La fantastica storia di come la Pepsi Cola entrò nel mercato sovietico e di come si facesse pagare in natura (navi e altro).

Money quote: "The U.S.S.R. was Kendall’s land of opportunity, and his goal was to open it to Pepsi. In 1972, he succeeded, negotiating a cola monopoly and locking out Coca-Cola until 1985. Cola syrup began flowing through the Soviet Union, where it was bottled locally. It was a coup: As the New York Times put it, the soda was “the first capitalistic product” available in the U.S.S.R. Pepsi had become a pioneer. But there was one issue: money."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-union-pepsi-ships

“Racconti di un futuro imperfetto”, un classico della fantascienza di Alfonso Font - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/01/racconti-futuro-imperfetto-alfonso-font-mondadori/

Il discorso integrale, lo State of the Union Address di Donald Trump di ieri sera.

Money quote: “Over the last year, we have made incredible progress and achieved extraordinary success. We have faced challenges we expected, and others we could never have imagined. We have shared in the heights of victory and the pains of hardship. We endured floods and fires and storms. But through it all, we have seen the beauty of America’s soul, and the steel in America’s spine”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/trannoscript-trumps-state-of-the-union-address/551864/

Storia di uno dei più pazzeschi, folli, straordinari comici della televisione americana

Money quote: "The one-liners were impeccable, unimprovable. Dangerfield spent years on them; he once told an interviewer that it took him three months to work up six minutes of material for a talk-show appearance. If there’s art about life and art about art, Dangerfield’s comedy was the latter — he was the supreme formalist. Lacking inborn ability, he studied the moving parts of a joke with an engineer’s rigor. And so Dangerfield, who told audiences that as a child he was so ugly that his mother fed him with a slingshot, became the leading semiotician of postwar American comedy. How someone can watch him with anything short of wonder is beyond me."

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-rodney-dangerfield.html

L'ipnotica storia della macchina fotografica - una Leica M2 - appartenuta a Sean Flynn, il figlio di Errol Flynn, e della sua scomparsa tra Viet-nam e Cambogia durante la guerra che stava documentando. Era un foto-reporter scavezzacollo, membro di un gruppetto di foto-reporter scavezzacolli.

Money quote: "Sean Flynn was the only child of the famed actor Errol Flynn & Lili Damita and was well known for his work as a photojournalist covering the Vietnam war. Flynn worked closely with special units in Vietnam and Cambodia, capturing incredible images of the war. Many of his images would be considered to be the raw view of an especially brutal war."

https://www.japancamerahunter.com/2018/01/camera-historica-the-sean-flynn-leica-m2/

Solo l’intelligenza artificiale ci potrà difendere da attacchi hacker e malware - il mio articolo per la Stampa

Money quote: "«Quella della sicurezza è una guerra che possiamo vincere solo se lasciamo che a combatterla al posto nostro siano le macchine» dice Gil Shwed, il fondatore dell’israeliana Check Point"

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/01/31/tecnologia/idee/solo-lintelligenza-artificiale-ci-potr-difendere-da-attacchi-hacker-e-malware-qpTQjUkLEEIPPyVVIMUxHN/pagina.html

Perché le cinture di sicurezza degli aeroplani per i passeggeri sono fatte come sono fatte? Risposta breve: perché costano molto poco. Però la risposta lunga è più interessante...

Money quote: "Seat belts became common in airplanes by the 1930s and 1940s, though even in 1947 there was pushback from the airline industry. (They often insisted that a tight belt could cause internal damage upon a crash. This is very rarely true and also pales in comparison to the number of injuries, internal and external, that are caused when a passenger doesn’t wear a seatbelt.) The Federal Aviation Act of 1958, spurred by several airplane crashes, began the move towards better safety requirements; these were codified in 1972 and have been occasionally updated ever since."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-are-airplane-seatbelts-so-weird

Fuji vuole comprare Xerox, nascerà un colosso da 18 miliardi di dollari - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/fuji-vuole-comprare-xerox-nascera-un-colosso-18-miliardi/

