In 2020, during university, I realized that I should stop vegetating at home all the time, and became obsessed with the idea of traveling: back then, I spent days on end coming up with my own itineraries, figuring out the ins and outs and studying about countries along with my main classes. I spent a lot of time on it, but it paid off: now I have my own guidebook, as well as an understanding of which specific places I want to visit and how to get through them in the most optimal way. Some time later, I made my first solo trip in the Altai Republic to see how much money I'd actually need — but quickly realized I need nothing at all.

During another wave of emigration from Russia, I decided to start living on the road instead of settling somewhere. To achieve this, I've learned to work remotely and became an extreme minimalist, then grabbed a camera and transformed my life into a full-time adventure.

Now I live for exploration, which changed my lifestyle: a five-something-kg backpack of everything I own (my home, basically), simple living, total mobility and genuine hobo-punk spirit. I tend to invest in experiences, being a renter, not looking for material possessions. No shoes & no problems. Only freedom and rock 'n' roll mixed with inner peace — I refer to my own "philosophy" as "Zenpunk", and it sounds sexy.

After exploring most countries, I'll probably start traveling more casually, but while I'm young — there can't be any other options. Seize the day!

At the moment I'm sticking to hobo travel style, namely the triad: lightpacking, hitchhiking and couchsurfing. I almost always travel solo, over long distances at a time, co-op with other digital nomads at stopovers, and stay away from touristy spots, occasionally venturing out on small 1-2 day treks with a tent. This style requires almost no money, and therefore allows me to work much less often. I also intend to try moto-traveling and van-dwellling in the future, but for now extreme is preferred — the lack of pretentiousness makes it possible to understand people better by living alongside them, as well as to learn how to get out of trouble, speak to people, not give up.

AI and data has fascinated me even longer — that's why I chose a related career. It's a piece of pleasant routine: with my active lifestyle, I'm glad I can slow down to delve into complicated things requiring diligence. Some of my discoveries are published in Research.

I'm a multidisciplinary full-time freelancer: I work with data, do analytics, design AI algorithms and build software (see my portfolio with 50 projects). It's a starter for my small, slowly growing business.

I'm also an author and maintainer of a free in-depth course on machine learning and data science. There are 167 articles in the course so far.

I absolutely love open source and actively contributing myself (check out my GitHub). And yes, this site is open source too. You can help with minor fixes or even contribute to the course!

I'm a long-time Linux user. My setups are usually minimalistic, lightweight and optimized as much as possible for the computer's hardware. Here you can find my Arch Linux config.

I'm slowly moving towards complete self-hosting of all my data and apps to stay independent.

Despite the ubiquitous usage, Averett isn't my surname, but a pseudonym or even something of an alter ego.

Before 2022 I wanted to move to 🇷🇺 Saint Petersburg, but had to put this idea on hold for an indefinite period of time  At the moment, if I return to Russia, I won't be able to leave the country and will face repressive laws, losing many other rights — because I'm conscripted for military service (travel restrictions are imposed automatically).. I'm still considering this city for permanent residence in the future, yet supposing permanent emigration if returning to Russia won't be possible for the next few years.  Note to self: I consider 🇦🇷 Buenos Aires on a "Nómadas digitales" visa as my top priority migration option in case I can't/won't go back to Russia, as I'd like to learn Spanish and it's possible to get citizenship there quickly (opening up free travel to Europe), so I see this passport as a good investment of ~2 years.

In most of my political attitudes, I support the ideas of right-wing libertarianism (more towards classical liberalism) and cultural conservatism — as I'm moderately conservative overall.  In short, I mostly advocate freedom of speech & self-defence, property & privacy rights, free-market capitalism, natural law and true federalization along with gradual reduction of government — which is (sadly) an unpopular set of views — it's neither the liberal nor the far-right side of the Russian right wing. I support some initiatives of the Libertarian Party of Russia since 2018; the party proposes libertarian reforms in this rusty political system, but since 2022 it has been completely in exile, mostly being focused only on distingushing Russian people from the Russian state against the backdrop of collective discrimination.

I keep a channel @avreads in Telegram with some knowledge I get from reading Wikipedia and classic literature.