Protesilaos
Protesilaos
Protesilaos
I am a philosopher living in the mountains of Cyprus at a house I built myself which I affectionately call “the hut.” I spend my free time programming on GNU Emacs, writing essays on a wide range of life issues, and doing infrastructure work around my house. My background is diverse and reflects my intellectual curiosity as well as consistently high work ethic.
Latest Posts
I just read an article by Abhijit A.M. in The Anvil journal. Its title is The Decline of the Copyleft Free Software Movement and Its Ideological Limitations. It is subtitled A Marxist Critique of the Free Software Movement. It makes...
Yesterday I met with Amin Bandali to talk about Emacs. Amin asked me if he could record the session, which I agreed to. The video is available on Amin’s website: https://kelar.org/~bandali/gnu/emacs/ffs-emacs-ext-prot.html. We started...
I read a story I wrote and published last evening: https://protesilaos.com/books/2026-05-12-mask-of-phantes/. It is about a magic mask. Whoever wears the mask gets all the attention. The themes I explore in that publication are about...
In a distant land lives a peaceful man called Phantes. His house is nice and cosy. It was built by a gifted fellow before Phantes was around. Nobody knows for sure who that person is. Whispers echo in the night. Birds sing of a peerless...
Writing for UnHerd, in an article titled Boots-on-the-ground is Trump’s best option, Wolfgang Munchau elaborates on a logical argument in favour of committing to the war in Iran: […] Unlike Russia, Iran is not a nuclear power, and on...
In this 30-minute video I expound on the close connection between deep thought and misery. I do so by explaining the symbolism of Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, the world of disembodied souls. Hades is also known as “Plouton”,...
I met with Amin Bandali to talk about Emacs, specifically Amin’s upcoming ffs package. Amin informed me about changes to ffs in light of a discussion we had during a previous session. Amin asked me to record the meeting and then publish...
Today I watched with great interest the discussion of Yanis Varoufakis with the hosts of The Rest Is Politics podcast, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart:...
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has created an input shock whose delayed cascading effects we shall experience in the months and years to come. Shortages in oil and its derivatives bring about challenging states of affairs that...
On the 14th of May we will meet with Sacha and Philip to talk about the upcoming Emacs 31 and other developments heading into Emacs 32. Philip is a contributor to core Emacs and the main driver behind the new newcomers-presets theme,...
This is an excerpt from an exchange that I am reproducing with permission from my correspondent. I am not sharing their contact details. As I understand, you’re using the regular keybindings in emacs. I’m trying to transition away from...
In this short video I demonstrate my new package for Emacs. It is called buffer-to-pdf. The idea is to save your current buffer to a PDF, while preserving how it looks. This means that your font size, theme, and other visual effects are...
These are the basic settings for Emacs that I shared with Sacha Chua during our livestreamed meeting on 2026-04-30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7pcLdwuyxE. ;;; Sensible defaults that are not too intrusive and focus on common...