Mapping the Minds of Search & RecSys: A Comprehensive Directory | August 10 2026, 03:56

84 researchers, 40+ laboratories — who’s who in Search & RecSys, all on one page.

https://www.testmysearch.com/who-is-who.html

Google, Meta, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, CMU, UMass, UCSD, and others — for each person links to their website, Google Scholar, LinkedIn, key papers. Plus the h-index and number of citations from Semantic Scholar.

Made it for myself, because it’s more convenient to quickly see who publishes what. Couldn’t find anything ready-made — had to compile it myself. Seems useful, I hope not only to me.

https://www.testmysearch.com/who-is-who.html

https://www.testmysearch.com/who-is-who.html

Navigating Medical Titles: Why Dentists Aren’t Just Doctors | August 09 2026, 12:44

Interestingly, a dentist and a therapist are not covered by the same term ‘doctor’; that is, you would not say ‘doctor appointment’ for a dentist, but rather ‘dentist appointment’, and in various documents, it’s listed as ‘doctor or dentist’. They also hold different degrees (MD/DO and DDS/DMD). And of course, they have different insurances. Perhaps the reasons are historical – barbers used to deal with teeth, meaning they were distinct trades.

Adding to this are optometrists as yet another separate category, but this is understandable and justified.

Exploring the Depths of Unicode’s Complex Symbols | August 09 2026, 12:22

It’s amazing that Unicode includes such complex “characters” as shown in the picture. This is a single character. When the Unicode table had accommodated all the alphabets of the world, arrows, circles, and there was still a ton of free space left that needed filling, the capacity was used up. It has space for about 1.1 million characters, and font designers are doing their best) Chinese and Korean occupy 71% of the existing characters.

Also, Unicode includes some cool ligatures. For example, the following text is one “character” ﷽ (Basmala). Here on Facebook, it doesn’t display quite right because of the fonts, the full version can be seen here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%EF%B7%BD where ﷺ and ﷻ also live

Moreover, Unicode includes hieroglyphs that do not exist. An investigation in 1997 discovered, for example, the origin of 妛: the compilers wanted to record “山 over 女,” but could not print the composite sign — so they printed 山 and 女 separately, cut them out with scissors, glued them on a sheet and made a copy. On the copy, the seam line of the two pieces of paper looked like a stroke and was included in the hieroglyph. Now it remains so forever

The Evolution of Mermaids in Russian Folklore: From Legged Creatures to Aquatic Tails | August 08 2026, 02:15

WOW, it turns out that mermaids in Russia actually had legs, and if you asked about the tail, they would tickle you to death or drown the curious in the nearest pond. A specific feature — tousled blonde hair, hence the phrase from Dal “walks like a mermaid.” The name itself, however, is not from the type of blonde hair, but from “rusalki” — a spring commemorative festival.

And the tail actually came from sea maidens (mermaids). Mermaids are an invention of peoples living by the sea. In general, how mermaids merged with them in our perception is unclear, but it happened relatively recently.

Although there is one assumption. In Andersen’s tale, the little mermaid — literally a sea maiden (Den Lille Havfrue). But in Russian translation, it was called “Rusalka.” Lermontov has a poem “The Mermaid” from 1831, where she swims in a river. Surely the modern reader imagines a tail. There’s also a tale by Orest Somov, where the mermaid runs away from her mother, and her unfaithful lover—the Pole, was tickled to death by mermaids.

I illustrate with an 1871 painting by Ivan Kramskoy. With legs and Makovsky’s “Mermaids” (1879) – Makovsky painted it on an estate on the border of Chernigov and Poltava provinces, near Dikanka — that very Gogolian Ukrainian night, i.e., the same literary source as Kramskoy. They would have been very surprised by a tail. Also adding Prushkovsky’s Mermaids” (water nymphs) from 1877. Also attaching a drawing by Ivan Bilibin (1934).

By the way, those who depict mermaids with tails on trees – think about how she climbed up there.

Deciphering Tolstoy: Lost in Translation | August 06 2026, 21:36

I wonder what word our Leo Tolstoy had in mind in “War and Peace,” “lost the wolf” or something harsher? I take the English translation off the shelf, there it’s b——ed, apparently buggered, so it’s definitely “lost the wolf.”

A Close Encounter with a Giant Horsefly: Insights and Discoveries | August 05 2026, 01:33

I just had a huge, about three and a half centimeters across, loud buzzing black fly come into my room. I caught it with a blanket and shoved it into a vase, inspected it closely and Googled it. It turned out to be a black horsefly (Tabanus atratus), female. The females are vampires. They need fresh blood. For the eggs. And their bites are very painful. Essentially, a horsefly’s mouth is like scissors. A pair of serrated mandibles which they use to saw into the skin, opening up capillaries, and then they lick up the blood from the resulting pool. It’s said that their bites hurt a lot because you are literally being cut by these scissors. An anticoagulant is injected into the blood to prevent it from clotting, so the wound oozes for a long time after the horsefly has flown away. They can easily bite through fabric, so a shirt offers no protection.

