--- title: 'A Fortress Against Obsolescence: Mastering Your Immortal Tech Stack' permalink: /futureproof/fortress-against-obsolescence/ description: "I'm laying out the entire philosophical framework for my career and\ \ my craft. It's built on a core belief that we must consciously choose durable,\ \ open tools (LPvg) and master them like a musical instrument. The alternative is\ \ to suffer the pain of vendor lock-in and planned obsolescence, which feels like\ \ having your instrument broken or taken away. My solution is to build a fortress\ \ around my skills using Nix, creating a perfectly reproducible and immortal environment.\ \ This journal entry documents not just the 'why' but the 'how'\u2014my daily workflow\u2014\ and sets the stage for the ultimate expression of this philosophy: building a Python\ \ tool that brings the durable, pipe-like nature of Unix into the ephemeral world\ \ of Jupyter Notebooks." meta_description: An exploration of building a durable skill set with Linux, Python, vim, and git (LPvg), and making it immortal with Nix to escape the cycle of planned obsolescence. meta_keywords: Nix, NixOS, LPvg, vim, git, Python, planned obsolescence, developer tools, reproducible builds, infrastructure as code, IaC, workflow automation layout: post sort_order: 3 --- ## Context for the Curious Book Reader This journal entry is a deep dive into a core philosophy for surviving and thriving in the tech world: the deliberate cultivation of a durable, open-source skill set that acts as a fortress against the winds of change and planned obsolescence. It starts with the analogy of a technical stack as a musical instrument—something to be mastered until it's an extension of your body—and contrasts this with the pain inflicted by proprietary vendors who arbitrarily change the rules. The narrative then walks through a real-world workflow, demonstrating how tools like Nix and NixOS can encapsulate this entire 'instrument,' making it reproducible, portable, and effectively immortal. This isn't just theory; it's the foundational 'why' that leads to a very practical 'how': a plan to build a new tool that brings this philosophy of permanence and stability into the often-ephemeral world of Jupyter Notebooks. --- ## Technical Journal Entry Begins When starting a creative session where I do article writing like this, I always need to remember to go to *pipulate root* before I `nix develop .#quiet` from when `cd`'d into the `~/repos/pipulate/` folder. This is sort of like sprinkling in the magic fairy dust of the particular *infrastructure as code* (IaC) that's carried around by that directory's `flake.nix` file. Projects are always *git software repositories* whether or not they're on GitHub. Okay, okay let me back up for a minute. I'm always going to dive real deep real fast on these *technical journal entries* that I'm writing for this book *How To Future-Proof Yourself In the Age of AI* — aka *Resist Obsolescence With LPvg!* LPvg is the acronym abbreviation for Linux, Python, vim & git — the *four best friends your muscle-memory ever had.* I propose that short technical stack, an abbreviated platform, can be like a musical instrument. You can learn it, practice it, and get better at it forever like making it an extension of your body. ## The Musical Instrument of Mastery Musical instruments are something you've spend years learning, practicing and committing to memory in such a way that you can read and operate in the language of music to the point where you can joke around and even do poetry in that language. 1. You learn to read and write and express yourself in that language. That's literacy. 2. All those skills become internalized to the point where you no longer consciously think about doing it. That's automaticity. 3. The language and skills become so comfortable that you can joke around and speak in rhythm and rhyme. That's prosody. So you go from literacy to automaticity to prosity. Fancy words but sometimes we gotta use 'em. Together they become fluency. Fluency is a rather hard-won lifetime thing. Some studies show it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours to reach that level of mastery over a difficult specialized skill. Nobody has any right to push a magic button to make all that time and passion and energy you poured into that thing all suddenly useless — all on the alter of some company's quarterly profits. ## The Phantom Limb of Obsolete Skills That particular tool or musical instrument that you have mastered has become like an extension of your body. Yet it is uniquely vulnerable to being rendered suddenly obsolete or of no economic value used in exchange for other things. Trying to not make light of people who actually have had this horrible thing happen to them it's like getting a limb chopped off. After that you have phantom limb syndrome. I still find myself reaching for the `Amiga`+`N` key to cycle virtual desktop workspaces. It has long-since become a `Ctrl`+`Alt`+`Left/Right` arrow keys. There's also trackpad 3-finger swooshes but that's more hardware-dependent. I'm not even thrilled about arrow-keys, but 80/20-rule I guess. It's been a long, long time since I've used an Amiga computer but my fingers remember. They were not pleased when I had to rewire for a mainstream keyboard. And it's not much better than I have to switch between Mac and PC-style keyboards. It's like moving the keys around on a piano. You become spontaneously expert at playing music and somebody switches the C & D notes on you. ## Deliberate Pain and Vendor Lock-In That's *exactly* what Steve Jobs did by swapping the `Ctrl` key with the `Command` key and the `Alt` key with the `Option` key. And if it weren't bad enough to change what they're labeled he also *swapped their positions* on the keyboard layering ambiguity on top of ambiguity. That was to lock you into Apple's hardware and to a extract a ***painful switching cost*** from you if you ever tried to escape. That is a deliberate infliction of pain. While technically not *planned obsolescence* it's exactly like the kind of masochism exhibited by the *Steve Martin* dentist character in *Little Shop of Horrors!