Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

The title “czar” in the USA is informally used for top officials responsible for problematic areas of the country. You probably haven’t heard about this.

For example, when the HIV epidemic emerged, there was a “AIDS czar,” there have been auto czars, finance czars, etc. Now, Biden has announced a new nominee for climate czar, John Kerry, who officially holds the title “presidential envoy.” Well, envoy or not, the funniest czar titles to me are the cleanup czar, Iran czar, and drug czar. There was even an ecommerce czar in the 2000s, specifically Elizabeth Echols. Presumably, this was right after the dot-com bubble, when online businesses were going bankrupt by the droves due to inflated investor expectations.

Under Barack Obama, there were 38 czars, whereas Trump had only one (he is the Fact-Finding Officer for the Federal Maritime Commission, Louis Sola). By the way, Fact Finding here does not refer to Trump’s beloved fake news, but rather to the impact of COVID-19 on the cruise ship industry (https://www.fmc.gov/fact-finding-30/)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars

I wonder, if the efficacy of a single vaccine dose is 70%, what is the efficacy of three consecutive doses administered a month apart?

Google plotted a bike route to the capitol. It’s just straight down the road, 10 minutes. Google thinks that’s too boring. Better by the river!

I wonder, what prevents diverse bloggers, who are testing the vaccine against COVID (where 30% is a placebo), from testing right after vaccination to check if it’s the real vaccine or a placebo that has entered the body? Is this technically feasible?

Came across an interesting fact: Down syndrome was called “mongolism” for a hundred years, until the Mongolian People’s Republic wrote to the WHO that it was not nice to do so. Then, gradually, the term fell out of use. The U.S. National Institutes of Health even recommended removing “Down” from the syndrome’s name, because Down did not have the disease, and it seemed as though he did. But they were ignored.

“You like to-may-toes and I like to-mah-toes …”

An accent spills the beans about where a person spent their early years. Some New Zealanders claim that Australians pronounce “fish and chips” as “feesh and cheeps,” while some Australians assert that New Zealanders pronounce it as “fush and chups.” Apparently, this phrase can be used as a short, but reliable test.

Today I stumbled upon an interesting video from 1958, explaining how speech is linked to the place in the USA where a person grew up. The lecturer demonstrates phrases that can quite accurately determine where the speaker is from. Quite interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8ZNnlYvXw0

Today I had a conversation with mom. She says she’s into music therapy, listening to Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Wow, I say, tell me what you’re listening to. And she puts something on. “Rain Waltz” by Chopin. I listen and realize, Chopin could not have composed this in the mid-19th century, no way. Turns out, with a bit of Googling, that the so-called “Rain Waltz” attributed to Chopin was actually written by the contemporary composer Yaroslav Nikitin, and arranged by Sergey Kuznetsov, the one who created almost all hits of the “Laskoviy May” band. Google “Chopin autumn waltz”—you’ll be surprised.

Moving on. She puts on “Spring Waltz.” Says it’s by Chopin. Beautiful, isn’t it! But I hear it, and it’s definitely not Chopin, but who is it? Hard to tell, I’m no Shazam. I ask Siri – it identifies “Marriage d’amour” by Paul de Senneville and Olivier Toussaint. What classic? Written the year I was born.

Then Vivaldi, she says, listen to this. And she puts on – surprise, “Song from a Secret Garden.” I say, that’s not Vivaldi, and play this piece by Rolf Løvland for my mom right there on the piano (it’s a simple one). Seems she called it “Soul”?

“So, wait, does this mean I’m being duped? And Tchaikovsky—isn’t Tchaikovsky?” But Tchaikovsky turned out to be the real Tchaikovsky.

Overall, fake news has long been around in music. And the main thing is, it’s unclear what to do about it. For the sake of likes, ignorant reposters add whatever they can.

How do you like that, Elon Musk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HZ4DnVfWYQ

We need a button or a menu item in the browser that shows a list of all tabs from all windows where audio is playing for a quick jump to close that damn window. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this yet?

A very interesting lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U

I only post worthwhile videos on Facebook, so take a look, you won’t regret it (especially if you understand programmers even a little)

“Software and technology has changed every aspect of the world we live in. At one extreme are the ‘mission critical’ applications – the code that runs our banks, our hospitals, our airports, and phone networks. Then there’s the code we all use every day to browse the web, watch movies, create spreadsheets… not quite so critical, but still code that solves problems and delivers services.

But what about the code that only exists because somebody wanted to write it? Code created just to make people smile, laugh, maybe even dance? Maybe even code that does nothing at all, created just to see if it was possible?

Join Dylan Beattie – programmer, musician, and creator of the Rockstar programming language – for an entertaining look at the art of code. We’ll look at the origins of programming as an art form, from Conway’s Game of Life to the 1970s demoscene and the earliest Obfuscated C competitions. We’ll talk about esoteric languages and quines – how DO you create a program that prints its own source code? We’ll look at quine relays, code golf, and generative art, and we’ll explore the phenomenon of live coding as performance – from the pioneers of electronic music to modern algoraves and live coding platforms like Sonic Pi.”