Ok, se provate il desiderio di sperimentare, potete fare molte cose: una di queste è usare Atom come se fosse VIm. Insomma, più o meno

Money quote: "My work is greatly owing to former achievements of the original vim-mode developers and many of its contributors.
As you can see in the commit history, this project was originally started by forking official vim-mode.
The great design to achieve Vim operation by composing operator with target (motion, text-object) on top of operationStack still lives in vim-mode-plus now.
I don't think I can find this idea by myself from nothing.
Sincerely, I feel I couldn't do anything without the original vim-mode."

https://github.com/t9md/atom-vim-mode-plus

La storia dei mulini a vento statunitensi: uno degli elementi paesaggistici più famosi di quel Paese, che in realtà sono anche uno degli strumenti più importanti per la conquista e l'industrializzazione della Frontiera americana. C'è anche un museo a loro dedicato, nello stato dell'Indiana.

Money quote: "You have probably seen windmills like these before, if not in person, then in pictures or on television. Sometimes known as “windpumps” or “wind engines,” they power a mechanical apparatus that draws water out of the ground. They share a general silhouette—reinforced tower, slatted fan wheel, rudder-like tail—and most are around forty feet high. They have names like Butler Oilmatic; Dempster 12A; Baker Direct Stroke; Southern Cross; The Whizz; Fairbury No. 33; Aermotor 602. In 2018, these windmills have a quaint, decorative sort of feel, like something you would find at an antique mall. But they are in fact technically profound pieces of equipment with a history of powering American expansion."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/windmills-water-pumping-museum-indiana

L'articolo purtroppo è a pagamento, ma solo l'incipit pubblico vale la pena: gli uccelli a quanto pare hanno scoperto il fuoco prima degli esseri umani. Ci sono predatori volanti che sono anche piromani: spargono il fuoco sulla foresta per stanare le loro prede. Almeno, in Australia.

Money quote: "Some birds of prey have learned to control fire, a skill previously thought to be unique to humans. The birds appear to deliberately spread wildfires in order to flush out prey. The finding suggests that birds may have beaten us to the use of fire."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2157887-arsonist-falcons-suggest-birds-discovered-fire-before-humans-did/

Storia di Margit Wennmachers, la donna che ha creato l'immagine di uno dei più grandi venture capitalist della Silicon Valley e ridefinito l'idea che abbiamo dei genietti della tecnologia che abitano in California

Money quote: "The best communicators, by definition, go unnoticed. They’re the invisible third person in every interview. It was Wennmachers who coaxed a reticent Andreessen into participating in Friend’s story because she believed it would be good for the firm. It was Wennmachers who set up most of Friend’s interviews at Andreessen Horowitz and had a colleague staff them. When Friend felt he needed to see more of Andreessen, Wennmachers hit upon the idea of a TV-watching dinner date, correctly suspecting the scene would be just weird enough to guarantee inclusion and that Andreessen would come off exactly as she hoped: a relatable visionary who identifies with oddball hackers and who, when he is not predicting the future of computers, is watching TV shows about people who predict the future of computers."

https://www.wired.com/story/margit-wennmachers-is-andreessen-horowitzs-secret-weapon/

La Cina comincia a non poterne più dei Bitcoin

Money quote: ““Currently, there are some so-called ‘mining’ enterprises that produce ‘virtual currencies.’ They have consumed huge amounts of resources and stoked speculation of ‘virtual currencies,’” according to the document dated Jan. 2.”

https://qz.com/1174091/china-wants-an-orderly-exit-from-bitcoin-mining/

La famiglia Rockefellers è diventata leggendariamente ricca grazie al petrolio di una azienda che si chiama Exxon. Oggi la Exxon cerca di difendersi dai Rockefeller perché si sente attaccata dalla famiglia diventata con il tempo sempre più ricca ma anche sempre più ambientalista. Interessante.