* If you ever try to switch to Windows after a long stint on the Mac, the C & D notes get switched on your keyboard. The most melodical mental image of the mastery I'm muttering about is maybe the motion picture about Mozart, *Amadeus.* There's a scene where Antonio Salieri plays a piece he's particularly proud of in the court of Emperor Joseph II of Austria. Antonio Salieri, the respected and established court composer, has prepared a simple "March of Welcome" for the much-hyped arrival of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri plays his piece for the Emperor, who finds it charming. When Mozart arrives, the Emperor shows him the sheet music. Mozart glances at it for a moment, dismisses it, and says he already has it in his head. He then walks to the fortepiano and plays Salieri's march back perfectly from memory, having heard it only once. This is the first demonstration of his genius, which leaves the court impressed. But he doesn't stop there. With a slightly condescending and playful air, Mozart critiques the piece, suggesting it's a little "mechanical." He says, "I can fix it for you." Then, using Salieri's simple theme as a starting point, Mozart begins to improvise. His fingers fly across the keys, effortlessly transforming the dull march into a brilliant, complex, and magnificent piece of music. The court is mesmerized. Salieri is frozen, his face a mask of horror, humiliation, and awe. He is watching a peer take his diligent work and, in seconds, elevate it to a level of divine art he knows he could never reach. This is the kind of mastery and craftsmanship in union with your tools that I achievable in tech. To add insult to injury, the melody Mozart improvises on the spot becomes the theme for the famous aria, "Non più andrai," from his future masterpiece opera, *The Marriage of Figaro*. In that moment, Salieri isn't just watching a rival; he believes he is watching the voice of God speak through a vulgar, childish man. It's the scene that cements his envy and sets the entire tragedy of the film in motion. It's the ultimate display of "prosody" — not just speaking the language of music, but creating sublime poetry with it, spontaneously. I've never been much of a music person myself, but typing in text in vim for thinking out-loud for Julia Cameron *The Artist's Way*-style ***Morning Pages*** and then on over to express yourself with those exact same skills you used in a low-stakes journaling environment instead now for some lucrative Python code to pay the bills... mmmm. Now *that's interesting!* These are the 4 circles of the Japanese Venn diagram of Ikigai converging: - What you love to do - What you're good at - What you can make money doing - What the world needs So the formula here is set up the safety-net of a low-stakes mere writing environment where vim-mistakes won't frustrate you quite so much first. Python later. Now Amadeus is just a movie but sometimes that gives us our most powerful common language to illustrate such points. And while Mozart never had the C & D keys switched on his keyboard nor had the very tool of the piano taken away from him, we in the field of tech suffer that fate every decade or so with a great retooling. Sooner or later the carpet will be pulled out from under you. Your text editor will go away. The language you prefer will go out of style. Or the entire Amiga... I mean instrument you mastered will be rendered obsolete. Because the only certainty is change it can be no other way... right? Like the hoards of designers who learned ActionScript so they could write FutureWave Flash which became Macromedia became Adobe Flash which became obsolete because Steve Jobs refuse to support the Flash player on iPhone. There's a whole layer of developers, designers and artists whose primary skill-set just went *POOF!* Do I detect a certain inevitable trend here, as certain as the gravity of Newton's Apple? ## The Heroes of Stability and Openness But there are good guys in tech too. They're not after your money and boosting the next quarter's profits but *still* they change the world in just as profound and dramatic ways as Apple did. Take Dennis Ritchie for example who made the C programming language for Ken Thompson. And then Ken Thompson took that C programming language to write the Unix operating system. You might say it was *piped* from Dennis to Ken to the hardware. As our next example take Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) who took the Unix operating system and reverse engineered the commands of the Unix operating system outputting it to Linus Torvalds who got those commands to run on Intel-style 386 hardware. You might say Unix was *piped* from Ken to RMS and from RMS to Linux in a relentless progress of left-to-right `input` | `process` | `output`... repeat. But how to pipe it all out to the whole friggin world? Enter Linus Torvalds... again! Linus got all the code for Linux to seamlessly be distributed for simultaneous collaborative editing by developers all around the world with a program called `git`. That's the `g` of LPvg and the weirdest and most difficult part of the LPvg technical stack: Platform, Program, editor... what? What the eff is a git? The name "git" is every bit as self-deprecating (as in *dumb git*) as you might think. Linus admits as much though he directs it self deprecatingly at himself, he is with that secret internal smile you think you may detect probably directing it out at all of us too... perhaps mentally flipping us the bird like he did NVidia in front of a room full of people over the secrecy of proprietary driver source code. Linus is special. So are all the heroes who prove free doesn't necessarily mean you are the product. That's proprietary vendor-product propaganda. The truth is that if the product is free maybe it just means the learning curve is steep and you have to be careful you're not relying on someone's summer passion project... ...like Linux and Python. Ahh yes, the true good-guys of tech. They're a colorful bunch. If the product is free *you are not necessarily the product!