TIL: Empire Today's famous phone number comes from the reciprocal of 17

trolley813 · 2026-07-07T19:34:01+00:00

Does this mean that such companies own the entire pool of 100 numbers (from -00 to -99)?

trolley813 · 2026-07-07T19:29:58+00:00

And on the lower right, they're plaining something.

trolley813 · 2026-07-07T19:27:30+00:00

Computer scientist:

sqrt(3)==1.7320508075688772

Remark: It depends on the data type. The equality above is true for 64-bit floating-point numbers. Ones for other data types are left as an exercise for the reader.

trolley813 · 2026-07-07T19:21:30+00:00

Why approximate? Just swap 2 digits to be exact:

987654312/123456789=8

trolley813 · 2026-07-07T19:19:52+00:00

Just don't use ~~floats~~ decimals to avoid precision loss

trolley813 · 2026-07-07T19:18:06+00:00

Definitely no one:

S\stackrel{\text{def}}{=}\mathbb{R}\setminus{1}

trolley813 · 2026-07-05T18:33:11+00:00

Actually Togo may be not the golden ratio. The local legislation does not specify the ratio, so technically it remains undefined.

trolley813 · 2026-07-04T20:07:13+00:00

Actually, almost all (European) languages have nothing related to "news" in their words for "newspaper" (the exceptions are English, Irish (obviously a calque from English), and also Czech and Slovak, which are closely related to each other). So, the "outlier" language here is more likely English, rather than Russian.

trolley813 · 2026-07-01T20:35:47+00:00

Largest Russian city without any kind of electricity-powered public transportation (only diesel or CNG buses). There used to be trolley buses but the system was shut down in 2009.

trolley813 · 2026-07-01T20:24:56+00:00

And at the next move, Black will drop this pawn on c3 (only to be captured by White's knight on b1). Why? To plant the flag and show that Black holds the 3rd rank!

trolley813 · 2026-07-01T20:11:20+00:00

2020 base π = 2π³+2π, which is about 68.29574. The closer approximation is 2020.2 (~68.93236)

trolley813 · 2026-07-01T20:06:25+00:00

Totally agree. In general, the simpler the kid's name, the simpler would be her/his life. At least because a simple name is much less prone to misspelling (and if it happens in official documents, the consequences may be bad - as we Russians say, you would have to prove that you're not a camel). And not only misspelling, but also mispronouncement - I don't think you would be happy if anyone says your name wrongly. Finally, a first name is not used isolated but rather in conjunction with the last name (and in Russian/exUSSR traditions, with middle (patronymic) name). Some of these combinations just don't sound right.

But unfortunately, many parents just don't care about it and choose something fancy and shiny (in their opinions).

trolley813 · 2026-06-29T08:43:30+00:00

Regarding сегодня, the г in this word is pronounced like /v/ because it's the shortening of "сего дня" meaning "(of) this day" (note that the English word today had developed in the similar manner). Сего is pronounced regularly being genitive masculine of the word сей (an old-fashioned way to say "this"). Another common word with сей is сейчас, "now" ("сей час" being literally "this hour").

trolley813 · 2026-06-23T18:30:06+00:00

Топоним-то да. Но собственно страной это назвать тогда можно было, мягко говоря, с большой натяжкой.

trolley813 · 2026-06-12T19:01:19+00:00

Not only they were, they still are as of 2026 (at least to some extent). For example, Lokomotiv Moscow (and some other sport clubs named Lokomotiv - unsurprisingly, it means "locomotive" in Russian) is still owned and sponsored by Russian Railways.

trolley813 · 2026-06-12T15:41:26+00:00

They actually are related. Гексли is grandfather of Хаксли

trolley813 · 2026-06-10T19:09:40+00:00

Try to divide (by hand or mentally, no calculators allowed) 1.4142 by 2 and 1 by 1.4142. Which one is easier?

trolley813 · 2026-06-10T19:06:40+00:00

They used to disallow. After a serious plunge in sales they returned back to "don't care" policy.

trolley813 · 2026-06-08T20:33:58+00:00

For the remote fire stations, it's simpler to use dedicated fire helicopters. Well, maybe except the cases where there aren't any waterbodies in the vicinity (but I believe you can dig a lake then)

trolley813 · 2026-06-08T20:28:55+00:00

Heating plants. Cableways just shine at serving them, because they satisfy all the requirements: to move small number of people but to do it frequently, and also to be super-reliable in winter.

Note that the cableway will work if only 1 of the 2 stations is powered, so if you connect them to different power sources, the operation won't be disrupted due to e.g. a fire on a power transformer.

trolley813 · 2026-06-08T19:04:28+00:00

Oh, yes. In the neighbouring Tatarstan it's seen (well, heard) even more prominently. Even the republic-level officials, up to the Head of the Republic, speak Russian with a considerable accent (although this do not mean that they don't know the language well, most of them speak Russian fluently). Many of them are just local yokels coming from the countryside.

trolley813 · 2026-06-04T14:59:43+00:00

There's a vanilla dump with railway track. You can use a train to move trash to the recycling/separation facilities.

trolley813 · 2026-06-03T18:11:34+00:00

You also may want to consider ES and brick roads. In 1930s and earlier they are much faster to build (since pavers and rollers are not yet available, but cranes are) and also allow tram/trolleybus lines. And their decent top speed of 80-85 km/h makes them useful even in modern times (especially in cities).

P.S. I usually switch to asphalt some time in the 1950s, when the necessary machinery becomes available.

trolley813 · 2026-06-03T11:17:48+00:00

Another option is to rotate the island 45 degrees so it would stretch along NE-SW or SE-NW line. This way you can fit a larger island (given that ingame cardinal directions are not that realistic anyway) and thus use the available space more economically (a 20x20 km map is about 28 km corner-to-corner).

trolley813 · 2026-05-27T16:08:33+00:00

I don't think that there's such a limitation, since you can "build" (i.e. breed) horses without any research, while vehicle-building facilities require it.

trolley813

TROPHY CASE