1# anti-antihuman. 2025-02-08
2
3Hi everyone,
4
5Wrote two new simple posts since the last update:
6
7[https://antiantihuman.com/marketing](https://antiantihuman.com/marketing)
8
9https://antiantihuman.com/unverifiable-technology
10
11They are both about modern technology. Good parts and bad parts. I have a backlog of those stories that I want to share
12
13Till the next time!
14
15Anton

1# anti-antihuman. 2025-02-02
2
3Hi everyone,
4
5Wrote two new simple posts since the last update:
6
7https://antiantihuman.com/not-yet
8
9https://antiantihuman.com/seinfeld
10
11Those are not super deep reflections, but still I think there are few small observations on societies, language and culture.
12
13Small update from me. In general I write a lot of code. But this past January I did two things:
14
15run 100km. Join my club on strava if you want.
16* wrote 10 posts on anti-antihuman
17
18started new blog in Ukrainian
19
20Till the next time! But please always reply to this email if you have some comments or questions or suggestions on my writing.
21
22Anton

1# anti-antihuman. let’s do something good together
2
3Hi everyone,
4
5Anton here. As some of you might know I’m originally from Ukraine.
6
7Almost 3 years ago russia launched full scale invasion of my home country. Almost 11 years ago russia started the war annexing Crimea and launching military operation in the east of Ukraine.
8
9So let's do something good **together**.
10
11**Donate money to any Ukrainian nonprofit and I will personally match it.**
12
13All you need is to make your donation and send me a screenshot and I will do my matching donation(and I will send you my screenshot back and full video later).
14
15Good part is that I can double my donation too. So in reality if you donate 10 USD, I will donate 10 USD personally and will get 10 USD extra match. So your 10 USD will turn into 30 USD.
16
17You can donate to any Ukrainian nonprofit you want. Or it can be your local organization that helps Ukraine.
18
19I personally recommend donating to this organization https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate-en/#donate-army-card-once. It’s been active(and very efficient) since 2014 when russia started the war.
20
21Another good option is this https://prytulafoundation.org/en.
22
23Or if you are US based you can donate to this organization https://novaukraine.org/. It’s proven too and I know them personally and donated many times before.
24
25PS I did a similar donations matching thing on Feb 24, 2022. You can see it here https://x.com/podviaznikov/status/1497000422774558728. I will post video of me doing all the matches.
26
27Anton

1# anti-antihuman. first update. 2025-01-24
2
3Hey everyone,
4
5Anton here.
6
7Thank you for subscribing to my new blog. Currently it’s 20 people total, but I think more people have read some of my posts.
8
9I’ve only started writing this one 20 days ago but already have 8 posts:
10
11* https://antiantihuman.com/on-hiding 
12* https://antiantihuman.com/toxic-sweetness 
13* https://antiantihuman.com/mismatch 
14* https://antiantihuman.com/programmable-intimacy 
15* https://antiantihuman.com/californication 
16* https://antiantihuman.com/blowing-bubbles 
17* https://antiantihuman.com/latex-salesman 
18* https://antiantihuman.com/communication 
19
20I still have few topics sitting in drafts. But I also want to slow down writing a bit (maybe one post per week).
21
22I didn’t figure out how to find a positive spin on issues I discuss and when I only think about problems I get annoyed and frustrated.
23
24So I will soon try to find a balance and also write about things I consider good.
25
26Eg here I already have evergreen list of people who I like https://antiantihuman.com/inspirations
27
28I also decided to create subreddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/antiantihuman/. Not sure if this is a good idea, but if you have some public comments/ideas - you can try leaving them there.
29
30I think I was able to write so many things in a short period of time mostly because of comments from people - my friends and also https://www.recurse.com/ community - that was encouraging, so thank you a lot for reading and commenting.
31
32Have a nice weekend,
33
34Anton

1---
2date: 2025-04-11
3location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Context Matters
8
9Today I start with the claim.
10
11Best people, best partners, best friends, best managers, best colleagues - are those who care about the context.
12
13If I want to build deep relationships I gave a person more and more context about me over time. And I seek more and more context from another person.
14
15At the end of the day ideally we have pretty detailed mental models of each other in our heads.
16
17This works in any context. I propose being allergic to quick conclusions(with some exception of course, where speed is important for safety).
18
19I’ve lived long enough to know that first impression is not reliable indicator. Eg in any relationship you really want to see how person works, how they handle difficult situations etc.

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1---
2date: 2025-01-14
3location: Miami, US
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Mismatch
8
9Year 2023. I'm in London. My sneakers are finished, and I need to buy new ones. I'm searching online for some European brands.
10
11Finally, I found one. It's called Axel Arigato. All the photos online look great. I like the design of the site.
12
13Those sneakers are not cheap. So I spent a few days thinking about it and checking the site back and forth.
14
15Finally, I checked the location for the offline store and went there.
16
17To my surprise, the offline store looks nothing like a website.
18
19It's a dirty, small place. No one is in the store. The floor is dirty. The shop assistants just talk between themselves.
20
21I finally checked the sneakers. And at this moment, I realized that I had been played.
22
23They look nothing like the online photos. They look like cheaply made sneakers of poor design and poor quality.
24
25I spent 2 minutes in the store and left.
26
27Never in my life did I see such a huge mismatch between the promised product and a real one.
28
29I do not advocate going all the way and doing what they do in Japan, where photos of food should be of exactly the same proportions as the food you will get.To prevent scamming customers. But there is a line somewhere. A small exaggeration is okay, but let’s not overdo it.
30
31Are we going just to use digital tools and make campaigns to sell products that look very different?
32
33**Reflections:**
34
35- huge mismatch between the digital representation of your product and your product is *antihuman.*
36- huge mismatch between advertising and product is *antihuman*.

