Husan Isomiddinov

I usually stay away from admissions or sat-related topics, but this is not about admissions anymore. It is about basic ethics. There is this channel that openly sends the leaks: https://t.me/secretsofsat And there are other BIG orgs that (i won’t name) who openly rig the system and either send the leaks publicly or within their students. If you reduce the entire value of an elite education to cheating in the tests, you will get an according result. You reap what you sow. I think this topic should be brought more often. More often than debunking some admissions gurus.

SAT inflation is insane. Students are getting 1550s with ease. I fear CB might take action. An aggressive action. I remember Egypt had the problem with the leaks. They banned the test in the country for an entire year. CB is not stupid. They are an educational institution.

Made some improvements today: deep thinks (thinkers), the stack scroll in the reading section, and a few minor design changeds. Some people asked why I did this entire thing. To be frank, I don't know. It just felt the next important thing that I had complete with my academic journey. Or maybe I wanted to see my own academic path and intellectual interests more visually. Or maybe I was a victim of mimetic desire after seeing the works of these guys: - paulgraham.com - patrickcollison.com - press.stripe.com - thekurzweillibrary.com - andymatuschak.org - calculatingempires.net (this one is crazy cool)

husanisomiddinov.com You can check out my blog. Videcoded the entire thing. Took a little over a month. Used Typescript, JS, and MDX (Markdown with JS). There are some parts that are incomplete. And definitely some mistakes too. But I eventually launched it! (somewhere in the middle, i had to renew the entire architecture of the project. the speed was an issue)

The Foundation Asimov fulfilled Machiavelli's description of a futurist: "Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times." The Foundation Trilogy is not prophecy. Asimov consulted the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire to create his sci-fi world. But mapping out an entire Galactic Empire using the Roman Empire as a base wasn't meant for a lazy analogy. Asimov, I believe, was testing out his hypothesis: if civilizational decline follows predictable patterns, can we engineer our way out? Hari Seldon is one of the main protagonists. He is a mathematician who invented a statistical framework called Psychohistory. Psychohistory would analyze the past patterns and predict the future (on a grander scale, not on an individual level). He finds that the Galactic Empire is doomed to collapse, with eventual chaos followed for 30 thousand years. The Foundation is especially compelling right now. We are living through our own version of late-empire decline. We have institutions that no longer solve problems. Bureaucracies that exist to perpetuate themselves. Systems running on momentum rather than purpose. And too many standards that make the point of "standard" pointless. Like Rome's grain dole, we have programs designed to manage problems rather than get rid of them. (I talked about this in one of the essays in the writing section: Exit). Asimov says the Foundation is the solution. We need to preserve knowledge for better times, so we can go through chaotic times faster. Akin to a prescription written way before the illness kicks in. The right prescription helps alleviate the pain and keeps the immune system at stable levels while the body deals with the problem. The collapse is inevitable. But we can prepare for it. We can build the Foundation that survives the fall.

I was writing a mini reflection on the book "Skin in the Game" by uncle Taleb. It is for my blog. The book itself is poorly organized. I think Taleb wrote it in more of a stream-of-consciousness mode for the most part. His words are violent. He is blunt, sometimes obstuse, but very often right. He reminds me of Magnus Carlsen for some reason. Bold. Yet Great. The Economist described reading it as as "being trapped in a cab with a cantankerous and over-opinionated driver." Instantly reminded me of the evening Yandex ride I had earlier (more like trapped in the traffic jam). Only if I had a thick tape. The yellow one used for sticking to bigger surfaces. In anyway, amazing read. Had read it last year, but had to revisit this one on my digital library. I can send the reflection later.

I am making my channel private for a few days because some fake accounts keep joining and spamming my comments. I am not sure how, but uncle Durov gotta fix this asap even though he gave this amazing interview with another fella from Khujand.

“Everyone deserves to have a mentor” Happy teachers’ day people!

