February 07 2024, 22:26

It turns out that “nightmare” and “cauchmar” (French for nightmare) share the same root, mare, which refers to a demon or ghost that presses on the chest during sleep and causes a feeling of suffocation.

This specifically causes a phenomenon that is now medically referred to as sleep paralysis. It is believed that 7.5% of people have experienced it at least once in their life, and among psychiatric hospital patients, the percentage is five times higher.

February 06 2024, 17:06

I needed to buy some brushes for oil painting, and it turned out to be not so trivial. I need several brushes of different sizes made from hog bristle, flat or slightly rounded (flat & filbert), with bristles about one to one and a half centimeters wide, plus or minus, and a long handle. This is not something special; in fact, it’s the go-to choice for artists. Around my home, there are three stores that traditionally fall into the art supplies category – Hobby Lobby, Michaels, JOANN, each the size of at least three gyms, and each has a wall of brushes. Of course, none of the three ever had or has these particular brushes. There are a lot of “substitutes, identical to natural.” I’m now driving to the nearest proper store where everything is available, 50 km from home, and it’s very small—packed tightly from floor to ceiling with good artist supplies. There are decent online stores, yes. The last time I ordered from rosemary&co, but it’s British and the shipping to the USA takes long. However, they have a very good selection and high quality.

Moreover, these brushes are also expensive. The price of what I’m looking for ranges from $20 to $30 depending on the size. You would think, what’s there, pig hair and a wooden handle.

February 06 2024, 01:05

My favorite music for work, which apparently none of my acquaintances understand 🙂 Canto Ostinato by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt is an hour and a half of very strange music

: It consists of small musical phrases over a static rhythm, repeated many times, gradually evolving and developing. This change is often slow, but steady. That is, it is like putting an extremely slow melody on top of a rhythm. Such repetitions create a kind of hypnotic effect, probably immersing some in a meditative state.

February 04 2024, 23:32

Decided to check if pagers are still alive. Alive and kicking!

The same protocols and hardware as 40-50 years ago. And plenty of service providers! For instance, in the USA there are Spok and American Messaging, Metrotel, Pages Direct, Pager99, MySecretaryUSA, DirectPage. For strictly local use, one could of course set up their own transmitter and send messages, say locally to hospital staff, factory workers, or use a service provider if you are in a coverage area. All major cities and their surroundings are covered.

Pagers are sold on Amazon for 150 bucks. Annually, the cost ranges from 100 to 500 dollars depending on the provider.

Surprised, but it actually makes sense. There is a market.

February 04 2024, 19:20

It’s intriguing that since 1970, when they managed to do something genuinely new and interesting, now in the entire world only one company — Residue Solutions under the MudMaster brand — manufactures these mud-snow-watercraft all-terrain vehicles. There’s also production in Nizhny Novgorod of something similar based on the UAZ van — ZVM-2901, but it’s for the domestic market, and its specifications are embarrassing. However, it costs only 6 million rubles.

One would think, with so many places in the world where it’s impossible to travel by tracks, wheels, or boat, because what’s beneath is unknown. What surprises me more, of course, are the bold experiments that were conducted fifty years ago. They did allocate funds for such things, and how many students grew up working on such projects.