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Your weekly crème de la crème of the Internet is here!
23.01.2024 (read in browser)
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In case you missed it, the last three paid editions included:
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#181 on Hogmanay, where I join a torch procession, cook my first dressed herring in a decade or so, and learn about some disturbing properties of American chocolate.
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#182 on flakes, where I iterate on three batches of homemade croissants, remember IDEs we had 30 years ago, and come across a cookbook that calls for "handfuls" and "glugs".
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#183 on prototyping, where I 3D-print a few things, share the summary of things I learnt in 2023, and come across letter Y's origins.
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On taxes
Every year I take care of my taxes in July, and then a week before the deadline decide to check everything, catch-up with an advisor, and resubmit all documents in a few days.
So instead of blissfully cooking up a storm over the weekend I got trapped in tax purgatory.
On the brighter side of things, Sasha had a chance to bake, and just look at this fruit cake:
I was never a big fan of similar desserts, mainly because they're usually too dry but this one is quite the opposite.
The recipe's author claims that it's served in two restaurants as of yesterday, and I can see why.
Things I enjoyed reading
I've been building apps for years, and thinking of accessibility became a natural part of the process, but I never thought of things like colour blindness outside of the app world (and also driving, but that's because it's a common example).
As a result, some hues of green and red look like each other, converging on a muddy brown. Other colors, like shades of purple and blue, bright orange and green, or even pink and gray, can look very similar. People with other kinds of colorblindness will confuse different colors.
For example, at a glance, barring other context clues like texture and toppings, avocado toast and peanut butter toast look pretty much the same to me.
The post does a great job conveying the experience as all images have an overlay filter for those keen to see the world through the eyes of a colour-blind person, so do give it a try.
This is a very basic overview of Obsidian, an incredibly powerful note-taking app that I've been using for the past year or so as well. However, I wanted to highlight this part as it's probably the main reason I keep using it almost daily:
As I continued using Obsidian, I started to link notes together. This could be done either when the notew was first created, or when I scheduled time to review these notes again. Soon, I saw clusters of ideas organically forming into broader topics. My deep dive into Scala, my exploration of Causal Inference and a whole variety of subjects that interest me came out of these clusters. And today, I have a nice graphical topology of sorts that represents my learning journey and keeps me motivated.
The opportunity to visualize your learning (or thinking) journey is incredible: it doesn't help you to really navigate the notes, but it does give you an overview of knowledge clusters, thus understanding one's strengths and areas of improvement.
It took me a few years to stop replying with ))) to something I find hilarious, as in Russian that's a common way to laugh online. It took me another year or so to get used to various other ways my colleagues would write their laugh in online messages, like jajaja or ahuahua. It makes total sense though, and I love the further examples by the authors:
Take Japanese, for instance. “Warau” is one way to express laughter. Some shortened that to just the first sound of the word, “w.” Others then noticed that “www” looked like blades of grass, leading people to start using the Japanese word for grass (草) to represent laughter. That continual evolution is why, if you want to write about laughing hard in Japanese, you could type 大草原: “giant grass field.”
Or there’s “askfhsjkd,” used in Turkish. No acronyms or wordplay here — keyboard spam is actually a popular way to indicate amusement among young Turkish speakers, as if they’ve been overcome by laughter and are unable to type complete words.
My favourite is the way people in Georgia rely on similarities of a letter in their alphabet to replace :D though. So good.
At first I thought the title downplays the post a bit: the author actually wrote their own iOS simulator from scratch and shared some of the learnings along the way. However, it's actually way more precise than I thought. The simulator described here is not the full-blown replica of iOS, but rather a way to interact with a selected part of an iOS app.
Simulators and emulators are notoriously difficult to debug, as often the errors only become visible in the higher-level logic of whatever you’re simulating.
I built a debugger that allowed me to run lldb on a real iOS device on one side, and the simulator on another, and run each forwards until the register or memory states of the simulator diverged from the real thing.
It's very impressive nonetheless. If I ever get a sabbatical, it'd be either to stage at a Michelin star restaurant, or to code something low-level again.
