Educated people and, on average, people in the West tend to see squares first, while others more often see circles first. Just imagine, that some people only see circles, for me that's is not easy at all.

In fact, the image is simple, there are horizontal stripes with 16 circles cut out of them and rotated 90º. Because of this, some people don't notice the rectangles (often called "squares" for simplicity) formed by this arrangement and only see the cut-out circles.

Industrialization and life in cities filled with rectangular objects and buildings develop a new skill in us to recognize these newly formed rectangles. Without this skill, the circles cut out of the stripes are the natural thing to see, and because of how they're cut, the circles are what stand out.

But the skill honed to recognize the pattern of rectangular objects is so strong that people raised in an industrial environment are led to see the illusion of the formed rectangles as the main subject of the image.

In any struggle we face, any confrontation, political divide, or even everyday conflict, there are opponents, adversaries, or outright enemies. And they always come in three types, and all three exist simultaneously.

The first ones, or we could call them direct opponents — these are those who are generally on the other side from us. The second are those even more radical than we are. And the third are those on our side, but much closer to the first group than we are. Surprisingly, the main anger and the very manifestation of struggle is often directed at the third group. Though most often it's precisely the second group that's the reason we're fighting the first group at all, while the third group kind of smooths things over. The first group, correspondingly, has exactly the same situation. They have their own second and third types, and here's the funny part: when their second group is so far from the center that their enemies would initially be the opposite second group, they'll eventually unite and become almost one entity.

Briefly, this can be described as: the first are direct enemies, the second are radicals often pushing us into the conflict itself, and the third are moderate allies who seem suspiciously close to the enemies. And it's precisely on them that the main fury is most often unleashed.

And of course, the strategy for all three is different. You need a kind of trident of approaches to be able to mount a full defense.

In military science, this is described as "external, internal, and nearest enemies," and this is a classic scheme: external enemy, internal (radicals), nearest (moderates, traitors). Freud explained this through the narcissism of small differences, where the most bitter conflicts arise precisely between those who are similar but differ in nuances. And of course, Kernighan's Law is also about this — alongside enemies, there are also worst allies. And regarding opposites, this is described by the horseshoe effect: opposite extremes (our second group and their second group) converge in methods and sometimes even become closer to each other than to the center.

There's also always what's called the gray mass, or the silent majority, or apathetic don't-care-ers. But this doesn't mean they're the center, which may not be passive at all. I don't like it when these passionate types are described as neutral. They're all on someone's side, and their outward neutrality is most often a defensive reaction. Therefore, they're either with us anyway, or essentially in league with one of the three types.

Here's an important thought: these three types always exist. But what about very narrow situations, for example, a conflict between two people? It seems that if there's only one opponent, the rule of three is violated. No, the rule remains in effect. When we descend to the level of conflict between two individuals, we begin to see that each person is a multifaceted personality, and each has their own divided parts, each with its own opinion. And within the person, there's still a struggle going on, and essentially these are our doubts that we constantly need to grapple with.

Therefore, the rule of three operates everywhere: from geopolitics and world wars to family quarrels and even our internal struggles. External, internal, and nearest enemies are always present. The question is only how we'll build the strategy of our trident.

There is newcomer in the world of wires and connectors — General Purpose Media Interface (GPMI), China's step beyond USB-C. It's a standard, a protocol, and a new set of ports and cables.

First off, it's not just one standard, but two Type-B and Type-C. Type-B introduces a new plug, which is reversible and noticeably larger than USB-C, as shown in the image on the left.

The second type, Type-C, uses the same shape as USB-C. But now you'll have to be extra vigilant about which cable you're holding — is it a cheap USB 2.0, a charging-only one, does it support video, is it USB4, Thunderbolt 3, or even 5, and now, is it GPMI? I suspect manufacturers will, as usual, skimp on labeling because, well, it's such a hassle for them to make things clear for us.

Why all this? Type-C offers data speeds up to 96 Gbps (gigabits per second) and charging up to 240 W. That's higher than standard USB-C's 40–80 Gbps but below the top-tier Thunderbolt 5 modes. Essentially, it's an attempt to improve on HDMI/DisplayPort and create a proprietary — or rather, Chinese — standard.

