Category: facebook

September 23 2020, 15:18

Today at the Russian post office, my mom was turned away with dietary supplements – apparently, that’s not allowed. I found a complete list. Interestingly, here’s what you cannot send to the USA:

– printed materials on the topic of abortions

– cosmetics

– offensive shipments

– advertisements or circulars regarding lotteries

– postage stamps and vignettes of any value, as well as imitations of used and unused postage stamps

– diagnostic tools

– items of any kind violating U.S. copyright laws

– items made by prisoners

It’s forbidden to ship live and dead animals, but interestingly, there’s an exception for bees, leeches, and silkworms.

Complete list:

All alcoholic beverages and intoxicating substances; contraceptives or devices intended for abortion, as well as printed materials on this subject; fish, fruits, and vegetables that spoil quickly, as well as substances that emit foul smells; live or dead animals (except bees, leeches or silkworms); medicines, therapeutic and cosmetic products; animal products; plants and plant products; weapons, including knives with automatically opening blades; ammunition; explosives or flammable substances; matches; agricultural products (coffee, cotton, fresh fruits, vegetables, grain, seedlings, lentils, nuts, cones, acorns, chestnuts, seeds, silage, oils, sugar, cereals, tobacco and tobacco products); offensive shipments; narcotic substances (opium, morphine, cocaine, and other drugs); tickets, announcements or circulars regarding lotteries; lotteries; imitations of checks and stocks, used and unused postage stamps, coupons, bills, notes issued by the State Treasury, gold and silver certificates; postage stamps and vignettes of any value; furs and skins; bird feathers with skin; cosmetics; diagnostic tools; items of any kind violating U.S. copyright laws; items made by prisoners; radioactive substances.

September 22 2020, 21:31

An interesting hypothesis in the article linked: wearing masks increases the level of immunization from coronavirus because the mask actually reduces the infection dose and, consequently, the viral load, leading to asymptomatic or mild cases.

This method is also known as variolation. Generally, variolation is the practice of deliberately infecting people with low doses of a pathogen to elicit a protective immune response. This was once a treatment for smallpox before the invention of vaccination. In this case, masks are considered like a sieve, through which the virus passes in enough quantity for the variolation effect.

For now, this is only a theory. We shall see.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2026913

September 21 2020, 00:09

Published the second part of the article about working with the database directly from Hybris. Thanks to @[100001772111225:2048:Timofey Klyubin] for almost everything that eventually came out.

The article discusses L1 cache, features of multitenance, and mass updates – in the context of when it’s really necessary to work with the database directly, and not through ORM as “supposed”. The article is very “geeky”, aimed at experienced developers on SAP Commerce, or those who want to become one 🙂

https://hybrismart.com/2020/09/20/how-to-make-native-sql-coexist-with-sap-commerce-orm-part-2/

September 20 2020, 23:45

This is what the Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia looks like, along with our state flag (with a blue background). We have grown accustomed to it (since 1776), but it may be a novelty for you.

The woman is on top, Amazon-style, the king is defeated, tyrant-style. This signifies liberation from the oppression of monarchical Britain and the birth of a new free republic. In the tyrant’s hands is a chain, symbolically representing the shattered shackles of English colonial trade and Western expansion, and in his right hand is a useless whip, symbolizing the so-called “Intolerable Acts” of the metropolis.

The Latin inscription, “Sic Semper Tyrannis”, translates as “Thus always [happens] to tyrants”. It is attributed to Brutus during the assassination of Julius Caesar.

It somewhat reminds of Saint George the Victorious, except the figure is a lady in revealing attire, and instead of a dragon, there’s a king.

September 19 2020, 18:40

It’s interesting how marketing on Amazon works. Bought a manual coffee grinder and found a little note inside: “leave a review and we’ll send you another one.” They did send it. Bought a Bluetooth headset a couple of weeks ago, and it was the same deal. Now I have two Bluetooth headsets. Each can be connected to two devices, so now I can listen to four devices at the same time! Two with my left ear and two with my right.