I was always very sceptical of all things math, algorithms, and theory. It never worked though, and I found myself again and again solving obscure programming challenges with memory limits and time restrictions.
Apparently so did the majority of Easter Europe.
This state of affairs is similar to all the countries from the Eastern Bloc, not only Romania. So, if you speak with a Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian, or Russian person, they will tell you the same story.
This is the secret recipe for why Eastern and Central Europe is so well-represented at the International Math Olympiad. Those Elite Schools, spread in every region of the country, try to create the next generation of olimpici (kids that go to the Olympiads). Those Elite Schools are almost always Math oriented. It’s practically a cult (without any negative connotation).
Looking back, it was not too bad though. While some of my peers were drinking low-ABV booze in warehouses, I was inverting binary trees, and I'd take a binary tree over any low-ABV booze any time of day.
More like a cri de coeur, rather than an essay, but you can tell that the author is not happy with the desire of modern generations to film and post everything around them:
And we’re so addicted and used to reflexively recording everything that we end up excusing the weirdest behaviour. They just want to remember the fireworks! Really? There’s crowds of people all capturing the same thing; they will likely never watch that video back, and if they’re posting it online that’s not for memories; it’s for attention. It’s the same thing as ‘90s camcorders! In what world! Camcorders didn’t come with this urge, with this compulsion to constantly update people, with tying your self-worth to likes and followers. You’ll regret it if you don’t record it! Sure, capture occasional moments; keep them for you.
I am for one guilty as well, and while I make pictures of everything I eat, I very rarely open them again. Luckily these days it's getting easier and easier to search through them, so it's not a problem any more to look up a receipt from a restaurant by its name, or find all pictures of steaks I cooked in the past five years (if you're interested, that's a total of 552 photos).
I still don't understand those filming every single song at a concert though. The music is already worse than if you were to listen it at home.
I came across bere a few months ago, a native to Scotland grain used for bread for two thousand years, but never read more about other crops in other parts of the world.
As explained in the paper, these crops were once cultivated and eaten by the people whom archaeologists study, but they have not yet made it into the archaeobotanical record.
Most of these absences are, unsurprisingly, due to limitations of preservation and identification of ancient plant remains as well as regional biases in the intensity of archaeobotanical research.
However, among the follow-on analyses, results suggest that crop history research may also replicate biases inherent in modern agriculture. For instance, wheat and maize, two of the most widely cultivated global crops, have been subject to more archaeogenetic studies than any other crop. This is probably due to a combination of factors: in part, their relative ubiquity in archaeobotanical assemblages of dryland regions which are most conducive to ancient DNA preservation, but also the fact that there is much more research interest in these global commodities.
I am curious though at what point the scientists will be able to grow some of these findings and if there will be any unexpected flavours.
There are different ways to support free software – from contributing to open-source to telling your friends about apps to paying for them even if it's not mandatory. The author decided to take the latter path and try to give back to developers of all free apps they use.
The individual donations may seem trivial, but let's say a piece of software has 10000 users—0.0000012% of humanity—and they all pay €5, that's a decent sum. Unfortunately only a minority of people pay for free software, rarely enough to live on. More realistically, the majority of humanity cannot cough up a yearly ±€400 for donations because 105 countries have a median yearly income below $5291.04 which means €400 is more than one month's wage.
But let me throw a curveball: ideally they shouldn't pay. People shouldn't be reliant on the whims of greedy white men such as myself who more often indulge a €4.5 portion of French Fries unnecessary for sustenance rather than investing it in something meaningful—not to be mistaken with something lucrative, because I am under the impression that the profit motive is what's killing our habitat, us.
I am surprised that some apps didn't have an option to donate, like uBlock Origin's specifically mentioned that donations will be refused, arguing that "no donations = no expectations".
Previously I shared a few opinions on disadvantages of QR code menus, and then also a few more on issues with self-checkouts in shops, so this one is a transcript of a podcast and it covers both topics simultaneously:
So there’s definitely a future here in which the QR code persists for a few years, but it’s going to be disrupted because that’s the story of technology now, right?
