Coffee With Tanya #30

Hello, coffee lovers! As August ends, I've been reflecting on how the most unexpected things can change the world. From ancient languages finding new voices through AI to marketing tricks that saved nations from hunger, this month's discoveries are all about transformation and resilience.

This blazing August heat has me thinking about transformation - how extreme conditions change everything, even us 💡 Perfect timing for stories about reinvention.

Here's what we have on our menu today:

1. Language - When AI learns to speak your ancestors' lost words 🎙️🇯🇵
2. Art - Van Gogh's sunflower obsession and my Friday flower traditions 🌻
3. Streaming - This week's binge-watch recommendation 📺
4. Food - How one man tricked France into eating "poison" 🥔
5. Gaming - Quick break (you've been warned) 🎮
6. August in History 🌍

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." - Chinese Proverb

When AI Learns to Speak Your Ancestors' Language 🎙️

A young woman in northern Japan presses play on an old cassette.

Through the static: her grandmother's voice, telling ancient stories in Ainu.

Maya Sekine's bedtime stories were different. While friends heard Japanese lullabies, she fell asleep to stories about singing wolves in her family's old language. These weren't just tales. They were the last pieces of a culture Japan tried to wipe out.

The numbers say it all.

• In 1870: 15,000 Ainu speakers
• By 1917: just 350
• Today: UNESCO calls it "Almost Gone"

But here's the surprise: AI is learning to speak Ainu.

Scientists put 700 hours of old recordings into computers.

Now the machines can create new Ainu speech that sounds 95% real. Old voices, talking to new generations 👵🆎.

Imagine: AI teachers helping kids learn words their great-grandparents knew. In voices that sound almost human.

Maya isn't sure about this. Can computers really understand a language that has 80 different words for bears? Can AI get that in Ainu, everything in nature has a spirit?

"Language is everything to us," she says. "It connects us to our culture."

Here's the big question: If we save a language on computers, is it still truly alive? Or just a really good copy?

Young Ainu people keep making new words. "Imeru kampi" means "email" - mixing "lightning strike" and "letter." Even dying languages can still grow.

Sometimes the best conversations happen between old and new. Technology helps lost worlds speak again.

What voices from your family would you want AI to save?

Can AI speak the language Japan tried to kill?

More than a century after colonisation, the Ainu language almost vanished. Now machines are listening to hours of old recordings and learning to give it a new voice.

BBCJessie Lau

When Sunflowers Became Van Gogh's Obsession 🌻

"I must have flowers, always, and always." - Claude Monet

As a flower and green-loving person, I cherish this quote. I enjoy Fridays when I pick fresh flowers for Shabbat and the weekend. Bringing that burst of life and color home makes everything feel right.

Vincent van Gogh heard those words and understood completely.

Van Gogh felt the same urgency about flowers - but his was different 🧑‍🎨.

In 1888, he woke before sunrise in his Yellow House. Racing to his easel. Sunflowers fade fast.

He painted his entire famous series in one week!!

Working "with the gusto of a person eating soup," he said. The flowers couldn't wait.

But here's the twist: Van Gogh probably never arranged 15 sunflowers like he painted. The stems were too thick. The vase too small. It would have toppled over.

Those perfect golden arrangements? Pure imagination.

The real story was friendship. Van Gogh was decorating for Paul Gauguin's visit, dreaming of an artist community. "Nothing but large Sunflowers," he wrote to his brother.

He wanted to surround visitors with golden blooms. A "symphony in blue and yellow."

When Gauguin saw the paintings, he called them "completely Vincent." The highest compliment ever.

Here's what's heartbreaking: The sunflowers are slowly turning brown. Van Gogh used new chrome yellow paints that are chemically breaking down. Museums keep them in special lighting now.

One painting was even destroyed the same day as Hiroshima - burned in Allied bombing.

But their power lives on. In 1987, one sold for $39.9 million 🤑. Today it would be worth hundreds of millions.

Van Gogh chose rough, unpolished sunflowers because he saw himself in them. Overlooked. Tough. Beautiful if you really looked.

Like Monet, he needed flowers always and always. They were his way of saying thank you to life, even in darkness.

