Tag: Geography

When the Night Lit Up: Unraveling the Mystery of a Superbolt Storm | March 21 2026, 12:55

We had a thunderstorm last night. The whole county is buzzing because everyone thinks that something exploded just before midnight. Several posts in a row on social media. In short, it was thunder. But a bit more rare than usual. Caused by a 401 kA lightning, dubbed the Wild House Shaker. A typical lightning strike is 30 kA. If the numbers are to be believed, 401 kA is really damn a lot. They will likely say we haven’t had such lightning here for decades.

Attaching an interesting map.

The points on the map show superbolts — lightning strikes with an energy of no less than 1M J. Red points — particularly powerful superbolts with an energy of more than 2M J. That is, superbolts mostly occur in the northeastern part of the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean Sea, and less frequently — in the Andes, off the coast of Japan, and near South Africa.

this is what the page from which I took the map says (translation):

“New work shows that superbolts most often occur over the Mediterranean Sea, the northeastern Atlantic, and over the Andes, as well as in smaller amounts to the east of Japan, in tropical oceans, and near the southern tip of Africa. Unlike regular lightning, superbolts often strike over water.

“Ninety percent of lightning occurs over land,” said Holzworth (that’s the main guy on lightning at the University of Washington).

“But superbolts mostly arise over water, right up to the coastline. For example, in the northeastern Atlantic, the distribution maps of superbolts clearly show the outlines of the coasts of Spain and England.”

“The average energy of a discharge over water is higher than over land—that we knew,” he said. “But we did not expect such a stark difference.”

The season for superbolts also does not match the usual patterns of lightning. Regular lightning most often occurs in the summer—the three main so-called “lightning chimneys” coincide with summer thunderstorms over America, Africa south of the Sahara, and Southeast Asia. However, superbolts, which are more common in the Northern Hemisphere, occur in both hemispheres from November to February.

The reason for such a distribution remains a mystery. In some years, there are significantly more superbolts than in others: the end of 2013 was record-breaking, and the end of 2014 was the second largest, while in other years such events were much less frequent.

“We speculate that this may be related to sunspots or cosmic rays, but we will leave that for future research,” said Holzworth.

“For now, we are just demonstrating that there is a previously unknown pattern.”

Navigating Without GPS: Understanding Cardinal Directions in Moscow | March 13 2026, 18:41

The spokesperson for the Phystech press service explains how to determine cardinal directions in Moscow when navigation systems are down. Find the North Star or use the sun: it rises in the east and sets in the west. Also reminds us how to determine directions using trees. Ziya, do you know how to find cardinal directions using trees? — What’s there to know? Fir tree points north, palm tree points south!

Overall, it seems the Phystech press service is not aware that in Moscow, the annual amplitude of sunrise point movement is almost 90 degrees. That means, it only sometimes (like now, in March) actually coincides with the east. But they do know the word “asterism”. I think most readers will place it somewhere near the word “flatulence”

Mapping Global Friendships and Rivalries: A Color-Coded Matrix Analysis | March 12 2026, 03:29

For fun, I decided to make a matrix of who is friends with whom and who is enemies with whom. For each country-country pair, I asked Gemini which of the five categories the relations fall into: “at daggers drawn” (purple), “predominantly unfriendly” (red), “neutral” (yellow), “predominantly friendly” (blue), “friends” (green). Lisa said that “neutral” should be purple. Overall, the quality of Gemini’s assessments is quite good.

Among all countries, three red lines stand out. These are countries that are on very bad terms with many others. Well, you guessed Russia right. And what is the second country? Israel? No, it’s Belarus and Venezuela.

In the top five countries that everyone is friends with and who have many friends themselves, LLM included the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Germany. There is an anti-rating – these are countries that have very bad relations (“at daggers drawn”) with many others. In this rating, Russia is in first place with 21 countries, and Israel is in second place with 18 enemies. Following them, with a significant gap, are Syria and the USA with 9 enemies each. There is also a separate Conflict Zone rating – this is the sum of red and purple. Russia, Venezuela, Belarus, Israel, USA, Iran, Ukraine.

There is a “pacifists’ club”. These are the ones who have no enemies at all, sorted by the number of friends. Rating: Bahamas, Vatican, Luxembourg, Angola, Singapore, Iceland, Jamaica, Tanzania, Zambia.

I was curious, what if I apply the formula: the enemy of my enemy is my friend? What would change? This led to new colors on the matrix – logic friends.

The most unexpected leader of the Master Pragmatists ranking was Taiwan (25 logical connections). Why so? In the logic of LLM, Taiwan is a country that is officially recognized by few, but because of its global opposition to China, it automatically becomes a “logical friend” for everyone who has strained relations with Beijing. This is confirmed in the Shadow Bridges section: Taiwan has 23 connections beyond its region. It literally “stitches” different parts of the world together through a common problem.

