Author: knari

Book: Alex Krol “The Theory of Castes and Roles”

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Alex (Alexey) Krol describes himself as an “entrepreneur, author, lecturer, and film producer.” Judging by his LinkedIn profile, he has had an impressive career, managing multiple companies before stepping back to take on roles at lower levels. Along the way, he also worked in game development.

Recently, he has been focusing more on writing and designing concepts, particularly in the fields of gaming and NFT mechanics.

However, I only learned about his professional journey after reading his book The Theory of Castes and Roles, which is what I want to talk about here. The book has received quite high ratings across various popular bookstores and review platforms. Moreover, several of my acquaintances spoke about it with great enthusiasm. While I take online reviews with a grain of salt (even though I write them myself), recommendations from people I know usually carry more weight—though, of course, tastes may differ.

The book itself is quite short and presents a theory developed by Alex Krol himself. The core idea is simple: in this world, resources are limited, and not everyone will have enough. You are either in the role of a “slave” (at the lowest level) or you secure a place among the powerful elite, with all the accompanying benefits—high salaries, yachts, villas, and so on. But between these two extremes, there are many intermediate positions that largely determine who you are and what you are worth.

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Songs: Cheboza “Vasilki” & Eminem ft. Dido “Stan”

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In today’s edition of “good songs”—a personal anthem to me as the biggest musical slowpoke.

I’ve already written about how much I love the work of Vasya Oblomov, whom most people only know for a single song—”Edu v Magadan” (“I am travelling to Magadan”). But at the beginning of his career, he had a band called “Cheboza,” and together they recorded the song Vasilki (Cornflowers). It’s written as a fan letter to Dima Malikov, a Russian singer.

On New Year’s Eve in the 2004 show Negoluboy Ogonyok, Cheboza performed it together with Dima Malikov, where he sang “his own part.” And I loved this song like crazy. It has been playing on repeat in my playlist of favorite songs for years.

So why am I a slowpoke? Because only yesterday, thanks to my beloved wife and eldest daughter, I finally realized why the chorus “V chistom pole vasil’ki…” (In the open field, cornflowers…) always reminded me of some well-known song. I’m sure 99% of people would have immediately recognized what it sounds like. Forget “reminds”—it’s practically a slightly altered version of Eminem’s Stan, in which he used the chorus from a completely separate song by Dido. And Cheboza’s lyrics? They’re almost an adaptation of Stan rewritten for Russian realities.

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Book: Art Spiegelman “Maus”

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A comic book about the genocide of Jews? Sounds unusual, but why not? The important thing is to convey knowledge, and the method is secondary. Some people read books, some only watch movies, and some consume information exclusively through comics. And it’s long been foolish to think that comics are just for kids or the unintelligent. As the history of manga shows (see my review of Frederik L. Schodt’s “Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics”), sometimes comics can convey more knowledge than a specialized encyclopedia.

So the existence of such a comic didn’t surprise me at all. What did make me slightly wary, though, was the prestigious award it received. I have this odd quirk—I tend not to trust overly hyped or award-winning works. It seems to me that these awards often follow their own internal logic, which doesn’t always correlate with actual quality.

Maus by Art Spiegelman is “the only comic book to win a Pulitzer Prize,” as proudly stated on the cover. And it tells the story of a Polish Jew, Vladek Spiegelman, who struggled to survive after Nazi has occupied Poland but ultimately ended up in a concentration camp with his wife.

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Amazon: The Death of the MOBI Format?

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No matter how hard competitors try, Kindle e-readers remain among the most popular in the world. A major factor in this is their seamless integration with Amazon’s vast library of e-books, making it incredibly convenient for users to buy and read books directly from the platform.

However, there has always been one frustrating limitation—Kindle devices have traditionally supported a very restricted set of formats. If we exclude image files, Kindles could only handle TXT, Microsoft Word documents (DOC), and Amazon’s proprietary e-book format, commonly known as MOBI (with file extensions like .azw or .mobi, depending on the version). This is where competitors have tried to outdo Amazon by offering support for a wide variety of formats. But in reality, do we even need an excessive number of formats?

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Book: Konstantin Borisov “How a Good Developer Can Avoid Becoming a Bad Manager”

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One of the best books I read last year was a relatively short but incredibly useful guide by Konstantin Borisov on conducting interviews—“To Hire or Not to Hire? Or How to Interview a Developer.” I now recommend it to everyone, whether they are conducting interviews themselves or preparing to be interviewed. It gives you a much clearer understanding of what a potential employer is like and whether they are worth considering.

But Konstantin Borisov also wrote another book—“How a Good Developer Can Avoid Becoming a Bad Manager.” The topic may not seem obvious at first, but it’s actually incredibly relevant. In the IT industry, it’s well known that top specialists often get promoted simply because they excel at their tasks. One day, you’re a great developer, the next, you’re mentoring a couple of interns. Before you know it, you’re made a lead developer, then given a team to manage, and suddenly—you’re a manager.

I went through a similar path myself, though for a long time, I tried to balance both roles. I loved mentoring specialists and building teams, but at the same time, I still wanted to be a hands-on developer. Eventually, I realized that trying to do both was making me worse at each, and I finally made the decision to fully transition into management.

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Song: Beautiful Far Away… Far Away, But Not There

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Today, I learned something completely unexpected about a childhood song that everyone knows—”Prekrasnoye Dalyoko” (“Beautiful Far Away”). Yes, the one from the movie Guest from the Future. And the revelation shocked me so much that I decided to dig deeper, do a little investigation, and prove that we’ve all been deceived. Turns out, we have been—but not entirely. So, here’s what I found.