1---
2date: 2025-01-16
3location: Miami, US
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Programmable intimacy
8
9I am on the call with the sales person from one of the software vendors I’m trying to use.
10
11We had an intro call one month before, since then I made a proof of concept demo using their tool and went on a two weeks vacation.
12
13This call is a catch-up call to talk about the demo experience and future. It starts with small talk.
14
15He asks me how my vacation was. I told him a few things and how the weather is now in Mexico. And then he says, “I thought you were in Miami.”
16
17At this moment, I realized that during the last meeting, he recorded all the data points about me and is now just recalling them.
18
19I tell him that I am still not in Miami but will be back soon.
20
21While I say this, I see on my screen him typing all my answers.
22
23Why are we doing this?
24
25I know that sales small talk is performative and no one cares about each other really.  But just sit there with CRM and type answers and use them next time during the meeting as a prompt? What is the actual skill here?  The ability to type and read?
26
27Am I evaluating company by the ability of its sales people *to write things down and then read them back*?
28
29Can we focus on each other for a moment? When we talk, why cannot we be present? Why do I see a person reading and writing things on another screen?
30
31You can still write down your notes, but after the call, from memory, from remembering what was interesting or important.
32
33Just be present. It's only a 15-minute call.
34
35### Reflections
36
37 - programming the sense of intimacy, connection, caring is *antihuman*.
38- not being present is *antihuman*.

1---
2data: 2025-01-14T01:28:23Z
3
4---
5# Inspirations
6
7people that inspire me and whom i consider to be anti-antihuman.
8
9 - [Václav Havel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel) 
10 - [Neil Postman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman) 
11 - [Alan Kay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay) 
12 - [Bret Victor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Victor) 
13 - [Yaroslav Hrytsak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaroslav_Hrytsak)

1---
2logo_text: antiantihuman
3logo_text_color: "#0084ff"
4logo_text_font: "Berkeley Mono"
5backgroundcolor: "#ffffff"
6showchildren: no
7turnstylesitekey: 0x4AAAAAAAfRsywuCIelRKZ2
8author: anti-antihuman
9description: commentary on tech and society in general
10newslettersubscribebutton: subscribe
11image:
12  shadow: none
13footer_menu:
14  - title: rss
15    url: https://antiantihuman.com/feed.xml
16  - title: reddit
17    url: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiantihuman/
18  - title: strava
19    url: https://www.strava.com/clubs/antiantihuman
20  - title: newsletter
21    url: https://antiantihuman.com/newsletter
22---
23hero.png
24
25welcome. not much here for now. more things are coming.
26
27for now my goal is to document different stories related to the technology, work, companies, business practices etc.
28
29after writing down those personal stories([1](https://antiantihuman.com/on-hiding), [2](https://antiantihuman.com/toxic-sweetness),  [3](https://antiantihuman.com/mismatch), [4](https://antiantihuman.com/programmable-intimacy), [5](https://antiantihuman.com/californication), [6](https://antiantihuman.com/blowing-bubbles), [7](https://antiantihuman.com/latex-salesman), [8](https://antiantihuman.com/corruption), [9](https://antiantihuman.com/communication), [10](https://antiantihuman.com/not-yet), [11](https://antiantihuman.com/seinfeld), [12](https://antiantihuman.com/the-work-about-nothing), [13](https://antiantihuman.com/fake-analysis)) i hope to come up the list of the things that I consider antihuman and list of the things that i consider anti-antihuman.
30
31here is the [list](https://antiantihuman.com/inspirations) of people who inspire me.
32
33also [join me](https://www.strava.com/clubs/antiantihuman) on strava - lets run together.
34
35[https://antiantihuman.recuremail.com](https://antiantihuman.recuremail.com)

1---
2date: 2025-01-22
3location: Playa del Carmen
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Latex salesman
8
9At work I decided to open Health savings account ([HSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_savings_account)) - this is special type of individual pension account that you can use for health related expenses.
10
11Usually your company enrolls you in and you just need to register online and small amount of your monthly income will be allocated into this account.
12
13So I tried to do the registration part on a provider’s site. But it didn’t work, I was able to save my personal data but after that site would enter infinite spin.
14
15Ok, so I got a phone number to call the support. I’m on the phone again - read how I like calling support [here](https://antiantihuman.com/toxic-sweetness) - I’m waiting 40 minutes just to talk to the operator. Great start!
16
17Finally I was connected to a real person and she tells me she cannot find my account and that I should contact company I work for - after 40 minutes of wait time. I asked her to double check and at the second try she found my account - bad sign, she didn’t want to help me that much originally.
18
19Now that she found my account I explain her the problem. Immediately she says “You probably has blocked popup in your browser.”
20
21I check my screen and I see that tiny Safari icon telling me that popup was blocked.
22
23*Why didn’t developers of this site showed me an error message that popups might be blocked, it seems like support immediately knew about this problem?*
24
25Ok, so I unblocked this popup and got redirected to another site that was promptly blocked by Cloudflare. I tried the same thing from 3 different computer and 1 mobile phone - no luck. I tried VPN - no luck.
26
27I told her about the issue and she didn’t have the solution and said that she will open the ticket.
28
29The call lasted 1 hour 14 minutes.
30
31No solution was found.
32
33The only thing I had on my mind was Jerry Seinfeld [question](https://youtu.be/VUW71HXbXAg?si=ltmteyTI45diY6O6&t=46) to George Costanza who was lying with his pants down on the floor: “And you wanted to be my latex salesman?”
34
35How is this company are going to manage my Health savings account? What expertise do they have if they cannot make a website for me to register properly?
36
37Can I trust them with my money?
38
39### Reflections:
40
41 - most companies are not good in any industry. [Pareto distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution) strikes again.
42 - you might be an expert in your field, but if you cannot execute on simpler things surrounding your project - you will lose trust.
43 - if you deal with people’s money - please do proper support.

