Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

What the heck kind of news. LE VENDEUR DE NOUVEAUTÉS À PARIS translates as “the novelty seller in Paris.” Repin lived in Paris for three years from 1873 (actually, the year the painting was written).

https://my.tretyakov.ru/app/masterpiece/77855

Look at these clever guys. I live in a hotel styled like a castle. Well, there are old wooden frames, rusty grills on the windows, somewhat crooked walls, beamed ceilings, etc. And I noticed that when you open a window, the air conditioner turns off. Right then and there. And it turns back on when you close the window. Just like magic. Probably how some people marvel at the escalators in the subway.

I roamed around there with a flashlight, and not without some difficulty, found it! Everything was almost “overgrown” with something like cobwebs, and I managed to take a clear picture only at the second window.

It turns out, a sensor is embedded in the window frame. Just a reed switch with a little magnet. When it opens, it sends a command to pause the air conditioner.

I would replace any metro in the world with Dubai’s. It seems to have no flaws at all

I could never understand why hotels place telephones next to the toilet. Is this a “cultural” thing? No one uses the room phone anymore, except maybe to call the reception. It’s hard for me to imagine a use case where this is done from the toilet.

I found out – apparently, those odd structures are not just for aesthetics, but they actually have a functional purpose. They are called barjeel, or wind towers. I see there are scientific papers claiming these towers reduced indoor temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius. Sticks protrude from the barjeel. Why? They were used to attach sails for better wind collection. Now, it’s merely a tradition. And of course, nobody uses them for cooling in the age of air conditioners anymore. But many stylize their villas to resemble a desert home.

Say what you will, but the Arabs have a knack for design. I often hear that their transition from the desert to civilization happened too quickly, and supposedly this creates problems. I completely disagree. If people truly strive to create a pleasant living environment around them, then in thirty years the best will become even better, and the mediocrities will go sell vegetables at the market. And the reverse path, a fall from civilization to savagery, I fear we may yet see in our lifetime.

P.S. I really like the slide bolt in the toilet.

I apologize, but friends, either make the $20 portions smaller, or the door wider

Interestingly, of the entire globe, satellite internet will not work over just a small piece of Western Africa.

Sitting on the plane, it’s a 15-hour flight, updating the world map in my head and turns out there’s quite a few changes. It turns out the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo are two different countries, separated by the Congo River. Also, it turns out Swaziland is now Eswatini, which is still Swaziland, but in the Swazi language.

It turns out that in our homeland, Arabic numerals did not exist at all until the 18th century.

There was a cunning system based on Cyrillic and symbols. There is even a converter program http://info-7.ru/Titlo/Titlo.shtml Darkness, legion, leodr, vran, deck. Sources: http://hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/ahist/cyrik.htm also here http://www.pravpiter.ru/zads/n018/ta013.htm.

Especially interesting is that our ancestors for some reason needed such unimaginable numbers as 10 to the power of 48 and next to it 10 to the power of 50. These are klada, ten vrans and darkness of dark, ten decks. For instance, in the Apocalypse: “The number of the horsemen was two hundred million (Ancient Greek δισ-μυριάδες μυριάδων); and I heard the number thereof” (Rev. 9:16). Not only are various kladas and darkness of dark simply huge numbers, but their powers differ only by a couple of orders of magnitude. Interestingly, maybe scientists have figured something out over something simple.

“…APRICOT. This word originates from the Latin praecoquum /prekokvum/ — “early”: this name was given to various early-ripening fruit varieties. Of course, when a word transitions from one language to another, some sounds often get replaced; but where did the initial ‘a’ sound come from? The history of this word is as follows. It was first borrowed by the Greeks, who replaced the Latin suffix with their own: prekokkion; then the Greeks lent it to the Arabs. In Arabic, there were no ‘p’ or ‘o’ sounds, and the Arabs replaced them with ‘b’ and ‘u.’ Moreover, an Arabic word cannot start with two consonants — and a vowel appeared between ‘b’ and ‘r’; the ending was dropped. Finally, they added the Arabic article al at the beginning: resulting in al-barquq. As the Arabs moved from the east of the Mediterranean to the west, they introduced this word in Spain; the Spaniards made it their own: albaricoque /albarikoque/. It then reached the French: abricot /abriko/, and the Dutch: abrikoos /abrikoos/; from the Dutch, it was adopted by the Russians….”

(“The Book on Language”)