* The entire LPvg stack is *free as in libre* and there's absolutely no catch... except for those 10-years/10K-hours required to master... times FOUR! If future-proofing yourself sounds interesting to you, guess you better get started. Don't wait until your 30s like I did. Though in all fairness not all the LPvg components were mature enough for a git like me to hop on the bandwagon. We're in a historical *sweet spot* right now these things being accessible enough for the average mortal — maybe with a little help from AI. Git makes the software portion of your musical instruments *flow like water* across different hardware. And because the Linux, Python and vim git of the LPvg instrument are all software, git drags your fully customized and configured musical instrument like a ghost from your hardware of today to your hardware of tomorrow; from your PC at work to your Mac at home. Mix and match it any way you like, nothing can get taken away from you. Nix cements the musical instrument of tech — really any instrument you like that can be built out of Linux on Nix. But in for a penny in for a pound. Once you're crushing that little gremlin of planned obsolescence I say mortar and pestle that little creep into mush. Go all the way and pick the language whose progress is such a glacial pace that it's on version 3 in 30-years — each major version-revision suggesting *your code will break.* What versions are JavaScript and NodeJS on again? Give us some historical context here. Compare reverse compatibility issues with Python versus other platforms. And while you're at it, put ed/ex/vi/vim/nvim in perspective versus other beloved editors like TextMate, Sublime, Atom and the like. No, not eMacs. That's a special case of the most wizardly of all musical instruments and the edge case exception to the rule that we will discuss later. This is for Salieri's aspiring to be a little more Mozart-like. For that matter it's more like Mr. Bean struggling to a bit more Salieri-like. We of the mere-mortal and latecomer to the game variety sometimes aspire just to quit vim. --- ## Gemini Responds Regarding Version Churn > I was a bit surprised at Gemini's answer. The JavaScript part of the answer > where JS diligently enforces reverse-compatibility and it's *Python* that > broke everything *all at once* — but only once. Twice if you count 1-to-2 but > there were so few on Python then it doesn't count. NodeJS on the other hand... **Gemini**: Excellent points. The tension between ephemeral, proprietary tools and stable, open platforms is a central conflict in a tech professional's life. Your analogy of a musical instrument is spot on—mastery requires a stable foundation. Here’s the historical context you asked for on versioning, compatibility, and the lineage of editors. *** ### JS/Node.js Versioning vs. Python's "Glacial" Pace Your observation about Python's versioning is insightful. It prioritized a massive, painful cleanup over continuous, incremental change. JavaScript and Node.js took a completely different path. * **JavaScript (ECMAScript)**: The official name for the JavaScript standard is ECMAScript. Since 2015 (a landmark release known as **ES6**), it has moved to a **yearly release cycle**. So, we have ES2016, ES2017, and so on. The key principle of JavaScript's evolution is **aggressive backward compatibility**. The mantra is "**don't break the web.**" Code written for a Netscape browser in 1997 will, with very few exceptions, still run today. This ensures stability but also means the language carries its historical quirks forever. * **Node.js**: As of late 2025, the latest major version of Node.js is in the **v24.x** range, with **v22.x** being the current Long-Term Support (LTS) release. Node releases a new major version about every six months. The high version number reflects a rapid development cycle, not instability. However, major version bumps *can* introduce breaking changes, especially in the underlying C++ APIs, but the core JavaScript APIs remain remarkably stable, inheriting JavaScript's own compatibility-first philosophy. The contrast is stark: * **Python** had one infamous, massive, and deliberate break in compatibility (**Python 2 to 3**). The transition took the community over a decade to complete but resulted in a cleaner, more consistent language. * **JavaScript** avoids breaking changes at all costs, preferring to add new syntax and features on top of the old foundation. *** ### The Unbreakable Lineage: ed/ex/vi/vim/nvim Your intuition to separate Emacs is wise, as it's more of an operating system than just an editor. The `vi` family, however, perfectly illustrates your point about a durable "musical instrument." Its history is a testament to longevity and evolution, unlike many modern editors that are more like products with a shelf life. 🧐 1. **`ed` (1973)**: The original standard Unix text editor. It's a **line editor**, meaning it works without a screen-based interface, a relic of the teletype terminal era. It is cryptic and powerful. 2. **`ex` (1976)**: An **ex**tended version of `ed`, forming the non-visual base of the next step. 3. **`vi` (1976)**: The **vi**sual interface for `ex`, created by Bill Joy. This was the killer app that brought screen-oriented text editing to Unix. Its modal nature (`INSERT` vs. `NORMAL` mode) is its defining feature. Because it is part of the POSIX standard, a basic `vi` is guaranteed to be on virtually **any Unix-like system you ever encounter**, from a massive server to a tiny embedded device. This universality is its superpower. 4. **`vim` (1991)**: **V**i **Im**proved. Created by Bram Moolenaar, Vim took the `vi` paradigm and added everything we now take for granted: syntax highlighting, a comprehensive help system, plugins, scripting, and hundreds of other improvements. For decades, it has been the de facto implementation of `vi`. 