This is what happens when a Texas accent goes on a vision quest and comes back with a philosophy degree and a suspicious amount of bongo experience. Easily my favorite one from Hollywood! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_woFP79F0Q

If you are not using NotebookLM, you are missing out on something big! Try: https://notebooklm.google.com/ @husan_thinking

💼 Internship Positions at Agora! About a month left until the Early round deadline, and many (including you?) might still be struggling to gain genuine experience. Don't get us wrong. One should not engage in any activity solely for the sake of applications. But sometimes it is just hard to find proper experience in the fields you enjoy. This chance might serve as a refuge from your pressing problem. General benefits: - Genuinely well-written recommendation letters from either the Agora team or the SATashkent authority. - Industry operations exposure: Understanding how edtechs make money, build audiences, and scale. - A chance to make new connections and put the first steps into your career ladder. - If you need to buy courses to better your skills or need access to paid tools, we INVEST in you! Apply: https://forms.gle/64fC3o9LgbKtrDu38 📝 R&D Intern

What you will do: - Find good writing examples from known authors/academics - Write notes on why each piece is useful for teaching - Research content for social media posts about writing and intellectually-stirring ideas What we want: - Flexible with using Google ecosystem and similar software tools (digital organization) - Effective researching skills - Self-directed work style - Strong creative writing skills - Passion in writing and writing education (don't apply if you plan college admissions benefits) Duration: 2 months | Compensation: Unpaid for the 2-months period (possible paid return offer later)

🎨 Graphic Designer

What you will do: - Create design templates for social media posts - Update the website design (tentative) What we want: - Broad design taste and comprehensive understanding of multiple design languages - Punctuality and good work ethic - Stark arguments in design decisions (we want you to tell us what to do, not vice versa) - Passion in design (don't apply if you plan college admissions benefits) Duration: One month | Compensation: Unpaid with a high possibility of paid return offer if the work is satisfactory

🖋 Copywriting Intern

What you will do: - Create a plan of pre-planned posts across social media platforms and make sure the posts are on time - Manage the LinkedIn account effectively - Research more effective ways of copywriting and growing audience - Self-growth in copywriting What we want: - Copywriting is hard, so we want people with actual passion in brand-marketing, business, and consumer psychology - Genuine work ethic and punctuality - Strong writing skills - Priority commitment (don't apply if you plan college admissions benefits) Duration: One month | Compensation: Unpaid with a high possibility of paid return offer if the work is satisfactory

@agora_writing

Knowing English is not an achievement, it is the minimum that counts! Got 1550 on SAT? Cool, now start gaining actual knowledge in your field. Explore, observe, interact with advanced ideas. Stop performing intelligence. @husan_thinking

Wrote this in more like a stream-of-consciousness mode, so there are a lot of mistakes with the argumentation, so I will address them below quickly: 1. "Only a Sith deals in absolutes," And just as Obi Wan Kenobi said, I want to exclude the absolutist thinking from the equation, which my above reflection seems couldn't avoid. I am not saying politics is bad, and tech is good. There is so much overlapping between these domains. And I am not saying you should not pursue politics. It was just my experience that deterred me. 2. It is not all broken with Politics. Look at Nepal. Look at Indonesia. There is progress. (I am NOT rooting for revolutions, ahaha). We have proven that if a system doesn't work, people can make it work. It is not like a dead-end per se. 3. I addressed it in the og post too and i will do it again. I am not saying there is no politics involved in tech, ai, or startups, or however you call it. But the power structures of this new domain seem to be more dynamic, novel, and a bit exciting. So, I am essentially escaping politics to go to "better politics." I know I overdramitized, so I am correcting myself.

For all those folks smashing instagram reels 24/7 to the point of being unable to read long essays, here is the message in a short form: I studied Politics for the entirety of my high school, but then I found a new toy-car to play with. And just like any other materialistic person, I dumped my old toy to play with the new toy-car.

