About modulus

Who am I?

I’m the author of this blog, an avid IRC user of the Freenode Libera network (you can talk to me on ##marxism and ##politics, inter alia), and I like reading and writing. My primary areas of interest are mathematics, computer science/programming, politics, law and literature, though I also enjoy reading about history, economics, and more or less whatever comes my way outside of critical theory.

I live in Southern Europe, but I’ve been to an international school in my formative years and spent long periods of time in other countries, which makes me a bit of an eternal outsider, or third culture kid, as they say in the literature. Perhaps travel isn’t indispensable to broaden the mind, but I can say it definitely worked for me, and I recommend it to everyone. While I consider digital nomadism a little superficial and hipster, there are useful lessons to draw from disassociating oneself from a given nation and place.

What can I do?

I’m not great at talking about myself and my abilities. It makes me uncomfortable, but it seems like the sort of thing one should do. So I’ll get it out of the way.

• Qualifications:
  • I hold a licenciat in law from a Spanish university, which enables me to practice.
  • I have a diploma in Computer Science.
  • I have been formally trained in music and, though rusty, learned to play the piano.
  • I am a licenced ham radio operator.
• Languages:
  • I’m a native Spanish and Galician speaker.
  • My English competence is near-native, covering most registers: colloquial, business, literary, academic…
  • I can translate from and to any of the 3 languages above, and have worked with technical documentation, legal texts, academic articles and poetry.
  • I have edited texts for style, coherence, grammar and orthography.
  • I can read German with considerable difficulty, although I’m working on improving it.
  • I’m interested in Finnish but have only the barest ability to understand it.
• Writing:
  • I have written poems, short stories and longer works of fiction, none of which have been formally published yet.
  • I have written academic articles, administrative and judicial complaints, terms and conditions, contracts and technical documents.
  • I am an avid reader.
• Software:
  • I am intimately familiar with GNU/Linux.
  • I’m an intermediate LaTeX user: up to using and modifying other people’s packages, but not quite up to creating my own.
  • I’m familiar with many forms of mark-up: html, markdown, restructured text, etc; it’s easy to pick up another one.
  • I know how to run an IRC channel, a mailing list, a multi-user blog or a forum.
• Coding:
  • I have a good working knowledge of Python, Rust, and C.
  • I have a cursory knowledge of C++, Clojure, Ruby, Java, Common Lisp and Ocaml (mostly outdated on these).
  • I may be able to understand Scheme, Coq and Haskell; but I won’t promise.
  • I am very interested, but not sufficiently versed, in type theory and formal methods.
  • I know the basics of algorithm analysis.
  • I am not scared of any maths.
• Personal:
  • I know how to listen.
  • I can handle cultural differences.
  • I can change my mind.
  • I enjoy vigorous debate and can keep calm and friendly in spite of vigorous disagreements.

There’s a lot of bad things about me too, but I don’t think I’ll bother with those.

What do I believe?

I am an atheist, a communist, a marxist, a determinist, a scientific realist, and an advocate for strong typing. Depending who you are one of those may put you off. I’m mostly open to discussion, but unlikely to change my mind on these. I’ve thought long about them.

How can you contact me?

The fastest way to contact me is probably through IRC, if I’m online and awake (which I usually am). For things which don’t require real-time replies, or which would be impractical to discuss on IRC at length, email is preferred.

• IRC: Jardie on libera.chat.
• Email: modulus at spirit of contradiction dot eu
• Twitter: @modulux
• Mastodon: @modulux@mastodon.social

If you decide to contact me, I have some suggestions.

• Use plaintext whenever possible: HTML email is wasteful, and PDF or DOC attachments are entirely unnecessary in most cases.
• Do not send me images. Just don’t.
• Text is preferable to audio. Audio is preferable to video. Slides are probably not going to be read so don’t bother.

Anything else?

I like folk music, historical novels, written speculative fiction including science fiction and fantasy (not interested in visual media), erotic stories, wine, cheese, tea, formal poetry, comparative law, operations research and generally lots of nerd stuff. I enjoy talking about ideas more than things and things more than people. I’m agnostic about the Oxford comma and prefer etymological plurals (pinna pinnae, octopus octopodes). Oh, and I’m blind.