🍂 mood

Great news for Ukrainian bitcoiners 😉. Ukrainian banks are introducing KYC for financial operations over 100 euros 🫠. Earn money, put it in the bank, and then you have to prove you're not a penguin. Hope this news is going to push people to look for alternatives.

A few years back I came up with this rhyme in my native language and shared on FB 🙃 here translation one day the Lord said unto Mark thou shalt be a fisher of men and Mark verily became the holy face-book he turned on each day and reckoned how many folk he had caught and bound in his nets he beheld men in blue-chrome the Lord granted him no power to behold in full colour and an heap of folk he gathered into his nets and men dwelt in these nets peering and looking in sharing their sorrows their wants their likes-and-hearts casting rotten eggs rattling whatever arms they bare weeping turning their coats vexed that they were misunderstood or misjudged they were not rightly understood or perceived and Mark still fished these men in days to come men shall forsake Marks nets and swim unto other fishers founding fathers of new worlds or peradventure become fishers themselves and we shall be remembered in legends as the flock of Mark and then forgotten as all have already forgotten Myspace

I once had a hypothesis that state leaders are like phantoms of the collective shadow (as in Solaris) that materialize and come to remind us of our own shadow. Yanuk (our 4th president) - material pragmatism, and as a shadow, the greed for possessing things. Porokh (5th) - the ability to manage grand processes and negotiate, and as a shadow, cloudless vanity. Zel (current) - unyieldingness, the courage to stand at the center of the storm, and as a shadow, immoderate pride (arrogance, hubris). So, about hubris. It is a terrible and eerie thing. Because it blinds you and gives you the illusion of messianism - that you can save everyone, and that you are God. Pride burns everything around it to ruins. The best cure for this fierce plague is humility, dialogue, taking on the responsibility you can actually bear, and stopping the urge to save everyone and everything around you. Simple food, work, and relationships are the best medicine for hubris. Accepting that I am not God, but just a human, like everyone else. Just a human.

The early Christians were oppressed, persecuted, killed, and driven into the catacombs. The cross was a symbol of resistance to violence and an emblem of the emancipation of the spirit. However, after Christianity was institutionalized and granted protection by Emperor Constantine, Christians spread their wings and began to take brutal revenge for their former oppression (look at the movie Agora as an example) later, this violence transformed into more subtle forms. ​Voltaire, Diderot, Parisian salons. Dissident thoughts of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The Enlightenment under the pressure of the monarchy and the Church. Then came the French Revolution, where the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity triumphed. The monopoly on violence suddenly belonged to the formerly oppressed. "If you don't agree with our ideas, we'll give you a bloodbath." And rivers of blood began to flow. ​The 19th century. Ideas of social justice and resistance to class oppression captured the minds of intellectuals worldwide. Early 20th century: the Bolshevik Revolution succeeds. The monopoly on violence is once again held by the formerly oppressed. I won't talk about the consequences of this victory—you already know them all too well. ​Late 20th and 21st centuries. The democratic hybrid welfare state yesterday's oppressed (LGBT, eco-activists, fighters for equal "rights") gain a protective umbrella from the holder of the monopoly on violence, turning the field of interaction into inverted discrimination and cancel culture. ​What I'm getting at is this no matter how correct and pure an idea might be, once it gets a club handed to it by "Big Brother" it's game over. Only the free competition of ideas without involving a centralized "well-intentioned enforcer" can keep society viable, vibrant, and prevent ideas from becoming destructive. But oh, how tempting it is to get a privilege, a monopoly, or protection from the "Chief Director." I know, I know.

With a 300,000x great-grandmother

Yesterday wife ironically pointed out a paradox that our generation is like axolotls who realized with horror that they've started to age. Are we really beginning to lose the superpower of these wonder-creatures?

It turns out I somehow manage to hold both an engineering perspective and a holistic Gestalt view of things at the same time, even though these are completely different worlds and approaches. I promised myself I wouldn’t spam "AI-generated wisdom", but I just can’t help sharing this one—forgive me 😁. I asked Gemini: "Why shouldn't therapy be viewed through the lens of IT bug fixing, even though it's so tempting?" warning for those allergic to AI: proceed at your own risk 😁: The attempt to apply the metaphor of debugging and fixing to the human psyche is a very understandable temptation, especially in our rational world. It gives a sense of control: here is a system error (anxiety, depression, burnout), here is the "bug report" (symptoms), and now we will find the broken line of code, write a patch—and the system will revert to its default normal operation. However, if you look at it through the eyes of a Gestalt therapist, this approach doesn't just fail to work—it actually halts genuine change. And here is why this is a much deeper and more complex, holistic story. A symptom is not a bug; it is a creative adjustment In programming, a bug is a logic error that wasn't supposed to happen. In Gestalt, what a person considers a "bug" (for example, the habit of self-devaluation, avoiding conflict, or freezing emotions) was once the best available solution for survival. It is a creative adjustment to a difficult environment in the past. When a child was punished for expressing anger, their "patch"—suppressing that anger—saved their relationship with their parents. They didn't "break"; they adapted. Trying to simply cut this mechanism out like unnecessary code means invalidating a huge piece of their experience and defense system. The Paradoxical Theory of Change In an IT model, we take State A (wrong) and forcefully push it into State B (right). In Gestalt therapy, there is a core principle formulated by Arnold Beisser: change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not. Attempting to "fix" oneself creates an internal war (what Fritz Perls called the conflict between the "topdog" and the "underdog"). True transformation is born not from fixing, but from fully acknowledging and experiencing what is happening with me right now. A human being is not an algorithm; it is the "organism-environment" field Code runs in an isolated environment. A human being, however, exists only in context—in the organism-environment field. We do not function in a vacuum. How you feel right now depends on your physical state, your relationships with loved ones, the war around you, a word you heard in the morning, and a million other details. You cannot simply "rewrite a function" inside your head, because your reaction is a living, dynamic process of interacting with the entire surrounding context. Wholeness instead of rationalization Debugging is purely intellectual, analytical work. But a human being doesn't live solely in their head. From a holistic point of view, we are a unity of thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, and behavioral impulses. For instance, a person might understand rationally ("fixing the code") that public speaking is safe, yet their body contracts in terror. Until we return to the body, feel that constricted breath, and unpack the unfinished emotional figure, no "logical patch" will work. Therapy happens in the "Here and Now" contact A developer fixes code independently using tools. Therapy, first and foremost, is a meeting of two subjects. What heals is not an algorithm or correct interpretations, but the lived experience of a relationship with the therapist in the "here and now"—a space where one can try being different, being seen, accepted, and not "fixed." Therefore, therapy is not a service center for repairing the psyche. It is more of a joint research expedition where we explore: "How exactly do you organize your life in a way that makes it difficult for you? What need is hidden behind this irritation? And how can you reclaim your freedom of choice?"

