I've seen a YouTube video. Its topic is now irrelevant. In that video, there was a clip of a woman saying something. She was from Ukraine and allegedly spoke Ukrainian, but the author wasn't sure. He asked the viewers who knew to comment and confirm.

The woman was clearly speaking Ukrainian indeed. I thought, "Well, there are probably not many people here who watch this English-speaking author and know Ukrainian. I may be of some help." I scrolled to the comment section. To my surprise, there was already an abundance of replies meant to "clarify" the matters. They said... she spoke russian.

It is hard for me to convey the stir of emotions I experienced rifling through those comments. Yet it may be even harder for you to rationalize it. "Some false information circulates the web. So what? It happens all the time!" It may seem trivial on the surface. I feel I should explain all the different ways in which this situation is fucked up.

1. There are different types of falsehood. "Mao Zedong was the smartest person on the planet" is a false statement. Or is it? What definition of smartness must we use? Can we know for sure what he was aiming for? Can we read his mind and see what mental calculations he was performing? Such a statement, while being obviously false, is impossible to prove or refute.

"The Earth is flat," "The Moon landing never happened," and "The communist famines were natural disasters" are also false statements. They are provably false. However, this kind of statements people usually firmly believe in. Moreover, you'd need a certain level of intelligence to evaluate them. And not everyone is able to perform the necessary research and analysis. The people who say these things aren't necessarily lying and don't necessarily have malicious intent. They believe what they say and are incapable of seeing the truth.

"I did not kill them" said by the murderer is another kind of falsehood. This is where things start to get ugly. It's not subjective, and it's not something you must research and analyze. It is a deliberate lie.

When someone hears a person speaking language A and tells you they spoke language B, it is a deliberate lie.

There are a lot of people (at least in the English-speaking world) who peddle nonsense such as, "Russian degenerates are innocent! They simply say what they were brainwashed to say! They are isolated from the world! They have no access to the truthful information!" ...Don't they have access to their own fucking memory of their own fucking language?? [1]

2. Lying about a murder is bad. But at least such a thing doesn't occur often. It's not a national concern.

The comments I saw, on the other hand, were not isolated cases. They were predominant. They had hundreds of likes. It was a collective effort.

There were, of course, some truthful comments. And there were some puzzled replies asking why would anyone lie about this thing. I assume those were left by Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Georgians, maybe a few Westerners — anyone who knew either Ukrainian or russian language but wasn't plagued by the russian brain-damaging culture. Unfortunately, these peoples are outnumbered by the degenerates in the real world, so their comments were sparse, had fewer likes, and were often met with dismissive responses. (Among which, "Haha keep coping! *laughing emoji*" and "You are a hypocrite! *clown emoji*" They are so fucking absurd their messages can be physically painful to read.)

I didn't see a single comment saying, "I am a russian (and not a degenerate), so I know pretty darn well she did not speak russian in that clip. What the heck are you on guys?"

So here is what we have: the degenerates in their majority chose to promote a deliberate lie collectively.

3. Lying about a murder is bad. But at least such a thing is easy to understand. The murderer simply tries to save his ass.

On the other hand, why on earth would anyone lie about a person speaking this or that language? It may not be immediately obvious, but I think it makes perfect sense. It aligns well with the twisted logic that the Kremlin tries to establish. It goes something like this: "That place has ethnic russians or russian speakers, which means it is our rightful area of influence, which means we can use our military force, especially to protect our oppressed people." A big portion of the announced pretext was shamelessly stolen, word for word, from Adolf Hitler's speeches where he explained why they must protect Germans in Poland. And aptly so: if that story worked for Germans with their rigorously controlled radios and newspapers, it would surely work for russians with their mildly censored internet.

Subconsciously, the degenerates understood what they must do to support their pretext internationally. They started to inflate the number of russian speakers in Ukraine. And, to counter that, Ukrainians tried to downplay their number. No one denied there were millions of them. But examples speak louder than figures and better influence public perception. Even one single instance of a person from Ukraine speaking russian signifies a little victory for the degenerates and their narrative.

As I thought about it more, I realized there might be another simple reason hidden in plain sight. It's possible that the degenerates were trolling. That is, they were trying to inflict emotional damage on those who knew the truth and cared about it. And I must humbly admit that they succeeded. I was agitated. Whenever I think I know the degenerates well, they negatively surprise me. They find unexpected ways to prove they are much worse than perceived. I am partly writing all of this because I was trolled so successfully. Writing helps me vent and process information. People have no bloody idea how often they mistake a regular russian degenerate, whose fervent wish to cause trouble emanates from within, for a money-paid "Kremlin troll." Or maybe they do understand but don't want to be seen as rude or "racist" or some other bullcrap.

Either way, their goal was to cause harm. This is another ugly dimension of this ugly incident. What do we have so far? The degenerates in their majority chose to promote a deliberate lie collectively in order to inflict damage on a group of people.

4. From centuries ago to the present day, Moscow has been practicing ethnic cleansing on its subjugated territories. Today, they burn Ukrainian books on the occupied Ukrainian land. In the Soviet era, they assassinated Ukrainian writers. I don't want to linger on this last point. I believe it is crystal clear that such a historical context makes the thing I witnessed even more disturbing.

