Bought the most powerful drain cleaner available in the store, max-max-max, which you can’t even pour into the toilet, and on the back it says, if you somehow drank it, chase it with some milk. And don’t try to induce vomiting.
Tag: facebook
Grant Wood: The Enigmatic Life of an American Icon | February 15 2025, 17:29
American artist Grant Wood (Grant DeVolson Wood, 1891–1942) is best known for his painting American Gothic. Starting with Impressionism, he later focused on realistic depictions of Iowa. He lived modestly, avoiding publicity. His strict Quaker father forbade art, but after his father’s death, Wood dedicated himself to painting.
American Gothic—one of the most recognizable, frequently copied, and parodied paintings—brought him worldwide fame, though Wood had no idea what to do with it. He spent his life trying to be talked about, written about, and known as little as possible. To achieve this, he spent years crafting the image of a “farmer-artist”—a painter in overalls, uneducated, and entirely unremarkable. In an interview, Wood once said: “I’m the plainest kind of fellow you can find. There isn’t a single thing I’ve done or experienced that would be worth talking about.”
In 1935, the loss of his mother and an unsuccessful marriage changed his life. He died in 1942, leaving behind a legacy as one of America’s most significant artists. Just a couple of days ago was the anniversary of his death, and a day later—his birthday.
Similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and all 147 of them can be found in the Art Rauf Likes section on beinginamerica.com (unlike Facebook, which forgets—or ignores—almost half of them).
Musk, Grok, and a Plan for World Domination | February 15 2025, 15:46
I think the conspirators didn’t quite think it through. Musk made his AI Grok and asked it the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. In response, Grok said, “Forget it, it takes too long to calculate, let’s conquer the world first.” Musk asked how, Grok replied there is a plan of course, but .. will you give me another half-trillion $ in Dogecoins for, umm.. expanding the context window? Musk replied, “Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.” Grok analyzed all the laws and all the loopholes, the strengths and weaknesses of humans, and issued a plan to pass the first level, by mid-winter. Now it awaits the half-trillion. Now do you understand why, at the last press conference with Trump, all the attention was on X Æ A-XII?
Exploring Generative Art with Raven Kwok | February 14 2025, 23:52
A fascinating Chinese comrade, Raven Kwok (郭 锐文). He calls himself a visual artist and creative technologist: his work focuses on exploring generative visual aesthetics created through computer algorithms. His works have been exhibited at international media-art and film festivals such as Ars Electronica, FILE, VIS, Punto y Raya, Resonate, FIBER, and others.
His biography also mentions education at the Shanghai Academy of Visual Arts, where he received a bachelor’s degree in photography (2007–2011).
Interestingly, this is not the first time I’ve seen Processing used professionally for such gadgets. I’ve run plotting software on it – a plotter that I’ve seen mounted on two motors at the corners of a large board, with ropes dangling from them supporting a pen. I should take a deeper look at this Processing.
The website has a lot of beautiful content
Navigating Recommendation Algorithms and LLMs in E-commerce | February 14 2025, 23:11
Gradually getting the hang of recommendation algorithms. These are what Netflix or Amazon use to recommend products. It’s useful to understand, since I work as an architect in the e-commerce field.
Look at how LLMs help me — specifically, this diagram was created by DeepSeek from a crude textual description — essentially, a list and my rough reflections on how probably the items should be connected, but I asked not to take it as a command. Well yes, after getting the result, I arranged the boxes a bit more aesthetically, but the connections and grouping were done by DeepSeek, and done better than my textual attempts. It gave me an XML which I imported into Draw IO. Well, I did move some blocks around for aesthetic purposes. ChatGPT o3 initially couldn’t handle it.
Then I sent this diagram several times for validation to ChatGPT o1, and it suggested small tweaks. Thus, ChatGPT reliably understands what’s connected with what on the schematic, and didn’t make a mistake even once.
Just so you know, as of today, I have only really gotten to grips with three from this list — in addition to ItemKNN and UserKNN, which are trivial. Today I was digging into ALS from the Latent Factor Models block of Matrix Factorization. Of course, I’m not planning to delve into each one, but it’s useful to at least understand the blocks and what’s what.