1---
2date: 2025-02-08
3location: Tijuana, MX
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Unverifiable technology
8
9December 2020. I’ve juts got my first driving license and went to Mexico for a solo trip.
10
11I’ve rented a car all by myself. I’ve put my luggage in the car and left rental station.
12
13I’ve parked the car near the coffee shop and wanted to go to the beach. I closed the car and the trunk using electric key.
14
15I’ve checked the trunk of my car while before leaving to the coffee shop and realized it was open.
16
17I’ve panicked a bit. Because there is no way I leave all my things in the car with an open trunk.
18
19I’ve got into the car and went back to the rental. I told the guy that I cannot close my trunk.
20
21He was surprised but came with me. I showed him that every time I close trunk via electric key and then try to open it with my hands - it would open.
22
23I saw a smile on his face. He told me to close the trunk and give him the key - which I did. He went 10 meters aways from the car and told me to open the trunk.
24
25I couldn’t! So the trunk was closed but would be *automatically unlock* if you come close with it with a key!
26
27I mean this technology is amazing, but it’s absolutely shouldn’t be used!
28
29There are two reasons:
30
31 - it’s not a beginner friendly. If you didn’t know they put this technology in the cars(which I didn’t because remember I just got my license) - you wouldn’t guess that was the reason trunk was always open. That technology was so unintuitive that you wouldn’t even google it!
32
33 - even if you know that technology works it’s really hard to trust it because it’s very difficult to verify that it works. If you are driving on your own the only way to verify that the trunk was locked is to lock it, walk away for 10 meters, put your keys on the ground and return and check the trunk.
34
35### Reflections
36
37- We live in the world where technology fails all the time - software, electricity, hardware and so on. We cannot just trust the technology, we should have an easy way to verify it worked.
38 - Also using cool technology just for the technology sake is not needed. Eg we had physical keys and locks and they worked nicely for many years(decades, centuries?). They were easily learned since the young age and everyone could verify if the lock worked or was broken.

1---
2date: 2025-02-12
3location: New York City, USA
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# The work about nothing
8
9I have this theory that you can be an above-average middle manager if you do close to nothing. Maybe run some weekly meetings, a few superficial one-on-ones  and some quarterly checkins for formality. Nothing more.
10
11By *not doing things* you can be better than majority of other middle managers that do things that end up being detrimental - micromanagement, being vocal about your own ideas, making presentations where you would misplace credit and piss off half of your team.
12
13There is so much room to make it worse - and make your team unproductive and demotivated - that in my opinion it’s easier and more optimal just to do nothing and let the team work.
14
15It can be an unspoken contract between two parties. You don’t interfere into your team’s work and they do their best and both share credit for successful execution.
16
17In my experience such setup is low drama and quite effective.
18
19Of course things can be better and middle managers can be helpful, but in my opinion that is very rare with 5-10% chance.
20
21Is there an explanation for this? Are middle managers bad or stupid? No, not at all. I think the setup is screwed. And the game for middle managers differs from both the ICs(individual contributors) and C-suite (including founders).
22
23Middle management is stuck in between places where things happen and that are interesting and productive.
24
25As an IC you can easily imagine that you are contributing something. The output of your work is tangible. After the day of work it often feels that something was achieved - some bug was fixed, some problem was solved, some insight was acquired and product or process became better and that would impact customers or your coworkers.
26
27C-suite is different too because you have tons of responsibilities and you have actually quantitative KPIs to really see how your decisions impact business, company, employees, customers etc.
28
29Middle management is not like that. You spend time in meetings. Maybe you had one-on-one today. Best case it was productive and you helped IC. But that help is hard to measure. It might be unlocked way later and even then it would be not clear in quantitative terms how important was your advice. Worst case you said something stupid, because you’ve misread situation and now you lost a bit more respect from your colleague.
30
31I have a belief that most middle managers have a real problem feeling that they have an impact on a company, their teams etc.
32
33Here is a story that happened almost 5 years ago. I was on a team and we got a new manager. He was over 45 years old, very experienced with a great CV. For 6 months it felt that he did nothing - vacations, performative one-on-ones etc. I don’t even remember that much about him. It was very unremarkable and I think most of my teammates would have the same feeling.
34
35Then one day we had a technical incident and the whole team spent like 12 hours on a call trying to solve the issue. Our manager was there and I think he got involved with helping to coordinate the incident. Next day he was rejuvenated - he smiled and was joking how happy he was to get that “bonding experience”.
36
37He even said that maybe we should have more incidents - that is how much he loved it.
38
39That is where my belief comes from - most people want to be involved and actually do something, help the customers, help teammates etc. Because then your work doesn’t feel pointless. It can give you energy instead of taking it. And I don’t think middle managers in many modern tech companies have a setup that allows them to have an impact and contribute. In my opinion because they don’t have that outlet many got bored and switch to two other things that they can do - 1) micromanagement to try to feel busy and useful 2) climbing the ladder, which often involves nasty things that make you even more isolated.
40
41**Reflections:**
42
43- feeling useful is important. It makes work enjoyable instead of miserable.
44- for some professions it’s way harder to find the purpose and meaning of your work.
45- incentives and processes are good things to look when trying to understand some systematic things(don’t blame the people, blame the game).