I think that's enough explanations for now.

When you see messages like "Fascism is the best system" or "9/11 was an inside job" or "British Empire brought prosperity to India" or any other speculative unpopular message coming seemingly from a mental asylum escapee, you may feel uneasy or frustrated. Yet, as I hopefully clearly demonstrated, there can be messages orders of magnitude more malicious and hideous in their nature, even when appearing innocent.

I am greatly relieved at the recent news about the degenerates being cut off from YouTube. Public spaces are no place for the lying scum. [2] It won't fix all the problems, of course. But the platform will surely be a little bit more healthy.

It was not the initiative of the gutless and irresponsible YouTube management. The unsung hero is the management of so-called russia itself. Thank you, evil russian elites! (When will you assemble the degenerates for a bloody civil war already?)

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[1] Maybe some of them do experience trouble with language comprehension. About a decade ago, I spoke to a lot of random russians using their local social networks. I noticed how poorly most of them knew their own first language. It's not just that I made fewer mistakes despite never studying in a russian school. Many of them communicated in a way almost unintelligible, as if they were drunk typing. I kid you not. Not like "Gonna check tis a lil later," which is not even erroneous. More like "Going this to cheking a litel leiter." 

(All contrarians will call bullshit at this point. It's not something you see in English indeed. And whatabout all those photos where they read books in Moscow subway, unlike stoopid muricans who only eat burger?? Whatabout Tolstoevsky?? In reality, this disparity is easy to explain. Even the most delusional misinformed contrarian who thinks that the average russian speaker gets a better education than the average English speaker must know that English is a relatively simple language. In English, you either know a word, or you don't. That's not the case for russian.)

I also recall talking to a person and saying something like, "You need to differentiate this and that." He replied, "Differentiate? The fuck does that word mean?" That word was used many times in the recorded lectures which he praised and recommended to watch. He praised lectures the content of which he did not understand. But that was a praiseworthy response: to admit you don't know something. The majority of rustards would have pretended they understood what I said and provided some pseudointellectual passive-aggressive garbage in response. There is a widespread snobbery in their culture, but that is a whole separate topic.

In light of that, I assume there could have been some people whose messages had no malicious intent. Many russian words sound similar to those you can find in Ukrainian. Some person may have genuinely thought, "Okay, I didn't understand everything the woman said. And the parts I think I understood sounded a bit off. But that's natural! That's how I perceive words every day! I am 100% positive she spoke russian. Now let's dive deep into those comments and be helpful! And if anyone questions me, let's be aggressive, just like my dad taught me before he was neutralized!"

But you have to ask yourself, could a person of such intelligence really watch a video in a foreign language? The same applies to the foreigners who may have studied russian. Their number pales in comparison to that of the native speakers to begin with. Could it be that all those people imagined they heard a familiar word or two and rushed to provide a definite answer? There is a chance such non-malicious people appeared, but that chance is small.

[2] While the implemented approach is far from ideal, I do believe we must fight disinformation. This seemingly goes against libertarianism and its freedom of speech. It's a big topic, so I will address it very briefly. I still have libertarian views, but it does not mean I want to implement everything libertarianism describes everywhere in the world right about now. It will be a disaster if society acts irrationally, wages wars, or is in a state of some existential crisis, for example.

Early morning winter sun; I watch it.
Only one thing on my mind, only one thing on my lips:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
I am the way of the universe to love itself.

Steinway Tower looks like a product of an amateur CGI artist. It’s so out of place! I want to love it, like I love all skyscrapers, but I can’t. Maybe it would fit nicely somewhere in Hong Kong. But there, on the edge of Central Park, it irritates the eye.

Why do many chess players act like they are some sort of intellectual elite? You guys waste your time and energy learning a skill that is utterly useless anywhere in the world except for the game of chess. Someone so impractical and shortsighted should rather be concerned about having a mental disorder or brain damage. Maybe stop being so damn pretentious? (It must be clarified that I am exaggerating here for a comical effect. Not sure if that’s something a chess player can recognize.)

Why do we associate “losers” with someone who is playing video games and not someone who is playing chess? At least video games can teach you something useful. Most of them develop your spatial awareness. Shooters give you some rudimentary understanding of real-life warfare. Cooperative games teach you to understand and prioritize your team’s needs. And so on.

When it comes to board games specifically, there are so many better alternatives. For example, Texas hold ’em. It is an objectively amazing game. It requires two whole domains of applicable skills.

The first domain is social. You must be able to read people and influence them. To play well, you will have to answer questions such as: Is she a careful player or is she acting? Is that a suppressed joy on his face? How long should I wait, what body language should I use, and what bid should I place so that they all think I am bluffing?

The second domain is mathematical. You must be able to quickly estimate your chance of getting this or that combination, your opponents’ chances, the amount of money worth the risk, etc. You may call it the “intuition for numbers” which, I’d argue, is important for anyone who is interested in anything beyond the mundane “What should I watch on Netflix next?”

