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Reading Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond). Here are some new interesting details about Francisco Pizarro.

“…the first meeting between the Inca emperor Atahualpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in the highland town of Cajamarca in Peru on November 16, 1532. Atahualpa was the absolute monarch of the largest and most developed state in the New World, while Pizarro represented (falsely, by his own account) the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V (also known as King Charles I of Spain), the monarch of the most powerful state in Europe.

Pizarro, leading a motley crew of 168 Spanish soldiers, was in unfamiliar territory, not knowing the local people, without any contact with the nearest Spanish forces (1000 miles north in Panama), and far beyond the reach of timely reinforcements. Atahualpa was at the center of his own empire with millions of subjects and was immediately surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers, who had recently won a war against other indigenous people. Nevertheless, Pizarro captured Atahualpa within minutes of the two leaders seeing each other for the first time.

Pizarro held him captive for eight months, extracting the largest ransom in history in exchange for a promise to release him. Once the ransom—enough gold to fill a room 7 by 6 meters and more than 3 meters high—was delivered, Pizarro broke his promise and executed Atahualpa.

The capture of Atahualpa was crucial for the European conquest of the Inca empire. Although the superior weapons of the Spanish would have guaranteed their ultimate victory anyway, the capture made the conquest much quicker and infinitely easier. Atahualpa was revered by the Incas as a sun god and had absolute power over his subjects, who obeyed even those commands which he issued while in captivity. The months that passed before his death gave Pizarro time to send out reconnaissance parties to other parts of the Inca empire and to send for reinforcements from Panama. When fighting finally broke out between the Spanish and the Incas after Atahualpa’s execution, the Spanish forces were already sufficient in number and knew what to expect.”

Around me is an almost completely full parking lot with 400 spaces at Masha’s school, which has 1500 students.

Observing all this mess in the opposition camp, and over the reaction of people from different countries and cultures to what’s happening around them, here’s a thought.

It seems that some cultures, Russia appearing to be one of them, have a stronger predisposition to distance themselves from even like-minded individuals and neighbors, on the “us versus them” scale. In many cultures, adversity unites, but in some, it seems to build fences. This individualism has likely been cultivated over generations, ironically, by the method of the reverse. The state forced people to unite, and people might have perceived this compulsion with resistance. Forming strong, authoritative groups has always been dangerous unless these groups were under state control. Even the church does not create such an “interest-based community”.

I am currently reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and it precisely discusses this topic. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily life of most people took place within three ancient frameworks: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the local community. More precisely, bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.

Back then, a person was never alone. More precisely, they wouldn’t have survived long. A person who had lost their family and community around 1750 was as good as dead. Boys and girls who ran away from home could at best hope to become servants in some new family. At worst, they ended up in the army or a brothel. And then this circle, whether nuclear (immediate family), extended (relatives), or even more extended (friends, neighbors) behaved like one big organism, where each person did not have enough will to change the direction in which the whole “organism” was moving.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) in China, the population was organized into the baojia system. A unit of ten families was called a jia (degemena), and ten jia (or one hundred families) made up a bao. Each jia had a plaque, which circulated among the families. The family holding it at a given time was the jiazhang, or elder of the degemena. Similarly, the captain of the bao was the baozhang.

So, when a member of the bao committed a crime, other members of the bao could be punished, particularly the elders of the bao. Taxes were also collected from the bao, and it was the elders’ responsibility (not state officials) to assess each family’s situation and determine the amount of tax they should pay. Imagine how to cheat under such conditions?

As far as I know, a similar system informally exists even today, in societies where individualism hasn’t penetrated yet. Many Muslim territories. Plus, places that “civilization” hasn’t reached yet (from our point of view).

In many such societies, the concept of home is much wider than for people living in the apartment-car-office-vacation format.

Even in developed Europe and the USA, this identification of a person as part of society is still strong. People go to church on weekends not always because they are very religious. But because they are raised to be part of a larger group of people, not just themselves. Of course, this too is breaking down with each passing year. Where individuality has triumphed for various reasons, fences begin, disarray and wavering in achieving common goals. The notion of “why do I personally need this” begins to prevail over “why do the 100 people close to me need this”.

I think this is the main reason why some groups of people can unite for a common goal, while for others it is unnatural. They can too, and it even works out somehow, but it takes more energy and strength. And the brain has to readjust on the fly, and that’s oh so uncomfortable.

Could you recommend an Android phone in Russia? I need it for my mom. Just the basics. Otherwise, apart from the table about Androids, I haven’t heard much—around seven out of ten brands don’t ring any bells. Samsung or Huawei? I want one where you can’t accidentally mute it by gripping the sides and hitting the volume down button. Ideally, it should be available in stores like Svyaznoy, where they can set up WhatsApp and all that. Although that’s a minor detail, it’s more important not to buy junk.