1---
2date: 2025-01-13
3location: Playa del Carmen, MX
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Toxic sweetness
8
9I'm on the call with an Airbnb support. There is a problem with the apartment I'm staying in and I need to cancel current booking and immediately move to another place.
10
11The customer agent tells me he understands my problem and "empathizes" with it. He tells me he will help me and that I shouldn't worry, saying "I'm here for you". But of course he cannot solve it immediately and needs to "escalate" it. Because his supervisor is "busy", I shouldn't stay on the line and they will call me back.
12
13I'm happy that all goes like this and hang up. I wait for one hour but they never call me back. I'm starting to get nervous. Remember, I need to cancel this place, find and book a new one, and move immediately. I don't have that much spare time. So I call them again.
14
15Another person picks up. I explain the problem from scratch and they say exactly the same things as the first person - how they "truly understand me" and how they are going to call back.
16
17The cycle repeats. I hang up and wait for one hour. No one calls me back. I call for the third time and get exactly the same answer. This time I press the agent to tell me when they're going to call me back and in how many minutes. He says "in less than 30 minutes".
18
19Of course, no one calls me back after 35 minutes and I call again. I talk to representative number 4. I retell my story and my frustrations with customer support. He listens and says how sorry he is and how he understands me and wants to help me.
20
21But this time he tells me he will take over the case but would need 2 hours to solve the issue. He asks for 2 more hours after I reached out to support for the first time 5 hours ago.
22
23At this point I realize that now I am a character in one of Kafka's stories. I cannot do much and this company is just wasting my time and energy. But what infuriates me the most is the fake empathy and fake understanding. I call it "toxic sweetness".
24
25They say the right things with the sweetest voice. But of course, those things are not true. It's like a snake that slowly wraps around you and with each minute slowly suffocates you. It draws your energy and willpower bit by bit.
26
27At the end you are left with nothing. Your sense of agency is depleted.
28
29You understand that you are against a corporation that prioritizes money.
30
31You understand that support is just a "cost item" for Airbnb. They want to reduce support and they are not doing it for me.
32
33You understand that customer support was designed to be that way. Those customer agents were trained to talk like that. They cannot really help you and of course they do not "empathize" with you. Who came up with the idea that they should? I've never asked for empathy. I don't need it. I need my problem to be solved with the least amount of time and least amount of effort from me. I do not need customer support agent feel what I feel. It would be selfish of me.
34
35### Reflections
36
37- systems that are designed to frustrate and not help *are antihuman*.
38- systems that misuse the language and mess with your perception of objective events and feelings *are antihuman*.
39- systems that reduce agency of people *are antihuman.*
40- systems that reduce your energy *are antihuman.*

1---
2date: 2025-01-21
3location: Playa del Carmen
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Corruption
8
9Years ago I worked at a big tech company. Every employee had an “educational budget” - some fixed amount of money(I forgot how much it was, maybe 200 USD per year or so) per year that can be spent on books, courses etc.
10
11One day our CEO wrote some autobiography. As far as I can tell it wasn’t associated with the company.
12
13But everyone got email in the company to buy his book using our education budget. So we were told to go and purchase his book online and report that as educational expense so that we can get reimbursed from the educational budget.
14
15I don’t know all the details because they were no shared with us but from the point of view of random engineer it looked like this:
16- CEO wanted to get his book on the NYT bestsellers list
17-He used company’s employees and company budget to pump out sales numbers
18
19And maybe that was not true. But no one told us if the book was originally  sponsored by the company and if the company will get money back from the sales.
20
21That was all unclear and not communicated. In our current times we cannot assume good intentions anymore. Transparency is needed.
22
23Just it case it wasn’t clear the book was not good. It was one of those trashy autobiographies of the business person written by the ghost writer.
24
25I think it made it to the NYT bestsellers list at the time. And that is when I saw for myself the value of that list and how easy it can be gamed(if you have money).
26
27### Reflections:
28
29 - if you don’t want any suspicions of corruption - please disclose all the information(who paid for what etc).
30 - transparency will save you from bad rumors.
31 - mixing private affairs and company affairs(especially money) is not good.
32 - many systems seem to be gamed far too easy.
33 - in America we do not use word “corruption” much. “Corruption” is the thing that happens in the “third world countries”. In America we have lobbying  and collusion and interference and who knows how many more smart sounding words describing not good actions.

1---
2date: 2025-01-23
3location: Playa del Carmen, MX
4author: Anton
5---
6# Communication
7
8I’m staying in Mexico in Playa del Carmen. There is a nice local food truck that sells tacos and [tortas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torta#Mexico)(Mexican sandwiches).
9
10Every day I go there and order two tortas: one for myself and one for my girlfriend.
11
12My order usually goes like this:
13
14“One sandwich with meat with cheese and no onions and another one with meat and onions and no cheese”(una torta con arrachera y queso sin cebolla y otra torta con arrachera y cebolla sin queso) - try saying that aloud when you reading this.
15
16At this moment cashier that accepts my order freezes - because I order two sandwiches that kind of opposite of each other. Then in 3 seconds he realizes what I order and repeats the order back to me. I pause too to process what he said, but then I approve the order and he passes it to the cook.
17
18Everything so good so far.
19
20But then every 3rd time when I received my order *I’ve got two sandwiches with onions*.
21
22I repeated this procedure maybe 15 times at this point. And everyday there is a pause and everyday there is an anxiety not knowing if both sandwiches will have onions.
23
24So what is the issue here? The issue is that information needs to travel from me to cashier and from cashier to the cook.
25
26So there is more chances that information can be lost or misunderstood. The person who takes the order and understands it is not the same person who executes it.
27
28Here is small visualization for you:
29
30communication-diagram.png
31
32Why am I telling this story? Because it’s a trivial example about trivial topic - sandwich. But you can see it’s happening in our daily life all the time - in relationship or at work.
33
34[Telephone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game) game is a real world thing that happens all the time.
35
36Think about work. Maybe you come up with some idea for a project. You describe it to 3 different people in one sentence and they will imagine 3 different things - and now you need to spend time bringing everyone on the same page - to reconcile what you have in your head with the things people have in theirs.
37
38Or maybe you are an engineer and your manager asked you to work on a thing that he got from the support and support got it from the customer. How many levels did this information pass before it reach it? How accurate it is?
39
40### Reflections:
41
42- communication is hard.
43- alignment is hard.
44- in order to make communication more efficient remove intermediate steps if possible.
45- if you can, try to implement checks if information received is correct at every stage. try to catch mistakes as early as possible.
46- direct contact - try to make sure that people who collect information at the source are the ones who are working on things(if possible).

