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Americans usually opt for practicality. But here, a tunnel in Baltimore stretching two and a half kilometers is meticulously lined with 15×15 tile on both sides, just like in bathrooms. Of course, it’s understandable that since it’s an underwater tunnel, there’s a similarity to a bathroom, but it’s insanely expensive and complicated. Normally in such cases, they would just use plain concrete and not bother. Yet here, they installed eight million tiles, which took two years and 200 workers dealing solely with tiling. It’s claimed that this makes the tunnel brighter, enhancing safety. But we know better!

Decent room

Our bike rides in Pennsylvania and Delaware from this and past weekends (photos).

Today was not the luckiest day: we went on the trail without checking the tires, which turned out to be damaged from the last time, and as a result, two punctures in one day. The last ferry to the island where Fort Delaware is located left shortly before our arrival. We had to go back and pick up Nadya by car from the last five kilometers of the route: after all, walking for an hour under the sun at 35 degrees Celsius is not the most pleasant activity. I quickly drove to the car, but retrieving Nadya from the trail turned out to be quite a problem. For instance, Google Maps indicates that there is a path between the 285 highway and Michael N. Castle Trail at its narrowest part, but in reality, there is a house of some burly guy who started yelling obscenities at me even before I figured out what to do with the private property sign and the maps contradicting it. Naturally, I wouldn’t have gone there, tried to be extremely polite, but the guy decided to be proactive and showed aggression, and I had to quickly retreat. Eventually, I still walked back and forth along someone’s lawn (I hope, along its edge), but it seemed much safer. Otherwise, it would be an hour’s push for Nadya with a punctured tire. So, the takeaway: carry not only a spare inner tube but also a spare tire.

Along the way, saw a lift bridge (Lift Bridge). A very interesting engineering structure. There are similar, albeit smaller ones, in St. Petersburg, and a similar one in Rostov-on-Don.

I decided not just to enjoy a cold beer while watching another episode of Brave New World, but also to conduct a simple experiment.

Beer (355 ml) cools from 27.5 degrees to 14.5 in 25 minutes in the freezer when wrapped in a wet paper, and only to 18.1 without the paper. Of course, we all remember from school why, but we still just throw the beer in to chill as is. Yet, in wet paper, it cools down much faster.

Yesterday, I noticed that the armudu glass gifted by Lala Alieva isn’t meant for hot tea. It cracked when brewing. Decided, before throwing it away, to record its final moments on video. I loved it so much 😞 I wonder if all armudu glasses are this sensitive.

Interesting lectures by Severinov, you can start with “Gene Work”. They cover the basics of cytology and bioengineering, but despite the complexity of the topic, they will be understandable and interesting even to children.

Somehow nobody talks or writes about this, but I believe that I will reach retirement age with biocomputers, in which the processor uses artificially grown cells for atomic operations that have an analog nature. It will not be as fast as a digital one, but due to “clustering” and “fuzzy logic,” it will solve qualitatively different problems. At first, a processor will emerge to solve some single task, which will be even hard to articulate to the uninitiated public. Then, a processor that solves a comprehensible task will come out, but only one. Then, about ten years later, the number of tasks it handles will begin to increase.

https://postnauka.ru/author/severinov

Can you whistle loudly? Like, a “heads up, guys!” kind of whistle? With your fingers or not? With one hand or two?

Very.

I listened to several lectures on Post-Science about exoplanets and possible forms of biological life, and came to think that if we ever discover extraterrestrial life, the chances of creationism followers will skyrocket. Why? Because a cell became a cell and its constituent proteins became these specific proteins as a result of evolution, which by definition has a random nature, and life based on principles other than intracellular ones is theoretically conceivable. Moreover, it is conceivable around us.

For example, one could invent such a crazy concept as “living matter” based on micro-interactions between molecules of matter (such as gas) and distributed storage of information defining these interactions. Physically, each individual molecule does not store anything, but its instantaneous state carries the information necessary for such life. Micro-effects in the dynamics between molecules cannot be measured in any way (since trying to measure it would affect the system), and if we’re talking about huge volumes spanning hundreds of kilometers, where the wave of interactions and vibrations makes sense, such a hypothesis will be untestable for another century. If we imagine that such “life” coexists with terrestrial life, it would be impossible for us to detect them, and for them – us.

Alternative life may have its own flow of time, completely incompatible with ours. For example, a million times slower or a million times faster. The concept of intelligence is only understood through comparison with humans. If you think about it, intelligence is just an evolutionary mechanism, and not at all the only possible one.

I think it will be similar with extraterrestrial civilizations. We shouldn’t be looking for little green-headed men, but rather something entirely different, like the things mentioned above. Or something like this

I am planning a trip to this area, 70 km away from us. And I’m laughing. The towns here are selectively named: Another place, Mutual consent, Broomes island…

Reading Anne Frank, I surprisingly discovered for myself that the Russian word pogrom (pogrom) has entered the English, German, and other European languages as a designation for mass attacks on places with concentrated Jewish populations. Only later did it begin to be used in a broader sense. In the text, Anne recalls the Jewish pogroms, known as Kristallnacht.