Month: July 2025

Alaska Airlines Omits Boeing Branding from Safety Cards: A Strategic Move? | July 31 2025, 13:18

When I flew to Seattle and back on Alaska Airlines, I noticed that the Safety Card in the seat made no mention of the plane being a Boeing (left picture mine, second one from online). Not even in fine print. Only the model was specified — in my case, a 737 MAX, incidentally the same model from which a door detached mid-flight on an Alaska plane. So, from the inside of the plane, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s a Boeing, an Airbus, or a McDonnell Douglas, unless you know that 737 is only made by Boeing.

My first thought was, of course, what else could Alaska do to salvage its reputation, except to remove the word Boeing wherever possible.

But it turns out this has been the case before. One of the Alaska flight attendants mentioned that it’s been like this for about 8 years, at least. Another flight attendant confirmed that this is the case with all planes.

It seems that they simply don’t want to promote another company for free, and Boeing certainly doesn’t want to pay all the airlines for such advertising, meanwhile charging them for every little thing. And they cannot oblige them either. An interesting case indeed.

Yuki’s Dinnertime Dilemma: When Appetite Meets Mood | July 30 2025, 21:04

4pm. Yuki hasn’t eaten anything since morning. I take a piece of organic chicken, cook it, cut it into small pieces. He turns away. No, he’s not sick, that’s just normal for him, he won’t even eat cheese if he’s not in the mood. Well, alright, I mix it with his food, leave it.

And there’s the cat, already on duty by Yuki’s bowl, fishing out pieces of chicken. The cat is on a diet, so it won’t be long before he starts eating the dog’s dry food as well.

Yuki sadly watches his own food gradually disappearing from his own bowl and slowly tries to formulate his stance on whether to eat or not. But appetite inevitably arrives during the meal, especially when the food is from someone else’s plate.

Concert Weeks: From Pink Martini to Postmodern Jukebox | July 30 2025, 03:40

I have two weeks of concerts. Today — Pink Martini! Next week Postmodern Jukebox, and this past weekend was a great piano concert (Beethoven, Shostakovich, Chopin, Rachmaninoff at the Washington Piano Festival). Facebook cuts out the sound from concert recordings, so I’m attaching a cool video that’s already been cleared (or missed) by Facebook from some Pink Martini performance, featuring Thomas Lauderdale with Hunter Noack, who is either his wife or husband, and I’ll try to add my own in the comments

DIY Wireless Reaction Game: Building Interactive Button-Based Activities | July 28 2025, 22:26

Who knows their way around electronics? Any recommendations?

I want to make a thing some weekend. A big bulbous button. It lights up – you smash it. The app records the time from when it lights up to when it’s smashed. There might be several buttons and they could be scattered – on walls or the floor. WIRELESS. They might light up randomly – this is controlled by the app (phone or computer). Metrics like average reaction time are calculated on the fly for different understandings of the word ‘average’. For instance, you could place buttons on the ground a few meters apart and invent a moving game for the kids. Or attach them to a wall and smash them with a ball. Basically, it’s a technical question.

How would you do it – dumb buttons on an nRF24L01+ chip or smart buttons on an esp32 microcontroller?

In the first case, every such module listens to the radio: as soon as a command with its ID arrives from the central node, it turns on the light. After the button is pressed, it sends back a “pressed” message. The timer is on the side of the central node. Each button has an Arduino Pro Mini + nRF24L01+, but there will also be a central hub with either nRF24L01+ and Arduino Uno, Mega or ESP32, which collects the data and is connected to the computer (Bluetooth or WiFi).

In the second case, the buttons are connected via Bluetooth (BLE) or WiFi. The brains of the button is the ESP32, which needs to be programmed through a programmer.

Cost-wise, both approaches are roughly the same minus the cost of arcade buttons and 3D printing, somewhere around $10-15 per button.

Exploring Unusual Time Signatures: From Prokofiev to Pink Floyd | July 28 2025, 05:32

A small concert at a Catholic university. Prokofiev’s 7th sonata features a tricky musical meter — 7/8. It’s interesting, but it seems I’ve never heard or known anything else in this meter. Early 20th-century composers were quite the innovators. Oh, I remember now. The closest to 7/8 was in Pink Floyd’s “Money” with their 7/4.

