The international politics is definitely getting more interesting with each day. I am closely following the development of the US-Russia relationship. Dare I say I almost feel strangely hopeful? Is Russia - NATO war no longer on the table? Do we even have NATO still?

I believe there are books for reading, and then there are books for looking at and aspiring to read sometime when the inspiration comes.

For some reason it’s hilarious to me that people on LinkedIn have been discussing for a couple of past months whether they should or should not use ChatGPT to write their LinkedIn posts. As if that changes anything, they already sound identical and empty of any meaning.

Yes, but it felt nice to pretend to uphold international law.

The word is “delusion”

The whole world’s security agreements and systems put in place to maintain at least a vision of peace are being brutally tested and dismantled in the recent few years. All the vulnerabilities are exposed, and we will need to rethink the old systems and come up with new ways of securing peace.

Well, it hasn’t even been three days of the new year, and we already have a new war.

Our Solar System is orbiting the center of our Galaxy at about 220 km/s so in 2025 we collectively traveled something like 7 billion kilometers across the Milky Way. Once in a while, when you have a moment, it’s worthwhile to take a look around, see where you are, and appreciate how far you’ve come.

Afterwards, they will cry “why did nobody tell us?!”

How much I hate the fact that all our attention (directed by media) has to go to monitoring a bunch of international war criminals chatting each other up, instead of focusing on cooperation against climate change that is worsening thanks to them as well.

There must be some primeval excitement people experience at seeing a firework explode in the sky. It’s the same every year, yet people can’t seem to get enough of it.

Finally reading “Project Hail Mary” and loving how Andy Weir just blasts scientific facts and theories at his readers. I am googling like a madwoman on the side and very excited to read further.

Ah, finally time to chaotically read those ten books I started recently. Happy holidays!

“Here is a memory of that letter you were dreading to send so you though “maybe ChatGPT can help me” but it failed”

After having been primarily on BlueSky for a while, I have no desire to engage with people on other platforms. Especially the ones owned by Meta seem to attract primarily people who are hateful for no reason. It’s just constant rage bait. This place gave me a feeling of normalcy I longed for.

For how long am I going to ask to invent an automated meal-maker they promised me in sci-fi films of my childhood? Are we not all equally invested in this?

One more day of trying to convince people not to use ChatGPT for medical advice.

As in other spheres of work, the one who is good at marketing wins. A completely separate skill from research. The most valuable parts of research cannot be predicted and pitched to the funding committee. I console myself with the thought that it has probably been like this since the dawn of time.

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

I believe that most problems come from the inability of people to handle the complexity of the world.

Turned 34 this Sunday. Feeling completely ok about it, as it is still quite far from my mental age of 60.

That part is really tricky for my mother. I’m 34 but still allowed no agency in her eyes whatsoever. Apparently, I am constantly possessed by different people making decisions about my life, which somehow always go against her wishes 😄.

Sometimes, I think how I don’t appreciate enough having the opportunity to work in Academia. With all its flaws, it is a wonderful place where you get to hear and discuss the latest findings and ideas, read works-in-progress, and just have nerdy fun. #blessed 😄

Because their whole personality is a bully

Spending winter in Denmark:

This year Black Friday and the salary day in Denmark coincide like a solar eclipse. Good luck to us all.

It turned out my deep Russian sadness and joyless Danish winter were not a good match.

My parents thought film making would be too difficult a career for a girl. Becoming a journalist in Russia was completely fine in their view, however.

All the services we signed up for and used for decades are now training their “AIs” on our data. I am exhausted.

Trump can’t beat the allegations of being Putin’s pet. Utterly disgusting.

What is this obsession with making service robots humanoid? Is there not enough research showing why this is problematic?

This storyline has been old for decades, yet it seems like every day there's another new installment.

Always found it ironic that it is especially bad at counting)

Isn’t it great that 2025 rhymes both with Nazi Germany and the Middle Ages?

I was waiting for it since 2017, and it’s finally here.

The keyword here is “sometimes”. As the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I mean, aren’t we allowed to dream?:)

NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen. Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.

I think people intentionally say “immigrants” and not “asylum seekers” when meaning the latter. It gives them a moral excuse to treat them as leeches. If they say “asylum seekers” in this context, they would feel bad about themselves not helping people escaping wars. It’s a moral loophole.

Cows are still out and about in +2 degrees.

This is why I believe in removing the grading system in schools as a concept. It is because my idea of teaching is to encourage and support curiosity and self-learning. I hate hate hate comparing students with each other by giving them grades. They care too much about grades and forget to learn.

We are betraying children by allowing the use of genAI in schools. The fewer “crutches” they have, the better their minds will develop.

When I see an AI-generated illustration in a power point presentation, I struggle with listening further and taking the information seriously. Respect yourself and others, don’t do this.

And generally, for some reason it is very hard to abandon platforms because there are always some people still on Fb, Insta, etc. I always try to replace predatory platforms with better alternatives, but end up only increasing the number of platforms I am on.

It’s unfortunate that not all researchers I would like to follow joined BlueSky. Many ended up on LinkedIn, and now I have to suffer the bombardment with superfluous (not to say stupid) takes on AI from business people among the useful updates from friends and colleagues.

What a masterpiece is this album 🔥

This is quite horrifying to me, especially because I can’t think of a useful application of it for my work without it compromising my research integrity. And in addition, the use of LLMs is so highly unethical for the environment, intellectual property rights, etc.

I am old enough to remember when our teachers warned us about the inaccuracy of information published on Wikipedia and we couldn’t cite it as a source. And now it has become a valuable collaborative knowledge base that is under threat of extinction. Feels like we are moving in the wrong direction.

Maturing is celebrating major revisions 🥳

Apparently parents are now casually using ChatGPT to diagnose their children’s illnesses instead of calling medical services. As if googling your symptoms was not bad enough.