Exploring Lippmann Plates: The Wonders of Early Color Photography | June 06 2026, 05:30

I learned today about a method of color photography invented in 1891, called the Lippmann plates. The Lippmann method is a beautiful hybrid of photography and holography. A layer of transparent gelatin with silver halide nanoparticles was applied to a glass plate, which was backed by a mirror made of liquid mercury (!). Light, passing through the glass, was reflected by the mercury, collided with itself, and created a standing wave. Inside the microscopic layer of gelatin, the light literally “froze,” burning silver nanostructures in strict accordance with the actual wavelength.

In all modern methods, color is achieved by overlaying three colors, just as on the screen from which you are reading this, red, blue, and green. Thus, there is no true yellow or purple in photographs. But on the Lippmann plate, all colors are real.

It’s also interesting that the Lippmann plate contains not a drop of pigment or dye. It is absolutely transparent! The color in it is born physically (due to structural interference) — just as the wings of butterflies or soap bubbles shimmer.

And obviously, you cannot make a copy from such a “photograph.” I’ll give a link to a good video below.

Indeed, this optical magic had its own quirks. Perfect mirror-like layers inside the plate were only obtained from pure, concentrated color. If a complex “dirty” or dull light entered the frame, the microstructures began to overlay each other, blurring the accuracy of color reproduction. Moreover, two opposite effects were born in the emulsion at the same time: the physical silver mirror created a colorful positive picture, but the silver itself remained just a regular black-and-white negative. Because of this optical conflict, the brightness of the frame was severely compressed, creating a vintage effect of a “hand-painted” photograph. Therefore, the method required jewel-like work with light and perfectly bright set pieces.

The Secrets of Painting and Maintaining a Water Tower | June 05 2026, 20:02

Why does the water tower (next to the house) have a tent during the day in thirty-degree heat, but not at night? That’s what I thought too. It turns out – I thought wrong.

It turns out that the tent is temporary, necessary for painting the tower. Once painted, it will be removed. At night, the paint is aired out and dries.

By the way, the tower is metallic, which means it changes size with temperature fluctuations. Hence, the paint is elastic.

Interestingly, how they check if everything has been covered with paint (because otherwise it will start rusting). They use a method, amusingly still called Holiday Detection since the early days of shipbuilding, which is essentially spark testing for defects.

A specialist takes a device that looks like a mop with a metal brush, to which a high voltage is applied (up to several thousand volts). Since dry epoxy resin is a dielectric and the steel wall behind it is a conductor, the inspector slowly moves the brush over the freshly painted wall. If there is even the slightest microscopic defect in the coating, the electrical circuit is completed, a loud beep sounds and a spark jumps. This spot is immediately marked and repainted.

Also, by the way, just in case someone didn’t know, these towers don’t even come close to creating enough pressure for the water to reach your faucet. They act as accumulators, softening the uneven consumption. And at the same time, they serve as a shock absorber.

And another interesting fact is that in the northern states the problem is not with heating but with freezing in the winter. A layer of ice forms on the surface and along the walls, comparable to a meter or two in thickness. And there, they really do have water heaters.

The Intriguing Life and Science of Ilya Mechnikov | June 02 2026, 11:32

Talk about tons of weird and intriguing stuff about Ilya Mechnikov (biologist). His older brother (Ivan) – a prototype for Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Another brother (Lev) – an anarchist, sociologist, fought in Italy alongside Garibaldi. Mechnikov himself made two attempts to depart this life: the 1st time — after the death of his 1st wife (who, suffering from tuberculosis, was carried into the church on a chair). Mechnikov swallowed morphine but survived. The 2nd time — when his 2nd wife contracted typhoid. He deliberately infected himself with relapsing fever. Both survived. By the way, this 2nd was his 15-year-old teacher (when he was 30).

Odessa. The country’s first bacteriological station on Leo Tolstoy street 🙂 An employee there botched a vaccine for anthrax and a whole flock of sheep died. Scandal => M emigrated to Paris.

Paris. Came under the wing of Louis Pasteur (the father of pasteurized milk). P supported M’s theory, gave him a lab in his institute for 28 years. M worked there for free.

M advanced the theory that not everyone who gets infected becomes sick and dies. Basically, it’s all about (of course) the gut microflora. To prove it, he deliberately drank cholera vibrios. Nothing, he got lucky (“lucky as you were”, M thought)

Not satisfied. To prove that it was about the microflora, he made his lab assistant Latapie drink cholera. Hmm, then M gave the culture to a second person, the biologist-watchman J.-B. Joupié. Joupié nearly died. Mechnikov: yay, it works: different microfloras, the microbe works differently (hmm).

Result – Nobel Prize for phagocytosis (cell immunity). And he is also the “father of gerontology”: M proposed that for longevity, one needs to quell “bad bacteria” using probiotics (hmm).