The report “Secret Partners” – a list of geopolitical oxymorons. These are pairs that are “at daggers drawn” in official news but are forced to be friends by Gemini’s calculation. For example, Afghanistan – USA/United Kingdom. Despite the status “rather bad relations”, Gemini’s logic sees them as “logical friends”. Possibly due to common regional threats (like ISIS) or dependence on humanitarian and back channels. Or here’s a strange alliance “Belarus — Hungary”. Nominal — different camps, factually — similar style of rhetoric and common “enemies” in Brussels. Eritrea — Ethiopia: Status “at daggers drawn”, but at the same time, they became logical friends.

In the report “Most Controversial,” the first places are taken by the USA, and then with a significant gap, Russia, and even larger – United Kingdom, Canada, Ukraine. These are countries with the highest Love x Hate product value. That is, countries that have many friends and enemies at the same time.

Another report – the indifferent ones. About them, LLM couldn’t say much, apparently because they bother no one (both literally and figuratively). There are, for example, Madagascar and Haiti.

I also tried to cluster by the strength of friends and got four groups of countries.

The largest cluster. Core: China, Russia, Iran, India, and BRICS+ countries, as well as almost the entire African continent (from Egypt to South Africa) and a significant part of the Middle East (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar).

The second cluster mainly included European countries. Core: France, Germany, United Kingdom. The algorithm determined Ukraine and Israel to be here. Logically: their survival depends on “predominantly friendly relations” with the European core. In this same club are Armenia, Georgia, and Serbia. Apparently, despite all the political swings, Gemini considers their ties to Europe more fundamental than any others.

The third cluster included the USA, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and, for example, Taiwan. Officially, it can be a “logical friend” to all of China’s enemies, but by “strength of friends,” it is permanently sewn to the American block. The Vatican also ended up here, which makes this club not only economic but also somewhat “values-based.”

The fourth cluster, the most compact and specialized, included countries of Oceania and Southeast Asia. Leaders: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore. This turned out to be a club of countries trying to balance in the most complex region of the planet. Here are almost all island states (Fiji, Samoa, Tonga).

What else could we extract from this information?

The Curious Etymology of the Turkey: Naming Perceptions Across Languages | March 09 2026, 21:36

I wondered why turkey is called turkey here and what it’s called in Turkey. In Turkey, it’s called hindi – turkey! Decided to see what it’s called in India. Haha, in Hindi, it’s called Turkish (टर्की). Let’s see in other languages. Portuguese – Peru. That means, for them, it’s Peruvian. In Spanish – pavo, which refers to peacock 🙂 “pavone” in Italian – peacock. In French – dinde, because this bird came from the West Indies (America). Comes from poule d’Inde – “hen from India/West Indies”. Greek – “Γαλοπούλα” “French bird”.

Exploring Redundancy in Toponymy: From European Rivers to the Hill of Hills | March 08 2026, 02:54

Reading Nabokov, there “…with the dash of the Danube in his veins…”. Turns out, Danube is Дунай. But that’s okay, trivial stuff, the interesting thing is something else. That Don, Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, Donets, Dvina, and Disna essentially mean more or less the same thing – river. Apparently, the ancient people were not always rich in imagination when it came to toponymy. If you live by the water, you simply call it “River”. Over time, others came, heard this word, took it as a proper name, and altered it slightly to fit their accent. This way “River” (Danu) transformed into a dozen different names across the map of Europe.

The river Volga essentially is also just “river”. Okay, slightly different, “Volga” comes from the Proto-Slavic *Vòlga, which literally means “moisture” or “water”.

Also, it turned out that the Sahara desert is named so because Sahara (الصحراء) is desert. And the Gobi desert is called Gobi because Gobi in Mongolian is desert.

While googling, I stumbled upon another fun thing. There’s a place in England, Torpenhow Hill. The name is composed of four different linguistic layers: Tor — in Old English “hill”, Pen — in Cumbric “hill”, How — in Old Norse “hill”, Hill — in modern English “hill”. Result: “Hill-hill-hill-hill”. Likely, each new people arriving in this area didn’t understand that Tor, Pen, and How were already names for the hill, and added their variant of the word “hill”.

Redefining Third World: Beyond Cold War Labels | March 07 2026, 03:36

Today I read that the Third World countries were initially countries not part of NATO (First World) or the socialist bloc (Second World), that is, countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Ireland, and Austria. Some still use the term “developing countries,” where it is customary to include low-income countries, but, darn it, a developing country is actually a good definition. The one that has developed and stopped developing – that’s a signal. Incidentally, Qatar, which has the highest GDP per capita in the world, is formally considered developing.

CIS Headquarters’ Outdated Member List: A Curious Oversight | March 07 2026, 03:22

It’s funny, at the CIS headquarters in Minsk 1) they still think that the CIS is alive (joke) 2) they still think that Ukraine is still there (never was part of the CIS, but officially left the CIS governing bodies in 2018). By the way, Moldova started the withdrawal process this year.