Everything gets disrupted quickly, except the barcode. And I think what heartens me about that is if we see it less often, maybe we’ll actually admire and appreciate it. Because I don’t think, until I started thinking and reporting the story, I really noticed the barcode at all or really appreciated it. But I think in a world in which we see this familiar barcode 50 percent less frequently, I think we’re more likely to actually give it some thought and to appreciate the degree to which it has just withstood 50 years, unlike every other aspect of American technology.
Personally I can't wait for the world where shops similar to the ones by Amazon could just scan things you put in the basket, recognize everything using AI, and send a bill by the end of the month.
Most conferences I've been to were giving away t-shirts. Sponsors would usually go for something cheaper: pens, stickers indeed, notebooks. That's the first time I see someone printing their logo on one of the most iconic British sweet:
The key flaw in my cunning plan is that once you give someone a sweet with a logo on it, they eat the sweet. Now they don't have your logo to remember you by! A sticker is like a business card - a physical reminder. A sweet is gone in an instant.
The sweets are quite small and, as a consequence, the logo and text are also small. A few people didn't notice the printing or thought that the mints were designed to look like blue eyeballs.
I'd argue though that there are better sweets to brand, and they could also be separately packaged.
Think Jaffa cakes, that'd be memorable.
Things I didn't know last Tuesday
Miele is a pretty famous brand of commercial kitchen equipment, so it's not a surprise their new oven costs around $10k. What's a surprise is how it works:
Despite the oven’s illustrious history, our first course was a bit of a magic trick. A chef put a cod filet inside a block of ice, and then put the ice inside the Dialog. When the door opened eight minutes later, voila! The fish was cooked, but the ice hadn’t melted.
The truth is, it’s actually difficult for any microwave oven to melt ice. That’s because solids tend to transmit, rather than absorb microwaves, and because the hydrogen bonds in ice are stronger than (and harder to induce vibration/heating in) those of liquid water. Still, the fish was delicious, and the Dialog’s radio still managed to penetrate the ice and cook the food.
I am not sure combining a microwave and an oven together will change the industry, but it definitely opens up new paths to dishes previously thought impossible.
Ok, here me out, I came across the name and paused for a second. Apparently there is variety of so-called "natural skin" condoms. Technically they're actually "natural membrane" condoms but anyway:
Lambskin condoms aren’t actually made from true lambskin. They’re made from lamb cecum, which is the pouch located at the beginning of a lamb’s large intestine. These have been around for longer than you might expect.
Now, to the important questions: is it vegan? I am pretty sure it's not. Is it at least vegetarian then? Are people meant to disclose their food preferences and condoms composition on the first date? Are there known cases of people breaking up after years in a relationship when someone read the back side of a box and found "lamb intestines" among ingredients?
I didn't pay much attention to it but indeed there are plenty of universities in London that have other cities in their names.
And why are these provincial universities in London? Mainly to attract international students and their unregulated tuition fees, because it's a lot easier to persuade them to spend a year or three in a throbbing world city than to entice them to the wilds of Leicestershire or Wales. Your average British student, unless parentally flushed, is more likely to run a mile from the expense of London living.
The reason behind it also makes lots of sense. What doesn't make sense is then explaining to someone that you graduated Glasgow Caledonian University but never been to Scotland.
I have a big selection of various starches and hydrocolloids at home, as different applications call for different qualities, but I never thought arrowroot has many varieties and uses:
While you may encounter arrowroots sold as vegetables, arrowroot starch is its most-common commercial form, also called arrowroot flour or powder. But the shocking truth is that there is no one arrowroot plant. There are actually around 10 edible plants that may be referred to as arrowroot; a quiverful of them, if you will.
That being said, arrowroot powder is one of the very few starches I didn't buy yet.
I only have a very basic idea of how to drive (hence I don't drive, yes), but I didn't expect modern cars to have a button to disable one pedal and just use the other one for both gas and brakes.
One-pedal driving helps your brakes last longer because you’re not using them much. EVs use regenerative braking like hybrids and plug-in hybrids and capture the kinetic energy typically lost while coasting and braking. When using a single pedal to accelerate, decelerate, and stop the car, it grabs the excess energy and sends it to the battery, helping to extend the range of your EV.
