Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Fellow Americans, this is the traditional Russian dish, “herring under the fur coat”

December 30th! The customs of our little town. A Christmas tree and a TV set have been tossed to the curb. Because Christmas is all over and so are the sales 😉

PhoneticFanatic — the best Russian-speaking channel about English pronunciation. The creator really delves deep into each topic. In the comments of his latest video about linking j/w. It’s a big topic, but to put it simply, it’s why this year is often read as thiSH year. Or why sugar is not pronounced like suicide or superior. Or how to pronounce Tuesday as ˈtjuːzd(e)ɪ, as ˈt͡ʃuːzd(e)ɪ or as ˈt(j)uzd(e)i. Or tune. Whether as tjuːn or as tʃuːn or as t(j)un. And how to pronounce duty, news, suit, resume. And that’s not all, there’s a lot more.

(There’s also another good channel, Virginia Beowulf. Just to save getting up twice)

I’m currently reading in Musk’s biography about the Babylon Bee case. They were banned by Twitter for violating the misgendering policy. And Musk is discussing with lawyers Alex Spiro and Yoel Roth how to unblock them without changing the policy.

And I thought, why not create an unblocking policy that requires submitting a phrase like the one from the attached image for N consecutive days. Miss one day, and you start over. For repeat offenses, N doubles. All properly done with CAPTCHA, to prevent cheating.

Baubles on the Christmas tree for the New Year

Came to New York for a day!

Wow, I’ve never encountered anything like this 😉 their checkout is kosher and follows the commandments of the Torah? If so, what does the checkout do on Saturday?

update: Got an explanation in the comments that generally builds the logic why the checkout is closed: “Observant Jews do not want to earn income from actions that violate the Sabbath.”

I am currently reviewing an interesting article from the October 2022 issue of Cell about why mosquitoes do not bite me.

This well-conducted study revealed the following findings:

– some people are indeed more attractive to mosquitoes than others, with differences reaching up to 100 times (!)

– people who attract mosquitoes significantly produce more carboxylic acids in their skin secretions. These acids are detected by ionotropic receptors in mosquitoes.

– these acids are emitted by bacteria on the skin, and the “pattern” is unique for each individual.

– for the experiment, scientists created genetically modified mosquitoes Ir25a/Ir76b, designed to be less susceptible to carboxylic acids. This confirmed the hypothesis but also raised more questions as other unknown attractors were discovered.

Since no mosquito has bitten me for at least 8 years, it seems my skin bacteria are doing a great job.

There is a popular myth that Eskimos have 500 words to describe snow. Today, in the Russian language, I discovered five words to express the typical Russian mood—can you immediately explain the difference to a foreigner?

Words: melancholy 😕, sorrow🙁, sadness☹️, yearning😞, and despondency😟.

P.S. speaking of the Eskimo language. It doesn’t have words for “yesterday” and “war” (indeed, where would “yesterday” come from if there they have six months of day and six months of night?) Also, it has 63 verb tenses. Regarding snow, it was reported in 2015 by researcher Igor Krupnik that in the Eskimo language (depending on the dialect), the vocabulary for snow comprises 40-50 words. It’s noteworthy that, for example, in the Sami language (the Sami are a people living in northern Europe), there are altogether 180 words, and in Scottish, as many as 451.