Exploring the Mystical Connection Between π² and g in Defining a Meter | March 01 2026, 17:11

It turns out that π² ≈ g is not some mystical coincidence. When the first scientists contemplated the definition of the meter, there was one elegant proposal: to make the meter equal to the length of a pendulum that takes exactly one second to swing from one side to the other.

For a mathematical pendulum, the period of oscillation is calculated by the formula: T = 2π √(L / g). If we take the length L = 1 meter and set the full period T = 2 seconds (so that it takes exactly one second for each half swing), the equation implies: g = π² (m/s²).

The definition of the meter was later changed: it was tied to one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along the meridian passing through Paris. However, this geodetic definition was inspired by the earlier idea with the pendulum. Notably, both approaches match up with an accuracy of 1%. Essentially, since the old “pendulum” definition was the main candidate for a long time, values were adjusted so that the new meter was convenient and close to the measurements customary at that time.

It is also interesting that the number of seconds in a year roughly corresponds to the number of pi * 10^7. Earth’s orbital speed is about v = 30 km/s. The distance from the Sun to Earth is approximately r = 150,000,000 km. Thus, over a year, Earth travels a path of about d = 2 * π * r. Then, the orbital period equals T = d/v = π * 2 * r/v = π * 10⁷ seconds.

Unveiling Scientific Misnomers: A Cross-Cultural Exploration | January 14 2026, 04:46

Today I was surprised to learn that the Coriolis force is pronounced as CoriolIs force, not coriOlis force as we were taught in school. I started to investigate what else was wrong, and discovered something amazing.

It turns out what we called Gay-Lussac’s law is known as Charles’s Law in the rest of the world, and what we called Charles’s Law is known throughout the world as Gay-Lussac’s Law.

The Cartesian coordinate system here is Carthesian. Cartesius is just the Latinized name of René Descartes.

In our textbooks, the law of conservation of mass is called the Lomonosov-Lavoisier Law (what enters the chemical reaction = mass of the substances formed). In the rest of the world, it is exclusively the Law of Lavoisier (Lavoisier’s Law). Lomonosov got included here only because “whatever is taken from one body is added to another”.

Also, it turns out that if you have to explain Pythagoras’ theorem to someone in English, without a hint, it’s absolutely impossible to guess that it’s Pythagoras. Greek names are generally a mess. Thales here is pronounced as Teelis.

For some reason, in physics Roentgen is called RentgEnom, although it’s Röntgen with the emphasis on ö.

In Russia, a trapezoid is a quadrilateral with two sides parallel and two not. In the USA, our trapezoid is known as Trapezoid, and the word Trapezium here refers to a quadrilateral with no parallel sides at all. In the UK, it’s the opposite. Our trapezoid is Trapezium, and the “skewed” quadrilateral is Trapezoid.

Arbitrage Adventures: A Glimpse into Venezuela’s Currency Chaos | January 04 2026, 17:10

I first looked at a map of Venezuela around 15 years ago when you could fly there from Russia for a couple hundred dollars. I studied the map but never used it (though perhaps I should have).

At that time, it was the era of wild currency arbitrage, where the difference between the official bolivar rate “from the TV” and the real price on the black market reached astronomical proportions.

The scheme was simply brilliant: within the country, all airlines were required to sell tickets for local currency at the government rate. If an international flight cost a thousand dollars, it was converted into bolivars at the “pretty” official rate. But if you came off the street with a stack of real dollars and exchanged them at a money changer, the sum in bolivars needed to purchase the same ticket cost just a real hundred dollars, and sometimes even fifty.

The real fun began when intermediaries or acquaintances within the country got involved. You could book a ticket online through a local office, pay for it in bolivars through someone in Caracas, and then simply give them cash dollars when meeting, or transfer to a foreign account. The savings were so absurd that people flew business class simply because it was cheaper than lunch at Miami airport.

But cheap tickets were just the tip of the iceberg, because there was also something known as “raspao”. The state gave every traveler the right to buy a couple of thousand dollars at the cheap official rate on a credit card for spending abroad. Eventually, people bought cheap tickets, flew to the nearest islands, cashed in their currency quota, and returned home virtually rich, having sold these dollars on the black market for many times more.

Of course, this bonanza could not last forever and very quickly ended with a loud crash. Airlines quickly realized that their accounts were filled with millions of worthless-bolivars, which the government flatly refused to exchange for real currency. Planes flew half-empty, although all seats were officially bought out for currency quotas, and the government’s debts to carriers grew to billions of dollars, after which global giants simply began to massively leave the market.

But it worked for a while. I don’t remember exactly, somewhere between 2011 and 2014.

How such a breakdown between the official and unofficial rates lasted so long is beyond comprehension. The government could not quickly abolish the official rate because it supported imports of food and medicine. As soon as they acknowledged the real dollar rate, prices in stores would have skyrocketed immediately (which later happened). Flight tickets merely became a “collateral hole” in the system that everyone used while it was possible.