Category: facebook

Near the office

Soviet science fiction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrPwptirvJc

Decided to watch a funny segment on the News about Roldugin just for fun. They threw everything together, so it’s worth watching for entertainment. In one of the frames, they showed a surprisingly familiar website. I looked closer – and it was just a placeholder with Google ads. It’s portrayed in the segment as the website of US Investigations Services (USIS) – a company specializing in the analysis of biographical data of candidates for work in governmental structures. It is known for having vetted Edward Snowden before hiring him to the CIA. Also, it is known for being located 7 minutes from my house. The company has since gone under, but we are talking about its logo here.

In the original segment by Vesti, the USIS site was shown with a standard placeholder logo used by Network Solutions. I checked archive.org to see what the page looked like a few years ago – and there I found a little blue logo. The exact same logo, pixel-for-pixel, with the same colors and shades, is used by the British company Kroll OnTrack. Established in 1985, it employs several thousand people. Look – I placed that site to the right of the Vesti screenshot, and I positioned the logos one below the other.

And here’s an interesting question: how can a large company in England and a large quasi-governmental company in the USA have identical logos? Obviously, there’s nothing particularly behind it, just a coincidence that they happened to draw the same ones, it happens.

Maybe it was indeed the case then

Friends, can anyone recommend a car rental in Moscow with good conditions and reasonable prices? I need it for two weeks.

In the states, biodegradable plastic ware is quite common. This means that such plastic is not produced from petroleum, but from renewable plant-based materials or decomposes without harming the environment (like calcium carbonate, for instance). In the photo, for example, there is bioceramics – a mug made of calcium carbonate (not disposable, suitable for microwave, withstands temperature, weighs like plastic). There is also clear bioplastic made from PBC available via the link below http://www.ecozenithusa.com/pbc-disposable-food-containers.html where various packaging, which I initially mistook for regular plastic made from petroleum products (polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene), is quite common. To my surprise, I discovered that biodegradable plastic is used much more frequently than I thought – I find relevant brands and markings on very many products here, in the USA. Some are made from corn and sugarcane (polylactide, PLA), some from plant starch, and others from cellulose. Such production is much more expensive, but there are significant tax breaks, so the transition is gradually happening.

For some reason, women’s soccer is very popular here. I mean, boys seem to be more into other things. When you see a boy playing, it’s almost always a mixed team – with both boys and girls. But I have yet to encounter adult men playing soccer on the street.

In Russia, street soccer was becoming more associated with migrant workers for me.

A photo from the playground near my house. It looks like some club has rented it out.

Very interesting. The year 1928. It says that alcohol affects the body much more destructively than cosmetics, and that the latter affects the girl, unlike alcohol, not directly but “insidiously”. And many other pieces of advice from the past.

So you study English for the last 28 years, and suddenly a completely unfamiliar grammar topic comes up –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptional_case-marking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative_and_infinitive

I have never heard you sing.

I heard her come up the steps.

I saw her run into the house.

What I would like is for things to get better.

She had me cook, or at least try to.

She had my watch fixed.

Friends, the declaration must be submitted for 2014 as a sole proprietor – if there is anyone among you who can answer a couple of questions, I would be very grateful.