I got a "new" laptop — July 24, 2023

I've technologically progressed into the late 2010s with a "new" laptop. By that, I mean a 2017 ThinkPad P51. The T530 was good enough, but the P51 is a true desktop replacement. I wasn't even looking for a new laptop; I chanced upon it at an electronics swap meet for $50, and couldn't pass it up. The specs are pretty good: an i7 7820HQ, Quadro M1200 4GB, 32GB of RAM (only came with 4), and 500GB NVME. The dGPU is especially welcome since it can do CAD work (and play 3D games). As a side note, I've revised my position on laptop GPUs- they're still dumb unless there's sufficient cooling, which only workstations (like the P51) and gaming laptops (which are bad for other reasons) have.

A positive side effect of setting up the new laptop is that it has gotten me deeper into Linux. I've intended on properly configuring it, but have been too busy during the school year. I've set up some Ansible-powered dotfiles at the behest of my friends, switched from stupid Vscode to Neovim, made my own ST and DWM builds, and tried out a bunch of CLI tools. I tested Arch for a couple hours, but compiling from the AUR was annoying (even with yay) so I went back to Debian. I'm finally building a system that actually works. I'll probably revisit it with more detail in the future.

I also got a new phone, an iPhone SE 3. Not very libre of me, but I was tired of cheap Motorolas that only got a year worth of updates. If I loved phones, I'd hate it. But, because I hate phones, I love it. The SE 3 is a perfectly utilitarian device. The specs seems decent, the screen is just big enough to be usable, and it has barely any pocket presence. My only gripe is its lack of battery life, but I don't use it enough for that to be an issue.

That begs the question of why I run Linux on my laptop, yet am fine with a locked-down iPhone and iPad. Beyond taking notes, I don't use mobile devices for serious work. Since my laptop gets used for actually important stuff like programming, customizing it to my needs makes sense. Even if my iPad ran Linux, It'd still be many magnitudes less useful than a 15.6" x86 laptop. Tablets and phones just aren't good for getting work done. I don't feel like going full schizo-mode on mobile privacy, either. Maybe someday I will, but for now I'm indifferent towards Google knowing all the dumb Linux questions I've had, and at what times my classes are. I refuse to use social media, though that's because I don't appreciate its disastrous effects on interpersonal relationships.

Most important is the fact that I'm now religious. I won't say much since it's worthy of a separate post, but it came after being a lifetime of atheism. As a naive kid, I wished to be "stupid like a religious person" so I could be "ignorantly happy". Even then, I realized the utterly dissatisfying nature of atheist philosophy- the great contradiction of deriving meaning from nothing. I'm skeptical of those claiming to find comfort in moral subjectivity and a lack of inherent meaning. I've tried embracing "the absurd" all my life, and it's only lead me to be pathetic and depressed. No matter how many Reddit posts I read on how epic it is that we can do whatever amazingly cool and wacky stuff we want, I'm always left dissatisfied.

Assuming the existence of God and the lack thereof to be equally unprovable, I find it more rational to choose the former from a functional point of view. People crave meaning and purpose in a way that only religion can satisfy, and I feel it's decline is responsible for a lot of the psychological and moral issues people face today. Humanity and religion are inseparable, and secularization is the sociological equivalent of a lobotomy. Without something objective to work towards, even if it's only seen that way and isn't truly such, we're left chasing our tails towards whatever utopian vision-of-the-day is in vogue. I'd rather be "irrational" and actually have something to live for than "rational" and be left with nothing.

I've been specifically getting into Christianity, both because it's the largest religion in the world and because of how intrinsically linked it is with western culture. Seems natural, considering I'm of European descent and all my (recent) ancestors were Christians. I've started going through scripture, regularly attending church, and even got baptized a few weeks ago before going on break. I've come to find my place in Lutheranism since they seem to respect church tradition while simultaneously affirming protestant teachings like the five solas, which make sense to me. Of course, more research is needed before fully fleshing out my theological beliefs. I might get confirmed when I come back, so long as they don't change in the meantime. It's rather fitting because many of the men on the Danish side of my family, such as my great-grandfather, were Lutheran ministers.