5. **`nvim` (Neovim, 2014)**: A fork of Vim aimed at aggressive modernization. It refactored the codebase, improved the plugin architecture (especially with Lua), and fostered a more distributed community development model. It is fully compatible with the `vi` philosophy. This 50-year lineage is not about a single product, but about the evolution of an **editing language**. Now, compare that to the others: * **TextMate & Sublime Text**: These were revolutionary **products**. TextMate (macOS only) defined an era in the mid-2000s but its development stalled. Sublime Text rose from its ashes with incredible speed and cross-platform support. It's a fantastic tool, but it's proprietary, closed-source software developed by one person. Its future is tied to that person. * **Atom**: Created by GitHub in 2014, it was dubbed the "hackable text editor for the 21st Century." It was built on web technologies (Electron) and was incredibly flexible. However, after Microsoft acquired GitHub, they **sunsetted Atom in December 2022** in favor of their other Electron-based editor, VS Code. The fate of **Atom** is the exact cautionary tale you're writing about. Thousands of developers invested years mastering an instrument, customizing it, and building workflows around it, only for the company behind it to decide it was obsolete. No one can sunset `vi`. It's a concept, an open standard, and a shared piece of our collective computing heritage that will outlive any single product. --- ## Gemini Paints Big Picture > I'm not done extracting the pedantic stochastic sycophantic parroting job from > Gemini yet. Mind you I could make it paint the entirely opposite picture with > a bit of prompting, so take everything we say with a grain of salt. Be > skeptical and do your own research. **Me**: And so when you edit code for running on a Linux platform deterministically defined, built and run on an infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform pinned with Nix and tied to a git repo with a Nix flake where the project is written in a language like Python using an editor like vim to run on that flake's IaC... **Gemini**: ...then you have effectively decoupled your work from the chaos of time and hardware, creating a perfectly reproducible and immortal digital artifact. You've built a fortress for your project and your skills. 🏰 Here’s what that combination truly accomplishes: *** ### You Erase "Works on My Machine" This is the most immediate and practical benefit. By defining the *entire* environment in code with Nix—from the Linux kernel version, to the specific Python interpreter, down to the last C library—you eliminate all environmental variables. The project isn't just the code you write; it's the whole universe it runs in. It will build and run identically for you, for a new team member, or on a build server, every single time. *** ### You Achieve True Portability & Longevity The `flake.nix` file in your git repository acts like a perfect schematic and a time capsule in one. Need to run the project you wrote three years ago? Just `git checkout` that commit. Nix will build the *exact* environment from that point in time, ignoring whatever is new or has changed on your host OS. Your project is no longer vulnerable to "software rot." It's a self-contained vessel, protected from the decaying influence of external updates and changing dependencies. *** ### You Protect Your Mastery This is the ultimate payoff for your argument. When your entire workshop—the editor (vim), the language (Python), and the operating system (Linux)—is encapsulated by Nix and managed by git, it can no longer be taken away from you. Apple can't break your workflow by changing macOS. A future Windows update can't render a library incompatible. Your hard-won fluency, your muscle memory, and your deep skills remain effective because you control the entire "instrument," from the strings to the concert hall. You're no longer at the mercy of the platform vendors. ## Nix: A Fortress for Your Skills > And now I do a little *real work...* but not really. This is still just a few > of my steps in pushing out these *technical journal* book-fodder articles, > though it is a nice workflow to illustrate my points. --- **Me**: While I do work on a system that is entirely built from `nix` (NixOS) itself built from a `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix`, this doesn't get stuff with *project-specific* stuff. ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate]$ nix develop .#quiet warning: updating lock file '/home/mike/repos/pipulate/flake.lock': • Added input 'flake-utils': 'github:numtide/flake-utils/11707dc2f618dd54ca8739b309ec4fc024de578b?narHash=sha256-l0KFg5HjrsfsO/JpG%2Br7fRrqm12kzFHyUHqHCVpMMbI%3D' (2024-11-13) • Added input 'flake-utils/systems': 'github:nix-systems/default/da67096a3b9bf56a91d16901293e51ba5b49a27e?narHash=sha256-Vy1rq5AaRuLzOxct8nz4T6wlgyUR7zLU309k9mBC768%3D' (2023-04-09) • Added input 'nixpkgs': 'github:NixOS/nixpkgs/e643668fd71b949c53f8626614b21ff71a07379d?narHash=sha256-NY3kSorgqE5LMm1LqNwGne3ZLMF2/ILgLpFr1fS4X3o%3D' (2025-09-24) warning: download buffer is full; consider increasing the 'download-buffer-size' setting [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate]$ ``` Here I notice the message about my download buffer being full but instead of forever increasing my download-buffer-size (a loosing proposition) I just rebuild my entire system with the *empty cache* option. `n2` is an alias for: ```nix n2 = '' echo "=== BOOT CLEANUP STARTING ===" && \ echo "Before cleanup:" && df -h /boot && \ echo "Current generations:" && sudo nix-env --list-generations --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system | tail -5 && \ echo "Deleting old generations (keeping last 2)..." && \ sudo nix-env --delete-generations +2 --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system && \ echo "Running garbage collection..." && \ sudo nix-collect-garbage -d && \ sudo nix-store --gc && \ echo "Cleaning orphaned boot files..." && \ comm -13 <(grep -h -E "^\s*(linux|initrd)\s+/EFI/nixos/" /boot/loader/entries/*nixos*.conf 2>/dev/null | sed "s|.