Month: September 2025

Songs: Tsoi Lives — AI, and AiRushV Will Confirm

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Disclaimer: this post is mainly for those familiar with the work of legendary Soviet rock musicians. But even without understanding the words, you can still see here how songs are already being created with the help of neural networks. Of course, without the ability to compare with the original works, the perception of these songs will be quite different.

After Ozzy’s death, a wonderful picture like one above began circulating on the internet. I think if Ozzy had known who Tsoi was, he would have appreciated such a posthumous joke about himself. The text over it is says:

— And where is Tsoi?
— But Tsoi lives!

Because for my generation, the phrase “Tsoi Lives” was never a meme. Viktor Tsoi is a legend — ours, our own.

And in memory of Viktor, new works keep coming out. His already famous song “Peremen!” became one of the anthems of the 2020 protests in Belarus. Viktor’s son brought together former band members and created a remarkable project with modern arrangements of the songs, over which his father’s cleaned-up voice was laid.

And with the development of artificial intelligence, people have gone even further. I once stumbled across one such song, listened to it, and forgot about it. But the other day I was shown another one — and suddenly the puzzle came together.

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Asya Kazantseva “Where Do Children Come From?”

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Asya Kazantseva is one of the most well-known popularizers of science. Her first published book Who Would Have Thought! literally blew up the market — it was so unconventional, since Asya spoke about complicated things in fairly simple language, with plenty of good humor. I myself was wildly enthusiastic, and so I gladly went on to read her next two books. After that, Asya disappeared from the public sphere as a writer for a while, though she continued to give many live lectures. And in 2023 her fourth book was released, titled Where Do Children Come From?

Here Asya stepped away from her favorite topics, deciding to talk about the myths and realities of pregnancy and childbirth. All the more so since she had tested it not only in theory but also in practice, having given birth to a daughter. She approached the topic as thoroughly as always, having studied a large amount of material long before her pregnancy.

And although, as usual, I made many notes while reading, for a very long time I couldn’t bring myself to start writing a review of this book. Because Asya’s second and third books were already somewhat weaker than the first, but this fourth one seemed to me the dullest. And the first one that I have absolutely no desire to recommend.

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Book: Lyudmila Zotova “How to Raise a Bilingual Child and Stay Sane”

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In 2014 the topic of bilingualism suddenly became relevant for me. That was the year my family moved to another country, and the children suddenly had to immerse themselves in a school environment not only with a completely different language but also with a different culture. And while one can still argue about the bilingualism of the children who moved with us (although for all of them English has already become more widely used than their original native Russian), with the younger ones, born in Cyprus, there is no question at all.

That is why, observing the development of all the children, I increasingly asked myself how we could help them in mastering several languages, what peculiarities there are, and whether we as parents are doing everything right. And then, at Sandermoen Publishing, a book by Lyudmila Zotova was released under the title How to Raise a Bilingual Child and Stay Sane. I was curious to look at another person’s experience and opinion and perhaps find answers to the questions that troubled me.

Lyudmila’s case is considerably more complicated than mine. She is married to an Italian, lives in France, but in a region near the German border, where the population also speaks German. In relation to her daughter one can already speak not of bilingualism but of tri- or even tetralingualism. However, while her daughter will easily learn the surrounding languages simply through immersion, with the mother’s native language there were peculiarities. And Lyudmila asked herself how to ensure that her daughter would know Russian.

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