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Your weekly crème de la crème of the Internet is here!
09.07.2024 (read in browser)
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#205 on exploring the neighborhood, where I enjoy the newly found freedom of driving and slowly get further and further away from home, question mainstream charcuterie books, and discuss the tipping culture.
- #206, which I sadly missed due to an overwhelming schedule.
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#207 on omakase, where I eat with my hands, remember years I spent building chat apps, and appreciate the growth of UK wine tourism.
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On affirming allegiance to the King
The idea of leaving my motherland first crossed my mind in early 2014 when Russia occupied Crimea, midway through my first year at university.
While leaving wasn't an immediate option then, I immersed myself in international projects, honed my English skills, and maintained my motivation.
A few years after graduation, I made the move to the UK and haven't looked back since sorting out my visa — it's been over six years now.
I don't see myself returning to Russia anytime soon. It's partly because I don't feel safe in a country ruled by a deranged dictator and his cronies, and partly because I refuse to support Russia's war on Ukraine, even indirectly like the money spent by homesick immigrants on syrniki and taxis in Moscow.
Now, after more than half a decade of building a life in the UK, I have had the privilege of becoming a British citizen and it feels like the ultimate validation of my journey.
It's ironic how I escaped a wannabe empire only to settle in a former one, but I've never doubted my choice.
Here's to the country that welcomed me with open arms 🍸
Things I enjoyed reading
It's not easy to host a party, despite so many people constantly trying to, and rarely understanding that they have failed: parties require a proper agenda, a well-thought out circle of attendees, a certain amount of constraints, and yet most often it just boils down to multiple small circles of acquintances talking about life and complaining about politics while the host is running around making sure the drinks are topped up.
One should never have to ask people to a party just because they are on one’s list. Guests should be selected with as much care as a new Reboux hat, and should be equally becoming, for a hostess should wear her guests at a party as she wears a hat – with an air! Also, people should not be invited because one dined with them last week – or because you owe them a lunch – or because your father plays backgammon with their father at the club – or because a friend asks to bring a friend – or because you feel sorry for those “poor things” next door: “Let’s ask them just this once,” and the “poor things” instantly become your deadliest enemies on the spot, murdering your party merely by being there. No – the gravest menace to a good party is the dangerous, emotional kindness of most hostesses in the extension of their invitations.
Ruthlessness is the first attribute towards the achievement of a perfect party.
Personally I gave up on organising parties a long time ago, but this essay is a nice overview of things I might think about if I ever decide to give them another go.
Well, maybe for the right cause.
This is a summary of a book, and while I'd probably never read the book itself as I tend to avoid reading modern "self-helping" programming books, the summary is actually very good and reads like a proper long read:
There are two ways in which code with a complicated structure can overload the working memory :
- You do not know exactly which parts of the code you need to read
- read more of the code than is needed
- may be more than your working memory is able to process
- With code that is highly connected, your brain is trying to do two things at the same time :
- Understand individual lines of code
- Understand the structure of the code to decide where to continue reading
I also appreciate how the author managed to either copy or re-draw charts and diagrams to make the summary more efficient. I guess it must help a lot with remembering the book in the first place.
This is an unusual (at least to me) perspective on some factors behind the World War I:
Once these first cousins took their thrones, they often found themselves at cross purposes. Victoria’s most contentious grandchild was Kaiser Wilhelm II, the volatile ruler of the German empire. He was the product of what Victoria once thought was one of her most successful matches: the marriage of her daughter, Vicky, to Prince William of Prussia. But unlike many of Victoria’s grandchildren, Wilhelm couldn’t be controlled by a word from his grandma.
It also must have been so odd to have rulers of all countries in Europe to be more or less close relatives and yet keep plotting against each other. But then again, it just makes the Game of Thrones a bit more realistic.
Everyone around me is talking about a new season of the Bear series, featuring kitchen toxic environment at its worst, and I haven't even watched the first one, because even the trailer gives me immense anxiety.