I don’t know about you, but as a kid, I absolutely loved Guest from the Future. And like most Soviet boys, I had a bit of a crush on Natasha Guseva, who played the main character, Alisa Selezneva. I also read Kir Bulychev’s novella One Hundred Years Ahead, which the movie was based on—but it was completely different. Not the point right now, though.

After the movie, the song that played at the very end of the last episode became a massive hit. “Prekrasnoye Dalyoko” exploded in popularity—it was performed by various state and school choirs, released on vinyl records with children’s songs, and practically overshadowed every other song on the charts at the time. Probably the only real competition came from “Krylatye Kacheli” (“Winged Swings”) from The Adventures of the Elektronic.

“But what’s the big deal?” you ask. And here’s where things get interesting—something often called the Mandela Effect. That is, when many people collectively remember something that never actually happened. With this song, everyone remembers and sings the lyrics as: “I hear a voice from the beautiful far away, it calls me to wondrous lands…” (This research is about the Russian lyrics, but I am providing them in a literal English translation.) Sometimes the lands are far away, sometimes beautiful, sometimes something else. But in every breakdown of this phenomenon, in every reference to the Mandela Effect, they say that these lyrics never existed. Because in the actual song, the words are: “It calls me not to paradise lands.”

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Song: Kalush Orchestra “Stefania”

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Somehow, almost immediately after our wedding, my wife and I started a tradition—watching Eurovision every year. I wouldn’t say we’re huge fans of European pop music, but every now and then, some genuinely interesting bands pop up, and some of them even end up in my playlist. More often than not, they’re not even the winners. And honestly, we’ve always enjoyed the voting part the most. For example, I’ve been convinced for a long time that all professional juries should be kicked out. From those selecting the songs for the contest to those sitting there with serious faces, pretending to judge them. Ever since they started showing the jury votes separately from the public vote, it became crystal clear how far removed these so-called professionals are from the actual audience.

This year, Ukraine was the clear favorite. Of course, most commentators were yelling that it was all because of the war, that nobody actually cared about the song, and that Ukraine was going to win purely for political reasons.

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Song: Nogu Svelo! “Generation Z”

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I wouldn’t call myself a die-hard fan of Nogu Svelo!, though I’ve known the band for many years, and quite a few of their songs have made it into my playlist. But Max Pokrovsky, the band’s frontman, really caught my attention when he joined the reality show “The Last Hero” and was one of the first to openly talk about how tough it actually was. (Well, there was also the ‘clown’ Nikita Dzhigurda, who bailed from the island in the first few days, ranting about how he had been deceived and that they really weren’t going to feed them—not just on camera but for real).

And now, during these wartime days, Max is one of the few who openly speaks his mind about what’s happening—including about Russians themselves. Opinions on his new song vary widely—some even call him a sellout imperialist, standing with one foot here and the other there. But the song is raw and honest, without embellishments. And for that alone, I’m grateful to Max.

Book: Ben Elton “Two Brothers”

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I haven’t written in my blog for a long time, but I’m returning with a book that has unexpectedly become highly symbolic of current events—when one country, under the pretext of “brotherly help,” wages war against another. And a third, also supposedly “brotherly,” sometimes helps the first, sometimes tries to stay on the sidelines. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Since childhood, I was taught that we must never allow the return of Nazism. I was psychologically crushed when, at around 12 years old, I saw the film “Triumph Over Violence“ (in Russian its title literally means ‘An Ordinary Fascism‘) on TV (I even felt physically sick from what I saw). For many years, I’ve continued reading and reflecting on how the dehumanization of entire nations and the transformation of people into monsters become possible. Documentaries, memoirs, and historical works are often far more terrifying than any fiction because with fiction, you can always think: “Well, this is just made up—things couldn’t have been that bad.” Even though you know they could. And they were. And now we see just how easy it is to “repeat it”—ironically, by those who, on a genetic level, should have carried an unshakable aversion to repeating it.

But sometimes, there are brilliant books on this very subject, and “Two Brothers” by Ben Elton is one of them. Perhaps because it is based on the real-life story of the author’s own family.

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Song: Irina Otieva “The Last Poem” — What You Haven’t Thought About

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Today, I want to talk about the song “The Last Poem”—a song many people know, but few truly understand its real meaning.

I’m sure many remember the Soviet film “Love and Lies” (a literal translation of its Russian title is “You Could Never Have Dreamed”)—a story about two teenagers in love, whose cruel parents prevent them from being together. As a child, I saw this film one way, but now, as a father of many children, I see it very differently. The girl convinces the boy not to pursue his education, claiming that learning is unnecessary—just drop everything, and we’ll simply live. It’s a compelling theme if you don’t dig too deep. And suddenly, the so-called antagonists don’t seem so bad anymore, while the supposed heroes reveal their own flaws and peculiarities.

But what I really want to focus on is the song—one that many know even better than the film itself. “The Last Poem” features the brilliant music of Alexei Rybnikov and was performed for the movie by Irina Otieva. However, in the USSR, it was also sung by other artists, including the band Yalla (whom I personally associate more with one song—“Uchkuduk, Three Wells”).

The song is deeply lyrical, and many perceive it as an anthem of youth and love. And that would be fine—if not for its origins. I had heard this story several times before, but for many, it’s a revelation (just as it was for me the first time).

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