After long-term use of the Apple Watch, here’s why to buy them:

1) to set alarms with your voice (“alarm 12:25”)

2) to set a timer with your voice (“ten minutes”)

3) to find your phone in the house

4) to decide whether to wear a jacket or not while standing at the door with the dog – the degrees on the watch face tell you

5) to answer calls while sorting out the garage (phone forgotten somewhere) and occasionally to make them with your voice (“call Masha”)

6) well, yes, to check the time and date

I don’t know why, but I turn on the workout mode when I exercise. Why I do this, I still can’t explain to myself. No special secret knowledge is imparted to me by the phones after processing all this.

Nadia, for one, likes to inquire about her watch’s (Amazfit) opinion on how her sleep went. Mine, for some reason, do not have this ability. Plus, her watch can live a month without charging, while mine need to be fed every night

How do you use your Apple Watch?

So, I am studying paints. I have a couple of dozen different colors, and it’s very handy to have a sample on hand that shows the mixture of two, or even better, three colors from this palette, in order to make fewer movements later to get the desired color. Yes, experienced artists may not need this, but I do.

And such a palette cannot be bought. Not at all. If you Google it, you find Color Wheels, Itten’s circles. But that’s not the same thing, when you are painting with real paints, not on a computer. The fact is that CYMK print colors are far from the same thing as colors from tubes. For instance, not all colors mix well with each other. The chemical composition of the paints varies, and the pigments might not be very compatible (resulting in mud — it can be used too, what color isn’t color, but it’s important to know that it will turn out this way). For example, an orange in printing is already a CMYK mix, not a pure orange pigment. It can be obtained from yellow and red, or you can use a ready-made color, which can be mixed with something else.

Beyond that, the color wheels sold on Amazon are all incorrect. For example, there is inexplicably a shade of blue lighter than BLUE-VIOLET and BLUE-GREEN in between them; moreover, the shade is such that you can’t even obtain it by mixing with added white. When mixing two colors, the mixture will never be lighter than the components. And adding white diminishes the brightness. Ultimately, it appears that one needs to think not in mixing RGB, but in mixing a couple dozen paints. And that is more complicated.

In general, I decided to create my own.

But here is the question — if I have squares of 1×1 cm, how do I dose the paint to get exactly 50:50? The internal diameter of the tube is 4mm, and it’s quite difficult to extract a little from there. Yes, you can extract it onto a palette, and measure with a palette knife. But I decided to embrace my inner engineer and make a dispenser.

I printed the dispenser on a 3D printer. It has a millimeter-sized hole, and it can extrude a thin “sausage” of the required length. I also printed caps for it. So, now this setup screws on instead of the original cap. Actually, I considered transferring all the paint into syringes, but in the end, this turned out to be simpler.

Interestingly, I wonder why paint manufacturers do not produce such a palette for sale. It would be very convenient for beginner artists. Paint manufacturers have everything needed for this. They need to mix their paints automatically in different proportions and apply them to a canvas according to the design — and you can create many such projects — color wheels, triangles, gradients, mixing white and black to each color in different proportions. Separate sets for portraits. I think there is a market for this. This process can be automated and released in small batches of Color Wheels for different sets of colors.

Someone should release a mirror with AI. Two cameras that record, send to the cloud where it’s analyzed, and what the mirror should say is sent back. The back cover should have a knob for adjusting political correctness and a male/female switch. Maybe make it over the weekend, we just bought a big mirror.

Walter Molino “Beating with Flowers.” 1958.

At our Wegmans, they cover up the potatoes for the night. Just the potatoes. Everything else is sold without restrictions. And it’s always been this way. Moreover, if you really crave potatoes, the organic russet potatoes in bags aren’t completely covered, and you can grab them without noticing they’re not for sale. The cashiers, I’m sure, will ring up any potato.

Update: they told me why. So that it can sleep!

I figured it out. Or rather, I asked. Potatoes deteriorate quickly in the light. To put it briefly. But more fully:

Potatoes, like tomatoes and eggplants, belong to the nightshade family, which contains the toxin solanine. Although these plants always contain some amount of solanine, the toxin increases when the potatoes are exposed to light. That’s why they should be stored in complete darkness. Under the influence of light, the skin and the flesh under the skin of the potatoes turn green. While the green color itself is harmless chlorophyll, the green color indicates the presence of solanine.

If one consumes enough solanine, the toxin can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headache, paralysis of the central nervous system, coma, and, in rare cases, death. How much is too much? It depends on the ratio of body mass to the amount of toxin ingested, as well as each individual’s tolerance to alkaloid toxins. A small child might need only a small amount, while an adult might need to ingest several green potatoes to feel the effects. The best way to avoid poisoning from solanine is not to eat green potatoes.