In the end, he still died after the third heart attack. In Paris, his ashes are kept in the library of the Pasteur Institute. Also, in English Wikipedia, he is Élie Metchnikoff. Hard to guess.

In the photo, Mechnikov is persuading Leo Tolstoy that he is not a charlatan.

The Mystery of Tal’s Havana Incident: Chess, Reality, and AI | June 02 2026, 00:50

In one of the chess communities, they posted this photo.

It seems to follow a theme. The Olympics, Havana, Tal really did get hit on the head with a bottle in one of the bars – and he was out of action for several days – but then he returned to the board.

But there are seven obvious differences from reality. The most interesting detail – too many pens and fingers on the right hand. But the most interesting – AI would never correctly portray it, no matter how hard it tries.

Understanding the Tingling Sensation from a Charging Laptop | May 31 2026, 15:27

Today I learned why there’s a tingling sensation from the metallic body of, say, a MacBook when it’s charging. The effect is called electrovibration, and it arises due to parasitic capacitive coupling and the absence of grounding in the standard power supply. This seemed kind of obvious, but exactly how it works was not.

Inside the charger, there is a capacitor, which allows a safe but noticeable potential of AC current to seep into the aluminum laptop case. When you touch the cover, your body and the laptop become a sort of living capacitor, with a thin layer of aluminum and skin acting as an insulator that separates the charges.

The pulsation of current in the socket – 50-60 Hz. The electric field between the finger and the body sometimes strengthens, sometimes weakens. According to Coulomb’s Law, this causes the skin to be attracted to the metal and then released. If you simply rest your hand on the laptop, the force of this attraction is too small to notice.

It results in sensory deception – nerve endings in the finger pads, which in nature are responsible for recognizing textures, go haywire from such microscopic friction chaos. The brain is completely unable to directly recognize electrostatic microcurrents, so it chooses the most logical interpretation for itself and convinces you that it’s the metal itself that is vibrating.

Freeports: Tax Havens for the Wealthy’s Art and Wine | May 30 2026, 14:15

Freeports are tax-free storage facilities that wealthy people use to store their investments in art, wine, and artifacts. The Geneva Freeport stores more artworks (both in quantity and value) than the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In 2013, the freeport contained about 1.2 million artworks. In addition to paintings and gold bars, it stores about three million bottles of wine. Freeports are closed to the general public and have been repeatedly used to store stolen paintings and cultural valuables.

They are not exactly free, or rather, not free at all. The only “free” thing you get is the right to store, buy, and sell anything within a certain territory without paying taxes… the goods, while within its territory, are considered “in transit,” that’s all. But this only lasts until you export the goods from there. At that point, you will have to pay taxes to the treasury of the country into which you are importing the item or money.

I learned about such a model from a recent video by Varlamov-Chichvarkin about wines, googled it, and it turns out that while wine is a minor thing, it’s much more significant with art.

Rediscovering Réaumur: The Forgotten Temperature Scale | May 28 2026, 21:48

LOL, it turns out that besides Fahrenheit and Celsius scales, there was another scale, and relatively recently. The attached photo is mine, taken in 2009 in Baku at a friend’s house.

So where did this Réaumur come from? In 1730, he proposed a temperature scale, one degree of which equals 1/80 of the difference between the boiling point of water and the melting point of ice. Why 80? Because it’s easier to remember, although in fact Réaumur took only one reference point – the melting point of ice. Hence, the “zeros” of the Celsius and Réaumur scales coincide. And one degree of Réaumur corresponds to a temperature change during which the volume of alcohol increases or decreases by 1/1000.

In Réaumur’s days, there were already several different scales, including the widely known Fahrenheit scale, which is still used in some countries, including the States (and which I have never gotten used to). In France, the use of this scale was abolished on April 1, 1794, in connection with the transition to the metric system. The Réaumur scale was used in Tsarist Russia until the 1917 revolution. But in general, the 18th century was a mess with this, and few people know that besides these Kelvin, Celsius, and Fahrenheit, their scales were also invented by Rankine, Rømer, Newton, Delisle, and Réaumur.

Navigating Price Adjustment Policies at Major Retailers | May 27 2026, 21:53

I found out that if you bought a jacket or a TV (for instance, at Target, Best Buy, or Costco), and a week later that item went on sale, you can come back with your receipt within 14–30 days. This is an official policy of almost all major Western retailers, it’s a standard of customer service and is called Price Adjustment. However, a receipt is often necessary. Most stores suspend this policy during the Black Friday season, Cyber Monday, and special holiday promotions.

Script Evolution: Creating Multi-Dimensional Word Art | May 27 2026, 21:12

I created a script that generates inscriptions readable as three different words from the left, right, and top. Overall, this is a development of what I had in my previous post – there it was only left-right. One script generates triplets of words from a dictionary, which technically can be done. Another creates a 3D model that can be thrown onto a printer (might do that today), and the third does a visualization of this model – see video