Today I discovered an interesting story about the name of the brand Lululemon (see below) and it turns out, not only is `ballet` pronounced in English as bal-AY (it seems everyone knows this), but also `cabriolet` as ka-bree-ow-ley, `valet` as val-AY, and even `parquet` as paar-kay. `buffet` is also pronounced as buh-FAY, but there is also the verb `to buffet` which is pronounced as BUH-fit. and `sorbet` is pronounced as sor-BAY. They are all borrowings from French.
It also turned out that aborigine is pronounced as a·buh·ri·juh·nee. `apostrophe` and `catastrophe` are pronounced as uh·po·struh·fee and kuh·ta·struh·fee respectively. `coyote` is pronounced as `kai·ow·tee`. The word `dilettante` (did you know there are two t’s together?) is pronounced as di·luh·tan·tee. Well, about recipe (reh·suh·pe) and fiance (fee-ahn-say) everyone probably knows.
I also read an interesting story about why Lululemon is called just that. Lululemon Athletica founder, Chip Wilson, shared: “The reason the Japanese liked Homeless (his former skateboard brand) was that the name had the letter “L. A Japanese marketing agency would never come up with a brand name containing “L because it isn’t in their alphabet. They find it hard to pronounce. So I thought: next time I have a company, I’ll invent a name with three “Ls and see if I can make three times the money. It’s amusing to watch them try to pronounce it.” (2004 interview with National Post Business Magazine)
Well, congratulate me 😉 I’ve finally picked the Tesla Model Y 2026, despite doubts about whether it’s worth paying Musk. I carefully analyzed all the alternatives to the “horrible Tesla,” but the new model beats all competitors, some by a significant margin. The only thing is I could have saved a bit. Tesla has finally made decent interior materials, and they and the exterior design finally match the price. And the AWD with a 4.5-second acceleration is hard to underestimate.
The level of automation from the buying process to driving is so advanced that, as an IT professional, I find it hard to rank anything above it.
I drove home for half an hour on full autopilot. Really cool, but after three months I won’t renew it; it’s pricey, although good. On some left turns, I would let more oncoming cars pass than it does, but, I must admit, it calculates very accurately.
Liza has finally graduated from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and now we have a certified architect in the family! Over here, a graduation ceremony is called a “Commencement,” which translates from English as “beginning.” Today, there was a formal diploma presentation ceremony. However, they don’t actually hand out diplomas but something like a voucher for a diploma, which can be converted into a diploma as long as you don’t have any “tails” left. Because the ceremony is a thing unto itself, and of course, no one is going to move or adjust it. The actual diploma will be sent by mail.
Today and tomorrow, our entire family, including our menagerie, is in Blacksburg—the place where the huge university campus is located, seemingly taking over the entire little town in southern Virginia. Nearly 40,000 students study here alongside about 13,000 staff members. It’s a whole universe, its branches shining even in our parts: campuses and research centers are not only here in Blacksburg. But this place is the “core.”
Well, now Liza, learn to drive! You won’t manage to get to work on public transportation around here; it’s very fragmented, slow, and unreliable. All in all, we are very happy. Tomorrow is the main event at the big stadium, and then, onto new tracks!
It seems like it was only yesterday. 2020, masks, COVID. But they let you study “in-person.” With a lot of restrictions, but at least not from home. You chose architecture, and people constantly asked us if we had architects in the family? Of course, we do, that’s me, except, well, I’m not really about houses and bridges. But now we have the full spectrum!
If the standard bachelor’s diploma in the States is obtained in four years, at Virginia Tech it takes five years to study architecture—and that’s still not a master’s degree. Initially, we were all worried about how we were going to afford this. When you apply to the institute, you show them all your income and expenses, and some smart system made up of a mix of people and computers tells you, for example, you’re poor but smart, so the university will charge you little, not a lot. Or it says, “you can afford it, I see,” so they give you the full load, tighten your belts. We didn’t quite meet the necessary level of poverty, and the numbers were initially scary, but somewhere along the way educational loans helped, and we also grew over time and started to get scared less.