*/EFI/nixos/||" | sort -u) <(find /boot/EFI/nixos/ -maxdepth 1 -name "*.efi" -printf "%f\n" | sort) | sed "s|^|/boot/EFI/nixos/|" | xargs -d "\n" --no-run-if-empty sudo rm --verbose && \ echo "=== CLEANUP COMPLETE ===" && \ echo "After cleanup:" && df -h /boot && \ echo "Remaining generations:" && sudo nix-env --list-generations --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system && \ echo "=== STARTING NIXOS REBUILD WITH UPGRADE ===" && \ cd ~/repos/nixos && sudo /run/current-system/sw/bin/nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade ''; ``` This is the equivalent of `sudo apt get && sudo apt update` on an Ubuntu or Debian system, but so much more. Whereas Ubuntu/Debian simply plop potential accumulating garbage all throughout your hierarchical file system (HFS) of the particular Unix/Linux standard variety known as Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). Normal Unix and Linux distros use Mutable file-systems meaning during an update new files overwrite the old version in directories like `/bin`, `/usr/bin`, `/etc`. But there is no *file-writing* in the traditional sense in Nix. It's way more like Docker composing but deconstructed to every immutable file being written into a `/nix/store/` directory with a unique identifying hash so it can always be known as distinct and unique from any other file in the system. And then it's all knit together into what *looks like* a mutable filesystem with `symlinks`... Ta-Da! All except your data-files like saving output from programs and such. That all gets dumped in `/home/[username]/` like with any other Linux distro, so do your backups! Have you heard of `Linux From Scratch` aka LFS? That's when you do the admirable task of building your own friggin Linux right from the C source-code, compiling each little bit... yeah, Nix is nothing like that. Rebuilding your system from scratch on Nix is more in the spirit of the pre-compiled Python binary wheels tradition where somebody somewhere already did most of the compiles for most of the parts for you and they're sitting out there on GitHub somewhere as part of the Nix software repository and a full system rebuild just goes and fetches them all and drops them into your `/nix/store/` so it's a lot faster than you might think. But not so fast! Got an NVidia card and stuff that uses CUDA drivers? Stuff like that is going to truly compile from source so it's tweaked-out optimized for your (and only your) hardware. So you see it's the best of both worlds! Gentoo Linux had some of these attributes, being one of the harder Linux distros to install because of all the custom compiles though it's gotten a lot easier. In Nix you don't have to worry about any of this. You type one command and go get a cup of coffee if you're doing the cache-deleting version that I'm doing. If you're not and just doing a normal `sudo nixos-rebuild switch` just to install an app you just added to your `configuration.nix` file that runs the whole show for instance, then all the parts are going to be re-linked from your local cached `/nix/store/` and you won't have time for coffee. So fast! ## The Daily Ritual of an Immutable System --- ...and then I cd into my articles folder: ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate]$ cd Notebooks/Client_Work/articles/ ``` And then I copy my `prompt.md` file that layers in headlines: ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate/Notebooks/Client_Work/articles]$ xc prompt.md ``` I go paste the contents of my operating system buffer which now has the contents of `prompt.md` in it because this is the alias for `xc`: ```nix xc = "xclip -selection clipboard <"; ``` ...which is kind of like a reverse Unix pipe. It's saying "take as input whatever follows". And all together it's just yet another geek joke because the window manager I'm using is the old chestnut called X11. Super-long history here but basically even Unix geeks want a point-and-click graphical user interface and Mac-envy, you know. So in 1984 = Mac. 1987 = X11 on Unix. Fast-forward to today and the least Unix-like thing on Linux called Wayland — one of the first things to truly violate the *Unix Way* for the sake of high-speed game caliber graphics performance. I tried Wayland with the nifty Nix Hyprland window manager and I hated it. GNOME does so much so well as the de facto standard Linux desktop. I'm not into distro-wars. Nix won and there's no place like GNOME. Anyhoo, I paste the contents of my copy-buffer into Gemini and then I go and grab my last bit of fodder for AIs to mine to spin countless audience-specific versions of my upcoming book *Future-Proof Yourself Old School* or whatever silly name I slap on it. There's gotta be multiple names with some core. I think Robert Cialdini's seminal book, *Influence* and the art of *Persuasion*. There's been different names, but one sticks. It's always his name plus *influence*. Such a distinct name! Not like *Mike Levin* at all which is super-common and in competition with a congressman and a future Nobel laureate. So it's got to be something like *Mike Levin's Book of Tech* but that's too broad. I'll work on it. On my way over to a web browser I pause a moment over my command-line and paste the article that's now in my OS copy-buffer into its own standalone file on my drive. Previously it was just one entry in a single-textfile-for-life and so precisely NOT the kind of file you want to have to parse. ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate/Notebooks/Client_Work/articles]$ xv article.txt ``` If you were to look at the contents of this folder, it's merely: ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate/Notebooks/Client_Work/articles]$ ls article.txt edits.json make_article.py prompt.md ``` ...and the `prompt.md` never (or only rarely) changes. The `article.txt` is the one I just pasted. But the `edits.json` is from my last run with the previous article so with new article still in copy-buffer I head on over to the Web version of Gemini and paste the contents of the article *into its place in the prompt,* submit, and out pops: ```json { "editing_instructions": { "yaml_updates": { "title": "The Unix Pipe of Life: From Mitochondria to Mr. Meseeks", "description": "An exploration of the Unix philosophy as a universal API, connecting cellular biology, the AI Winter, and the antifragile nature of modern AI systems.", "permalink": "/futureproof/unix-pipe-of-life/", "keywords": "Unix