During the restaurant’s lineup meeting, after Sussman updated the front-of-house staff on changes to service—the chopped salad was eighty-sixed; it would be great to sell more of the Montauk sea bass—Soares Vieira emerged from the kitchen with two finished burgers, which he sliced into tiny wedges so everyone could have a taste. “How would you describe Roquefort to someone who’s never had it before?” a server asked. “Very nutty,” Soares Vieira said. “Don’t say ‘moldy,’ but it’s full-on moldy—it’s a full blue cheese, which has mold in it. If they don’t know what Roquefort is, they probably won’t like it.” But Soares Vieira and Sussman agreed: no “mods,” or modifications.
The more I go out to restaurants, the more often I think that people working in hospitaltiy are saints and we don't deserve them.
What's not the title I thought I will share in a newsletter, but it is what it is:
For some collectors, it’s serious business. Right now, in barely hidden corners of the internet, barf bags are being purchased and traded in a commerce as foreign to most people as the phrase, “I collect barf bags.”
The community, small as it is, has formed its own etiquette and occasionally fizzes with a bit of drama. Friendships have been forged over this hobby, and the lore — oh, it is startlingly rich in detail.
I did the research so you don't have to, and these bags cost £15+ on eBay, depending on the design and airlines. Some people even sell them in sets – four bags from different Indian airlines will set you back £160 + postage.
It's an incredibly generic advice so could apply to pretty much any industry, but people hate change, and whenever you think of changing something in the app you need a very solid reasoning to do so:
The guys who would stop by on their way to work, kept driving. They didn’t grab a breakfast sandwich or sodas for later. They didn’t skip other gas stations to fill up there. None of this was surprising as I was one of them.
It’s hard changing prices in any business but there was something more here. A $2 cup of coffee is still cheap but a 100% surprise price increase blew up our expectations and broke the para-social relationship people had around a gas station.
That's also why I so rarely change things in this newsletter. If it works, just leave it as is, let it work for longer.
I am think of getting back on stage at some point next year, and this is a great piece of advice for structuring presentations:
I stole this technique from Lawrence Block's outstanding Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, a book about writing fiction. He suggests drafting a story the "natural" way, with the first chapter introducing the hero and the second getting the action going, then swapping the two chapters. Now the first chapter starts with a gun pointed at the hero's head. By the end, he is teetering on a cliff about to jump into a crocodile-infested river. Just when the tension reaches a peak, we're introduced to the character but we have reason to want to get to know him.
It's a common thing for software developers to talk about "HOW" and forget to explain "WHY", and this approach should help fixing it.
Archeologists came across an urn with wine inside, and seems like it's the oldest wine in liquid form found so far, which apparently is a big deal:
Finally, the urn in L-8 not only contained bone remains and a gold ring carved with Jano Bifronte, but it was also filled to the brim with a reddish liquid. Despite the initial surprise, we immediately concluded that the liquid could not have reached the inside of the urn through flooding or leakage in the burial chamber, nor through condensation, especially when the inside of the urn in the adjacent niche, L-7, was under identical environmental conditions but completely dry.
The whole post is quite interesting as there is definitely way more to the research than just confirming that the wine indeed was in the urn from the beginning and didn't just found its way inside through the seal at some point in history.
We take digital maps for granted these days, but digital maps of Medieval times are a different story: these need to be drawn by hand, not scanned by Google machines:
As a rule of thumb, the further you get from the city centre, the more the uncertainty. Land use within the walls is well recorded across multiple sources; not so the fields beyond the walls, much of which was marshy. The medieval map includes large fields of blank, named only “La More” (the moor, Moorfields), or “Area of market garden”. What went on in “No Man’s Land”, or the mysterious “The Wyld” of Southwark? We may never fill in the details, other than with the imagination.
The post features a few links to the maps themselves, and it's quite cool how one can overlay the maps over the city. I wonder how I'd use them though – to read Shakespeare stories and better understand the context?
I am always fascinated by cooking (and as the result, by eating too) but there are situations where I accept the limitations and don't expect much from food. Camping is a good example: just a mug of hot water and sugar, and some dehydrated meat would be nice, thank you.