So, it turns out that horseflies are possibly the fastest flying insects on the planet. Males of the genus Hybomitra (which also live here) are credited with speeds up to 145 km/h, and this, by some estimates, is the record for horizontal flight among insects (though this figure is indirectly obtained: an entomologist made a male chase a bullet shot from an air rifle, it intercepted it in the air, meaning it was flying faster than the pellet). Furthermore, horseflies are attracted to polarized light. This is how they find water — a smooth surface reflects light horizontally polarized, and for the horseflies, this is a beacon “here you can lay eggs”. Interestingly, this is also why white horses get significantly fewer bites, because they almost do not polarize reflected light. For these experiments, Gabor Horvat and his colleagues received the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize. Among other things, they smeared full-size horse models with glue and painted dummies to thoroughly check everything.

By the way, I released my captive.

From Bar Joke to Millionaire: The Unbelievable Success of the Pet Rock | August 05 2026, 00:55

Today I found out that the most successful product of Christmas 1975 was a rock. Just a regular rock. Gary Dahl, an advertiser from California, was sitting in a bar and listening to his friends complain about their pets – feeding them, walking them, cleaning up after them – and jokingly said that he had the perfect pet – a rock. It doesn’t need feeding, doesn’t poop, doesn’t die. The joke turned into a business plan over the course of the evening. Dahl bought smooth pebbles from Rosarito Beach in Mexico for about a cent apiece and sold them for $3.95 each. Every rock was shipped in a cardboard carrying box – with air holes “for breathing” and straw bedding inside. And here’s the kicker: the product wasn’t the rock. The product was the accompanying 32-page care and training manual, written stone-faced (pardon the pun): commands like sit” and lie down” are learned instantly, come here” and fetch” are a bit harder, and it executes the command “die” brilliantly.

Within a few months, over a million units were sold, Dahl became a millionaire, he was written about in magazines and invited on television. By early 1976 it was all over, warehouses remained filled with unsold rocks, and attempts to replicate the success with other novelty products failed. Dahl died in 2015, but the Pet Rock brand lives on: the rock in its original packaging can still be purchased today.

(How I came across this. I am currently reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and came across the phrase “They were the Pet Rock of parenting.” – referring to Amy’s parents. I did not understand it and went to google what this Pet Rock was.)

The Rise and Fall of the Pet Rock Craze | August 05 2026, 00:55

Today I learned that the most successful Christmas product of 1975 was a rock. Just a regular rock. Gary Dahl, an advertiser from California, was sitting in a bar listening to his friends complain about their pets — feeding them, walking them, cleaning up after them — and jokingly said that he had the perfect pet: a rock. It doesn’t need to be fed, doesn’t poop, doesn’t die. What began as a joke that evening turned into a business plan. Dahl bought smooth pebbles from Rosarito Beach in Mexico for about a cent apiece and sold them for $3.95 each. Each rock came in a cardboard carrying case — with “breathing” holes and straw bedding inside. And here’s the main point: the product wasn’t the rock. The product was the accompanying 32-page care and training manual, written with a stone-faced (pardon the pun) seriousness: the commands “sit” and “stay” are learned instantaneously by the pet, “come here” and “fetch” not so much, and it performs the command “die” brilliantly.

In a few months, more than a million units were sold, Dahl became a millionaire, and he was written about in magazines and invited on television shows. By the beginning of 1976, it was all over, warehouses remained with unsold rocks, and attempts to repeat success with other novelty products failed. Dahl died in 2015, but the Pet Rock brand lives on: you can still buy a rock in its branded box today.

(How I found this out. I’m currently reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and came across the phrase “They were the Pet Rock of parenting.” – about Amy’s parents. I didn’t understand it and went to Google what this Pet Rock was.)

Navigating Translation Traps: A Dual-Language Reading of “Gone Girl” | August 04 2026, 03:14

Bought Gone Girl in English in Spain, very interesting, reading it. But I keep a Russian translation on my phone, so if anything difficult comes up, I don’t have to go to a dictionary, but to the translation. And after a third of the book read – blood from my eyes. I don’t know who can like the Russian translation – only those who haven’t seen the original.

Eng: I’m using this journal to get better: to hone my skills, to collect details and observations

Rus: Работа в журнале — временная, она нужна, чтобы оттачивать навыки, копить наблюдения…

Darn, journal – it’s a diary! If they meant “journal”, they use magazine.

