Month: November 2020

November 27 2020, 19:27

Watched the first three episodes of Queen’s Gambit. Pretty good, but there’s one thing that seemed very wrong to me about this series — and it won’t be corrected in the further episodes. In a sports drama, you cannot show that success is achieved solely by talent. And in this film — it’s also on a mix of talent with tranquilizers. This sends a very bad message both for athletes who have their whole future ahead and for those for whom things do not go so smoothly.

Some journalists suggest that the portrayal of the main character echoes the early career of Bobby Fischer, who was also somewhat of a prodigy. Let’s see how it goes, don’t tell me yet 🙂

P.S. The chess games are beautiful. And wonderfully shot. Today I watched several video analyses on YouTube. Very beautiful games and very seamlessly integrated into the plot. I once took Kasparov’s course on masterclass.com, and he analyzed beautiful games there too, giving me that same feeling — how incredibly beautiful the game of chess is.

https://www.kinopoisk.ru/series/1253633/

November 25 2020, 16:50

I decided to briefly review the documents of Russia’s national project “Digital Economy” (https://digital.gov.ru/uploaded/files/natsionalnaya-programma-tsifrovaya-ekonomika-rossijskoj-federatsii_NcN2nOO.pdf). I was looking for the “roadmap” for the development of the high-tech field “Quantum Computing,” but apparently, it isn’t available in the public domain (crossed out. It is. – see comments).

So, according to the DE:

– By this August, the government was supposed to “For the sake of national security, provide regulatory support for the pre-installation of domestic antivirus programs on all personal computers imported and manufactured within the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Did I forget something? Are there more than one antivirus program produced in Russia? Or has “Laboratory” already transitioned to the state or does it still remain a commercial company? If I’m not mistaken in my assumptions, then the guy who pulled off the installation of their paid software with an annual subscription on all (all!) computers, should have a monument erected in his honor at the company. Not to mention how useful it is to have a network of agents operating on all systems.

– By the end of this year, 4650 Russian school teachers were supposed to “abroad undergo training in foreign countries in skills that are a priority for the digital economy”

Interesting, very interesting. Does anyone know at least one person? Just curious, it could make for an excellent report, “the teacher who was sent abroad on government expense for training.”

November 24 2020, 11:48

The title “czar” in the USA is informally used for top officials responsible for problematic areas of the country. You probably haven’t heard about this.

For example, when the HIV epidemic emerged, there was a “AIDS czar,” there have been auto czars, finance czars, etc. Now, Biden has announced a new nominee for climate czar, John Kerry, who officially holds the title “presidential envoy.” Well, envoy or not, the funniest czar titles to me are the cleanup czar, Iran czar, and drug czar. There was even an ecommerce czar in the 2000s, specifically Elizabeth Echols. Presumably, this was right after the dot-com bubble, when online businesses were going bankrupt by the droves due to inflated investor expectations.

Under Barack Obama, there were 38 czars, whereas Trump had only one (he is the Fact-Finding Officer for the Federal Maritime Commission, Louis Sola). By the way, Fact Finding here does not refer to Trump’s beloved fake news, but rather to the impact of COVID-19 on the cruise ship industry (https://www.fmc.gov/fact-finding-30/)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars