ANATOLY IVANOV / PROSE / CATEGORIES / ESSAYS

DEATH ON SCREEN

CINEMA / PSYCHOLOGY / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2019-11-29

We view death countless times on screens, daily. People exploding, shot, bleeding-out, run-over, cut to pieces in so many “creative” ways. And yet, how many of us think about the inescapable fact that at some point in the future, possibly very near future, we’ll be  + 

FAKE EVERYTHING

RELIGION / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2019-11-20

Fake food. Sugar and salt and glutamates. Fake faces. Make-up, lighting and Photoshop. Fake breasts. Silicone-gel. Fake diplomas. For the rich. Fake furniture. Veneered particle boards. Fake vacations. Staged and edited for Instagram. Fake feelings. Benzodiazepines and SSRIs. Fake songs. Auto-tuned studio and live recordings.  + 

APPLE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BUGS… FOR YEARS

COMPUTERS / ESSAYS / 2019-11-18

Apple really, really doesn’t give a shit about its bugs. For years! Appalling. Apple Mac OS Address Book entries with “son” or “daughter” will cancel the entire sync of contacts data to iPhone. (not talking iCloud sync here) Workaround: change all fields “Son” or “Daughter”  + 

ART IS NOT DEFINED BY ITS MODE OF CONSUMPTION

ART THEORY / CINEMA / PAINTING / ESSAYS / 2019-08-31

People who claim that an art form is defined by its consumption method continue to amaze (aggravate?) me. According to them, next time you buy a painting to hang on your wall, remember that outside the museum, it won’t be a piece of art anymore.  + 

TEACH KIDS TO DISASSEMBLE STUFF… IMPROVE RECYCLING AS CONSEQUENCE

EDUCATION / ENVIRONMENT / GADGETS / ESSAYS / 2019-08-22

We could cut recycling costs significantly if we taught and encouraged kids to disassemble stuff. DIY and engineering hands-on education as as bonus. Girls and boys. Requires better collection points, but otherwise, nothing fancy.  + 

PEOPLE LOVE CYCLIC AND REGENERATING STORIES AND UNIVERSES

PHYSICS / PSYCHOLOGY / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2019-07-28

People love cyclic and regenerating universes — reincarnation, royal / superhero families of father to son, extreme quantum fluctuation initiating a new Big Bang, etc. — because they appeal to our sense of narrative. They also appeal to our intuition for causality seen in most phenomena  + 

MAYBE THE ONLY METHOD TO “UPGRADE” THE HUMAN CIVILIZATION

EDUCATION / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2019-07-20

Maybe the only method to “upgrade” the human civilization is to implement mandatory annual reasoning, understanding and culture tests… worldwide? Each year, your understanding of the standard physics model, basic math, logic, chemistry, biology, psychology and economics are tested. With terrible, terrible consequences if you  + 

WASTE CAPITAL, INSTEAD OF TIME

ECONOMICS / PRODUCTIVITY / ESSAYS / 2019-07-19

While money can buy you time, time is the opposite of capital. Capital is self-reproducing and durable. Time is self-annihilating and fleeting. Capital is limitless, although constrained. Time is limited to ≈80 years. Don’t waste your time. Waste capital instead.  + 

SOCIAL MEDIA VS YOU?

MARKETING / PSYCHOLOGY / SOCIAL MEDIA / ESSAYS / 2019-03-20

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are platforms run by multi-billion-dollar companies with near infinite resources, best research and development teams, top neuroscientists and unscrupulous user interface designers. Huge companies working to make your experience on social media as sticky and addictive as possible. To take over  + 

WE REPAIR THE UNIVERSE THAT CRUMBLES

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / PHYSICS / ESSAYS / 2019-03-10

Blessed are those whose purpose and enjoyment is to repair and restore, rebuild and recover, for everything in this Universe decays and crumbles.  + 

MONEY = ENERGY… FOLLOW THE MONEY TO GET TO THE ENERGY

ART THEORY / CINEMA / ECONOMICS / PHYSICS / ESSAYS / 2019-01-29

Energy is what constitutes and organizes matter (and antimatter ? ). Prana is an Earth-local, Vedic special interpretation of it. Money is an Earth-local, economic interpretation of it. Follow the money and you’ll follow the energy that constitutes and organizes matter. If you really want  + 

NO ONE WILL REMEMBER YOU BEING LATE

CINEMA / FINANCE / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / ESSAYS / 2018-12-05

Nobody will remember if your film / book / design was late and over-budget… But everyone will remember if it was bad. Finance for the long term. Yeah, despite the capitalist preference for the short-term quarterly reports. ? Harder? Sure. But worth it in the  + 

RED HAT SOLD TO IBM

COMPUTERS / ESSAYS / 2018-10-29

I remember when Red Hat was still a startup… and me installing our own custom Red Hat Linux 7 Servers in… uhmm… 2001. Now it’s a 34 billion USD purchase by IBM.  + 

WHY DO WE MOURN THE DEATH OF CELEBRITIES SO MUCH?

SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2018-09-08

People rely on celebrities for personality templates, which is why celebrity deaths hit them so hard.  + 

ATTRIBUTION REDUNDANCY

LINGUISTICS / ESSAYS / 2018-09-07

The redundancy required by human language-based communication is so inelegant and inefficient. Take attribution for example. The requirements to state “I think that” for each sentence that expresses the opinion of the orator… of course most of the statements are personal opinions, don’t you think?  + 

FILM MARKET IMBALANCE

CINEMA / ECONOMICS / ESSAYS / 2018-07-10

Speaking of film market imbalance… The 2018 Cannes film festival and market has seen 12 411 participants from 114 countries, of which: 980 — festival programmers 1 743 — buyers 3 858 — producers  + 

HAPPY PEOPLE TEND TO MARRY… NOT MARRIED PEOPLE ARE HAPPIER

PSYCHOLOGY / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2018-06-02

Remember the “married people are happier on average than singles” stat? Well, it could be that the direction of causation is actually reversed: happiness _causes_ marriage. Higher levels of serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin bring about and maintain a marriage. ;)  + 

MOST CINEMAS STRUGGLE TO MEET PROJECTION STANDARDS

CINEMA / ESSAYS / 2018-06-01

Projection quality in most cinemas today is, alas, quite bad. If you think seeing a movie on a “big screen” is “the best cinematic experience”… well, sorry to disappoint you. On average, what you see in theaters worldwide, including in supposedly top-notch multiplexes in world  + 

ALWAYS DOCUMENT YOUR OWN CODE

WEB DESIGN / ESSAYS / 2018-04-18

So… I’m debugging someone else’s JavaScript code… and remembered this quote from somewhere: “Document my code? Why do you think it’s called ‘code’?” Argh… I always document my own code. Cause, even several projects later, which can be as little as 1 month… I can’t  + 

US DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN BIOLOGICAL TERMS

BIOLOGY / POLITICS / RELIGION / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2018-04-10

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.” — the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms  + 

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