1---
2date: 2025-02-14
3location: New York City, USA
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Fake analysis
8
9Ok. Imagine you are in the taxi or uber somewhere in the US. Your driver has his radio on. What is he listening to?
10
11It’s some sport analysis show - basketball or baseball or football.
12
13Hosts of the show debate the game from yesterday. Everyone makes some smart sounding points. They tell the stories that should explain in one go why their team did good/bad yesterday.
14
15It’s all very elaborate. It sounds even profound. It sounds like a host found some unique insight and you are the first one to hear it. And later in the evening you will go and retell this to your friends.
16
17Now step back. Go to twitter or open some podcast. What would you see? You will see similar pattern in similar analysis: “Let me tell you the real story on why russia started the war in Ukraine/who historically owns the land of Palestine etc”.
18
19It’s always tracked to one event in the past and then the story is retold based on that single event.
20
21Why did Lakers play good yesterday? Well it all starts in 2005 when Kobe introduced this novel training exercise.
22
23Why did Chiefs lose Super Bowl? Well, it is because in 2018 they hired logistic manager that has peculiar way of booking hotels and he made a terrible mistake of booking hotel which has late check in.
24
25Why did russia invade Ukraine? Well in in X century there was this event …
26
27Why did Trump win election in 2024? It all goes back to the year 2020. Let me tell you this story that will blow your mind…
28
29If you’ve never been to the US and you hear this sport analysis initially - it sounds impressive. Because it’s elaborate and uses nice words and nice structure and it feels smart.
30
31After some time you realize that people are talking out of their asses. They learned this format that is pure entertainment and very little content.
32
33It’s very unproductive. Because you can try to say that the point is wrong, but now you will be dragged in trying to show that the point is irrelevant. That things are more complicated and nuanced. That every event has multiple inputs and tons of people involved and that all those things played the role.
34
35We were promised scientific methods, tools to search the truth and knowledge and wisdom. But all we got is some performative pseudo-intellectual jerking that does no good. It makes people feel smarter without making them smarter.
36
37**Reflections:**
38
39- things that make you feel good are not always good. thing that make you feel smart are not always smart
40- oversimplification is usually a red flag(unless it’s Occam's razor)
41- how elaborate person is doesn’t imply she is smart, wise or even kind

1---
2date: 2025-02-04
3location: Mexico City, MX
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Marketing
8
9I know about WeWork for probably 10 years now. Since then times when I lived in San Francisco.
10
11But somehow it never appealed to me. As far as I remember their marketing was always focused on “community” and exclusivity. They even renamed company to be “We”(about people and community) from “WeWork” (about the place to work).
12
13And on top of that marketing message there was always this drama with investors and CEO.
14
15All public image and message from the company was  so strange that I’ve never even checked it.
16
17And then one day in 2023 when I was in New York I needed temporary office with display that I can rent for a day to setup new Mac Studio.
18
19I found WeWork and loved it. Immediately I started using it a lot.
20
21I travel a lot and I found WeWork perfect for that. 15 years ago when I was younger and my income was very low every time I arrived in a new city I would go to McDonald’s. Eg I would arrive in some city via bus at 7am and my checking would be at 15:00. I would just spend time in McDonald’s because they were available everywhere, they were open early, they had place to sit, they had coffee and food and bathrooms. And it was always warm.
22
2310 years ago I switched  McDonald’s for Starbucks. It was even better.
24
25Since 2023 I’m using WeWork and I still cannot believe how good the deal is. I’ve used it New York, London, Miami, Dublin, Warsaw, Lisbon, Munich, Cologne and Mexico City.
26
27It simplified my life a lot. Because now if I arrive to London at 7am I can head straight to WeWork. They have comfortable places to work, they have hot coffee and they have security. I can leave my bags there if I want to go outside and get some food.
28
29I’m still so confused why their marketing never communicated those features of WeWork.
30
31WeWork is basically ubiquitous in large cities. It’s very reliable, Internet is great, booking and entering is so simple. I can go from one city to another and never notice a difference. It’s always there and always works. It solves the real problem I have instead of some abstract thing like enabling “community.”
32
33### Reflections:
34
35- stop selling “community”, make and sell utilities or tools.
36- focus on your narrow and unique proposition and not abstract thing.

1---
2date: 2025-01-04
3location: Playa del Carmen, MX
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# On Hiding
8
9Sometime in the past decade, I worked in a huge tech company out of San Francisco. During one of the nights as an engineer, I got invited to an urgent customer call. No one knew what the problem was, so different people from different teams were called in just in case.
10
11When I joined the call, I saw 30 people. Half of the participants were VPs, Directors, and high-profile managers. The rest were engineers.
12
13It was close to midnight, and the customer was screaming on the call. They were the head of some NYC government agency, and something wasn't working.
14
15One of our engineers led the call and tried to: 1) organize work to figure out what was going on and 2) calm down the customer. The engineer was doing his job perfectly.
16
17The customer was upset because it was late, and she needed a fix before morning. She started screaming and insulting our engineers who had woken up to try to solve the issue. Looking around the Zoom call, I saw that all VPs and Directors were muted. They stayed out of it and just listened to the insults. No one tried to step in and calm down the customer. No one unmuted themselves to do anything. No attempts to help or deescalate.
18
19I was shocked. I was shocked that people who were in charge of the company and who were in charge of the engineers didn't do anything. These were people who were supposed to be "leaders", who were "senior" in their careers, who had high-profile educations and MBAs and were paid a lot of money.
20
21The funny part was that this company was all about communicating "family" values - that we were all in this together and that we helped each other. There were countless pages of documentation and emails about this. It was part of the internal and external marketing. Fake, of course.
22
23The next morning, the only thing the manager posted about it was a message: "That was quite a call ;)". With a winking emoji. That was it. No reflection. Pathetic. Few of my younger coworkers were on that call. I felt bad for them. That wasn't a way to experience work.
24
25### Reflections:
26
27 - I can only work for people who I respect. Otherwise, it's really difficult.
28 - Hiding is one of the fastest ways to lose respect. If you are not helping and not taking responsibility, then why are you even needed?
29 - Actions over words. Always. It doesn't matter what a company vision or vision statements are. What matters is what it does.

