Category: Society

Creative Mashup: Exploring Telegram’s “Rzhivopis” Art Parodies | September 12 2025, 20:12

I discovered a hilariously wacky group on Telegram, “Rzhivopis.” I spent an hour on vacation using a script to download their paintings and overlay them with their custom titles from their channel. Then two more hours reviewing them all and picking out the best. Definitely subscribe, there are about 2000 paintings, I won’t post that many, but maybe next time there will be a second part of the funniest:)

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Solar Simplicity: How Turkey’s Homes Heat Water with the Sun | September 11 2025, 06:44

I constantly see such panels on almost every house in Turkey. Of course, my first thought was that these were solar photovoltaic panels for generating electricity. But the second thought — they are expensive, there shouldn’t be so many of them, plus typically just two panels on a roof seems too few. I started googling.

It turned out, these are solar water heaters, more precisely, flat-plate solar collectors. The system is simple, reliable, and inexpensive — that’s why they are installed on every other house.

The principle of operation: the panels consist of an absorber (usually copper or aluminum plates with a black coating), a transparent cover (low-iron glass for greenhouse effect), and thermal insulation (glass wool or stone wool). A heat-carrying fluid circulates in the tubes — either water or antifreeze (glycol).

Solar rays heat the absorber up to 60-90°C, the heat transfers to the fluid, which by the principle of thermosiphon (natural convection, without a pump) rises to the tank, which is usually nearby. The tank is a thermos of 100-300 liters, with insulation, so the water stays hot for 2-3 days.

This too was a surprise. I actually thought the tanks were just metal and heated up in the sun by themselves. That’s how it was in Baku. It turns out, no, and so they are white here, not black.

In Turkey, with over 2000+ hours of sunshine a year, such a system covers 70-90% of the hot water needs for a home. The efficiency of the collector is 40-60% (depending on the model and angle of installation, optimally 30-45° to the horizon for the latitude of Antalya). For a family, this costs from 500-1500 euros, with a payback period of 3-5 years due to savings on gas/electricity. Electricity is expensive in Turkey. Plus, government subsidies and tax incentives encourage installation.

Probably, there are also electric panels, but I haven’t seen them yet.

Echoes of Anthrax: The Amerithrax Investigation Unveiled | September 02 2025, 13:33

From the museum of the day before yesterday. Probably, some of you remember the notorious case in 2001: shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the USA experienced a series of bioterror attacks: someone mailed letters containing powder with anthrax spores (Bacillus anthracis). This led to the deaths of 5 people and infected 17, but it could have ended much worse for the entire planet. The investigation, known as “Amerithrax,” was conducted by the FBI in collaboration with other agencies and became one of the most complex in history.

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For those who might not know — the inhalational form of anthrax has a mortality rate of 85–90% without treatment. Symptoms appear after 6 days, by which time dozens will be infected. It can’t be destroyed — spores remain viable for decades in the soil. For example, on the Scottish island of Gruinard, they lingered for nearly 50 years after wartime testing. Only after 50 years had passed and after 280 tons of formaldehyde solution had been sprayed across all 196 hectares of the island, and the most contaminated topsoil around the dispersal site had been removed, did the island become relatively safe. Thus, anthrax could easily be more terrifying than a global nuclear war.

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So, returning to the subject. Initially, suspicions fell on various individuals, including Iraq or Al-Qaeda, but no evidence was found.

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The key breakthrough was scientific examination. Scientists analyzed the anthrax strain from the letters — it was the Ames strain used in American laboratories. Using microbial forensics (genetic analysis), they identified unique mutations in the spores that narrowed the source down to flask RMR-1029 in the USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

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In other words, every living being has names and genealogy from birth, it’s just a matter of willingness to dig into the genealogy. Apparently, controlled substances have their own registry office, so to speak.

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Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist who worked there, was the custodian of this flask and had direct access (although more than 100 others did as well).

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Later, investigators gathered circumstantial evidence. Ivins had been working late at the lab just before the mailings in September and October 2001, which was inconsistent with his usual schedule. He could not convincingly explain these hours. Moreover, in early September 2001, he was vaccinated against anthrax, which seemed suspicious. The FBI also accused him of attempting to mislead the investigation: he allegedly provided false anthrax samples to divert suspicion and attempted to frame colleagues. In 2001, Ivins sent an email to colleagues offering the Ames strain for analysis, which might have been an attempt to cover his tracks.

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Behavioral signs also played a role. Ivins suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, especially after another suspect (Steven Hatfill) was cleared in 2008. In June 2008, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic, where during therapy, he made statements that the FBI interpreted as “denials without denial” — for example, that he “had no heart for killing” and did not remember participating in the attacks.

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By 2008, the investigation had narrowed down to Ivins. When he learned that charges were being prepared against him, on July 29, 2008, he took a lethal dose of Tylenol (acetaminophen). Formal charges were never brought. In 2010, the FBI officially closed the case, declaring Ivins the sole perpetrator.

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However, the conclusions remain controversial: the US National Academy of Sciences noted in 2011 that the genetic examination was not convincing enough for a definitive conclusion, and some microbiologists, victims’ families, and politicians demanded further investigation. As of now, no new discoveries have been made, and the case is considered closed.

Mexican Mosaic: Frida, Trotsky, and the Tale of an Ice Axe | September 02 2025, 00:33

Nadia with a Frida Kahlo purse encounters a painting by Frida Kahlo in which Frida Kahlo is holding a letter dedicated to Leon Trotsky, and an hour later, we see an exhibition at another museum dedicated to the assassination of Trotsky. Such a revolutionary Mexican vibe.