The Exit I used to think politics was where change happened. In the past 3 years, which happens to coincide with my high schools years, I spent afternoons reading Rawls and Nozick. Did internships. Wrote policy briefs that no one read. And even bought a yearly "Washington Post" membership which I probably ended up using for a few weeks anyway. I thought I was preparing for something important. The more I learned, the less sense it made. Politics wasn't about solving problems. It was about managing them. Keeping them at just the right temperature. Hot enough to mobilize voters, cool enough to avoid actual solutions. Every issue had the same structure. Someone identifies a real problem. Then the machinery kicks in. Committees form. Studies get commissioned. The problem gets reframed, subdivided, assigned to working groups. By the time anything emerges, the original issue has been processed into something unrecognizable. Something safe. Something buried deep under flagrant bureaucracy. This dive into politics coinciding with peak political sensitivity in the world power stage was of some help too. I could find proof for my 17-year-old self's speculations. The pattern was always the same. Take something urgent and make it routine. Take something clear and make it complicated. Take something that demanded action and turn it into a conversation. We can't really call this incompetence. It was the system working exactly as designed. The breaking point came during the admissions-season. I won't say how or what happened. But I spent the entire autumn/winter in an intellectual panick and paranoia, wondering if the field I was choosing was really mine, and whether or not I belonged in that perfectly-imperfect system that's entire purpose is to do what it is not supposed to. (sorry if i am sounding like a drama king atp) So I exited. I used to think that I'd not make fast decisions. But I did. I self-taught myself to code instead. Frontend took my summer. And now learning Python. I read everything I could find about AI. Fei-Fei Li's work on computer vision. Mustafa Suleyman on AI for social good. Texts that made actual claims you could test. In politics, you could spend years debating whether something was possible. In AI and startups, you built it and found out. The feedback could be direct, and progress measurable. When something worked, it worked for everyone who used it. Not that AI doesn't have its own politics, of course. But at least the code either runs or it doesn't. I'm diving deeper into startups and AI culture now. Not because I think technology is some silver bullet, but because it's the most accessible way to make an impact. You don't need permission from committee chairs or party officials. You don't need to wait for election cycles. You identify a problem and you solve it. My parents still ask when I'm going to a college. They don't understand how my entire intellectual manifesto changed. But I am happy as I could be. It is better to take a gap year, change, explore, and develop than worrying over my course-schedule that I know won't benefit me. With all the noise in politics lately—the constant outrage cycles, the performative controversies—I'm just fed up. Tired of watching obvious solutions get buried under process and procedure. Tired of people being slow and ignorant to just do the things. Tired of hearing the same speeches about change while the fundamentals never shift. And all that crap about "democracy," "freedom," and "justice" being tossed around like they don't carry any weight. And sometimes I think, Orwell was really an optimist.

Everyone tells you to be yourself in writing, but how do you actually be yourself? Start by learning to recognize what interests you. Most people have been taught that what they notice doesn't matter, so they never learn how to notice—not even what interests them. They walk through the world assuming their curiosity is trivial, their observations worthless. Or they assume that the world has been completely pre-noticed, already sifted and sorted and categorized by everyone else, by people with real authority. Everything worth seeing has already been seen, everything worth saying has already been said—or so they believe. And so they write about pre-authorized subjects in pre-authorized language. Why do I say this? When students are free to write anything they want, what they write first are pieces they hope look like something they saw published somewhere about subjects they believe are pre-authorized because someone has already written about them in pieces they hoped looked like something they saw published somewhere. The result is writing that sounds like writing about writing—imitations of imitations, copies of copies. A first piece of that kind is a tacit way of taking shelter under the authority of someone else's perceptions. It's also a way of saying, "I know you're not really interested in what I think or notice." It's a kind of preemptive apology for taking up space on the page. But that's the very thing the reader is interested in—if your sentences allow him to be. Your particular way of seeing is the only thing you have that no one else does. @husan_thinking

I will be sharing some of the notes I took on some of the books I am adding to my blog. These mini-essays don't do much. Just the ones written when I was in the stream-of-consciousness mode, sketching a few points on my notebook. I need to add the reflections for each book, a few more quirks, and i will host my blog on a proper domain.

@husan_thinking

To all the folks spending 25 hours of their entire day on Claude's latest models, you better go and watch this video. Or, just wait until we drop Atlas 1.0 (more on that later)

Bye Bukhara