Month: June 2021

Since standard English lessons at my level are no longer interesting to me, we discuss various aspects of American history and culture. Besides expanding my horizons and understanding the context of the country, I manage to address the issue of non-IT related communication. This has always been difficult. For example, I only learned today that “tsar” in English is not “tcar”, but “zar”. I learned that the sentence I saw the man cross the street and the cat jump over the fence is grammatically correct, and cross and jump do not have to be crossing and jumping but can remain such infinitives (By the way, does anyone know what this rule is?).

But the most interesting thing is, of course, the history itself. I realized that I knew almost nothing about it. The roles of Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Kennedy, Reagan were totally unclear to me. And then it turns out that the country is proud of them, and many educated people can talk for hours about the mark they left on history.

And I asked myself – we also studied our native history at school. What rulers are we proud of and why? We seem to have one of the highest levels of education in the world: 56% of the population has completed college or university, compared to 35% in the US (at least a bachelor’s degree). I know, most likely every other person in my contacts is educated and remembers at least the basics of Russian history. Who are you proud of?

I tried to answer this question myself and essentially recalled two names. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. Of course, does this reveal my poor knowledge of history? Or did the other characters just not impress in the textbooks under the “why they should be respected?” section. Or is it complicated? Or did we just parrot the textbook in school and not engage our brains?

Well, with Peter the Great it’s clear. He cut through the window to Europe, shaved beards with an axe, built the Northern Venice, and it seems he brought potatoes but didn’t succeed in fully introducing them.

I also remember about Catherine II the Crimea, reforms, and how she brought the Enlightenment to agrarian Russia, and along with Voltaire and Diderot cultivated culture. Probably I’ve forgotten a ton of other items. But okay, even just for this, she deserves respect – cheers, Katya, remembered and honored.

Not looking at Google, who else? Which of our tsars and princes would a typical Russian person recall fondly?

(In the next post, I’ll talk about an interesting story involving the Bolsheviks, Catherine the Great, and Mikoyan, the one associated with the meatpacking plant)

The accessory for the Breville coffee machine is ready. It’s a detachable nozzle tip to prevent anything from jumping out during grinding. After the coffee settles, it’s removable, of course. This one seems to manage well, but there’s a microcrack. I’ll print another one just like it on the photopolymer printer as soon as it finishes with the Nespresso capsule holder.

I also printed a piece that makes it more comfortable to press the portafilter when I’m tamping the coffee.

On my RAV4, there’s a feature on the rear lamp—a half-centimeter protrusion, black on black. The part is hardly functional: it likely has almost no effect on aerodynamics. But honestly, it doesn’t really impact the design of the car either—it’s too small and unnoticeable.

It looks like a pimple

It’s interesting to fantasize about how and why it was added 😉

P.s. thanks, I have smart readers! Vortex generator https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bmhuq38EYI

This is not cottage cheese. It’s something like Adygei cheese. I have never seen any cottage cheese here other than Baltic. Also, Nadya knows how to make it from milk and starter culture.

A good report on AI. Well done, occasionally very interesting. Although I’m not new to the topic, I kept looking for something to nitpick.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qAFzK_aTTaw&feature=share

Arthur Clarke, 1964:

“The only thing one can say about the future is that it will be utterly amazing! If what I am about to tell you seems quite plausible, then my attempt to describe it has failed. My vision has a chance of success only if my words seem absolutely incredible to you.

Let’s start with a look at the city of ‘tomorrow’. Some people think that it will be just so, and they are essentially right. Everything you see now already exists. All materials, all ideas—they can all be implemented in practice right now. But what if we try to imagine the city of ‘the day after tomorrow’, say in the year two thousand?

I think it will be completely different. Generally, it may never come to exist. No, I am not thinking about a nuclear disaster and a new stone age; I am thinking about the incredible breakthroughs that will be made thanks to discoveries in the field of communication. Particularly, I am talking about transistors, and above all, communication satellites.

These things will make possible a world in which we can instantly contact each other, no matter where we might be. We will be able to communicate with friends around the world, without even knowing where exactly the person is located.

Conducting your business from Tahiti or Bali as successfully as from London will become possible in this century (or maybe in about fifty years). Managing anything will be possible from anywhere on the globe regardless of distance. I presume that someday a surgeon in Edinburgh will be able to perform brain surgery on a patient in New Zealand.

When this time comes, the world will literally shrink to a single point, and the traditional role of cities as places where people meet will no longer make any sense. Generally, people will no longer make business trips, they will be accessible always and everywhere. People will travel primarily for pleasure, not money.”

Arthur Clarke died in 2008, in his 97th year of life. Thus, he did get to see the internet, robotic remote surgery, and the system of geostationary satellites orbiting, which is named after Arthur Clarke (http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT_8-pjuctM

Turned out to be really good for Russian cinema. Watched it on Netflix in one go. They really can deliver when they want to 🙂 It seems like a typical road movie, but it still draws you in.

https://www.kinopoisk.ru/series/1108682/

I remember how we all watched Felix Baumgartner’s jump from an altitude of 39 km. Back then, everyone was writing about it. And two years later, as I recently discovered in a space museum, Felix’s record was quietly broken by Alan Eustace, the senior vice-president of Google’s science division, who fell from 41 km reaching speeds up to 1320 km/h. Well, not so quietly. He talked about it at TED: https://www.ted.com/talks/alan_eustace_i_leapt_from_the_stratosphere_here_s_how_i_did_it?language=en

This is the first decorative (non-functional) item that I designed and printed. Tried it on two printers right away. Of course, the right one is completely unsuitable as a backpack decoration. Printed it (gray) in two versions – the larger one with a 0.2 print step (compared to 0.3 for the smaller gray one) and a size one centimeter bigger (5cm).

Lying on the grass, reading about cicadas. Suddenly, a familiar dog comes by. She licked my ear and lay down next to me. Her name is Sasha. A husky. She has heterochromia and is very nice. We’ve been lying here for about 10 minutes, reading together.

Cicadas are interesting creatures. This year, our periodical cicadas have emerged en masse from the ground and are clumsily flying almost everywhere. Their males scream so loudly that you have to shout over them. It’s said to reach up to 100 dB. How do they all simultaneously understand that after 15-17 years underground, it’s time to emerge? Molecular clocks, set in the same way for all cicadas of the same species in one place. On the year when it’s time for them to emerge from the ground and turn into adult cicadas, the massive exit of larvae is triggered by the soil reaching a certain temperature. As a result, they often synchronize to the hour.