Binge Alert: Dept. Q 📺

Just discovered this on Netflix and couldn't stop watching.

Dept. Q - a gritty crime series about a guilt-ridden detective (the handsome Matthew Goode) solving cold cases from a basement office that used to be a toilet.

Literally a toilet 🚽

Why did I like it? Dark, intelligent, and Matthew Goode is phenomenal!! Think True Detective meets The Office's bureaucratic chaos.

The setup: Broken cop + impossible cases + an office everyone forgot about = surprisingly addictive viewing.

You'll binge it in 2 days like everyone else.

Watch it here and thank me later.

IMDB Rating: 8.2/10 and climbing 🕵️.

The Man Who Fooled France Into Eating "Poison" 🥔

Growing up in a former Soviet country (Kazakhstan), I learned early: potatoes are life!

Not just food - survival. Every family had their potato routine. Mashed on Monday, fried on Friday, boiled with dill whenever hunger struck.

Like most of us from that region, potatoes aren't optional in my weekly meals. They're essential.

But here's what blew my mind recently: France once banned potatoes as poison.

France, 1700s. Potatoes were literally illegal to eat. What?!?! 🤯

People believed they caused leprosy. The Church called them "devil's dirt."

Then one man changed everything with history's greatest marketing trick.

Meet Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. A French pharmacist who survived as a prisoner eating nothing but potatoes. When he returned, he had a mission: convince France these weren't poison.

But how do you rebrand something people think is cursed?

Step one:

• Make it royal. He gave potato flowers to Marie Antoinette for her wigs. The king wore them on his lapels.

Step two (genius level):

• King Louis XVI gave him 54 acres to grow potatoes. Parmentier hired armed guards to protect them.

During the day.

At night? No guards at all.

People started "stealing" the potatoes. If it needed protection, it must be valuable, right? Locals grabbed them and planted them secretly.

Want something irresistible? Make it forbidden.

The results were incredible. By 1789, when wheat crops failed during the French Revolution, those "stolen" potato plants saved millions from starvation.

Plot twist:

• The Incas knew this 8,000 years ago. They worshipped potatoes as sacred while Europe called them cursed.

Today's irony? Americans eat more potatoes than anyone, but mostly as chips and fries. We've forgotten that a simple boiled potato was once revolutionary.

What "potato" are you avoiding because someone told you it was worthless? 🥔

How the potato went from banned to beloved

Potatoes were once so despised they were linked to leprosy. What changed? It’s a tale of propaganda, survival, and ordinary people’s resilience.

History

Quick Break 🎮

Need a mental reset? Here's some authentic mind control: Tetris

Warning: Highly addictive. Don't blame me when you see falling blocks everywhere.

Lazy Blocks

No stress Blocks

Lazy Blocks

August in History 🌍

• August 6, 1945 – Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima ☢️ The dawn of the nuclear age changed warfare and diplomacy forever.
• August 9, 1974 – Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. President to resign 🏛️ Watergate scandal ends with a historic presidential departure from office.
• August 15, 1947 – India and Pakistan gain independence 🇮🇳🇵🇰 The end of British colonial rule births two nations but sparks massive population displacement.
• August 16, 1977 – Elvis Presley dies at Graceland 🎸 The King of Rock and Roll's death marks the end of an era in American music.
• August 26, 1920 – 19th Amendment set up, giving American women the right to vote 🗳️ After decades of suffrage campaigns, women finally gain political equality at the ballot box.
• August 31, 1997 – Princess Diana dies in Paris car crash 👑 The People's Princess's death sparks global mourning and changes the British monarchy forever.

That's all for today. Stay tuned for the next coffee with me in September! And remember to keep some flowers around - Van Gogh was onto something. 🌻

You can also find me writing about Product management on LinkedIn, running my business at velonova.io, rating movies on IMDB, or making playlists on Spotify.

BTW - what I'm reading/watching this month:

• Dept. Q (obviously)
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
• Dead Poets Society! A masterpiece!! With one and the only Robin Williams (still processing those emotions)

You're one of the curious souls who made it here. If there's a topic you'd like me to dive into, just send it my way. Ciao! ☕

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