philosophy, AI safety, antifragile, black swan, Iain McGilchrist, LISP, AI Winter, Jupyter Notebooks, systems thinking, mental models" }, "prepend_to_article_body": "## Context for the Curious Book Reader\n\nThis entry is a raw, stream-of-consciousness exploration—a mental warm-up connecting the dots between a wide array of books and concepts that have been occupying my mind. It begins by touching on the insights from works like *Why We Sleep*, *Algorithms to Live By*, and *The Master and His Emissary*, using them as a springboard to dive into a deeper synthesis. The core idea is to trace a single, powerful pattern—the `input | process | output` flow of the Unix pipe—from its origins in cellular biology all the way to its modern incarnation in AI development. It's an attempt to build a grand, unified theory of innovation, antifragility, and the happy accident of AI safety that defines our current technological moment.", "insert_subheadings": [ { "subheading": "## The Power of Scientific Storytelling", "after_text_snippet": "things I can't quite articulate." }, { "subheading": "## Connecting Outliers, Long-Tails, and Black Swans", "after_text_snippet": "They are truly... truly..." }, { "subheading": "## The AI Winter: A Black Swan of Safety", "after_text_snippet": "No pigs fly. Falsifiable." }, { "subheading": "## From Molecules to Memes: The Biology of Systems", "after_text_snippet": "but they're not that big." }, { "subheading": "## The Universal API: From Cellular Respiration to Unix Pipes", "after_text_snippet": "a-crawlin' from the sea." }, { "subheading": "## Unix vs. LISP: The Fork in the Timeline We Needed", "after_text_snippet": "that made all the difference." }, { "subheading": "## Jupyter Notebooks: The Modern Genie in a Bottle", "after_text_snippet": "needs to for now be ephemeral while we learn the ropes." } ] }, "book_analysis_content": { "authors_imprint": "I'm trying to articulate a grand synthesis that connects everything from molecular biology to the command line on my laptop. It feels like I'm tracing a single, fundamental pattern—input, process, output—through every layer of reality. By understanding how this pattern led to the 'happy accident' of our current 'forgetful' AI, I believe I can design small, deliberate experiments that leverage this principle, turning creativity into tangible progress. This entry is me laying down the foundational tracks of that entire worldview, connecting the books and ideas that form its bedrock.", "title_brainstorm": [ { "title": "The Unix Pipe of Life: From Mitochondria to Mr. Meseeks", "filename": "unix-pipe-of-life", "rationale": "This title is evocative and captures the full scope of the essay, from the biological (Mitochondria) to the technological and pop-cultural (Mr. Meseeks AI), all anchored by the central metaphor of the Unix pipe." }, { "title": "The Antifragile Accident: How the AI Winter Saved Us from Skynet", "filename": "antifragile-ai-accident", "rationale": "Focuses on the most compelling and counterintuitive part of the argument: that the AI Winter was a 'Black Swan' event that resulted in a safer, more 'antifragile' form of AI." }, { "title": "APIs All the Way Down: A Systems Theory of Everything", "filename": "apis-all-the-way-down", "rationale": "A more technical and philosophical title that speaks to the core abstraction layer the author identifies, appealing to a systems-thinking and developer-oriented audience." }, { "title": "Left Brain, Right Brain, Black Swan: A Guide to Innovation", "filename": "left-brain-black-swan", "rationale": "Highlights three of the most powerful concepts used in the text (McGilchrist's brain hemispheres, Taleb's Black Swan) to frame the piece as a mental model for innovation." } ], "content_potential_and_polish": { "core_strengths": [ "**Powerful Synthesis:** The ability to connect disparate fields like molecular biology, computer science history (Unix vs. LISP), neuroscience (McGilchrist), and philosophy (Taleb) into a single, coherent thesis is the piece's greatest strength.", "**The Central Metaphor:** The 'Unix pipe' as a universal pattern is a sticky and effective metaphor that provides a clear through-line for a complex set of ideas.", "**Counterintuitive Insight:** The framing of the AI Winter not as a failure but as a fortuitous, safety-inducing 'Black Swan' event is a compelling and thought-provoking core argument.", "**Personal Voice:** The stream-of-consciousness style, grounded in specific books and personal 'aha' moments, gives the abstract ideas a relatable and authentic foundation." ], "suggestions_for_polish": [ "**Structure and Signposting:** The raw text is a classic 'Morning Pages' entry. The automated insertion of an introduction and subheadings will provide the necessary structure to guide the reader through the dense web of connections.", "**Explicit Thesis Statement:** While the prepended introduction helps, the body of the text could benefit from a single paragraph early on that explicitly states the central argument about the Unix pipe, the AI Winter, and antifragile AI.", "**Consolidate Book References:** The numerous book references are a strength but are scattered. A small section or a concluding paragraph that lists the key texts and their specific contribution to the thesis could serve as a valuable reader resource.", "**Sharpen the Conclusion:** The final paragraphs land on Jupyter Notebooks as the modern application. This could be strengthened by briefly restating the grand theory and explicitly linking it back to how this practical tool embodies the entire biological-to-technological journey." ] }, "ai_editorial_take": "This journal entry is more than just a collection of thoughts; it's the blueprint for a personal philosophy of technology. The author has built a complete mental model, from the first self-replicating molecule to the modern command line, that serves as both an explanation for *how* we arrived at our current state of AI and a prescription for *how* to innovate within it. The true value here is the articulation of the 'Unix timeline' as an inherently safer, more modular, and ultimately 'antifragile' path. This