Czech Republic to cease granting temporary protection to Ukrainian men of draft age. This is not protection, but a privilege granted by a bureaucrat. They can give it if they want, or withhold it if they don't. The European state does not recognize rights, just like any other. 😔 In my autobiographical essay, I touched upon the topic of mobilization. View article →

Kind of like that

😁 "​On the topic of ageism in IT hiring: ​I believe candidates 40+, who have at least 10+ years of experience, should be hired immediately. ​Because if a person hasn't burned to ashes by this time and hasn't told it all to go to hell, leaving to look for an abandoned lighthouse, nothing will phase them anymore."

Not long ago, while in a train compartment headed to Budapest, I met a young family from Israel. We talked for an hour and realized we have a lot in common. We exchanged contacts. It turned out they are artists—a painter and his wife, Stella Got, a musician. I’m sharing a song from her latest album with you. True art should grow and spread.

"The road to serfdom" the book I reccomend to read. We think it happens with other scesieties but not mine and it can be a trap.

NOSTR meetup in Prague

Clarinet Factory - the revelation of the evening

skeleton and fascia

Creation of the world #Prague

Catch me if you can

If we look at European dentistry (and healthcare in general) through a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist lens, the root of the problem is obvious: state regulation has destroyed the free market, created an artificial scarcity, and killed healthy competition. ​Here are the key areas that are broken in the European system from a libertarian perspective and need to be "fixed" (meaning completely liberated from state control): ​1. Abolishing Artificial Scarcity via Medical Licensing and Guilds ​In most European countries, dental chambers (the modern equivalent of medieval guilds) and ministries of health strictly limit the number of people who can practice. ​The Problem: University enrollment quotas, combined with overly complex and highly bureaucratized diploma recognition procedures for talented doctors from outside the EU, create an artificial staff shortage. ​The Fix: Abolish the state monopoly on licensing. The market is perfectly capable of regulating quality through reputation, independent certification bodies (like private quality associations), and client reviews. Easing access to the profession would instantly saturate the market with qualified specialists. ​2. Eliminating Insurance and Socialist Price Distortion ​When a third party pays for a service—be it a state health insurance fund (like the German Krankenkasse) or a private insurance company bound by thousands of regulations—rather than the patient directly, market pricing collapses. ​The Problem: Doctors are forced to align their pricing with state service catalogs, wasting chunks of time on paperwork and reporting instead of treating patients. Patients never see the actual cost of services, and clinics stop competing for the client's satisfaction, competing instead for payouts from insurance funds. ​The Fix: Shift to a Direct Primary Care model and a transparent cash-only or crypto-driven market for services. When patients pay out of pocket, clinics are forced to compete for every single customer by lowering prices and improving service (exactly how it works in the laser eye surgery or cosmetics industries, where state intervention is minimal). ​3. Deregulating Medical Equipment and Materials ​European regulators (such as CE marking bodies and local medical agencies) erect massive barriers to entry for new materials, implants, or dental software. ​The Problem: To certify a new, cheaper, or more effective composite material or a 3D printer for crowns, it takes years and millions of euros spent on bureaucracy. As a result, clinics are forced to purchase insanely expensive certified equipment, baking those costs right into the price of your filling. ​The Fix: Freedom of choice for both the doctor and the patient. If a doctor takes on the reputational and contractual liability for using a specific material or technology, the state has no right to interfere. ​4. Ending the Monopoly on Pharmacy Goods and Prescriptions ​Even basic prevention or specific post-procedure medications are over-regulated in the EU. ​The Problem: You cannot buy a strong painkiller or a specific antiseptic without waiting in line for a prescription and paying for yet another doctor's visit. ​The Fix: Complete freedom of trade in pharmaceuticals. The responsibility for consumption lies with the individual, not with a nanny state. ​The Bottom Line: Modern European dentistry is not about dental health; it is about servicing a system of licenses, insurance protocols, and tax schemes. ​To fix this, we don't need "cheaper state funding." We just need to kick the government out of the room, allowing a patient with capital and a doctor with tools to trade directly under the laws of the free market. High-quality service and reasonable prices will emerge naturally, just as they always do wherever regulators are absent.