges: complicated societies, regimes, liberation movements, dictatorships, revolutions, and wars stop being considered as phenomena in their own right and are reduced to functions of one “main” global conflict.
24/ In both cases we see a similar mechanism. Historical trauma and moral sensitivity toward the crimes of “one’s own” empire are taken to the absolute, after which all world history starts being read through one single optic.
23/ So in the end what we get is precisely that same cultural authoritarianism / colonialism which, supposedly, they are meant to be fighting.
22/ The neighbors are almost deprived of subjectivity. Violence and terrorist attacks against civilians can suddenly be justified if they are committed within the framework of national liberation struggle — “Chechens against empire.”
21/ And this reductionism manifests itself in the widest possible way. The history of all neighbors of the Russian Federation is very often reduced exclusively to the history of the Russian Empire / USSR / RF themselves.
20/ The USSR supported them, the RF supports them, therefore they are “proxies.” These countries are, in practice, denied their own political will and their own history.
19/ The US intervenes against Iran or Venezuela, carries out “humanitarian bombings”? In this optics Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Serbia and others are still perceived not as independent actors, but only as somebody else’s proxies.
18/ Meanwhile, decades of occupation, the struggle for their own state, and the complicated internal history there (PLO vs. Hamas, etc.) are simply ignored.
17/ The destructive Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which more and more genocide scholars are calling genocide? Well, Israel is “civilization,” while Palestine is “barbarism.” Palestinians are deprived of subjectivity and presented as “proxies.”
16/ But, well, Cubans are communists, they are Soviet proxies, which means they are “evil.” The complicated history of national liberation against a dictator in Cuba, and the tragedy of a revolution that went “in the wrong direction,” is reduced to the US vs. “red proxies.”
15/ Transatlantic slavery and systemic racism in the West? Well, that was just “the era,” and anyway “there was the Gulag in the USSR.” The US has almost starved Cuba through a blockade lasting many decades, condemned many times even by US allies.
14/ Almost all evil in the world starts being seen as coming from them. At the same time, everything positive that the Russian Empire / USSR / Russian Federation gave to the world is ignored or, sometimes, even denied. The rest of world history is reduced as well.
13/ The whole world is reduced to binary campism: the “civilization of the West” against the “barbarians from the East.” And, suddenly, the main barbarian in the East somehow turns out to be precisely the USSR / RF (Russian Federation).
12/ Russian liberals. Rooted in the dissident movement of the USSR and having a deep historical trauma connected with imperial policy toward everything around them, they developed this idea to the absolute as well.
11/ The result is a completely wild and absurd form of cultural-historical colonialism — which, supposedly, they are meant to be fighting.
10/ Hamas carries out the terrorist attack of October 7 against civilians, but in the campist optics this starts being justified as “decolonial violence” against a “US proxy.” Since Israel is a “US proxy” and a “colonial project of the West,” violence is justified.
9/ Executions under the rule of the ayatollahs become a reaction to / consequence of American imperialism, famine in North Korea is ignored or presented only as a consequence of imperialist blockade.
8/ There was the Gulag in the USSR, but this is treated as just “that was the era,” and anyway “Black people were being lynched in America at the same time.” If Iran or North Korea stand against the US, then almost everything is automatically forgiven to them.
7/ The complicated histories of countries and peoples, their own dictators and freedom fighters, their traumas and rises, their tragedies and genocides — all of this is reduced to binary campism: on one side, the “imperialist colonial project of the West,” on the other, the “axis of resistance.”
6/ In the end, all of this slides into absolute binary campism and “geopolitics”: all other actors in the world are stripped of subjectivity and become either mere “tools” of one of the camps or mere “reactions” to one of the camps.
5/ What we get, in essence, is a hidden nationalism through guilt: our nation is so important, so central, that the whole history of the world revolves around us; we are the main empire of evil in the world.
4/ At the same time, everything positive in the world that comes from the US / NATO is ignored. And then this is extended more broadly, to almost everything positive that Western European culture has given to the world.
3/ The American left. Having a deep historical trauma connected with transatlantic slavery and systemic racism, they developed this idea to the absolute. Almost all evil in the world starts being explained through US / NATO colonialism and imperialism.