1---
2date: 2025-01-17
3location: Miami, US
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Californication
8
9Three new stories today. Connected by the common trend.
10
11Year 2018. I live in San Francisco but come to visit Ukraine. In Kyiv I go and attend a few tech meetups.
12
13There is some book from Google on management or something that is all the rage. Everyone is talking about it. How to build and run software company told by some manager from Google(I’m writing this from my memory, so the exact details might be wrong).
14
15I’m a bit surprised. It’s been 4.5 years since I moved to SF and I’ve never heard of this book. No one I knew talked about it in California.
16
17I’m even more surprised because at the time - 2018 - Google already had a bad reputation in SF. Like it was considered a very corporate and boring company milking money from their ads. People usually went there to earn high income doing little work. And it was definitely not a benchmark of organizational efficiency. So no one I knew would be even remotely interested in reading such a book.
18
19At that moment I also realized two things:
20
21- information spreads with a different speed around the world through the human systems. There is huge time latency(several years) between something is known eg in California till it will make it to the mainstream in some other place around the world.
22
23- you can sell anything to the people around the globe if you put some well known label. Like a person who worked at Google can write book on any topic and it will sell. It doesn’t matter if experience of that person is relevant to the readers (that was the same time when Sheryl Sandberg book was selling well around the world. People wanted to read a book because it was from a person working for a famous company).
24
25Let’s move on to January 2025. I’m in Playa del Carmen - slow beach town in Mexico. I enter coffeeshop and pick a free table. I sit down. Immediately I realize my mistake. There is an American woman at the closest table. She is loud. And she is talking to some guy about astrology. With a confidence of an expert she explains what a “typical aries” person is. It goes on for a long time. I’ve heard it before. In California. Person talking absolute crap about the bullshit topic. But with this sense that she knows something and is an expert and can explain it to another person. You see that she feeds energy from this situation. From that feeling of “being an expert”. And that goes on and on for almost an eternity. I’m in pain. I already know that if some stupid things becomes popular in California there is high chance it will spread around the world. I’m scared that I’ll see this more and more around the world in the upcoming years.
26
27Somehow it never works the other way around. I grew up in Ukraine where in 90s astrology was a big thing. So many people cared about their sign and read predictions in magazines and followed dedicated TV programs. Did all that “knowledge” help us? Of course not.
28
29Have people in California who discovered astrology in 2019 done any investigation into whether that thing worked anywhere? Of course not.
30
31It’s always the same trend. Eg take communism. You can find modern communists in California. They always tell you that communism can be achieved if Americans try it. But most of them never try to learn anything from the people who actually lived through communism.
32
33And the last story. At one of my jobs, we had reorganization. A new manager came in. He decided to do a small thing - reorganize the team’s Slack channels. So he doubled the amount, and we went from 2 to 4.
34
35A few weeks later, I noticed that I’m a bit confused because now I’m not sure in which channel to post, but that it’s okay.
36
37I got a response - “I empathize with how you feel about new channels, but we are going to continue tomorrow”.
38
39“Empathize”? I’m okay with any solution. But why do I need someone to “empathize” with me on such a trivial thing?
40
41Why do we start talking like that? Why is this Californian way of talking now spreading around the globe(my new manager wasn’t American and only visited the US once)?
42
43All of those 3 stories I described remind me of California. California is the place where many ideas or cultural phenomena come alive. Unfortunately not all of them are good and not all of them are worth spreading.
44
45### Reflections
46
47- some regions influence the world way more than others in both positive and negative way. I hope we can build some filters to protect us from the spreading of bad ideas.
48- Californian communication style is not good. In fact it’s a bit antihuman. It’s misuses words, it plays with notions of expertise and it hides conflict and aggression inside some weird package.
49- if something is popular(or made NYT bestseller list -  I have another story on that later) - it doesn’t mean it’s good.
50- when people see known brand our bullshit defense is often lifted. It’s a very dangerous situation because with the right branding any idea and any product can be sold.
51 - common knowledge in one place might become common knowledge in another after many years. Cultural latency is a thing. Especially now when we all live in our isolated informational bubbles - something that is obvious to us might not be know to another person for 3 more years.

