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Something elusive distinguished Shtirlitz from others: whether it was his heroic profile, his determined posture, or the parachute dragging behind him.

There are two types of Orthodox churches: with icons inside and icons outside. I couldn’t just pass by – St Moses Coptic Orthodox Church. They share the building with karate, dance classes, a photo shop, and a design company.

By the way, everything in this church is in Arabic, of course, since the Copts are from Egypt. For many, Orthodoxy and the Arabic language seem to come from different worlds, but they do not. Incidentally, this is one of the oldest Christian Churches – it has now been around for about 20 centuries.

We tried a bunch of different tumblers, thermoses, and a water bottle, and ultimately found the ideal ones.

The mug in the foreground has a really cool interface – to open the lid you need to press it at a certain angle with your finger, it clicks and shifts, and clicks back into place as well. The mechanism is well-crafted, operates precisely, doesn’t spill a drop, and it’s very intuitive to feel in the car which way it might pour when tilted, and of course, it’s easily visible whether it’s open or closed (these two flaws accompany most mug tumblers). A downside of this particular mug – compared to a thermos, it doesn’t keep the water boiling hot for as long as one might wish. And it seems it shouldn’t be washed in a dishwasher. Also, there were some old comments on Amazon about its unreliability, but probably the manufacturer has fixed all that by now.

The second, silvery one, is actually a thermos. Besides being the record holder in our tests for the time it keeps coffee very hot, it also has a cleverly designed lid. By pressing a button, a slit opens around the rim, and you can drink from any side. It holds up well in the dishwasher. Feels nice to the touch – like a cybertruck. The downsides – it takes an additional second in the car and some getting used to, to figure out by sight or touch whether the mug is open or not. This is already the third such item in a row. We periodically replace it when it wears out.

The other two bottles are for cold water. They are simply well-made, don’t spill when turned upside down, and instantly open a wide “spout”.

I just calculated, my average monthly mileage over four years is over 4600 km, and annually it’s 56000. Well, as for me, recently it’s been nearly zero. For the car. It turns out, the average daily is 150 km. Clearly, it’s very uneven. Sometimes busy, sometimes quiet. But on average, that’s how it is. Our little Toyota is doing great (knock on wood).

I am currently reading Virgil Elliott, and he uses an interesting grammatical construction in the text – “without our having to tax our brains too much”. I can’t find any explanations online about why it’s our having instead of us having.

I haven’t found out why one is preferable over the other, but why it’s such a complicated construction – I’ve figured it out. Here, having to, of course, comes from “have to”, which translates into Russian as being forced, must, have to. From this “being forced,” a gerund is formed, which doesn’t exist in Russian, creating something akin to “necessity.” So, the translation becomes “without the necessity to overly tax our brains.” Thus, our is optional. It can be removed entirely.

Also, there is an interesting verb in the screenshot: amount to

The U.S. Marine Corps is calling our figure skater Masha to join them with this kind of spam. Looks decent. I’m also attaching some emails regarding luring souls by the U.S. Army. In general, for many, this is not a bad springboard. Plus, they offer citizenship through an accelerated process (not relevant for us).

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.

Passed by today. Looks like “oh, the Germantown domain is taken. Register Jermantown!”

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.