Month: May 2024

Liza’s Budget-Friendly European Adventures | May 07 2024, 12:29

Liza is currently in Germany. Or rather, well… she spends more time in Germany than anywhere else. She’s taking full advantage of the opportunity to study in Europe. From her base in Braunschweig, over the past month, she has visited Prague, Berlin, Hanover, Hamburg, London, and most recently Munich last weekend. Liza is on a tight budget, and her trips are all about maximizing savings. She bought a monthly pass (apparently a BahnCard) that covers, conditionally, all regional trains in Germany. But because of this, her routes to destinations tend to be rather circuitous. For example, it took her 10 hours to get to Munich from Braunschweig using regional trains, and 13 hours to get back. The trip to Munich included 9 changes, including at Herzberg, Nordhausen, Leinefelde, Bad Langensalza, Augsburg, Nürnberg, Seesen, Erfurt. On her way back, she accidentally boarded the wrong train, which added a few more changes and an extra three hours to her journey. Isn’t she a hero?

She is now planning a ten-day trip to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France next week. Wow, I’m jealous.

Exploring Femininity: The Oil Paintings of Mary Qian | May 07 2024, 02:51

American artist of Chinese descent, Mary Qian (born 1973 in Shanghai) currently lives and works in Chicago, engaging in graphic design, but also dedicates several hours each day to painting. Primarily using oil paints, the main subject of her work is the female figure. Stunning works!

#artrauflikes

Global Variations in Finger Counting Practices | May 06 2024, 20:55

It turns out there are differences in how people count on their fingers (there’s even a term for it — dactylonomy). It could easily give you away as a spy 🙂

In Russia and countries of the former USSR, counting to ten on fingers starts by bending the pinky of the left hand and progresses sequentially to the bent thumb of the right hand. However, when it’s necessary to visibly show a number, the hand clenches into a fist and then opens first with the index finger, followed by the middle, ring, pinky, and thumb.

But in the American convention, for example, counting starts with the index finger. The thumb is kept pressed against the palm to show numbers from 1 to 4, and only extended (along with all four fingers) to indicate the number 5.

In countries like Germany, France, Italy, and others, it seems that locals generally start counting with the thumb (=1), adding one finger for each subsequent number up to five.

In Eastern countries, such as Iran, they often begin with the pinky of the right hand, and finish with the thumb. But these are all linear systems.

In Japan, however, the finger counting system is reversed. Instead of showing numbers by raising fingers, it’s the fingers that are hidden in the hand that indicate the number. It starts with the thumb and hides the subsequent fingers in the hand, counting upwards until a closed palm shows the number five.

In China, counting up to five is more or less the same as in the West, but after six it becomes peculiar; there are special configurations indicating 7, 8, 9, 10.

The way to show “2” might lead to misunderstandings if someone accustomed to the Chinese method sees the German “two” with a thumb and index finger, because it would mean “8” in Chinese finger counting (see below). I find it very fascinating (and useful!) that you can count up to 10 in Chinese using just one hand!

When showing the number “2” in the UK the American way (with the index and middle fingers), be careful not to turn your palm inward toward yourself, as this gesture is perceived (or used to be perceived, but who knows whom you’re dealing with) as an insult in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Discovering Free Bio Sludge Fertilizer at the Local Water Treatment Plant | May 06 2024, 18:35

Near our house, there’s a water treatment plant. It receives sewage water from all over the city. Today, I decided to stop by to see what those bags near the entrance were about. It turns out, they’re giving away free fertilizer, bio sludge. Essentially, it’s a by-product of the sewage water treatment process, and, apparently due to its by-product nature and relatively small quantities (and clearly the impossibility of scaling these volumes), they’re distributed for free. If you consider buying such fertilizer, there is a sign that suggests taking no more than 5 bags if possible. However, critics point out a slight potential toxicity of these fertilizers – apparently, they contain a slight exceedance of PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl sulfonates – chemical compounds also known as “forever chemicals” due to their durability and resistance to decomposition in the environment). But on the other hand, for fertilizing lawns, this isn’t really an issue, even if it exists.

Albert Anker: Capturing Timelessness Through Childhood Paintings | May 06 2024, 12:56

Albert Anker was a Swiss painter and graphic artist of the 19th century. He has about 500 paintings of children of various ages and social statuses. I hardly found a couple of his works where there are no children or old people—these are still lifes. His paintings look like a photo album from the past, and it becomes clear that not much has changed over the next 100 years in many parts of our world.

#artrauflikes

Assassins Game Craze Among American Students | May 06 2024, 02:38

In the USA, the game “Assassins” is popular among school kids and university students. The winner (typically a student) gets a few hundred bucks.

The essence of the game lies in participants attempting to “eliminate” each other over several days or weeks, using water guns that often resemble real ones. Each player receives a target, another participant they must “kill,” aiming to do so secretly and discreetly. Teams are also formed that play against each other.

The game spans weeks, and participants must be on their guard, as they can be “killed” at any moment outside of school or campus, which are safe zones or “out of game.” The last surviving participant becomes the winner. And because lots of people chip in a little, the prize pool may reach several thousand dollars. Players often hide in places where the “victim” appears, chase them down—all of which is quite emotional and vivid. Those eliminated are posted on Instagram, often with photos from the “crime scene.”

The rules vary slightly from place to place. For instance, glasses (if worn) might count as protection, but on some days they don’t work either. You cannot “destroy” by breaking the law, not even slightly.

Well, many adults, of course, do not like it. Especially the schools, as it only brings them problems (and they end up sending out letters like the attached one).

Everyone acknowledges that it doesn’t formally break the law, but it does cause inconvenience, and technically, in some cases, it might incur a fine.

Exploring Facebook’s LLAMA 3 AI: Local Processing with Promising Outcomes | May 05 2024, 19:03

I’m experimenting with LLAMA 3 from Facebook. There’s a modification called llama3-gradient:8b-instruct-1048k-q6_K, which has a context window of 1M tokens (that’s about 2 megabytes). And there’s even more. I feed it the entire book about Elon Musk (highly recommend it, by the way!) and it produces a pretty good summary—and does it quickly, any text from a screenshot is generated in about 40-60 seconds. And yet, it’s still relatively a weaker model (8B), while Facebook has a 70B. But the main feature here is that all this works locally on a laptop. No need to pay for API, it works quite fast, the script is small, fits on one screen.

Still, there are some rough edges—for example, for direct questions about the text (questions to which I definitely know the answers), the system does not always confidently provide answers. When you send significantly less text, it works fine.