However it looks like camping has changed a lot since I checked:
While backpacking cuisine has improved in quality and culinary options, not everyone is psyched to pay $10 to $15 for a pre-made meal. Some are weary of the price, while others prefer to make their own meals to avoid allergens or preservatives, or simply are part of the many outdoor enthusiasts interested in self-sufficiency—even if that’s more about dehydrating and packing food from home than foraging or fishing.
While some dedicated food preppers invest in freeze-drying equipment, many still opt for the convenience and accessibility (and cheaper price tag) of dehydrating. Under proper conditions and storage, dehydrated meals can keep you safely fed in the backcountry all summer long.
My favourite part of the article is that people use poaches with dehydrated food as plates – this is pretty cool, and if they don't bend easily it might be quite convenient too.
Things I didn't know last Tuesday
Imagine coming to a concert where you play solo to see that the piano is wrong and is hardly fit for playing;
However, there was some confusion by the opera house staff and instead they found another Bösendorfer piano backstage—a much smaller baby grand piano—and, assuming it was the one requested, placed it on the stage. The error was discovered too late for the correct Bösendorfer to be delivered to the venue in time for the evening's concert. The piano they had was intended for rehearsals only and was in poor condition and required several hours of tuning and adjustment to make it playable. The instrument was tinny and thin in the upper registers and weak in the bass register, and the pedals did not work properly.
Kudos to the pianist who ended up improvising large chunks of the concert to make it work with a different instrument.
I love constraints, whether it's in writing or code, and this is a great example of the former:
Exercises in Style, written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style. In each, the narrator gets on the "S" bus (now no. 84), witnesses an altercation between a man (a zazou) with a long neck and funny hat and another passenger, and then sees the same person two hours later at the Gare St-Lazare getting advice on adding a button to his overcoat.
There are translations in pretty much all widespread languages, but the most notable is probably the Italian version by Umberto Eco.
Despite UK wine being more and more common, Scotland is not really represented on the wine market. In the past people blained the weather and the politics, but it's hardly an excuse today. Seems like at least someone is trying to do their bit:
Set in amongst the rich fields and the hedge fringed country roads of the Carse of Gowrie, Perthshire, there’s this strange Scottish winery. Since 1987 Cairn o' Mohr has been brewing up juicy-fruity, berry loaded, blossom scented, leafy layered, award winning country wines, using the berries for which the area is famous, wild flowers, fruits and leaves. Fruit wines, sparkling wines, ciders and bourtree juices using near anything that grows.
I don't think they sell any grape-based wine though, most of these things seem to be mead-style drinks, but it's a great start.
I shared some very detailed post on traveling to Tajikistan last week, and this time came across a group of people trying to map a 1200 mile hiking route around the country:
Our mission is for the Pamir Trail to become a world-class long-distance hiking route across the mountains of Tajikistan that enhances economic opportunities for both local mountain communities on the route as well as the Tajik tourism sector in general. The Pamir Trail should also contribute to the preservation of the Tajik mountains and mountain culture and increase the knowledge and understanding about Tajikistan as a country.
Our of many volunteer projects, this one is one of the most impressive.
Some sources say that the salad turned 100 years recently, but for some odd reasons so many people claimed the ownership over years, figuring out the actual inventor is quite hard:
According to Caesar, his competition consisted of several Hollywood restaurants including Paul’s Duck Press and The House of Murphy (where it was known as a Di Cicco salad), and maybe the Brown Derby and Chasen’s. Then there were also all the busboys and waiters he trained to make the salad tableside on that fateful day, in 1924 (or, by other accounts, in 1913, 1919, 1921, 1926, or 1927) who lodged claims as the inventors.
Most likely it was either Caesar Cardini or his brother, but they both say to be heavily inspired by their mother's salad dressing, which is the main ingredient of the salad apparently.
I love medieval English folklore, mostly because it's incredibly cheesy:
Hailing from the nearby town of Warwick, Sir Guy is a major figure of medieval English folklore, if not as popular as King Arthur or Robin Hood. The core of his story is that this humble cupbearer must prove his valor and become a knight to wed his love, Lady Felice, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick. His chivalrous feats often include battles with dragons, giants, and the Dun Cow, a mythical creature often found in English folklore.
