Month: September 2026

Mastering the Art of Russian Paints: A Guide to Rare Pigments and Where to Buy Them | September 15 2026, 00:29

I brought the paints. It’s a rare case when something made in Russia is worth buying and bringing to the USA or Europe. So, if you have artist friends, you can bring them some, they’ll be 100% happy (but only the Master-Class brand). Moreover, even China doesn’t make decent paints that you could order cheaply from AliExpress with shipping to the USA. To be precise, there are some, but they aren’t highly valued by artists outside of China.

The most valuable here is Volkonskoite. It’s a rare mineral pigment, mined almost exclusively in one place in the world (Perm region), and in tubes, it’s essentially only made by “Nevskaya Palette”. The only option on our market — dry pigment Rublev Colours: Volkonskoite Pigment, from $26.40 for 10 grams (raw material from the same place, Yefimych in Perm region), needs to be ground into oil by oneself. In Russia, I bought it for 1200 RUB ($14).

Second is Glauconite — another natural Russian green earth paint. You can buy alternatives, but basically, only from Rublev. You need to order it, plus there are many imitations, but this is pure pigment (Rublev writes that most “green earth” paints from other manufacturers are not natural minerals, but a mix of chromium oxide and ochre).

Third — Pink Ultramarine. This pigment is rare, offered by literally two or three brands – about $17-$25 plus shipping. In Russia, I bought it for 780 RUB ($9).

Two cobalt violets (dark and light) are expensive in their own right — cobalt violets everywhere fall into the highest price group, but buying them in America is not difficult (Winsor & Newton, Gamblin, Williamsburg, etc.). The value is more in the price than in the rarity. For example, Williamsburg Cobalt Violet Deep 37 ml costs $46.01 (Michaels / Jackson’s), it’s currently $53.68 at Jerry’s with a list price of $76.69. And I bought it for 1200 RUB ($15).

Cerulean. In the USA, you can buy the same class Gamblin Cerulean Blue 37 ml, from $28.80, while I paid $15. Like cobalt blue, they’re just wonderful, absolutely standard paints, easy to find anywhere. I just bought them at the same time, it turns out cheaper that way.

All these paints are artist grade, the very top. The brand “Master-class”. In Serbia, I went into five Art Supplies stores and from the Nevskaya Palette range, they only had “Sonet” – those are the simplest ones in their line (there’s also Ladoga, between Master-Class and Sonet).

After 2022, “Nevskaya Palette” almost disappeared from American and European stores. You can carry them on a plane, but in case someone objects that you can’t bring such items onboard, it’s advisable to have an SDS with you (I have one, can send it). But they’ve survived three flights over the last week, and successfully so.

Discovering New Details in “Hedgehog in the Fog” | September 14 2026, 23:50

While walking with Yuki, I watched “Hedgehog in the Fog” again. Listen, pure discoveries. I always thought he walked with a little bundle tied to a stick. Turns out, he was just carrying the bundle in his paws, and the stick was there to poke into the fog. Did you also imagine him carrying a bundle on a stick, or was it just me?

Then I thought he was wandering around shouting “horsey!” But it turns out, he only said horse sadly once, and that’s it. And actually, the horse was off to the side, and his friend, a bear cub, was calling him off-screen throughout the cartoon.

It also turned out that the hedgehog speaks with the voice of Uncle Fyodor from “Prostokvashino”.

I read also that they made the animation simply by moving cut-out characters at different distances from ordinary tracing paper.

After that, Norstein has been shooting “The Overcoat” based on Gogol since 1981. Still not finished.

Exploring the Black Box: AI’s Struggle with Novelty Creation | September 14 2026, 20:19

I’ve devised a simple illustration of where current AI still falls short.

Imagine a black box with two knobs sticking out. You move the first one — the second one moves too, but according to its own rules, like with delay, inertia, threshold, however you like. In essence, the box transforms f(t) into f'(t). The question is: what’s inside? It’s necessary not only to devise an efficient mechanism but also to fit it within the box’s dimensions.

Formally, this is almost like programming. Because one can formally describe input-output and come up with an “alphabet” for mechanical components inside. But unlike programming, there’s a lot of nonlinear aspects – the mechanisms are bulky, and one must take into account numerous factors from materials to friction, and importantly, it’s not so simple to test a prototype before creating it. But the main thing is not even this – it’s understanding the problem. The only way to find out what’s inside the box is to put forward a hypothesis and devise a knob movement in which this hypothesis and an adjacent one yield different results. A good experiment here is more important than a good answer. And models are trained on a corpus of solved problems, where mistakes have already been cleaned up, and there nothing trains the ability to choose the next question.

The point is this. It seems that the challenge for AI (we’re talking about LLM; the field is broader)— isn’t the assembly of the known, it handles that increasingly well. That is, with an “alphabet” for describing the task and laws of mechanics, AI can solve the box problem through combinations of the known, rather than through a fundamentally new component. The challenge is inventing something new. Although, to be honest, most human inventions, when analyzed, also turn out to be an assembly from far-flung pieces. Yet, consider the invention of the escapement in clocks, where all the components — a wheel and an oscillating fork, and even the very idea that the oscillating system shouldn’t be driven by a spring, but should itself regulate when the spring is allowed to release a burst of energy, reverses causality in the device, and took centuries to achieve. And the lockstitch in sewing machines. It’s pointless to copy a hand with a needle, instead, it’s necessary to pull a second thread through the loop of the first from the back, and the needle must have the eye at the tip. All this isn’t just assembly from components, it’s changing what is generally considered the task, and that’s why such things are so poorly derived by mere combination, whether by humans or models.

An inventor has feedback from reality and a cost for mistakes, so they learn to test before believing. Within one answer, a model has nothing to pay with for a wrong guess. And besides, if you replace the mechanics with particle physics, everything has to be redone because it all works differently there.

Interestingly, this is not cured by the size of the model, but by the structure of the task. Let the box respond to movements — and the task transitions from textual to experimental. Let’s see who learns to play this game first.

Beyond the Screen: How “Gone Girl” Manipulates Us Differently in Book and Film | September 09 2026, 19:56

Finished Gone Girl!

Yes, I’ve seen the movie. Yes, I knew the ending. And yet—the book is a different beast. The movie shows WHAT happened. The book shows HOW you’re being fooled: half a year of dated diary entries that you believe because the other narrator, Nick, admits he lies to the police. Flynn buys your trust in one liar at the expense of another. The camera can’t do that.

And the finale—it’s two competing manuscripts, his and hers. The one who writes better wins. Film simply can’t show this because it’s a book about books.

Read, don’t just watch, especially if you can do so in the original—it’s worthwhile. I’ve written before about bad translations. In the English version of the book, it’s very evident how the author changes the style and vocabulary in Amy’s chapters compared to Nick’s. Amy’s vocabulary is richer, sentences longer, more rare words used, the whole diary written in present tense, with exclamations and flirty remarks in parentheses. Nick, on the other hand, writes like a fired journalist (which he is)—short, past tense, “said”, “shrugged”, “poured”—that kind of protocol instead of feelings. This nuance gets smoothed over in translation, completely lost in film—there, both just talk. It’s interesting when the author metamorphoses into a hero with a narration style specific to each chapter.