And just like that, five years have flown by, and now Liza will start earning her own money. A big deal. From mid-June, Liza starts her first job—the one that had already offered her several internships in summer and winter. So there probably wasn’t even a question of whether to hire her full-time or not.
Lizochka, congratulations again! And wishing you success!
P.S. Also, today is Yuki’s birthday—he’s 4 years old. He sadly watched from the window as we loaded our suitcases into the car. Nadia quietly said, “Yuki, we’re going to Liza and Levchik,” and he, skidding his claws on the floor, charging at full speed, with skids on the turns, dashed to the door and sat next to it! And that’s considering how we usually have to shove him out the door to walk him—he’s a real homebody. Literally: you push him down the steps toward the door and he moves as long as you push him, reluctantly gets dressed in his harness, then he starts his half-hour pond avoidance program. But this time, he totally lost his mind! He understands us somehow.
So, I’m convinced that Trump is operating on AI models, likely an early Grok, through a chip in his noggin, by special robots. All the signs are there, and I’ll provide the arguments.
That is, whenever Trump opens his mouth to say something, his TrumpGPT invents the next word for the already spoken ones, and since GPT hallucinations are not canceled, it ends up as it does. TrumpAI can’t finish a thought. It operates on looped inference: each word triggers the next without any notion of the end of the sequence. This isn’t rhetoric—it’s runaway generation. The speech patterns of TrumpGPT-0 remind one of a Markov Chain with lags.
Before elections, they just fine-tuned him on everything good, so when he comes up with the next token, it often clashes with what he was taught, but at the same time, generates a lot of accompanying nonsense. Anyway, he and Melania have their tokens, so everything’s in its place.
The pre-trained foundational model, as we see, is rather simple, probably about 1.5B parameters at best. Maybe GPT-2. Or something like that. This explains the irreducible inclination to looped inference. Apparently, there were a few volunteers, one went off to control a mouse cursor on the screen and play Minecraft, and the other, well, went off to become president. The timings match up.
Friendship with Elon is not about politics, it’s tech support. Elon did what he could to fine-tune the model, but apparently, they hit the limits of the technology.
The model was trained on Fox News broadcasts over 20 years. Everyone knows he “thinks what he sees on TV. Hence the “They’re eating the dogs, the cats”. Actually, it’s a vulnerability. As soon as the words “they’re stealing the election are uttered, Grok v0.1 intercepts and begins to playback the script. The syndrome of a “model too open to external context.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation? Not in this build. Question: “Who was the first president of the USA? might trigger an answer “Me. Because the model does not have access to external databases. Only pretrain on personal memoirs and commercials for Trump Steaks.
TrumpGPT operates on a custom version of TensorFlow from 2009, where half of the dependencies conflict with reality. That’s why it freezes at the words “climate change, “facts, and “evidence.
So, we just need to add a disclaimer:
This content was generated by artificial intelligence and for entertainment purposes only. This content is It should not be used for any other purpose, such as making financial decisions or providing medical advice. It may contain errors or inaccuracies, and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional advice.
I just read that Mulholland Drive was named after William Mulholland, who on one hand provided Los Angeles with water, but on the other hand buried 431 people after the St. Francis Dam he built collapsed, merely twelve hours after he and his assistant had inspected it. Essentially, it was the worst technological disaster in the US of the 20th century.
So, he truly did supply the county with water. Initially through good engineering, and then again through bad.
Incidentally, it serves as a good example of why it’s improper to name things after living individuals.
Yesterday, I visited a Tesla showroom, took a close look at their robot, seriously contemplated the Model 3 or Model Y, and incidentally learned that Waymo, conveniently parked right across, seems to be gradually making headway onto our roads.
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 🙂
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.
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.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 