5 March 2023
.book-toc { max-width: 8rem; } Europe and Mankind—English translation Translator’s notes Europe and Mankind is an interesting essay written by Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (1890–1938), who happens to be a first cousin thrice removed. He was primarily a linguist, but occasionally wrote on historical and sociological topics.
I merely stumbled upon this essay and found it extremely relevant to today’s world. However, there doesn’t appear to be an English translation available.
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21 February 2023
What can Wikipedia stats tell us about Ukraine (and Russia)? February 28, 2023
Read more about Ukrainian language trends here
Читать на русском
Background info Wikipedia, one of the world’s most popular websites, maintains accessible, detailed statistics on who visits the site. With a simple Python script, it’s possible to scrape this data and do some analysis on it.
31 December 2022
Потери России на Украине 31 декабря 2022 г. • Read in English
Российские и украинские потери в войне с февраля трудно отследить, поскольку обе стороны не особенно охотно делятся цифрами.
Отсутствие достоверной информации приводит к вакууму, который заполняется пропагандой, спекуляциями, истерией и прочей дурной информацией.
Тем не менее, все же возможно получить приемлемые оценки количества погибших.
Давайте начнем с российской стороны. По моим подсчетам, по состоянию на 15 декабря 2022 года в Украине погибло около 17 500 российских и союзных войск.
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31 December 2022
Russian losses in Ukraine December 31, 2022
Russian and Ukrainian losses in the war since February are hard to track, as both sides are not particularly eager to share the numbers.
The absence of reliable information leads to a vacuum that is filled with propaganda, speculation, hysteria and other bad information.
However, it’s still possible to get decent estimates of the losses.
Let’s start with the Russian side. By my estimation, as of December 15, 2022, about 17,500 Russian and allied troops have been killed in Ukraine.
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28 November 2022
Ukrainian language trends after the Russian invasion November 28, 2022
Читать на русском
Google Trends is a hidden gem. It’s a tool provided by Google that allows you to see search trends over time, or compare which search term is more popular. Many people use the tool to compare trending topics or celebrities (Kim Kardashian vs. Taylor Swift, soccer vs American football, burgers vs pizza, etc.)
But I’ve found the tool very useful for uncovering hidden social variables.
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28 November 2022
Рост использования украинского языка после российского вторжения 28 ноября 2022 г.
text in English
Google Trends - это скрытая жемчужина. Это инструмент, предоставляемый Google, который позволяет увидеть тренды поиска во времени или сравнить, какой запрос более популярен. Многие используют Google Trends для сравнения тем или знаменитостей (Ким Кардашьян против Тейлор Свифт, футбол (европейский) против американского футбола, бургеры против пиццы и т.д.).
Однако я обнаружил, что сайт очень полезен для выявления скрытых социальных переменных.
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15 October 2020
.book-toc { max-width: 8rem; } Wisconsin 2020: popular ways of detecting election fraud 15 November 2020
There are many popular methods of analyzing election results to see if there was any fraudulent behavior. My first introduction to these analyses came in the form of viral articles, shared by friends and family, proclaiming proof that the latest election in Russia was rigged. Now I will try to gather up all these methods in one blog post, and test them out on unofficial results from the 2020 presidential election in the state of Wisconsin.
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23 April 2018
Reconstructing Kenmore, 1890 23 April 2018
I wrote this short essay for a class called “History of Cartography”. Prof. Danzer thought I did a good job, so I decided to share it here.
The area of modern-day Boston between Massachusetts Avenue and Kenmore Square has no common name, despite being one of the city’s most important transport nodes. Beacon Street, Commonwealth Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, the Mass Turnpike and MBTA all converge here, in addition to the Bowker Overpass—these 50 acres handle virtually all Boston’s long-distance east-west traffic.
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12 May 2017
Proud of my little translation of this poem, preserving rhyme and meter.
THE WRETCH
Look here! A nicely groomed, “Enlightened European”;
In flagrant treachery—betrayal in the nude—
The S.D. wretch lays down his dirty flag, a peon
Before his fascist master’s boot.
– Demyan Bedny
10 May 2015
Russian has no word for “Privacy” 10 May 2015
I like to point out the sheer number of words in English, compared to a language like Russian; every word in Russian, including dialectal, archaic and nonstandard forms, amounts to around 300,000 words at most. That’s barely half of the Oxford English Dictionary, which itself is missing countless slang terms, neologisms and adopted foreign words. Yet we anglophones are never content. I’ve seen countless tabloid articles and blog posts about supposed “words that English desperately needs,” griping about how we don’t have a word for “a face badly in need of a fist” like German does.
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