About a year ago, I asked on my Facebook about a song that had a big influence during childhood or adolescence. The question wasn’t about what you were listening to, but what became your anthem or influenced you in some way.
For example, I was a fan of “Laskoviy May,” and I had all their albums on cassette (my wife still loves to remind me of this fact). But after them, I switched to the band “Kino,” and it was their song that helped me in life for a long time, specifically the words “You must be strong,” etc.
But today, I started thinking about something else. We live, we grow, and we listen to different music for different reasons. Sometimes we just like the melody, sometimes the lyrics. Even now, in most songs, I perceive the voice and lyrics more as another instrument in the song. For me, the melody is more important than the words.
However, there are still songs where it’s the lyrics that truly stand out. My example is Pink’s song “Dear Mr. President.”
And even more rarely, the lyrics not only stand out on their own but also deeply resonate with your mood and sense of self during a particular life period. Recently, for me, this song unexpectedly became Pavel Volya’s “Mama, We Are All Getting Older.” Before this song, I didn’t even know Volya wrote and performed music.
Here’s the song on YouTube, though this is a slower version performed with “Gorod 312,” while I prefer the more energetic solo version. But the music video was only made for the joint version:
It so happened that I had never watched Roberto Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful. I had heard of it, vaguely knew the plot, but had never seen it.
I decided to correct this, as I’ve never avoided the topic of Jews and Nazism — I’ve watched all the significant films and read many books on the subject.
But the film turned out to be different from what I expected. The first half is a sort of prelude, with nothing about Nazis. It’s about the main character — what he’s like in life. Both the character and Benigni’s acting style (he plays the lead role) were a bit irritating, but I managed to endure it, waiting for other developments.
However, as soon as the film started addressing the story of Jews and the concentration camp, I couldn’t take it anymore. Knowing how Jews were really treated and what happened in the camps, this buffoonery irritated me too much. It seemed to me that this couldn’t have happened in reality. In my opinion, it felt more like an insult to what actually happened.
Maybe I’m wrong, but at some point, I realized that I didn’t want to and couldn’t continue watching. I simply turned off the film, though I understand that many people love it (8.6 out of 10 on IMDB).
I’d like to talk about award ceremonies in Cyprus. Perhaps this isn’t exclusive to Cyprus, but in Belarus, for example, there was much less of it.
It seems that, in general, people in Cyprus really love different award ceremonies. It’s always a very important event, and everyone is invited well in advance. A whole occasion, so to speak.
But it all starts with the arrival time. If, for example, the ceremony is scheduled for 6 PM, that means that at 6, only a few idiots like yourself will be there. The majority (sometimes including the organizers) will start showing up over the next half hour.
Then come the obligatory opening speeches from 3 to 5 organizers. Roughly half an hour, just to keep it brief. In the best case, it’s in English or both languages. In the worst case for non-locals — only in Greek.
And only after that do the actual awards begin. There can be up to 300 awardees (as in the Kangourou competition). If the organizers are “weak,” they call up 4-5 people at a time. If they are strong in spirit, they call them one by one, along with speeches about why each person is being recognized.
So the whole procedure lasts several hours, during which you’ll see your child on stage for maybe a minute. The rest of the time, you’re just sitting and waiting.
Personally, after the second time, I swore off going to such ceremonies. My daughters also ask for permission to skip them. And I understand them.
I always thought that the midlife crisis was something out of the realm of psychological fiction, until this “fiction” overwhelmed me personally. And then I began to think about a lot of things and to reconsider much.
That’s when I came across the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. No, it’s not about middle age or even about its crisis. It’s more about the values we set for ourselves and how we do so. What we pay attention to, and what we SHOULD be paying attention to.
Some points are debatable, but overall, the author explains in a rather laid-back manner that many of the goals we set for ourselves, the things we strive for, are not actually what we truly need. Society imposes its values on us, preventing us from living happily and growing personally.
On the one hand, the author shows that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for who we haven’t become or never will be. He demonstrates that it’s often necessary to accept ourselves as we are and not stress over failures. And here lies the second important thing — mistakes and failures allow us to move forward. Self-doubt is a crucial part of our personal growth. In other words, we should doubt ourselves, but we shouldn’t worry about it.
Just the other day, my daughter asked me which achievements of humanity I consider the most important and significant. I thought about it, and then I said the Internet. It has truly transformed our lives.
The book The End of Absence piqued my interest primarily because of its subtitle: “Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection.” And indeed, our children don’t understand how we lived without all of this.
However, the book turned out to be quite strange. At first, it draws you in when the author starts talking about how things used to be one way, but now they are another. I’m exaggerating, but that’s the essence: the author shows how the Internet and related services have changed our habits, our pace of life, and so on.
I don’t even remember why I decided to watch Thank You for Smoking, starring Aaron Eckhart. But the film absolutely blew me away: the main character is a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. Everyone hates him and sees him as another Goebbels, yet he participates in all the talk shows with a charming smile and almost always manages to sway the audience’s opinion.
I’ve watched this film about five or six times, and I recommend it to friends. For a long time, I wanted to read the novel on which the film is based. I even started reading the Russian translation, but I dropped it after about ten pages because it was so poorly translated. So, in the end, I read the book in its original language.