1---
2date: 2025-03-11
3location: Warsaw, Poland
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Decentralization
8
9I’m going to be quick here. Let’s examine just one chart (usually that is not enough, but will do the job now).
10
11Up until 2014 US GDP was similar to EU. In the past 10 years US GDP grew 10T USD, while EU grew 3T USD.
12
13I believe that US foreign policy in 2025 is partially a result of this growth. American administration feels too powerful because it’s backed by the economy.
14
15Previously the collective West was united by few simple ideas - a) trade benefits all parties (economically and safety-wise) b) security is better to do collectively.
16
17America is currently responsible for 25% of the World GDP (106 T USD). It makes everything very unbalanced and it allows American politicians and oligarchs to have too much influence on the world and lives of people.
18
19I think decentralization is the important idea we should try to pursue. Idea of decentralization is the foundation of America itself. I think it should work on the global scale too.
20
21International politics often seems to be the derivative of economic situation. So it’s important to decentralize economy globally (and that would prevent political centralization - where we are one election away from some disaster).
22
23Ok. What can one do?
24
25I do not know about you but I came to the following conclusion.
26
27I owe America a lot. This is the place where I’ve built my career, learned a lot and where  I’ve earned most of my lifetime income.
28
29I’m very grateful to America and wish the best. I came to the conclusion that 25% of world total GDP is not good for the world and not good for America!
30
31American idea is to have US States to be decentralized as much as possible, similarly the world should work with no clear centers (political, economical, cultural etc).
32
33So I’ll continue to earn money in America but I will try to spend more and more money outside (Ukraine, EU, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia etc).
34
35Every dollar I spend outside will reduce American GDP a bit but will grow GDP of another country.
36
37I’m going to update this post with actual changes I’ve made.
38
39| **vendor & product*
40* | **annual spending*
41* | **replacement*
42* | **status*
43* |
44|---|---|---|---|
45| New Balance shoes | 200 USD | Tons of brands. | Stopped buying from the US. |
46| Atreyu Running shoes | 200 USD | Tons of brands. | Need to find new running shoe brand I like. |
47| Pants | 200 USD | Tons of brands. | Stopped buying from the US. |
48| Underwear | 200 USD | CDLP | Already replaced. |
49| T-shirts | 200 USD | Tons of brands. | Already replaced. |
50| Running shorts | 100 USD | Tons of brands. | Need to find new brand I like. |
51| Socks | 100 USD | Tons of brands. | Already replaced. |
52| AirBnB | 3000 USD | booking.com | Need to think. I’ve spent over 3000 USD in services fees paid to AirBnB each year for the past 2.5 years. |
53| Uber Eats | 200 USD | Bolt | Those are only service fees that go directly to Uber. Will replace Uber Eats in Europe. |
54| Uber | 100 USD | Bolt | Those are only service fees that go directly to Uber. Will replace Uber in Europe. |
55| Amazon |  |  | I rarely use it already, mostly for books. Need to come up with new setup. |
56| Apple |  |  | For now will continue using it. Mostly for tools. |
57| Apple Music | 109 USD |  | Undecided |
58| Apple TV |  |  | Still thinking. Probably go to cinema more often and find other sites where I can buy films. |
59| Netflix | 0 USD |  | Not paying anyway. |
60| WeWork | 0 USD |  | Not paying. But would be good to have replacement. |
61| Google | 100 USD |  | Pay for workspaces. Need to replace it. Do not really need it. |
62| Tom’s toothpaste | 50 USD |  | Need to find replacement. |
63| Deodorant. Malin & Goetz plus Tom’s | 80 USD |  | Need to find replacement. |
64| HotelTonight | 200 USD | booking.com | Those are only service fees. |

1---
2date: 2025-01-28
3location: Playa del Carmen, MX
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Not yet
8
9There is one episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza pitches his sitcom to Russell Darlymple who is the president of NBC.
10
11Proposed sitcom is the show about nothing. Basically it’s a show where nothing happens and characters just do their everyday chores.
12
13Perplexed Dalrymple asks: Well, why am I watching it?  
14George: It’s on TV.  
15Dalrymple: Not yet.  
16
17*Not yet.* Such a powerful phrase. I wish we used it more.
18
19It reminds me of Ukrainian anthem - “Ukraine is not dead yet.”
20
21You see “not yet” allows us to refocus.
22
23In Seinfeld Dalrymple takes George from future that is not there to the present moment.
24
25In case of Ukraine the anthem can say “Ukraine exists now and is free now”, but that is not the point. *The point is to exist and be free in the future.*
26
27So “not yet” allows us to snap from rosy future back to reality or from reality to the negative version of the future.
28
29In both cases it allows us to understand situation better and focus on the priorities.
30
31It feels like we don’t use “not yet” enough in our modern Western world.
32
33Think about it. We called United Nations organization - *United* Nations. What a terrible name. All those nations are not really united. There are so many disagreements and vetos and rarely do nations agree on something and act.
34
35“Not yet United Nations” would be a better way to call that organization. It would imply that we have aspiration for the future and we didn’t achieve it yet.
36
37We do the same a lot with products. Think about TurboTax or something. Is it really “turbo” at  this moment - not really, since you will still spend hours trying to report your taxes in the US.
38
39Wishful thinking is good but at some point if the future never comes wishful thinking becomes almost like a parody at best and a lie at worst.
40
41PS I just realized that Ukrainian anthem reminds me of Paul Graham essay [Default Dead or Default Alive?](https://paulgraham.com/aord.html) Default Dead and “is not dead” are powerful tools to see the current state of things a bit differently.

1---
2date: 2025-01-18
3location: Miami, US
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Blowing bubbles
8
9In [Californication](https://antiantihuman.com/californication) I’ve told a story how some information and common knowledge have a huge latency(time to travel) when spreading from one cultural hotspot to rest of the world.
10
11It always took time for ideas and cultural norms from some society or group of people to spread around geographically. So pretty much for the whole history of community we had some bubbles that would grow and pop. In cycles.
12
13Those bubble were the size of specific group. So your worldview might differ to the people outside of your bubble but you would still find people who share the same opinion or cultural  norms inside your group(same geographical location).
14
15Of course it almost worked, but there were always some outliers inside each bubble - people who didn’t agree and looked for a new knowledge and change etc.
16
17When the Internet came around it gave us a new promise - your new group and social bubble can be geographically distributed. UIf you are misfit you can still find your people and your community even 1000 km away. All using technology.
18
19What a beautiful dream it was. It worked for the first ~20 years of the Internet.
20
21Then algorithmic feeds came around. They had two new properties:
22
23* completely personalized and unique to each user.
24
25* unsharable and not possible to inspect - it’s impossible to see what other person saw.
26
27So in the world of algorithmic feeds every person has their own informational and cultural bubble.
28
29In the older days our personal opinions were mostly formed based on our life experience(and some consumed things like books and movies).
30
31But there are not so many insights one can form based on their own life. Maybe ~20-40 per a lifetime?
32
33So it was a very limited set of things on which you might hold a strong opinion - those were important things that you had visceral experience about. And you would defend those things if disagreement happens in your life - as your life depends on it.
34
35Nowadays our tastes and opinions are mostly formed based on what we see(consume).
36
37Modern Internet was famously called “information superhighway” - it plugs us into infinite matrix of data and media. It overwhelms our senses and bombards us with information. It makes us form opinions on many things we see per day.  It can be 20-40 things daily that we need to form our opinion on. Same number as before, but now it’s per day and not per lifetime.
38
39Every new topic has a potential for disagreement. So if you form 20 opinions per day there is a chance that you would disagree with tons of people on those 20 topics.
40
41And most likely you would disagree with people - all because of algorithmic feeds that are unique to you - the things that you see are seen only by you in that specific order and time. This order determines what you know and how you form your opinions.
42
43That is why we see so many disagreements online. You say something and other person disagrees. You want to scream - if only they would know(seen) things that I know(seen) they would agree with me! But that is impossible to achieve. Your feed is private. It’s not possible to send a link to your feed and allow person to consume same content you consumed from the different platforms in the order you consumed them.
44
45This is a tragedy of personalization. We were told that our life would be better because we are unique snowflakes and software would be able to tailor things to our tastes and needs. Instead we got personalized information superhighways. Plugged straight into our psyches.
46
47And those unique superhighways - those custom algorithmic feeds - make us more isolated from everyone. We feel that we know the truth - because we saw things in our custom feeds - but no-one agrees with us. We feel misunderstood and disconnected.
48
49Internet started with sharing things you consumed: sharing books you’ve read, films you watched, music you listened too, sites you bookmarked etc. Everything was public. Sources for our opinions were possible to audit and trace their history. If someone expressed an opinion you would see how that person came to that opinion by seeing his online history. Nowadays nothing is traceable. Most of the content is ephemeral anyway - some tiktok video that will be gone, some small tweet that is hard to find, some snap video or instagram story that will disappear soon.
50
51Things are not permanent anymore. And they are not communal. We were promised to have an ability to surf the web. Navigate all the information and media in unique ways. But I think the original dream was to surf alongside other people, Seeing them surf the web too. What we got is us surfing (or even us being made to surf) completely on our own. On isolated beach which only us can access with no other people in sight.
52
53### Reflections
54
55- memes is the one of the known to me things that still unites us. memes are usually not dividing by nature - because there are no opinions involved - and they are incredibly shareable that allows them to travel between bubbles and spread fast and far.
56- what we are promised and sold is not necessary the thing we will get.
57- good things do not come for free. when new solution is developed to solve some problem there might be significant side effects that would be hard to fix.

