BEg2 ch 34 references

[Michael Bailey]

“Lining the streetlike corridors, where a hundred years ago pony-drawn
delivery wagons, cranked up here on massive hydraulic lifts, brought
directly to the doorsills of tenants cans of milk, bushels of flowers,
cases of champagne”

Wow - that Deseret sounds Paul-Bunyan big!

Couldn’t find any historicity for that.



“It’s fuckin Hallowe’en, right?” sez Grisha.

         “Paying respects,” explains Misha.

         To whom? Here at The Deseret, of course, to whom else but Lester
Traipse, the real Hallowe’en ghost tonight, Lester the jive-ass ballistic
blade victim with the unfinished business, doomed to wander those
century-old corridors until accounts are balanced, or for eternity,
whichever comes first. Lester was a creature of Silicon Alley, Alley to the
core, and down the Alley the stories are never that short let alone sweet,
down there it’s not only a mediagenic neighborhood of dreams recently faded
but also the latest in a tradition of New York Alleys It Is In Fact Best To
Avoid, shadows full of mentally unstable voices, echoes off the masonry,
cries of city desolation, metallic noises less innocent than ancient trash
cans in the wind.”


Metallic noises less innocent - that’d be like Scrooge’s former partner
Marley’s clanking chains?

Lester still haunting the Deseret like the ghost of Silicon Alley, both
killed off by bigger fish: Lester’s cupidity quashed by the weaponized
greed of Ice, and Silicon Alley’s dawning new age of helpful computers as
“machines of loving grace” trampled by the ugliness of the burgeoning PNAC
security state vision iconified in 43, and the marauding rent-seeking
golden toilet emblematic of 45 while he was still just a horrible predatory
bigoted developer.



Misha and Grisha -
“You two,” noodging cautiously, “really did attend that Civil Hackers’
School in Moscow, didn’t you?”

Umnik Academy!” cries Misha, “those guys, no, uh-uh!”

         “Not us! We’re only chainiki!”

        “From Bobruysk!” Misha nodding vigorously.

         “Don’t even know how to sit facing keyboard!”



Chainik - it’s cute that the Russian slang for a tyro is “teapot”

Umnik -
https://www.fbras.ru/en/meropriyatiya-centra/umnik-v-ran

The Research Center of Biotechnology RAS is one of the main organizers of
the competitions of S&T projects targeting young scientists in the
framework of the *Program “UMNIK in the Russian Academy of Sciences”* of
the Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises in Science
and Technology.

T*he aim of the Program* “*UMNIK”* (the Russian abbreviation for “Member of
the Youth Research and Innovation Competition”) is to select and encourage
young researchers, who want to thrive and fulfill their potential in the
fields of innovation, science and technology. The program provides
organizational and financial support for innovative projects.

The program supports R&D projects implemented by young scientists and
experts (aged up to 30 years) and intended to promote the effective
commercialization of scientific results in the medium term. It is possible
to become a winner only once.

*Five thematic areas of the Program*:

   - Digital technologies
   - Medicine and health saving technologies
   - Advanced materials and chemical technologies
   - New devices and intelligent manufacturing technologies
   - Biotechnologies
   - Energy Resource Efficiency

The competition is organized in relevant institutes of the Russian Academy
of Sciences and the final competition is held twice a year (in spring and
autumn) in Moscow.

The grant of the Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises
“UMNIK” program is 500 thousand roubles within two years.

Schedules and more information about the planned events are published on
the official web-site of the Program “UMNIK” <https://umnik.fasie.ru/>.


Bobruysk - city in Belarus: a backwater?


https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/places/baltic-cis/countries/bobruysk