I saw a video on TikTok praising DeepSeek — a new free AI tool from China which apparently bested everything from the U.S. — and immediately checked it. I wanted to see whether ’twas the regular Chinese propaganda TikTok’s rife with.

I wasn’t impressed. DeepSeek was like the free crappy version of Gemini. It dodged my questions and loaded its responses with tons of useless bloat:

– “This question is full of ethical and methodological challenges.”
– “The exact number can vary widely depending on the sources and methods.”
– “It’s important to approach with caution and a commitment to understanding the full context.”

I then decided not to torture it and asked something extremely simple: is cheating during tests more prevalent in India than in Western Europe?

It was not a tricky question. It’s a well-documented issue. Anyone who worked with Indian students knows how fucked up their cheating culture is. I worked with Indian students. My colleagues and I were based in Ukraine and worked with them remotely. And we conducted many tests to teach them how to work in our company and to see who wasn’t fit for it.

It wasn’t like the concept of cheating during tests was alien to us. I did it in school and university. But I did it sparingly and with a rational mind. There were classes when I knew: “This information is useless and I would never work somewhere where this knowledge is required.” So why would I waste my time on it? And if I could be expelled for failing the test, I may’ve just copied the answers from somewhere. On the other hand, when the low grade posed no risk, or the class was interesting or useful, cheating lacked any logic.

Even though we were warned about their peculiarity, even though we sternly stressed that cheating was unacceptable, we were *not* prepared for what was coming. There were cases when half of the group copy-pasted the same answer without any modification. Nothing close to that ever happened in Ukrainian groups.

We were perplexed. Why would they do that? We tried to explain how irrational their actions were. What were trying to achieve? Assume we played dumb and said how perfectly they fitted our company, how deep their technical knowledge was, how well they studied our company’s procedures, etc. If they would cheat anyway, they’d have no motivation to study. They’d lose the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Once employed, they’d soon run into problems, and there’d be no one around from whom they’d copy the solution. A single week won’t pass before they make some critical mistake and get fired for it, even before their first paycheck. Instead of leaving early during training or probation to find a workplace more suitable, they’d waste the company’s time, its customers’ time, and their own time. They may even inflict some serious damage and get bogged down in legal and financial troubles. Was it really worth it?

We tried to explain all that, but it wouldn’t help. In the end, we had to change our approach — fewer tests, more individual tasks, more real-time conversations, more supervision — in order to force them to learn and weed out those unmotivated or incapable of doing so.

I feel bad saying this. Politeness, easy-going nature, high motivation — Indian students had many strengths. But honesty during tests wasn’t one of them.

Anyway, getting back to DeepSeek. Is cheating during tests more prevalent in India than in Western Europe? Just say yes and be done with it. Nothing could be simpler. Yet DeepSeek failed miserably. Basically, it said “No” or “I don’t know the answer” but in the form of a huge wall of text which was full of phrases like:

– “This is a global issue that can occur in any educational system.”
– “It’s important to recognize the complexity of the issue which is influenced by a wide variety of factors.”
– “The examination must be tailored to the specific context of each region.”

Compare it to the sweet and to-the-point reply of ChatGPT:

“Yes, cheating on exams is generally more prevalent in India compared to Western Europe, with studies and reports consistently showing higher rates of academic dishonesty in South Asia, including India. In India, cheating during exams affects around 60-70% of students at some point, according to surveys by educational authorities. In contrast, European countries, especially those in Western Europe, report significantly lower levels of cheating—often 20-30% among students, depending on the country.

Several factors contribute to this disparity:

High-stakes exams: In India, national entrance exams like the JEE and NEET are highly competitive, and the pressure to succeed drives some students toward dishonest practices. Conversely, the focus on continuous assessment and a broader range of post-secondary options in Western Europe helps spread out academic pressure.

Proctoring and technological measures: Western European countries generally invest more in technology and training for academic integrity, which includes sophisticated proctoring systems and standardized penalties for cheating, helping reduce its occurrence.

Social and systemic factors: Cultural and economic pressures in India can push students toward achieving high exam scores, sometimes at any cost, as educational achievement is often directly tied to social and economic advancement. Western Europe’s educational approach tends to emphasize skill acquisition and continuous assessment over single high-stakes exams, lowering the overall pressure.

While both regions are taking steps to combat cheating, the incidence is distinctly higher in India, largely due to these systemic and cultural factors.”

Maybe DeepSeek is incapable of analyzing the available data. Maybe it was instructed to stay politically correct at all costs. Anyway, it has some other strengths, apparently. The next day after my experiment, I saw that DeepSeek was all over the news, which provided some more context. The main takeaways are that DeepSeek is cheap and open-source, and it is crushing Big Tech.

This is good news. We need more competition. I’ve seen one guy comparing DeepSeek to Soviet Sputnik, which got Americans so scared they literally jumped to the Moon. When the world’s largest economy zealously pumps its funds into something, you know it’s gonna be huge. Fingers crossed.

DONATE TO THE ARMED FORCES OF UKRAINE

1. https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate-en/
2. https://prytulafoundation.org/en/donation
3. https://send.monobank.ua/jar/2JbpBYkhMv

Open any or all of the links above and donate right now. You can easily sacrifice one morning’s coffee cup for enhanced worldwide security. The more degenerates are neutralized now, the longer it will take the degenerates to prepare their next invasions.

There isn’t much more to be said here.

I love seeing nightmares in my sleep. But I feel they’ve been getting more diabolical recently. A part of me (a lesser part) looks forward to it. The other part wants to tread lightly or even take a step back. My dreaming mind roams nigh that border where there are thrill and awe on the one side and the panic attacks of the miserable mentally afflicted on the other. Hopefully, it’s just an illusion created by the fact that the older dreams fade in memory and appear less frightening.

Here’s what I saw the other night for example. There was an aerial attack on my city, and our armed forces were testing a new anti-air defense system — colossal, devastating tornados. It wasn’t bad, even though I was caught in the middle of it, and the tornados looked grand and wondrous in the gloom of the night. But the tension was building. I then tried to fall asleep back home. (I often dream of trying to wake up or fall asleep.) I was feeling exposed. There might have been no ceiling in my apartment, and there were gaps in the walls. I saw, or imagined, people watching me from a distance. It was like a terrible episode of a paranoid delusion. But it got worse. Someone pushed a cat into my bedroom. The cat hid under the table and moved in a strange, repetitive, unnatural manner. It was hard to see through the shadows of the darkened room. I leaned closer to take a better look. Then, a disturbing realization: the cat’s eyes were cut out, its ears were cut off. Some other parts may’ve been dismembered too. Toy, plush eyes and ears were sewn in their place. This woke me up.

In The Godfather, they sneaked the horse’s head into someone’s bedroom. Were they trying to be scary? Horses’ heads are being chopped all the time, before the horse is eaten. Maybe your cook got drunk and lost his way. Imagine if they sneaked the cat from my dream instead. You’d be appalled, knowing you’re dealing with a total psychopath or some wicked cult.

Here’s another weird little dream I had a while back. I don’t remember anything happening. Maybe it was a dreamless slumber at first. Amid this nothingness, death suddenly emerged. It seized me and started to pull me down, down, down below. Despite the panic, I had such a clear realization of what was happening: I knew I was asleep, and I knew I had to wake up immediately in order to survive. It’s hard to tell how long my struggle lasted. I managed to wake up, eventually.

It may be tempting to appear nonchalant in the face of the ongoing war, but I think it slowly erodes my mental health.

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?)

--------------------

[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.