1---
2date: 2025-01-31
3location: Playa del Carmen, MX
4author: Anton
5---
6
7# Seinfeld
8
9If you want to understand America you need to watch Seinfeld. It’s a cultural phenomenon that is still relevant today - 35+ years after the first season came out.
10
11Ok, so you’r millennial from Europe and you like Friends or Sex and The City - I got it. Those things are much more popular outside of the US.
12
13But let me bring you to America.
14
15As of Jan 31, 2025
16
17* [https://www.reddit.com/r/seinfeld/](https://www.reddit.com/r/seinfeld/) 779K members
18* [https://www.reddit.com/r/howyoudoin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/howyoudoin/) (Friends subreddit) 390K members
19* [https://www.reddit.com/r/HIMYM/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HIMYM/) 346K members
20* [https://www.reddit.com/r/sexandthecity/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sexandthecity/) 76K members
21
22Reddit is the site that extremely popular in the US. And you see all the numbers above. Seinfeld subreddit has 2 times more members than Friends or How I Met Your Mother, or 10 times more than Sex and the City.
23
24### What is the deal with Seinfeld?
25
26It’s a cultural phenomenon so it’s a hard thing to explain or analyze, but let me list few points.
27
28Seinfeld could have been easily called Friends and that name would suite Seinfeld better than Friends TV Show.
29
30Friends displays relationship between 6 people that I’ve never seen in my life(especially in America). In Friends 4 out of 6 people always live in two neighboring apartments. That is already unrealistic. The whole point of New York is that you choose a place you can afford and like and then you step up of your apartment to meet people! And you meet people who have similar beliefs or tastes or do some cool things. You don’t spend all your time in the apartment  with 3 people who live with you or next door.
31
32Also in Friends almost all the characters slept with each other(with exception of Phoebe and Ross-Monica). I’ve never saw such group dynamic in my life. In Seinfeld all the characters have romantic relationships outside of the group(with small exceptions that are not over proportional to real life).
33
34The most weird thing that Seinfeld could have been easily called Sex and The City. It was also about 4 very different adults who navigated their social and romantic life in NYC.
35
36### Ok, but why I’m writing about Seinfeld here?
37
38I think Seinfeld is truly anti-antihuman. Let me make my case.
39
40One of the best parts of Seinfeld is its deep penetration in our everyday lives. If you watched Friends you can make few references to the show in real life(one Mississippi, two Mississippi etc), if you watched HIMYM it’s the same(“Wait for it!”). But if you watched Seinfeld there are *countless* numbers of things that you would drop daily and they would be understood by people who watched the show.
41
42Another distinct thing about Seinfeld that it’s all “clean jokes” - which is different from the modern American standup. I do admire that, because it’s just way harder to execute.
43
44Another big thing in Seinfeld is constant reflection on the current state of society, societal norms, culture etc. Jerry Seinfeld’s standup was like that - observation comedy and the whole TV show was done in that style. Nothing even close to this happened in the other TV shows I named. Observing and self-reflection are very anti-antihuman things. Those are the things I try to do on this site.
45
46Seinfeld is anti-antihuman because it’s not flawless or overproduced. All the characters are “just ‘umans”. And the actors are humans too - Jerry Seinfeld is famously considered to be not a great actor.
47
48So the show feels very real and not overproduced and not polished. And this brings me to the last point.
49
50Have you noticed in the past 10 years rise of raw podcasts? Think Joe Rogan and others. Where the host would sit and talk to a guest for 3 hours with no filter.
51
52That was the whole point of Seinfeld - Jerry and George just talking to each other. With no preparation and no agenda. Even the setting is the same as modern podcast - one table and two people sit across it and talk to each other.
53
54Seinfeld tapped into that 20 years before everyone else really. While Friends were about relationships and romantic drama and Chandler and Joey watching TV on their armchairs Seinfeld was and is about something else - random unfiltered conversations. Something that so many of us still seek now.