Type-B is a bit more impressive. It delivers up to 192 Gbps and up to 480 W. The idea is to provide new capabilities for video, replacing HDMI and DisplayPort, plus powering devices with a single cable, as I understand mainly for TVs and projectors.

Regarding Europe, where USB-C is mandatory as a charging port for a range of devices, this doesn't prevent adding extra ports, but selling a phone without USB-C is a no-go. For TVs and monitors, there are no such restrictions. So GPMI won't arrive there immediately, not because of a direct ban but due to market inertia.

What comes after GPMI and USB-C? We'll see. There will be something for sure. I really hope that that something finally puts an end to the cable chaos, if not outright UX sabotage.

Sometimes you can't help but dream of a country that does everything itself. Like, everything: from food and fuel to planes, processors, cars, sneakers, medicine, and the most advanced weapons. A place where isolation or sanctions don't scare you, where there's no dependency—everything is yours, under your control. Sounds beautiful. But when you dig deeper, in the real world, this kind of deep self-sufficiency almost always turns into high costs and failure.

Why? Simply because the world has long operated like a giant workshop, where everyone has learned to do something particularly well. Some perfect electronics, others master pharmaceuticals, some focus on machinery, and others on software and services. Trading between these specializations isn't a weakness—it's a strength. When you try to cover the entire spectrum of technologies within one country, you quickly run into three basic problems.

First and foremost—scale. Making a thousand units is one thing, but producing millions at a good price with consistent quality is a whole different game. Without external markets, you're stuck with small batches, high costs, and slow product improvement.

Second—competition. If the market is closed, domestic producers don't feel the pressure to compete on quality or speed of innovation. The result? You get "our stuff, but more expensive and worse." Consumers have no choice—they'll pay anyway. Let's not kid ourselves about the kindness or generosity of monopolies.

Third—supply chains. Modern complex products involve hundreds of components, materials, machines, software, standards, and people who know how to use them. Try building that entire pyramid within one border—it's either painfully slow, outrageously expensive, or both.

But that's not all. There's also confusion around trade balance. If a country sells more to the world than it buys, that's a surplus. If it buys more than it sells, it's a deficit, and you simply run out of money. Big imbalances usually trigger reactions from others—surpluses lead to tariffs and quotas, deficits leave you broke. Either way, "doing everything yourself" rarely leads to harmony. Your products either become absurdly expensive and unwanted, or you end up importing anyway because someone, somewhere, does it better. Tourism, by the way, seems softer than a straight surplus—it's essentially exporting (people come and leave their money with you). But when tourism is a major factor, it's treated as a serious economic force too.

Now, let's run a thought experiment: imagine a modern country dropped into the ancient world. Obviously, at first, it's a god among gods—agriculture, construction, medicine, all sorts of tech, they're superior in every way. But you quickly hit bottlenecks: logistics, energy, labor, and organization. Making a hundred tractors? Doable. Supplying tractors to half a continent, along with fuel, maintenance, roads, and warehouses? That takes years and a ton of local labor. Complex tech is finicky: run out of one rare powder, and the factory grinds to a halt. Without external trade, the magic fades. Plus, no one in that ancient world could afford to buy your stuff. What could they offer in return? Essentially just tourism or dirt-cheap labor. Even if this super-country economically dominates and extracts resources from distant colonies, those colonies will eventually rise and want to compete—just like the U.S. did against England back in the day.

Now bring that thought to the present and imagine someone creates AGI—artificial general intelligence—or some breakthrough of similar magnitude. At the start, it's a massive leap forward. But code and tricks don't stay exclusive for long. People leave, ideas spread, and near-equivalent solutions pop up because the world is big and full of smart people. What lasts longer are the heavy things: hardware, energy, rare materials, data rights, standards, partner networks, and distribution systems—stuff you can't replicate overnight. The bigger the business, the wider the surface for leaks—contractors, regulators, integrations, or just ex-employees. So even here, the "everything in-house and secret" strategy doesn't save you. It's smarter to build a stack of advantages, where software is just the tip, and below it are factories, data centers, energy infrastructure, contracts, and rules of the game that you offer the world—and that the world either wants or has to accept. If you squander that lead without strategy, either others will catch up, or the AGI itself might sideline its creator country, and the fairy tale ends abruptly.

