Just Me

"SOON AFTER THE RUSSIAN INVASION of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, residents of the city of Kyiv knew they were in a fight for survival. Over the border with Belarus a colossal massing of Russian troops, armor, and matériel had been building for months. Then, at the outset of the invasion, Russian forces readied for a major push on what was still, at this stage, their primary goal: capture Ukraine’s capital and overthrow its government.

The centerpiece of this concentration of force was a column of trucks, tanks, and heavy artillery some forty kilometers long—a ground offensive on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II. It began moving toward the city. On paper the Ukrainians were hopelessly outmatched. Kyiv seemed to be days, maybe hours, from falling.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, a unit of about thirty Ukrainian soldiers wearing night vision goggles rode quad bikes through the forests around the capital that evening. They dismounted near the column’s head and launched jerry-rigged drones equipped with small explosives. These took out a handful of lead vehicles. Those disabled vehicles then clogged up the central road. Surrounding fields were muddy and impassable. The column, facing freezing weather and faltering supply lines, ground to a halt. Then the same small unit of drone operators managed to blow up a critical supply base using the same tactics, depriving the Russian army of fuel and food.

From here the Battle of Kyiv turned. The greatest buildup of conventional military muscle in a generation was humbled, sent back to Belarus in embarrassing disarray. This semi-improvised Ukrainian militia was called Aerorozvidka. A ragtag volunteer band of drone hobbyists, software engineers, management consultants, and soldiers, they were amateurs, designing, building, and modifying their own drones in real time, much like a start-up. A lot of their equipment was crowdsourced and crowdfunded." ©️

Having "S" in the country name proves to be unsafe since the beginning of this week, either the country president faces impeachment or get dethroned by the rebels.

P.S: Me being superstitious.

Tinchlik bo'laversin

"Apple’s iPhone processors are fabricated exclusively in Taiwan. Today, no company besides TSMC has the skill or the production capacity to build the chips Apple needs. So the text etched onto the back of each iPhone —“Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China”—is highly misleading. The iPhone’s most irreplaceable components are indeed designed in California and assembled in China. But they can only be made in Taiwan." (c)

If there's anyone voting here today, for the Earth's sake, choose wisely on behalf of us!

I can't get it out of my head. The British man literally said Chewsday when he was talking to his British fellow right next to me and switched back to my type of "normal" English. And that Chewsday has still been reverberating in my ears 😂

The Design Bureau spent weeks preparing for Khrushchev’s visit, holding a dress rehearsal the day before to ensure that everything went according to plan. On May 4, 1962, Khrushchev arrived. To welcome the Soviet leader, Sarant dressed in a dark suit matching the color of his bushy eyebrows and
carefully trimmed mustache. Barr stood nervously to Sarant’s
side, wiry glasses perched on his balding head. With Sarant in the
lead, the two former spies showed Khrushchev the accomplishments of Soviet microelectronics. Khrushchev tested a tiny radio that fit in his ear and toyed with a simple computer that could print out his name. Semiconductor devices would soon be used in spacecraft, industry, government, aircraft—even “for the creation of a nuclear missile shield,” Sarant confidently told
Khrushchev. Then he and Barr led Khrushchev to an easel with
pictures of a futuristic city devoted exclusively to producing semiconductor devices, with a vast fifty-two-story skyscraper at its center.

Khrushchev was enamored of grand projects, especially those that he could claim credit for, so he enthusiastically endorsed the idea of building a Soviet city for semiconductors. He embraced
Barr and Sarant in a bear hug, promising his full support. Several months later, the Soviet government approved plans to build a semiconductor city in the outskirts of Moscow. “Microelectronics is a mechanical brain,” Khrushchev explained to his fellow Soviet
leaders. “It is our future.”

These paragraphs are creating a mental picture of the Central Asian presidents visiting some openings in some towns or cities. Weeks of preparation and rehearsals to make things seem perfect when in fact they are not. At a government level, even these small tactics have been inherited from the USSR and still persist, unfortunately.

I'll soon start heading straight to the Work&Life balance section in the book store.

Do you know any hack to make at least 28 hrs a day ?

On the positive note, I'm so grateful for everything.

I got to visit last day, almost last session of a VR exhibition.

The guy started narrating his reflections on his perspective of the world from his sensory experiences as a blind person. I couldn’t hear the audio well so I asked the assistant at the exhibition to fix the issue. He helped me out. I started getting some instructions and followed them. Since I missed the beginning, it was late into the middle that I started to get into the right mood and mode. I felt closeness between narrator and me. The way he saw beauty in often-taken-for-granted things like Feeling The Wind or Raining weather was a breath of fresh air into my hustling and bustling life. Right after that, I watched -22,7 C and the scene where the subject (me) zooms out out of Earth and sees the kaleidoscope of colors in the Universe drove me nuts. The direct contrast I was exposed to between the blind and sighted person’s colorless and colorful realities were insanely beautiful. Probably the life continues to be hustling but at least I got that a nice reflective pause from the Notes on Blindess imprinted on my memory.

