Alexander Furmanov

Software Engineer & Essayist & Founder of @rhizome_lab

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

@OpenAIDevs When is the integration between the mobile app and Codex for Windows coming?

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

@dzprince25 @jacopone2 I'm not even from there, I was just talking about the logic of homo sovieticus: the West wants to provoke us, so let's get provoked first

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Codex limit resets are actually a genius dark pattern if you think about it.

Vibe coding was already gambling: you roll the dice and hope the agent comes back with a brilliant patch instead of architectural soup. But now there's an extra layer: refreshing X, reading rumors, wondering whether the limits will magically reset in the next 24 hours.

Honestly? I respect it.

Please continue...

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Am I understanding this correctly: the Baltic states supposedly want to ‘provoke Russia’ (whatever that’s even supposed to mean), so Russia should play right into their hands and get provoked before any actual provocation even happens? Sounds like the same kind of schizophrenic logic used to justify the war against Ukraine

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

@jxnlco It would be great to make a small usability improvement by adding the ability to customize project icons for better visual navigation. Or even for chats too

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@dvorstone Kripke probably got flack from his wife’s bf for Homelander being used in based memes and had to write that ending as a groveling apology

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

@ns123abc And we’re still complaining about expensive subscriptions

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

@BeingJWood If people stopped pretending that left-wing and far-left views are the norm/the center, then Musk wouldn’t seem far-right at all

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

@did0f @thsottiaux, could you explain it?

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Lol, do you actually think a strong ruble is a meaningful economic indicator?)

Let me tell you a scary secret: the government is actually not interested in having such a strong ruble and is trying in every possible way to weaken it, because with a weak ruble the country’s real dollar-denominated expenses are lower than when the ruble is strong.

And the reason the ruble is in this state is the lack of normal imports and exports due to sanctions. Russia barely exports anything anymore, which means there’s no significant internal demand to sell rubles and buy dollars for international transactions

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Looool, so you’re unironically citing an official Kremlin resource as a source of absolute approval numbers for Putin? Especially in times like these, when half of respondents either simply refuse to answer or give complimentary answers because they’re afraid of the consequences.

What matters is the trend:

1) Right now, according to these very same data sets, Putin’s ratings are experiencing their sharpest decline of the entire war.
2) Since May 8th, these ratings have stopped being published under various excuses like holidays — even though that had never happened before.

Draw your own conclusions.

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Or maybe you can tell me about the economic situation in Russia, particularly in Moscow. You probably live there yourself and know firsthand, right?

Or maybe you can tell me about the mood in Russian society — from exhaustion with the war to growing hatred toward the government because of internet shutdowns and rising taxes.

But sure, keep consuming the Kremlin copium about imminent successes on the front. It’s cute that it still works on someone — even if not on Russian speakers.

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Lol, you’re saying this to someone who reads all the major Z war correspondents in the original and sees what they’re actually writing about the situation.

There’s literally one general mood hanging in the air there: the war needs to be wound down.

But go ahead — break down what I wrote point by point and tell me exactly which part of it is false, as someone consuming information through a chain of ten intermediaries, while I have direct access to it. And again, I personally know what the soldiers themselves are saying about it

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Так ты нихрена не отзеркалил и объяснил почему)
Советы не могли двигаться дальше на запад из-за американцев, которые спецом высадились, чтобы русские не успели "освободить" территории западнее Берлина. В твоём же случае ты так и не объяснил, почему если НАТО спит и видит, как бы уничтожить Россию, оно не сделало это в момент, когда по парламенту били из танков или когда ГКЧП захватила президента и была полная неразбериха. Ядерное оружие? Ну вот ты сам и ответил на эти даунские доводы на счёт вторжения в РФ, если даже в момент её максимальной слабости они испугались вторгаться. Или я что-то пропустил и 24ого февраля Россия лишилась своего ядерного арсенала?

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Yeah, definitely not because the Allied armies were rapidly advancing toward Berlin from the west precisely to prevent that from happening — and to stop even more proxy communist regimes from magically appearing, just like they did in all the Eastern European countries “liberated” by the Soviets

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Advancing? By how many kilometers, and at the cost of what losses compared to the AFU’s losses? At this pace, how long will it take them to capture even Donbas, let alone all of Ukraine? And will the economy and human resources even last that long, considering the severe recession that has already begun? (And those aren’t my words — Russian officials themselves are saying it.)

Let them capture ten more random villages — what difference does it make if, at this rate, their front eventually collapses and they risk losing everything altogether?

Right now, they’re being temporarily saved mostly by oil prices, but even then Ukrainian strikes on refineries and tankers are making it hard to fully capitalize on that. And I’m not even going to get started on what happens once those prices fall back down again. That’s exactly why Nabiullina, the head of the Central Bank, isn’t celebrating and is openly warning about the inevitable downturn.

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

It definitely wasn’t the kind of devastating occupation people here love to talk about. Our homo sovieticuses love telling stories about how Russia was “on its knees” in the 90s and how Yeltsin was a puppet of the West, but I don’t recall Yeltsin having to beg for permission to hold a military parade from the president of Ukraine through the president of the United States.

I also don’t remember the country suffering a collapse in a war it itself started, nor do I remember Russia simultaneously losing virtually all of its regional influence — Venezuela, Syria, Armenia, Hungary, and soon enough Belarus as well.

Putin, with his Soviet-era horror stories about “scary NATO” and his imperial ambitions, didn’t just bring my country to its knees — he put it in a coffin.

So yes, I absolutely think that none of today’s cowardly world leaders, who are terrified of Putin’s empty threats, would have dared to do anything against Russia or attack it in any way if nothing had happened in 2022

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

I'm Russian myself, and I know perfectly well that if Russia had any real ability to escalate this conflict further, it absolutely would have used it already.

What you're mostly listing is either mythical wonder-weapons that have supposedly been "about to enter active service" for years now, or weapons of which Russia has catastrophically small numbers left, with barely any ability to produce more — and which likely wouldn't penetrate Kyiv’s air defense in any meaningful quantity anyway.

If you were actually familiar with Russian Z-channels, you'd understand this perfectly well. It's enough just to read what they themselves write about the increasingly dire situation Russia has found itself in on the front

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Respond with what exactly something they aren't already using? Nuclear weapons? So that the very next day even their few remaining allies turn away from them, or so that Russia burns in nuclear ashes together with Putin's regime?

Time after time, all these so-called "red lines" turned out not to be red but brown lines — from strikes on Crimea to strikes on Russian territory itself. Putin is a cowardly thug who just keeps trying to bluff his opponents

[Alexander Furmanov @afurmanoff]

Okay, smartass, how many terrorist shellings were there from Ukraine against Russia before the war started, and how many similar attacks were there from Gaza against Israel? Do you seriously think Ukraine posed the same level of threat to Russia that Iran and all of its terrorist garbage proxies pose to Israel (and I'm not talking only about Gaza)?

Or do you seriously think Ukraine was a "terrorist state"? It was doing exactly what Russians did during the Chechen wars — when they wiped the city of Grozny off the face of the earth — with one small difference: Chechnya actually wanted to secede, whereas in Donbas Russian proxies were simply brought in to artificially create the entire situation