Author: Rauf Aliev

Aluminum: From Precious Metal to Everyday Marvel | August 03 2025, 01:09

The USA imports aluminum mainly from Canada because aluminum leaves Canada and arrives in the USA. And from Europe, it would be aluminš’Šum!

Also, sapphires and rubies are essentially rusty aluminum, where in the process the new material becomes much harder than the original. In interaction with oxygen, different varieties of the mineral corundum are formed, which chemically is crystalline aluminum oxide (formula Alā‚‚Oā‚ƒ). And bulletproof glass is essentially transparent rusty aluminum, aluminum oxide, but with aluminum nitride.

Also, aluminum was the most valuable metal on Earth until the 20th century. When Napoleon III entertained guests, they ate with golden spoons, while he used an aluminum one. And the “cap” of our Washington Monument is made of aluminum for that very reason.

Decade Without Police Sirens: A Personal Observation in Public Safety Trends | August 02 2025, 23:48

Interestingly, I haven’t heard a single car siren in almost ten years, except from medical and fire vehicles. At least around here, it seems even the police don’t use them for their purposes. Apparently, the reason is that a police car with a siren behind is perceived as a command to stop and be ready to show your documents. But fire trucks and ambulances, it seems, always use theirs.

Many people don’t know that what we think of as an ambulance doesn’t really exist here. That is, you can call 911 and request a medical vehicle, and they will come, but it’s usually only done in truly critical situationsā€”like a heart issue or if youā€™ve fallen from a staircase and can’t get up.

This service, EMS, always sends a bill. The minimum is $550, but typically more than $1000, depending on the type of vehicle sentā€”which depends on what was said on the phoneā€”and how many miles it is to the hospital.

If transportation to a hospital is necessary, an insurance company, Medicare, or Medicaid initially pays for it. The patient might only need to pay the differenceā€”for example, a co-pay or a deductible. If the person is unable to pay due to financial hardship, CNS will not send the bill to collections nor will they recover the debt.

If you call 911 and report that someone has fallen from a ladder, especially with a suspected head, neck, or back injury, the dispatcher will send a full fire & EMS response. That means, besides the medics, this big red fire truck shows up. It arrives not because there’s a fire, but because it is staffed with EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians) who can begin assistance even before the ambulance arrives. Additionally, fire stations in the area are positioned such that the nearest fire truck can get there faster than a free ambulance.

In various incidents, if you can get to the hospital on your own, experience shows that it’s often necessary to go if you want results. This is not free either. Every such visit costs me $200 (insurance pays ten times more), but as it turned out later, it was always worth it. You just need to know where to go, and choose large facilities where the queues are shorter.

Stability at a Price: The Costco Hot Dog Phenomenon | August 02 2025, 18:26

What is stability? The price of a hot dog with unlimited soda at our Costco has not changed for 41 years, since 1984. Indeed, to have the privilege of buying a hot dog for one and a half dollars here, I need to spend $3000 a year in their store (to cover the membership through cashbacks; otherwise, I lose up to $65 on the annual membership if without cashback).

And that’s how they sell 100 million hot dogs a year.

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 ā€” 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 itā€™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 doesnā€™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 Yukiā€™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 elseā€™s plate.

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

I have two weeks of concerts. Today ā€” 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 ā€” 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, itā€™s gueule, museau, tĆŖte, 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 Ļ†ĻĻƒĪ¹Ļ‚ (physis) ā€“ “nature, essence, character” and Ī³Ī½ĻŽĪ¼Ļ‰Ī½ (gnomon) ā€“ “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!” Iā€™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.