I am not sure I understand why it's more energy efficient though.
I didn't know about this period in the UK history:
The Three-Day Week was one of several measures introduced in the United Kingdom in 1973–1974 by Edward Heath's Conservative government to conserve electricity, the generation of which was severely restricted owing to industrial action by coal miners and railway workers.
The most interesting part is that TV companies were forced to stop broadcasting after 22:30 to conserve electricity, and that not so long ago someone proposed to re-introduce the three-day week as it is better for work-to-life balance.
I've finally watched the new Wonka movie, and without getting into too many spoilers, at some point the main character needs giraffe milk to make some chocolate. Is it even a thing?
Meanwhile, giraffe milk is much higher in fat than cow’s milk – 12.5 percent compared to 3.5 percent. All that fat might sound like a turnoff, but recent research has shown that higher levels of dairy fat can also lead to a lower risk of diabetes. Oh, and more good news: In 2008, giraffe milk was determined to be kosher.
Sadly it's pretty much impossible to milk giraffes on commercial scale, so no giraffe truffles and lattes for us any time soon.
I am still not 100% sure if it's a myth, as there are not that many pictures of the "ghost apples" in the Internet, but the process makes sense and seems possible:
Apples have a lower freezing point than water, so when it gets a bit warmer the apple defrosts before the ice does, the rotting apple falls out of the bottom leaving its icy 'ghost' behind.
Looks way better than those frozen apples on trees.
I had no idea how this oddly shaped bench scraper for potters is called:
One of the most traditional and recognisable shaped clay tool also usefull for working with modelling wax, plasters and other modelling materials as well as pressing materials into moulds
I guess it makes sense though (I just looked up a picture of kidneys to confirm).
It's always fascinating how much information how much archeologists can figure out based on a single item, but I never thought of cutting a coin in half to conduct a small transaction before:
The country’s economy was reeling from the recent War of the Pacific, and the government was focusing on printing larger-denomination paper bank notes to pay off international loans; in 1899, the Lima Mint produced roughly one-tenth the number of silver coins it produced just five years earlier.
As a result, people in Peru were using coins from neighboring nations or even cutting their own country’s coins in half to conduct small transactions. “Counterfeiters found a field of opportunity,” Dr. Ortega said.
It'd be pretty cool it we could do it with paper bills these days.
Book of the week
I am on my third Stuart Maconie's book, and this time it's not about traveling to a specific part of the UK to find one's root. In Never Mind the Quantocks the author shares his love for country walking in general and then mixes in some disdain for public transport;
A few years back I took the fabled London to Scotland sleeper, a source of romance to generations of readers and movie fans. The journey was taken at the instigation of a TV director I was making a show with in Glasgow and who was frightened of flying. I would have been happy with the plastic glass of in-flight G&T, the little bag of nuts and the hour in the sky but thought to myself, hey, it’s an experience.
To be honest my expectations were way too high; I thought that Robert Donat would be on board, or at least Margaret Rutherford. I imagined crisply uniformed staff mixing me a Martini and falling into conversation with a beautiful and mysterious Russian heiress who appeared to be avoiding some burly bearded men who kept disappearing behind their newspapers. I rather hoped to find a dead body in my bunk and to be wrongly arrested on arrival in Glasgow, but that it would all turn out right in the end.
Actually it was a bit like what I imagine prison is like, but on wheels. Convenient enough, but functional rather than nostalgic. No gaslights or starched white waistcoats. Just a little covered sink and a couple of coat hangers. Subsequently the night passed slowly as we chugged through sleeping Crewe and Carlisle. And it was too dark to see anything anyway.
Ironically, I took the same train last year, and it was too dark to see anything too. However, growing up in a country where overnight trains are often the only way of getting to a destination, not a luxury experience, I thoroughly enjoyed the sink and shower in my compartment, as well as all available whiskeys in the bar carriage.
The misty Carlisle in the morning was quite beautiful too.
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