Eng: Nick prides himself on his packing skills: He is (was) the loader of the dishwasher, the packer of the holiday bags.

Rus: Ник гордится своим умением укладывать вещи. Ведь он работал (как-то!) загрузчиком посудомоечной машины, собирал сумки для пикника.

Darn, worked as a dishwasher loader… Nick is Amy’s husband, he just helped around the kitchen at home.

Eng: Amy’s cell was being monitored

Rus: Банковская ячейка Эми под наблюдением

Darn, translator, cell [phone] – it’s a phone!

Eng: dropped out of college and moved to Manhattan

Rus: в конце девяностых закончила колледж и перебралась в Манхэттен

Translator, dropped out means she left college halfway through. Not graduated from college.

Eng: I have a dash of ADD, and I’ve always found my wife a bit dazzling

Rus: Хотя у меня есть такой грешок — все преувеличивать

The translator clearly didn’t catch what ADD is 😉 It’s Attention Deficit Disorder

Eng: We have a cold-cut tray if you want, sweetheart

Rus: Там есть лоток с колотым льдом. Если хочешь, бери, дорогой

Cold cuts – that’s sliced meat. The curiosity is intensified by the fact that a page later Nick himself says: “we mainly live on cold cuts” – the translator translated the same word correctly, failing to notice the connection.

Eng: The awakening was mechanical. A spooky ventriloquist-dummy click of the lids: The world is black and then, showtime!

Rus: Обыденный механический процесс. Как будто фокусник распахнул черный ящик. Только что мир окутывала тьма, и вдруг — бац! — свет

Actually, spooky ventriloquist-dummy translates as creepy ventriloquist, and lids – it’s the doll’s eyelids. What’s with the magician darn.

Eng: My life was alarmless

Rus: У меня вообще беспорядочная жизнь

Actually, the author plays with the word alarm (alarm/clock, alarm). Nick means a life without alarm clocks and alarms (alarmless). The translator, however, delivered an abstract “disordered life,” completely losing the author’s irony.

Eng: Greedy journalists with knowing smirks and hollow legs, getting the free buzz before they go somewhere better.

Rus: Жадные журналисты усмехаются и

переминаются с ноги на ногу в ожидании халявного хавчика и бухла — напьются-нажрутся и свалят куда-нибудь еще.

Let’s put aside hollow legs – it’s actually an idiom, meaning the ability to drink a ton of alcohol without showing signs of intoxication, but darn where does shifting from foot to foot come from?

Eng: I was a writer who wrote about TV and movies and books

Rus: Я привык зарабатывать писательским трудом, сочинять романы, сценарии для кинофильмов и телевизионных программ

AAA! Nick wrote about movies and books — he’s a journalist, a pop culture critic. In translation, he became a novelist and screenwriter, which directly contradicts all further text (he himself tells the police: “journalism, pop culture”).

Eng: So there it came, out of nowhere, as Rand begged for his daughter’s return: a killer smile

Rus: Вот она, откуда ни возьмись, улыбка, о которой просил Ранд. Улыбка, так необходимая для его дочери. Улыбка убийцы

Rand didn’t ask for any smile 🙂 he was pleading for his daughter’s return, and at that very moment Nick flashed a smile. The translator invented “Rand’s request,” ruining a key scene of the first part. Plus, the wordplay is lost: a killer smile — primarily “a knockout smile” (see urban dictionary), and the ambiguity here is Flynn’s entire trick.

Eng: …people whose brains don’t work quick enough to blog or link or tweet…

Rus: …недостаточно гибкие, чтобы уйти в блогеры и городить всякую чепуху…

Is this because Twitter got blocked? 🙂

Eng: You guys not close?’ she asked. ‘We are the definition of not close.

Rus: — Ну, парни, не пора ли закругляться? — спросила детектив. — По-моему, пора

It seems the translator got carried away with creativity 🙂

Eng: A number of women – friends of my mom’s, friends of Go’s – had invited Amy to book clubs and Amway parties and girls’ nights at Chili’s.

Rus: Кое-кто — подруги моей мамы, друзья Го — приглашали Эми то в книжный клуб, то на заседание общества «Американский путь», то на вечерний девичник в «Чилиз гриль-бар».

For the translator’s information, Amway is a cosmetics company, which nobody translates into Russian as “American Way” 🙂 And Chili’s is indeed formally known as Chili’s Grill & Bar, although it seems no one knows it by its full name. It’s just a roadside restaurant chain.

And so – the whole book. This is just what I’m listing next to where I decided to make notes with a pencil, and only then, when I looked at “how interesting this was translated.” When I realized that such good stuff comprised half the book, I stopped marking it.