Of course, when you’ve watched a movie so many times and love it, you can’t help but compare the book to the adaptation. In the case of Thank You for Smoking, the differences are quite significant.
I just started Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy by Telltale. I can’t say much about the story yet since I’ve only played for about 15 minutes, but the character designs… I’ve never seen the original comics and only know the characters from the two movies. So, naturally, I’m comparing the game to those movie versions. I don’t know why they chose not to replicate the cinematic appearances, but visually, almost all of them fall VERY short compared to the beloved movie versions. Maybe except for Groot and Rocket, who don’t look that different—it would be hard to mess them up. What bothers me the most is Drax—he’s so “flat” and unmemorable. It’s unclear why they didn’t just go with the movie designs. I assume it was too expensive (though in Game of Thrones, they managed to closely mirror the TV actors). I’ll probably keep playing the game, but there’s definitely some disappointment from unmet expectations.
The book Shut Your Monkey by Danny Gregory caught my attention with its description. We all have doubts, and that inner voice often tells us unpleasant things that can sometimes make us give up. Danny Gregory suggests visualizing this panicky voice as a monkey that lives inside us and holds us back from growing and achieving success.
The author worked in creative fields for many years, and this is evident in the book’s design: it’s full of sketches and illustrations, with white pages alternating with black ones. It’s clear that he was aiming to create not just a book but a creative piece of art.
While there are some interesting ideas, the book as a whole didn’t captivate me because it lacks a clear, cohesive approach.
It feels more like a notebook where the author jotted down his thoughts and artistic sketches “on the subject” and then decided to publish the whole notebook as a book. Perhaps because of this, it reads quickly and easily—there are no long chapters, just short paragraphs on one thought before moving on to the next.
Unfortunately, that’s where the positives end. At some point, I even found myself thinking that the book felt like the speech of an American preacher: short, concise, emotional, but with an obvious underlying agenda—selling a form of religious fanaticism.
You can read it to reflect on how you deal with your own inner panic monkey, but don’t expect much more from the book.
Amazon, with its Kindle platform, has done a tremendous job in promoting eBooks. Unlike physical books, the production cost of an eBook can essentially be considered zero. Why? Because it’s created once and then requires no additional resources (while each copy of a physical book uses paper and ink at the very least). After that, you can sell 10 copies or a million without incurring any further direct costs.
That’s why I’ve always said that selling eBooks is, in many ways, selling air. And it’s for this reason that the pricing model for them is so intriguing. Typically, the price is comparable to that of the equivalent paperback book. After that, various local factors come into play: who the publisher is, how well-known the author is, which country the book is being sold in, and so on.
The approach to selling eBooks also differs from country to country. Just recently, writer Alexey Pehov mentioned that in Germany, eBooks might be released before the printed version, with similar pricing, and publishers there don’t believe it impacts print sales. In Russia, however, it’s the opposite: there’s always talk that releasing an eBook “kills” print sales (although I’ve never seen direct proof of this). As a result, sometimes you have to wait several weeks, or even months, for the eBook version to come out after the print release.
But yesterday, I discovered that even within the same book, prices can vary. This came as a surprise to me, and I found out quite unexpectedly.
I decided to buy the Kindle version of a book on Amazon. I found it, saw the price—$6.13. I noticed I was browsing anonymously, so I logged into my account. And then, surprise! The price for the same book was now $6.30. Let me emphasize—it was the exact same eBook!
The difference wasn’t huge, but it piqued my interest. So, I tried searching for the same book anonymously, accessing the site via a VPN from different regions. From Russia, the price was also $6.30, but when I accessed the store as if from Chicago, USA, the price nearly doubled to around $12.
I did some research online and found that I’m not the only one who has noticed this discrepancy. However, Amazon doesn’t comment on the situation. Judging by posts, sometimes their support team even shuts down such inquiries with a note saying, “case closed” (which I find odd, as my experience with Amazon’s customer service has always been great—they’re usually very customer-oriented).
Some speculate that this might be related to local taxes or other factors (similar to how Steam now includes VAT for purchases from Russia). But this explanation seems unclear, especially given my own experience: I checked the book price from Cyprus while browsing anonymously, then logged into my account again from Cyprus—and the price changed. Yet, there’s no clear link between an Amazon account and a specific country (there’s a billing address, and I have several cards linked, so it’s unclear how they choose). And in Russia, where VAT is now applied, the price was the same.
So, this is just another example of a strange and still unclear approach to pricing for a digital product.
The book Product Management with Scrum by Roman Pichler was recommended to me by some great colleagues with the comment, “it’s clear and to the point.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment, but my expectations, based on such a recommendation, didn’t quite match the book’s content.
No, it’s not that the ideas or methods described in the book are wrong—everything is fine in that regard. However, I’m left wondering who the target audience is. Who exactly is this book for?
The book’s main goal is to explain Scrum from the perspective of the role of the Product Owner. It begins by describing who the Product Owner is, then goes on to detail what is expected from them at different stages of working on a product using the Scrum methodology.