By the way, here he is Leon, not Lev. And not Trotsky, but Bronstein. But these are trifles.

There is something to tell here, although the story is, of course, very well-known. Probably everyone knows that Trotsky was hiding in Mexico, and that Kahlo was his lover (Diego Rivera did not mind). In 1939, Stalin through Beria ordered to eliminate Trotsky, and on the second attempt, the NKVD succeeded.

The murder was carried out by Ramon Mercader. He came to Trotsky under the pretext of showing him a manuscript of an article supposedly in need of editing. He carried an ice axe under his coat. This Ramon’s mother was also a Soviet intelligence agent, who actually recruited her son. Additionally, her lover was close to the organizer of the previous, unsuccessful attack, when a bunch of bullets were fired at the bed behind which Trotsky and his wife were hiding, and not a single shot hit. In general, they did their job as best they could. Well, after six months, the ice axe came.

The Mexican police preserved this ice axe as evidence after the murder, and later exhibited it in a museum. When the museum’s director retired in the 1960s, he received the axe as a gift. For 40 years his daughter kept it under her bed, not really understanding its value.

It took nearly four decades for historian and collector, an espionage specialist Kitten Melton, to locate the ice axe and understand why the assassin sent by Joseph Stalin, Ramon Mercader, used it specifically to kill Trotsky. Actually, this ice axe is exhibited in the museum.

So, this is how Ramon gained trust. Trotsky was brought to Ramon by Sylvia Ageloff, who was Ramon’s mistress, plus Trotsky was very much in contact with Ramon’s mother. Sylvia was the daughter of Samuel Ageloff and Anna Maslova — Russian emigrants, who spoke Russian at home. In general, in all this environment, it’s difficult to stay alert, but Trotsky managed to.

By the way, the first thought — of course, an ice axe in hot Mexico is something that doesn’t catch the eye at all. Anyway, where did the ice axe come from? It turned out that it was normal, as there were no refrigerators, and ice was brought down from the mountains, which “worked” almost all year round with proper thermal insulation.

Ramon’s mother fled to the USSR. Ramon served a maximum of 20 years and also fled to the USSR, where he received a medal. Ramon Ivanovich Mercader was posthumously honored with the title Hero of the Soviet Union for the assassination of Lev Trotsky. And he received the Order of Lenin. The award was made for his actions as an agent of the Soviet special services. Why he became Ivanovich is unclear, it seems his father was Pau. Ramon died in Havana in 1978 from cancer, buried in Moscow, at the Kuntsevo Cemetery, under the name “Ramon Ivanovich Lopez.” Havana extradited him.

Frida Kahlo’s painting almost got destroyed after the assassination of Trotsky, “out of anger,” but it was saved, and is now one of the exhibits at the museum of women in art in Washington, from which our yesterday began.

A couple of very notable photos in the comments

The Ingenious Spy Device Gifted in Friendship: Unveiling The Thing | September 01 2025, 01:03

Today in the museum I saw The Thing in person – simply a brilliant espionage device. In 1945, a group of Soviet schoolchildren presented a large wooden Great Seal of the United States to the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, as a “gesture of friendship”. The seal was beautifully hand-carved and hung in the ambassador’s office for a whole 7 years. And it leaked secrets!

No batteries involved! It was all very clever, especially for 1945.

Essentially, it was a passive radio relay or “parasitic resonator”. Inside the wooden seal was a small metal cylinder with a membrane and an antenna-rod.

Soviet operators directed a specific frequency radio wave (about 330 MHz) into the ambassador’s office.

Inside the device was a cavity resonator, tuned to the same frequency. It “responded” to the radio signal and began to retransmit it back.

On one side of the cylinder was a thin flexible membrane. It vibrated from the sound in the room (voices, footsteps).

The vibrations of the membrane altered the capacity and resonance parameters of the device, slightly shifting the reflected radio signal by frequency and phase. This was the modulation of speech onto the external signal.

Outside the building (like in a KGB car nearby), the retransmitted signal was received and the sound modulation was extracted – effectively capturing the overheard conversation.

Why was this almost impossible to detect? The device had no battery and emitted nothing by itself. It “came to life” only when irradiated with an external radio signal. In standard radio monitoring checks, it remained “dead”. Essentially, it was akin to an ancestor of the RFID tag – a passive device that operates only on external request.

But most interestingly, the inventor was Leon Theremin, the same person behind the musical instrument “thereminvox” (played with hands in the air).

His biography reads like a novel. In the early 1920s, Theremin went to the U.S., patented his thereminvox instrument, and collaborated with RCA; his New York studio was visited by Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, Gershwin, and other notable personalities. It is written that he visited the USSR – Already in 1926, he demonstrated television at the Kremlin.

At that time, televisions with screens the size of a matchbox were being created, but his television had a huge screen (1.5 x 1.5 m) and a resolution of 100 lines. In 1927, the scientist demonstrated his installation to Soviet military leaders K.E. Voroshilov, I.V. Tukhachevsky, and S.M. Budyonny:

state minds watched in horror as Stalin walked through the Kremlin courtyard on the screen.

This sight so frightened them that the invention was immediately classified and quietly buried in the archives, and television was soon invented by the Americans.

Eventually, in 1938, he secretly returned to the USSR, but was soon arrested as a “non-returnee” and sent to the camps, but his talent was still used in the so-called “sharashka” – on projects together with Sergei Korolev, including the development of radio-controlled apparatuses and listening systems, including the aforementioned “Great Seal bug”.