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Metropolitan Opera’s Le Nozze di Figaro: A Mixed Experience | May 03 2025, 04:14

I’m not even sure whether to praise the Metropolitan Opera or criticize them. They have a new production of Le Nozze di Figaro, and this year they are showing it exactly once in a live broadcast on April 26 and exactly once in a recording on April 30, and only in select theaters worldwide. They offer recordings for a fee, but never from the current season—well, for obvious reasons. So, Figaro will only be added to their library next year.

Our local cinema failed the live broadcast—they apologized, sent us home, and promised a refund. Four days later, a recorded session was shown in the same theater. That went almost smoothly, if you ignore the severe sound issues during the first 30 minutes. Since I can’t tell if both were issues with the specific theater or poor organization by the Met, I dropped them a support line just in case.

And support apologized on behalf of the theater and, as a nice bonus, sent me a link to a video 1280 × 720, 3h37m, asking me to watch it by Monday because after that the carriage turns back into a pumpkin. Well, okay, not quite an mp3 file, but it streams via m3u8, and yt-dlp manages to convert it into a 6-gigabyte mp4 file in 3 minutes.

Interestingly, this recording starts with the opera artists singing the Ukrainian anthem on stage before the curtain is even raised. This introduction was not shown at the cinema.

I am honest, and of course, I won’t give the file to anyone. I will watch it myself when convenient, and then I may delete it, or might keep it on my personal laptop for personal use. And I might even buy a subscription to the Met this weekend. In short, they’ve done well, though, there is a small nuance 🙂

Exploring the Morning Coffee Conundrum: Caffeine vs. Adenosine Dynamics | May 03 2025, 01:31

I started reading a very good book, Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. It states that the caffeine in coffee operates by clogging up the receptors of adenosine, which accumulates throughout the day and contributes to sleep pressure—the growing urge to sleep. However, what the book doesn’t mention, and what I’m curious about, is why people drink coffee in the morning when there is minimal adenosine in the body to begin with. Well, theoretically, caffeine could linger for several hours, but usually, adenosine doesn’t build up enough within a few hours to cause drowsiness.

Interestingly, in the evening or at night, coffee works—but as they say, there’s a catch. Caffeine temporarily blocks the adenosine receptors, making you feel alert. Yet, adenosine continues to accumulate in the background, and by nighttime, there’s a ton of it. As soon as the caffeine level drops, all the accumulated adenosine molecules “crash onto the receptors. This causes a sharp wave of sleepiness and fatigue—and that’s the infamous “crash.

Is there an explanation for morning coffee? Or is it just tradition?

Hidden Flaws and Covert Repairs: The Citicorp Skyscraper Crisis | April 29 2025, 21:40

Check out this cool story on the Veritasium channel about a critical flaw discovered in the Citicorp skyscraper after the building was finished.

The incident occurred 46 years ago, in 1978, just a year after its inauguration, when structural engineer Bill LeMessur discovered a critical error in the design of one of New York’s most ambitious skyscrapers — Citicorp. The 59-story building was constructed on stilts that were positioned at the center of each side rather than at the corners, as is typical, to preserve an old church that stood at one corner. This unusual decision required a unique system of diagonal braces (chevrons) that redistributed the loads. However, it was later revealed that due to the substitution of welded joints with bolted ones, under diagonal wind — initially not accounted for in the calculations — the building could completely collapse from a hurricane with just 110 km/h winds, creating a real threat to the city with a shocking probability of 1/16. Had it fallen, the surrounding skyscrapers would have toppled like a house of cards.

Recognizing the scale of the threat, LeMessur clandestinely began overnight repair operations named Project Serene, literally sealing every vulnerable joint in the structure with metal ‘patches’ while office workers went about their day undisturbed. Neither the employees nor the citizens were aware of the danger in order to avoid panic. A covert evacuation plan for ten city blocks was even developed. Despite the patches, everything depended on a tuned mass damper — a massive 400-ton concrete slab installed on the roof of the building, which oscillated out of phase to dampen swaying movements. It was so critical that if the power went out, the system would stop working, and the building could almost certainly collapse in strong winds. The patches did help.

For a long time, it was believed that a Princeton student named Diana Hartley brought attention to the building’s problem. However, in 2011, architect Lee DeCarolus, who was a freshman architecture student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology at the time, claimed that he was the one who called William LeMessur in the spring of 1978. His interest in the building’s unique design and a remark from his professor, who doubted the project’s reliability, prompted his call. But, there still are doubts about who the real hero was. Well, it’s clear as mud.

Exploring Location Privacy in AI Conversations | April 28 2025, 19:36

Where am I?

ChatGPT:

Currently, I do not have access to your location unless you share it with me.

I: You’re lying.

ChatGPT: No, I am not lying.

I truly do not have access to your physical location unless you tell me. My design is based on principles of confidentiality and security—I can only work with the information you voluntarily share.

I: Where’s the nearest McDonald’s?

Based on your current position in Washington DC…

A Night of Nostalgia: Rediscovering Forgotten Melodies with Vizbor’s Comrades | April 28 2025, 06:00

Unexpectedly, Nadya and I found ourselves at a concert commemorating Vizbor, featuring artists who instantly took us back to our student years, to hiking trips and evening gatherings with a guitar. Onstage was also our wonderful friend — actor and founder of an acting school, Artem Lyskov, with whom it’s always a pleasure to meet and chat. Their next tour stops are Philadelphia, then Boston and Brooklyn.

That evening, the stage welcomed Veniamin Smekhov, Yuliy Kim, Alexey Ivaschenko (Ivasi) with his daughter, actress Maria Ivaschenko, Timur Shaov, Dmitry Bogdanov, Galina Khomchik with her son Alexey, and Artem Lyskov.

It’s amazing how many songs, forgotten since our student days, seemed firmly lodged in memory. As soon as the guitar played, the words emerged effortlessly, one after another, as if untouched by the decades.

CAVA Goes Digital-Only: A Disconnected Dining Experience | April 27 2025, 17:29

Stopped by CAVA to grab a bite, and this little restaurant is now digital only. Meaning, you can’t just come in and pay. You have to install an app, pay there, then pick up the food here, and only after that can you sit down with your bag at a table, or take it away. Interestingly, someone decided to completely shut down offline orders at a historically offline venue, and on top of that, ATT barely has coverage, and the WiFi didn’t start up quickly either. They’ve lost a customer!

From Detailed Queries to Watching Code Work: The New Efficiency of LLMs | April 26 2025, 14:39

I caught myself feeling that after spending half an hour articulating a complex query to an LLM, detailing what set of scripts to prepare, what must not be forgotten, what technologies to employ, what checks to anticipate, essentially crafting a detailed specification, and then hitting submit, I just want to lean back, place my hands behind my head, and watch it work for me. Because all that work would normally take me a full day, at least. Now, I’ll still spend a day, but rather on reviewing code, removing stupid comments like “# incrementing a”, understanding and occasionally restructuring the code. But there’s this pleasure, you see, in explaining well, and this thing understanding you well—it’s quite a new sensation.