Yeah, sometimes in stories these aspiring knights fight dragons, but most of the times it's safe to say they're based on real events, hence the cows.
I am not sure what's more surprising, the fact that someone came up with this way ages ago, or the fact that here in the UK there are dozens of fisherman boats with people trained on how to execute this while on the go:
The principle of ikejime, is to disrupt the signal between the brain and the meat, thereby preventing the meat from getting the signal that it has died. This preserves as much Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), within the meat as possible. ATP, present in all cells, serves as a primary source of energy for cellular functions. After death, cells undergo anaerobic respiration, causing ATP breakdown, ultimately leading to the fish’s decay.
I wonder if any restaurants do blind tastings to see if Ikejime fish tastes different.
"The father of supercomputing" had an interesting way of coming up with his inventions:
Cray avoided publicity, and there are a number of unusual tales about his life away from work, termed "Rollwagenisms", from then-CEO of Cray Research, John A. Rollwagen. He enjoyed skiing, windsurfing, tennis, and other sports. Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his home; he attributed the secret of his success to "visits by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."
That being said, it's quite common for software engineers to sit in an empty room and talk to a rubber duck, so this guy is at least honest about his source of inspiration.
It wad a common understanding that animals (or any carbon-based form of life for that matter) require oxygen to survive, until this parasite was found:
In 2020, scientists discovered a jellyfish-like parasite that doesn't have a mitochondrial genome – the first multicellular organism ever found with such an absence. That means it doesn't breathe; in fact, it lives its life completely free of oxygen dependency.
I couldn't find a decent explanation of mechanics though, so don't really understand how it works.
Some languages just can't bother adding vowels to words:
Cwtch (Welsh pronunciation: [kʊtʃ]) is a Welsh-language and Welsh-English dialect word meaning a cuddle or embrace, with a sense of offering warmth and safety.
Yeah, there are no vowels in Hebrew either, but only because they're implied there and people just are too lazy to write them down. This one is a different story.
Book of the week
I've skimmed through Kit Yates' How to Expect the Unexpected over the weekend, and despite a very scientific look it's a really easy-to-digest book on how and why predictions go wrong – something I deal with on daily basis, whether it's planning weekly budget or estimating workload.
Perhaps the most famous truism about playing the stock market successfully is to ‘buy low and sell high’. Of course, if it were that easy, then everyone would do it. Perhaps less well known, but more apposite to explaining the difficulty with predicting the stock market, is the following facetious advice: ‘Buy a stock, wait until it goes up and then sell it. If it doesn’t go up, then don’t have bought it.’ Although it becomes obvious in hindsight, the key is knowing when the value of a share or an index is about to bottom out or to peak before it happens. No matter how much they believe in their ‘strategy’, the investors who seem to display this sort of superhuman foresight are typically just riding their luck and find their miraculous feats difficult to repeat. A tempting substitute for us mere mortals is to use short-term trends – to buy shares when they seem to be on their way up and to sell them after an apparent downturn. Appealing as it sounds, this market-timing strategy can lead to exactly the opposite of the desired and oft-quoted adage. Instead, we end up losing money by buying high and selling low.
The prices of stocks and shares naturally fluctuate over time. Even share prices that rise in the long-term experience short-term dips. A practical market-timing strategy might be to wait for the price to fall by 5 per cent, say, before selling, and then waiting until it rises 5 per cent before buying again. But how does this compare to a strategy in which you leave your initial investment untouched and ride out the rises and falls?
I can't say that after finishing it I am ready to forecast the weather or side-hustle as an oracle, but it's definitely a good way to reintroduce myself to some things about statistics I've forgotten since the university, or never really knew.
The best part of the book are the real life examples – short and occasionally hilarious anecdotes about various prediction-related events.
And on an unrelated note, it took me years to get used to the fact that "anecdote" in Russian is a short fictional story, while "anecdote" in English could as well be real. So how do people call those fictional stories in English? I kid you not, Wikipedia insists these are called Russian jokes.
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