Author: Rauf Aliev

Besides the fact that there’s nowhere to insert money into this beverage machine, it also offers online pouring. Contactless is the trend (Wegmans)

I traveled to Poland and Saint Petersburg for the world programming championship (as a representative from the organizers, not a participant), while Nadia went as a coach’s assistant to Nationals 2021. Read about how school volleyball competitions are held in the USA. Meanwhile, I’ll head to the airport to pick her up.

Get vaccinated. In our county, home to half a million people, it’s the second day of zero new cases. The average over 7 days is three cases. At least one dose of the vaccine has been administered to 61%, fully vaccinated – 53%. If we exclude children under 16, who were delayed, then at least one dose has been administered to 75%, two doses – 67%.

What do you know about curses? Today we discussed another event from American history, the Tecumseh War – an armed conflict between the USA and the Tecumseh Confederacy in 1812. Tecumseh was the leader of an Indian alliance, which included many tribes of the Old Northwest.

So, there is a legend about a curse that was once uttered by the dying Shawnee tribe leader Tecumseh over whites breaking a treaty. The curse entails that every American president elected in a year that divides evenly by 20 will die or be killed before the end of their presidential term.

It all started with William Henry Harrison, elected president in 1840, who died a month after his inauguration. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, re-elected in 1864, and fatally shot in the head in a theater a year later. James Garfield was elected in 1880, only to be murdered the following year. Twenty years later, in 1900, William McKinley was elected and was killed by the bullet of anarchist Czolgosz. Another twenty years later, in 1920, Harding takes office and dies in 1923. Then, in 1940 Franklin Roosevelt goes for a third term. You get the picture. Following the pattern, in 1960, John Kennedy becomes president, and in November 1963 he is killed by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.

One might think presidents just often die, and it just happens to be on years divisible by 20. Since the foundation of the country the only exception was the 12th president, Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850, a year after taking office. The rest died “on schedule”.

Ronald Reagan was the first to break this pattern, elected in 1980, surviving an assassination attempt in 1981. Reagan’s wound, a punctured lung, would have been fatal in the mid-19th century. Later, George W. Bush, elected in 2000, also fell out of the pattern when a grenade was thrown at him in Georgia, but — he survived.

And now it’s 2020. And Joe Biden becomes president. Now do you understand why there’s so much concern and anxiety about his advanced age?

Interesting lecture. Listen to Morgenstern’s “Cadillac” performed by a string quintet – very unusual and soulful. 53rd minute of the lecture

When I conducted a bit of research about Catherine the Great to remind myself why she is worthy of respect, I stumbled upon the fact that it was she, as an “enlightened monarch,” who made a significant contribution to the formation of a national art collection. Many paintings that we can now see in museums across Russia and the world were purchased by Catherine II from European collections. Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and many others became ornaments of the Hermitage during that time. “My museum in the Hermitage consists, apart from the paintings and Raphael’s loggias, of 38,000 books, four rooms filled with books and engravings, 10,000 engraved gems, approximately 10,000 drawings, and a collection of natural science, filling two large halls.”

It turned out that much of this heritage was sold by Anastas Mikoyan to America between 1929-34 to secure funds for the country’s industrialization. A total of 2880 paintings were selected. Among the departed paintings were works by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Botticelli, and Raphael. For example, “The Annunciation” by Jan van Eyck, “Portrait of Isabella Brant” by Van Dyck, “Adoration of the Magi” by Sandro Botticelli, “Joseph Accused by Potiphar’s Wife” by Rembrandt, and “Venus with a Mirror” (or “Toilet of Venus”) by Titian are displayed in the National Gallery of Art here in Washington. Thousands of works are scattered across museums around the country and the world, many in New York museums.

At the same time, Fabergé eggs and the Codex Sinaiticus were sold. “The Night Café” by van Gogh also went to an American collector and philanthropist Stephen Clark. Incidentally, Yale University won a lawsuit several years ago against a descendant of the Russian collector Pierre Konowaloff, who believed that after the revolution, “The Night Café” had been unlawfully nationalized by the Soviet Union and sought compensation for it.

The initiative for the sales originated from the People’s Commissariat for Trade, which was headed by A. I. Mikoyan in 1926—the same one who later became associated with the meat processing plant. The revenue from the sales constituted no more than one percent of the country’s gross income and did not have a significant impact on the course of industrialization, but on December 31, 1933, all nine workshops of the Moscow meat processing plant began operation, and the following year it was named after Mikoyan. Thus, Doctor’s, Amateur’s, and Tea sausages in Russia ended up being linked with the names of Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Raphael in such an interesting manner.

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.