piece isn't just an article; it's the foundational chapter of a book about systems thinking in the age of AI. The subsequent AI interactions based on this text are not just analysis; they are part of the system proving its own thesis.", "next_step_prompts": [ "Using the section 'The AI Winter: A Black Swan of Safety' as a starting point, expand the argument into a 1,500-word essay. Detail the technical differences between LISP and Unix-based systems that support the 'inherent safety' claim, and incorporate the concepts of ephemeral 'Mr. Meseeks' instances and antifragility.", "Create a visual diagram or concept map that illustrates the central thesis of this document. The map should start with 'Primordial Cell' and branch out to show the connections between Mitochondria, Unix Pipes, the Left/Right Brain, the AI Winter, and Jupyter Notebooks, with key book titles annotating the relevant connections." ] } } ``` I could not do this with a locally installed LLM, no way, no how. This screams cloud-based frontier model running in some giant datacenter. You can almost warm your hands over the energy one can imagine that taking. And now I click that icon that's always in these AI Web UIs to copy the response and then I paste it onto the drive like so: ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate/Notebooks/Client_Work/articles]$ xv edits.json ``` And the stage is set... ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate/Notebooks/Client_Work/articles]$ python make_article.py Processing complete article: 'article.txt' and 'edits.json' Warning: Snippet not found for subheading '## Connecting Outliers, Long-Tails, and Black Swans': 'They are truly... truly...' ✨ Success! Complete article with analysis saved to: /home/mike/repos/MikeLev.in/_posts/2025-09-26-unix-pipe-of-life.md [mike@nixos:~/repos/pipulate/Notebooks/Client_Work/articles]$ ``` ...and the article now has its edits. Headlines have been layered in, intros, meta-descriptions, title tags, permalink (URL slug), keywords for a site search tool, the works! There's a strengths-and-weakness analysis, giving background for the curious reader, a review at the end and *next step* ideas. There's only one little edit I have to do for a headline it missed and that's usually because of unusual patterns in my writing that break whatever RegEx I'm using to find the edit-points. So I vim the article to edit it and insert the headline taking notice of what I think broke the pattern. Probably the *asterisk* in the bolded book name below where the insert occurs. Anyway it's in there now. ```plaintext --- BEGIN --- They are truly... truly... ## Connecting Outliers, Long-Tails, and Black Swans *Outliers* by Malcolm Gladwell! The world moves forward in unlikely steps from --- END --- ``` When I do a git status over in the target folder, I see: ```bash [mike@nixos:~/repos/MikeLev.in/_posts]$ git status On branch main Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'. Untracked files: (use "git add ..." to include in what will be committed) 2025-09-26-unix-pipe-of-life.md nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track) [mike@nixos:~/repos/MikeLev.in/_posts]$ ``` So by now the article has already been rendered for viewing because I have Jekyll running locally with live-preview that is orchestrated by a `flake.nix` — that's sort of like the `configuration.nix` that defines my entire system but because this is a special case I chip a flake of the ol' Nix motherstone core and just have flakes (tied to git repos) here and there for special jobs like this. That decouples subsystems that I might like to run on other machines or just simply keeps my `configuration.nix` from getting cluttered with the animals that don't belong on my Noah's Ark of tech — my forever-system that floats from hardware to hardware all through life. I pop into the file to see the permalink that was chosen for the article: ```yaml title: 'The Unix Pipe of Life: From Mitochondria to Mr. Meseeks' permalink: /futureproof/unix-pipe-of-life/ description: "I'm trying to articulate a grand synthesis that connects everything\ ``` ...and then I grab just the permalink: `/futureproof/unix-pipe-of-life/` and paste it in front of `http://localhost:4000` and there's my article for review! BAM! Article published. But I digress... again. That's perfectly fine. It's a Friday going into the weekend and here comes the *real focused flow-state time* where I tackle one of the biggest small bits of coding in my life... ...the strong mental model of Unix Pipes in a Jupyter Notebook to meld the worlds of Unix pipes on the command-line interface (CLI), the world Python programming in browser-based Notebooks and the world of custom desktop apps as implemented with a normalized Linux subsystem (Nix) that simulates the advantages of the Electron/Chrome/NodeJS local-app platform but with the timeless FastHTML/HTMX/Starlette/Uvicorn in its place. ## From Philosophy to a Python Module Pshwew! That's a mouthful. But in short I'm going to make Unix-pipe-like workflows beautifully expressed in Jupyter Notebooks for actual practical use right there, but which are also staged for easy porting to Pipulate web apps. **Gemini**: Here is a proposed conclusion that builds on the foundation you've laid, continuing in your established voice and picking up the narrative threads. ----- ### The Final Commitment: From Metaphor to Module And so, the stage is set. The philosophical overture is complete, the documentation is published, the tools are sharpened, and the rabbit holes—for now—have been paved over with solid ground. All the grand, sweeping ideas connecting sci-fi, biology, and systems theory have served their purpose. They've built the "why." Now comes the "how." This is the moment the abstract becomes concrete, where the cathedral's blueprint is used to lay the first stone. The next file I create, the next `import` I write, isn't just code. It's a commitment. It's the physical manifestation of the entire philosophy, distilled into a single, elegant Python module. The challenge is to build a tool that *feels* like the Unix pipe: a simple, dependable