Faces of Language: Understanding the Human and Animal “Face” Across Cultures | July 25 2025, 16:35

I read about a fly on my windowsill, it’s a predatory critter, and its face is described on Wikipedia. Just like that, face. It got me thinking, is the word “face” applicable to animals other than humans (let’s skip the discussion of whether the term animal applies to humans). On the same Wikipedia, but on the face page, the face is only human. Yet, it is written that in professional terminology (veterinary, ornithology, entomology) it is quite appropriate to speak of the “facial part of the head” of an animal. For example, ornithologists at Cornell University use the term “face” specifically in descriptions of owls. Well, fine, we have a face, others have a snout. And birds? A snout in feathers? A beak is something else entirely.

In English too, by the way, things are not so simple. Even a cube has faces. In other European languages, the boundary between a human “face” and an animal one is more or less clearly drawn. Italians use faccia only for humans and muso for animals; faccia for a cat or dog would be inappropriate and even offensive. In French, visage usually means “human face,” and for animals, it’s gueule, museau, tête, etc. In Polish, there’s twarz for people and pysk/morda for beasts; moreover, the word morda in relation to a person is a crude insult (and in Russian too, only adding nationality to it). In Scandinavian languages (“ansigt” in Danish, “ansikte” in Swedish) “face” is also almost always human.

There’s also the word “physiognomy.” Interestingly, it only later came to denote a face. Essentially, this word means “the study of facial features to determine character.” It consists of φύσις (physis) – “nature, essence, character” and γνώμων (gnomon) – “indicator, determining.”

And then I remembered the word “unflattering.” Strange word, right? How can a conversation be unflattering? Turns out, its definition is as follows: “not based on flattery, the desire to please someone; impartial, fair.” So formally, Vitsyn could exclaim, “long live the most unflattering court in the world!” I’m not joking, for example, Saltykov-Shchedrin writes: “At the present time, in all corners of Russia, even the most backward people are beginning to recognize the vital need for a lawful and unflattering court.” “I must confess, I was very nervous, handing my brainchild over to the unflattering judgment of the editorial staff” (D. N. Mamin-Sibiriyak, “Features from the Life of Pepko,” 1894).

Actually, an interesting word. In Russian, its only decent synonyms are snout, mug, phiz, physiognomy, dial, and very memorable indecent ones.

Understanding American Politics Through Washington’s Farewell Letter | July 23 2025, 23:33

To better understand American politics today, here’s a fact. Since 1862, the farewell letter of the first president and founding father George Washington is read annually before the opening session of the Senate.

Among other things, it includes the following (I’m paraphrasing in my own words because the oddly complex sentences, in which it’s hard to track what is being talked about, are the normal written language of that time. I hope I didn’t misrepresent):

* Foreign interference is one of the worst threats, and you must constantly be paranoid about it. However, be cautious to be fair and wise in this matter, otherwise, you will focus so much on one country that you will slide into alliances with others.

* Avoid permanent alliances and foreign policy commitments. Trade with everyone, but avoid permanent political and military alliances with other countries, especially European ones. This allows you to avoid being drawn into others’ wars and conflicts. We obviously must keep our promises, but let’s try not to make new ones in the future.

* Europe has a bunch of problems that mean nothing to us. So they will fight, and we must make sure we do not get involved on any side. We can make ourselves unpleasant enemies, which we do not need.

* Since we are here, across the Atlantic, we can mind our own business. And if we just hold together a little longer, we might become strong enough to stand up for ourselves. And if we are cool enough, other countries will not want to start anything, so the choice of starting a war or maintaining peace will be ours.

* Political parties are evil. Namely, the party system leads to infighting, distracts from real problems, weakens the government, and exposes the country to foreign influence, as other countries can manipulate one of the parties.

* It is impossible to build a successful state and trust people (e.g., their oaths) if there is no strong moral and religious foundation in society.

* Do not accumulate large state debts during peacetime. It is necessary to pay bills on time, and for this, taxes are necessary, which citizens should approach with understanding.

Rediscovering Peder Severin Krøyer: The Overlooked Impressionist | July 23 2025, 22:40

I haven’t posted anything about artists in a while. Today, I want to talk about an Impressionist you’ve probably never heard of, yet he deserves to be ranked alongside Degas, Manet, Monet, and Renoir. His name is Peder Severin Krøyer, a Danish painter from the second half of the 19th century.

Interestingly, a film about his wife, Marie Triepcke, was released in 2012. She was considered the most beautiful woman in Europe, and he — at least in Denmark — the most talented painter. She was an artist too, but eventually stopped painting entirely in his shadow. According to some sources, not without the influence of her brilliant husband, who actively convinced Marie of her lack of talent.

Posts like this are grouped under the hashtag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com in the Art Rauf Likes” section you can find all 152 entries (unlike Facebook, which forgets — or ignores — nearly half of them).