Put simply, he (John Hull) saw the world with his ears. As soon as I came back, I read about his daughter’s interview with the Guardian. I wanted to fix the emotions and descriptions of The Moment after the exhibition but I couldn’t. A few hours passed so most of my memory muscles did their gymnastics and probably reconstructed the pathways and I’m not getting the signals that I need to describe what I visualized to convey. Read the Guardian and watch the video on Youtube (preferably with VR headset), I’ll attach links to both of them.

The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/27/i-was-proud-to-be-the-bridge-between-my-fathers-blind-and-sighted-lives

Youtube: https://youtu.be/tb5DwAZIQZw?feature=shared

"Death is often a good career move for an author."

Quote from a book that is totally unrelated to the topic. But what a great way to encapsulate the whole point in a few words with a little bit of humour in it. I wish I could be dense, precise, and fun in my formulations, too. Room for improvement detected

A little girl named Mary goes to the beach with her mother and brother. They drive there in a red car. At the beach they swim, eat some ice cream, play in the sand, and have sandwiches for lunch.

Now the questions:

1. What color was the car?
2. Did they have fish and chips for lunch?
3. Did they listen to music in the car?
4. Did they drink lemonade with lunch?

All right, how’d you do? Let’s compare your answers to those of a bunch of British schoolchildren, aged five to nine, who were given this quiz by academic researchers. Nearly all the children got the first two questions right (“red” and “no”). But the children did much worse with questions 3 and 4. Why? Those questions were unanswerable—there simply wasn’t enough information given in the story. And yet a whopping 76 percent of the children answered these questions either yes or no.

Kids who try to bluff their way through a simple quiz like this are right on track for careers in business and politics, where almost no one ever admits to not knowing anything. It has long been said that the three hardest words to say in the English language are I love you. We heartily disagree! For most people, it is much harder to say I don’t know. That’s a shame, for until you can admit what you don’t yet know, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to.

We are prisoners of the present, in perpetual transition from an inaccessible past to an unknowable future.

I envy politicians so much so that i lose sleep over it sometimes. Cuz they are fucking good at BSing.

Air is free. But the words stringed together by politicians and their speechwriters are CHEAPER than the air.

They try to sound inspirational and talk (in one breath) for 8:39 mins straight without giving anything other than bullshit

Some quotes:

1. "A politician is an acrobat. He keeps his balance by saying the opposite of what he does." — Maurice Barres

2. "I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians." — Charles de Gaulle

3. "In politics, sincerity is everything. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." — Groucho Marx

P.S: thoughts after watching a video

Chat with a friend abroad. Some of my insights from the trip as well.

Friend:
How is Kyrgyzstan?

I was there after Uzbekistan this year

Alisher:
That was amazing experience. Lots of Soviet vibes around. But the nature is😱😍🔥🥰

Where you been while in Kyrgyzstan?

Friend:
Almost all over. Bishkek, Song Kul, Osh, Pamir highway, Karakol, north shore of Issyk Kul and around, Sussamyr valley etc.

Alisher:
At first some ppl scammed us promising to give us a ride to the destination and leaving half way and charging for it.

Friend:
I kind of had a similar experience to be honest. I didn't like Kyrgyz people as much for this reason and honestly I was spoiled by Uzbek hospitality.

Friend:
Anyway nothing and no one can beat Uzbek hospitality

Alisher:
It's nice to hear good things about our people

Friend:
I mean I guess that's one of the major reasons that will keep me coming back

P.S: I felt really good to hear about unbeatable Uzbek hospitality and nice people. So I shared it.

I'm done with the hitchhiking. Actually, I already was like a couple days ago. But now I'm headed to another place. Hope to share the snippets of my experiences and the nuggets of wisdom I got from it.

Quick summary.

My personal interpretation of hitchhiking: it's a broke student type trip that the rich can't afford. Every day, I wrote reflections whenever I made time. They are rough drafts. So I'll organize them and pack into the posts. This is why i love blogging. I engrave my moments in the digital space for life. We stayed at the mosque for a night in Karakol. We almost fell off the edge of the mountains several times. We averaged 18-19 kms of walking daily. We had to and in fact, did persuade people to give us free lifts. We learned about the culture even though it seems like we are already very similar. There are plenty of nuances.

There are too many to write but little time. So will catch up soon, hopefully.