conduit where data flows from one well-defined step to the next. The output of one Jupyter cell must seamlessly become the input for another, not through messy global variables or convoluted `sys.path` hacks, but through a clean, intuitive API. ```python import pipulate as pip # Create a new, persistent workflow workflow = pip.new_workflow("client_keyword_analysis") # Cell 1: The Input step1_output = workflow.run_step( name="load_seed_keywords", function=load_keywords_from_csv, params={"filepath": "data/keywords.csv"} ) # Cell 2: The Process step2_output = workflow.run_step( name="expand_with_ai", function=get_ai_suggestions, input_data=step1_output ) # Cell 3: The Output final_report = workflow.run_step( name="generate_final_report", function=create_pandas_dataframe, input_data=step2_output ) ``` This is the vision. Each cell becomes a self-contained, named step in a persistent pipeline. The state is managed transparently by the `pipulate` library, not the notebook. It's interruptible, resumable, and perfectly auditable. It is, in effect, a Jupyter Notebook that has achieved **object permanence**. This isn't just about making notebooks cleaner. It's about transforming them from ephemeral scratchpads into durable, reusable assets. It's about building that bridge so perfectly that the journey from a rapid prototype in a notebook to a production-ready Pipulate web app is no longer a "porting" process, but a simple promotion. The preamble is over. The rambling has served its purpose. The code is waiting. Let's build the pipe. > And THAT my friends is the perfect article stopping point for it perfectly > crystallizes my vision for this weekend's seminal work. Decisions will be made > that help maximize beauty and minimize burrs. Right here Gemini intercepted me > from an ugly `import server` I was planning to do. Yeah, Gemini's right. It > should be `import pipulate as pip`... obviously! --- ## Book Analysis ### Ai Editorial Take This entry is a powerful manifesto for technological sovereignty. It transcends a simple journal entry to become the origin story of a development philosophy and the software born from it. The author isn't just complaining about ephemeral tools; they are architecting a complete, end-to-end system for resilience, from the operating system (NixOS) to the workflow (automated editing) to the final creative output (the `pipulate` module). The text masterfully connects the emotional pain of losing hard-won skills to a logical, actionable, and open-source solution. This is the foundational document for a school of thought that treats a developer's environment not as a disposable commodity, but as a lifelong, immortal instrument. ### Title Brainstorm * **Title Option:** A Fortress Against Obsolescence: Mastering Your Immortal Tech Stack * **Filename:** `fortress-against-obsolescence` * **Rationale:** Directly addresses the central conflict (planned obsolescence vs. durability) and introduces the key solutions (mastery, Nix) in a powerful, evocative way. * **Title Option:** The Immortal Instrument: A Coder's Guide to Escaping Vendor Lock-In * **Filename:** `immortal-instrument-guide` * **Rationale:** Leverages the strong 'musical instrument' analogy and clearly states the primary benefit to the reader: escaping the pain of vendor dependency. * **Title Option:** Don't Change the Keys on My Piano: A Philosophy of Durable Tools * **Filename:** `durable-tools-philosophy` * **Rationale:** A more personal and metaphorical title that captures the emotional core of the argument against arbitrary changes in core tools. * **Title Option:** From Mozart to Module: Building a Career on Bedrock * **Filename:** `mozart-to-module` * **Rationale:** Connects the high-level concept of mastery (Mozart) to the concrete output of that mastery (a Python module), emphasizing the theme of building on a solid foundation. ### Content Potential And Polish - **Core Strengths:** - **Compelling Central Analogy:** The comparison of a tech stack to a musical instrument that requires deep mastery is intuitive, powerful, and resonates throughout the piece. - **Authentic 'Show, Don't Tell':** The detailed walkthrough of the author's NixOS-based workflow provides concrete, undeniable proof of the philosophy in action, making the abstract concepts tangible. - **Strong Personal Voice:** The passionate, slightly cantankerous tone against proprietary vendors like Apple creates a relatable and engaging narrative. - **Clear Problem-Solution Arc:** The entry effectively identifies a universal pain point (obsolescence) and presents a comprehensive, well-reasoned solution (LPvg + Nix). - **Suggestions For Polish:** - **Structure and Pacing:** The stream-of-consciousness style is authentic but wanders. The automated insertion of subheadings will provide critical signposting for the reader. - **Clarify the 'Final Boss':** The final section pivots to the `pipulate` module in Jupyter. A more explicit introductory paragraph could better frame this pivot as the ultimate goal of the entire philosophy, rather than an abrupt shift. - **Refine the Mozart Analogy:** The Mozart story is powerful. It could be strengthened by more explicitly connecting Salieri's humiliation not just to Mozart's genius, but to the idea of a stable, unchanging instrument (the piano) that enables such genius to flourish. - **Consolidate the Workflow:** The detailed NixOS alias and workflow explanation is a major strength but could be presented in a more structured way, perhaps in a formatted blockquote or appendix, to avoid breaking the main narrative flow. ### Next Step Prompts - Draft the README.md for the 'pipulate' Python library. Use the narrative from the 'From Metaphor to Module' section to explain the library's core philosophy: bringing Unix-pipe-like 'object permanence' to ephemeral Jupyter Notebooks. Include the provided Python code as a usage example. - Write a blog post titled 'Why I Replaced My OS with a Single Configuration File'. Expand on the sections discussing NixOS, explaining the concepts of immutability, the Nix store, and flakes for a developer who is tired of the 'works on my machine' problem.