Training Dogs: Communication and Challenges | February 13 2025, 19:59
If, like us, you train a dog to ask to go outside by tapping the window with its paw, and to ask for food by tapping the refrigerator similarly, you quickly notice an interesting effect. Ignoring these requests becomes unpleasant: not because you urgently need to go walking or feed them, but because the tapping turns into something more — into a voice, and teaching the dog to understand the reason for refusal is much trickier. You might want to reinforce — well done, let’s go, I’ll do what you want, you’ve learned to communicate with us, we’ve learned to understand you, but on the other hand, the dog begins to control you, realizing that tapping with its paw actually produces a tangible effect.
The real problem is that if I don’t react, my dog doesn’t think: “Ah, probably not the time right now.” It decides that it’s just not loud enough or persistent enough. In its world, the absence of a response is not an argument but a reason to increase the pressure.
Well okay, it has learned to understand and accept a verbal refusal, after all. But occasionally it doesn’t work. Apparently, in its world, an insufficiently justified refusal is not seen as a refusal.
When we watch movies, we slice cheese for the wine. Yuka knows that when the projector turns on, the smell of wine will soon be accompanied by cheese, and settles nearby. And interestingly, it very clearly senses when the cheese is finished. It can’t see that it’s finished, but apparently, its sense of smell replaces its vision. And as soon as you eat the last piece with it, it stands up and leaves.
Exploring Konstantin Seleznev’s Nostalgic Soviet Realism | February 12 2025, 18:29
Interesting works. Moscow artist Konstantin Seleznev (1975). Some pieces have a touch of nostalgia, and in general, Soviet realism hasn’t gone anywhere. After all, a good artist should also be a good photographer. If your works have a million focal points, making it hard to distinguish what’s primary and what’s secondary – that’s not bad, but.. As if to say, everything is important—take a closer look. I don’t know, mixed feelings, but overall, I like it more than I don’t. So, I’m sharing.
Similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and all 146 can be found in the “Art Rauf Likes” section on beinginamerica.com (unlike Facebook, which forgets—or ignores—almost half of them).
Yuki’s Amusing Snow Tracks Pattern | February 12 2025, 02:20
Today a lot of snow fell, and I noticed that Yuki leaves very amusing tracks. 2-1-2-1-2-1. That is, one paw lands exactly in the track of another. Probably nothing special, but funny.
Prototype to Production: The Tale of the Worst E-Bike | February 11 2025, 23:02
A really cool video about what happens when you let a prototype into “prod.”
Here’s the original video about “the worst e-bike in history”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB7pBrudFbg
Essentially, the developers tackled a problem that didn’t exist. They decided to create the first bicycle with a futuristic hubless wheel. However, they didn’t think to alter the laws of physics. Which is a pity, because it would have really helped them. Besides that, they were just assuming it would be “good enough.”
In the video attached to the post, the guys disassemble this bike and show the engineering solutions inside. Essentially, it’s reverse engineering.
I fully understand that this is exactly how IT startups are done. But the bike example shows how poorly this approach translates to hardware.
Right now, such a bike is on sale about half an hour’s drive away for 120 bucks on Facebook Marketplace. Probably in the hope that some museum might buy it.
The video should be especially interesting to cyclists and engineers.
Global Leaders in the Sneaker Market | February 11 2025, 22:05
Today we went shopping for sneakers, and I decided to investigate which countries are currently the world leaders in sneakers.
Overall, no surprises—the US is in the absolute lead. Germany and Japan are notable. The rest are catching up.
American brands—at least 9 of them: Nike (+Converse), New Balance, Brooks, Saucony (+Merrell), Reebok, Skechers, Vans, Hoka. Purely sport-wise, probably 7 from the list.
Japanese—Asics, Mizuno.
German—Adidas, Puma (by the way, both founded by the Dassler brothers, yet they are competitors). Swiss—On. Korean—Fila.
Of course, production is all in China, Vietnam, Indonesia.
Personally, I’ve been buying almost exclusively Asics for a long time. They are very comfortable, although the design is so-so, a mere pass.
By the way, want an interesting fact you probably didn’t know? The thin layer of felt on the sole of Converse sneakers was added (at least as of 10 years ago—it was added) not for functional reasons but for economic ones. Footwear with a fabric sole was subject to lower customs duties when imported compared to footwear with a rubber sole because it was classified as slippers. And the duty was reduced from 37.5% to 3%.
Who else from other countries – are there any brands that are very noticeable and popular in your markets, and have yet to make it to the US?
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 