The picture is clear. Total self-sufficiency is just another utopia, beautiful on paper but expensive and slow in reality. The world, oddly enough, makes us all stronger when we're properly connected to it. And if you're going to dream of a "fairy-tale country," it turns out to be the whole world—or at least its civilized parts. It's for the sake of that civilization, and through it, that we need progress.

When a person lives, their life — and the effect it has on the world — remains both in the moment and for some time afterward. Our existence can be seen as consisting of three very different dimensions.

The first and most obvious is our body, our material form. It is a collection of cells and molecules acting together. They move through the world, do things, speak words, create changes. This is the version of us that our consciousness perceives and identifies as "me."

The second dimension is our genetic code: DNA, genome, hereditary material — call it what you will. Its simple and clear task is to continue existing. That is the essence of life as a phenomenon: life lives for the sake of life. All mechanisms — bodies, diversity of forms, behavior — are only tools to achieve that. And the realization of this goal follows the laws of evolution and natural selection. There is no "intelligent designer" directing it all. Even if we imagine that such a being exists — a god, aliens, some higher mind — and that it created us, humanity, Earth, and the entire universe, that being itself must have emerged at some point. Even if it stands outside our world, on another level of the matrix, it still had to arise somehow. Which means there was a process much like evolution: the progression from the simple to the complex. The details might differ, but the foundation is the same. And if someone claims "it has always existed," that only shifts the question to the next level of the matrix: somewhere, at infinite depth, the same natural process of development is still taking place.

The third dimension of life is our trace. Everything we do leaves an imprint, a vibration: a step on the floor, a breath in and out, words, ideas, actions. Most of these vibrations fade quickly, dissolving into indistinguishable noise. But the butterfly effect still holds. Some traces endure much longer — years, centuries, sometimes millennia. Even if humanity disappears tomorrow and Earth or the galaxy is ruled by AI, it will already carry within itself the mark of our thoughts. Our intellectual imprint will remain, embedded as a relic of our vibrational legacy.

And each of these three dimensions has its own mechanisms of self-preservation, of reproduction, and — through reproduction — its own attempt to survive, believing in its own immortality.

It's become trendy to say that we've grown lonely because of technology. That it's hard to find people you can have a real conversation with.

But technology isn't to blame. This happened because societies are developing in crooked ways. Our first principles — morality, education, upbringing, public institutions, and much more — have rotted, and this has been happening for a long time. It shakes entire countries and rattles each of us personally. And with time, the amplitude of this shaking just keeps growing.

It's become hard to communicate, hard to make sense of what's going on around us or in the world in general. It feels like there are fewer and fewer people with common sense. But this is mainly because we've lost touch with some kind of core. We've drifted too far apart from each other on too many issues. From early childhood, every part of life we encounter loads us with ideology. Someone else's ideology. Which itself grew out of other ideologies before it. In the past, when people lived closer to nature, they received fewer signals from other people and more directly from the world itself. And the world is physical, just as it is.

Technology, on the other hand, gives us a chance to at least partially counter these effects and gradually reduce the difficulty of adapting to life.

We connect on social media with people far away because there are so few nearby who really understand us. And more and more, we'll find ourselves talking with AI bots — because, in our eyes, they'll seem more reasonable than the vast majority of people around us. Let's not confuse cause and effect though. And let's not confuse the cause of the problem with the tools created to deal with it.

Yes, modern technology may not be the best cure for such deep social distortions, but it's still a step in the right direction.

Here's my allegory (and you know I love these and stick them everywhere): if you find yourself in a disaster, everything's exploding around you, and you're wounded and bleeding, bandages won't solve the problem of explosions. But don't say the explosions are happening because of the bandages. Bandages help soften the blow, keep you from bleeding out, and maybe, once you're patched up, you'll be able to stand up and start addressing the actual root of the problem.

I made a new painting: Thinking Boy. No ai, all human.