Another great praiseworthy board game is Scrabble. It improves your literacy. If Scrabble were as popular as chess, the world would be a better place.

It annoys me that chess is so popular. Because of this, when I watch any video about any unrelated board game, YouTube starts to push on me all these chess recommendation videos with cringe thumbnails.

This was my dream on the morning of December 3, 2024.

In my dream, I was exterminating livestock together with some other woman. Presumably, we used our bare hands for the job. It was now the turn of a big pig. But I couldn’t force myself to hurt the animal. I pulled a gun for the job.

With my right hand, I tried to aim the gun carefully behind the pig’s head. With my left hand, I rubbed its belly, calming it down and cheering it up. The woman was seemingly more experienced. She showed me how to hold the gun, how to hold the head of the animal, and where to shoot for the best result.

The pig turned into a little girl of three or four years old. In my dream, this was nothing worthy of a surprise or even a notice.

As I was curling the girl’s head closer to her body, as instructed, she had a glimpse of understanding of what was happening. She became visually anxious and started to call to her friend. It was not a scream for help though. She eagerly wanted to see them soon but displayed no resistance. It was as if she wanted to tell them something important. Her last words.

What could she possibly have important to say? Whatever she may have felt was important would have been in reality insignificant. It was best to end her mental suffering immediately. It took me only a second to recognize true intentions, weigh the options, and even linger from the lack of determination. But it was a very long and painful second. I finally pulled the trigger.

Her blood started to seep through her neck. I didn’t want her blood to get unclean from the contact with the surface where she was lying. I took her gently into my arms and moved her elsewhere.

I then recalled the reasoning behind today’s actions. I had seen it. It was crystal clear. With this certainty, a farmer harvests his crops. He does not stop to ponder, “Must I not harvest? Does the wheat or the carrots or the cotton plants want to live and enjoy the sunshine?” My cold calculating mind saw everywhere and considered everything and left no room for the slightest hesitation. And yet, and yet…

It felt so bad. I wondered what I could do to best commemorate the girl, to express warmth, tenderness, and most earnest appreciation for the years she lived. The only right answer came naturally: I am obliged to cook her well and consume her fully.

I loathed the human world! The world where you were compelled — even by law! — to suppress your feelings for the deceased loved ones and surrender their bodies to the cold and filthy ground drenched with the stink of the detestable rotting strangers cramped there all around. Where the rains will flood their final resting chambers, where the worms will gnaw their molding faces.

My eyes were filled with tears. I went outside. In the clear winter sky, I was greeted by the awe-inducing Sun. It was pure white, with a flaming red outline. It shone so bright that the horizon in proximity appeared pitch-black. But there was more. It was accompanied by the smaller suns — a phenomenon people call “sun dogs.” And there was more: those suns had their own sun-companions. There were around nine shining orbs in the sky. It felt so unreal yet not entirely impossible, like a double or triple rainbow. This breathtaking sight made me very excited. I called to my mother to come and witness the miracle. Though very soon I started to realize that the smaller suns were in reality nothing more than the light from the street lamps in the distance.

I declare poetic fortnight #2. The rules remain the same: I must produce a piece of rhyming poetry, however bad, every day. I want to improve my English proficiency, and I believe this can help (immensely). I will try not to put too much effort into it.

…

November 14 – November 23

1. Chronic Illness

The chronic illness will progress, unless you want to stress
How faithful are your mind and soul to our Church. We bless
Against the snap of darkness all whose loyalty will fall
Not short. It’s nothing you may call a grave or noble toll.

2. His Wayward Mind

His wayward mind fell into shock at such an evil thought:
To murder infant regal twins and tie them in a knot.

3. Mushroom Stew

My mother drifts among the stars; and I am drifting too!
Her ass is dead. And I have just got high on mushroom stew.

4. Emperor of Sol

His throne — Olympus Mons of Mars,
His judgment reigns above us all,
His gaze transfixes distant stars,
Almighty Emperor of Sol.

5. Their Industrial Landscape

His metal hands, her plastic face.
These two adorn what humans would escape.
The stormy skies, the barren place.
They cherish their industrial landscape.

6. Sentient Eyes

I dreamt of squares, and circles too;
They march’d and whirl’d and grew in size.
It was a nightmare then, I knew,
When they revealed their sentient eyes.

7. While I Sleep

You’re such a weirdo, such a creep!
Are you a pervert in disguise?
Would you then care to fertilize
My woman’s body while I sleep?

8. Your Crops Have Died

Your crops have died, and flowers withered.
Your orchards bore no fruit this fall.
You lost your sight. Your wife delivered
A stillborn baby in a caul.

9. Forlorn

Forlorn, ostensibly, was she
Whom ocean that primordial begot;
And then, abandoned, left her be,
Alone, unaided, and forgot.

10. In defiance

In defiance of the warnings of the elders I will spit
In that mystic pitch-black endless eerie-howling gaping pit.

…

Okay, I failed. I lost the determination to compose even the tiniest two-liners. Well, if I hadn’t been willing to share failures, I’d have been even less motivated. It wasn’t pointless nonetheless.