Money quote: “All of which is how ExxonMobil found itself in federal court this past November arguing that the Rockefellers were funding a conspiracy against it. Judge Valerie Caproni of the Southern District of New York was hearing the latest arguments in a legal battle that had begun more than two years prior, when members of the Rockefeller clan, in their latest attempt to pressure the erstwhile family business to deal with climate change, funded journalists who uncovered documents showing Exxon had known about the dangers of burning fossil fuels for decades while publicly denying it was much of a problem at all. The Rockefeller-backed reports had inspired multiple state attorneys general to investigate whether Exxon might be liable like tobacco companies that lied about the cancer risks of smoking had been”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/the-rockefellers-vs-exxon.html

In memoria di Fred Bass, il proprietario della libreria Strand a Manhattan.

Money quote: “In between a formal request for Senator Wyden to replace Chuck Schumer and a plea for Paul Krugman to explain Bitcoin, Fran lauded Fred, whom she had known since she was twenty. “Young people say to me, Fran, where’d you get those vintage glasses?” she said. “And I say, They’re not vintage; I just still have them. I felt the same way about Fred. Fred’s such an old-school guy, they’d say. Well, Fred’s not an old-school guy, I’d say. We just still have him.””

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/01/raising-glass-fred-bass-strands-iconic-owner/

Kodak: la nostra criptovaluta serve al lavoro dei fotografi - il mio articolo per Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/kodak-la-nostra-criptovaluta-serve-al-lavoro-dei-fotografi/

Nel medioevo si potevano solo dipingere soggetti sacri: è la base per un proliferare di sexy-madonne e scente alquanto cruente o vivaci, piuttosto lontane filologicamente dai tempi che gli artisti cercavano di evocare (anche per farle meglio capire alle folle illetterate, per carità).

All'epoca dell'Unione sovietica è invece diventata obbligatoria un tipo di arte chiamata "realismo sovietico" o socialista. A Mosca ci sono un po' di musei dove poter vedere la migliore produzione.

Money quote: "Socialist realism was the dominant style of art in the Soviet Union; a regulated, rigid form of creativity. As its name suggests, it relied on realistic images that highlighted communist values. It was approved and promoted by the government, hence its reputation as a form of propaganda."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/institute-of-russian-realist-art

Se vi sentite "useless" e "joyless", probabilmente è colpa di Facebook. È un viaggio verso la depressione che può terminare con il suicidio.

Money quote: "Two followed people over time, with both studies finding that spending more time on social media led to unhappiness, while unhappiness did not lead to more social media use. A third randomly assigned participants to give up Facebook for a week versus continuing their usual use. Those who avoided Facebook reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week."

https://theconversation.com/with-teen-mental-health-deteriorating-over-five-years-theres-a-likely-culprit-86996

Diciotto anni fa c'era una cosa che si chiamava Open Letter, ed era un Internet magazine bellissimo. Mi manca parecchio

Money quote: "Open Letters is a new magazine of first-person writing in the form of personal correspondence.

But it’s something else, too: it’s an ongoing, evolving experiment in content delivery via the Internet."

http://openletters.net/the-delivery/

La Paris Review, che come avrete capito è una delle mie riviste preferite, ha pubblicato un florilegio di recensioni di Parigi prese da TripAdvisor. Insomma, Paris reviewed. Tutte a una stella: stroncature dire. Genio.

Money quote: "LES DEUX MAGOTS -

Hemingway ate here all the time. Hemingway also shot himself. Draw your own conclusions."

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/31/paris-reviewed/

Probabilmente tutti abbiamo incontrato a un certo punto l’idea delle “mappe mentali”, quei diagrammi dove si mettono tutte le cose cercando di organizzare il pensiero a suon di tondi e di freccine. Bello, ma come funziona? Quando di usa? Salta fuori che c’è più di un modo, anzi ce ne sono tre, secondo questa interpretazione, e che sono fra loro interconnessi.

Money quote. “Here are three types of maps that can help your get started when trying to get your arms around what a topic or system boundary should be. The mind map, the cluster map and the concept map are three great starter maps and each informs the next to help you understand a topic or system. By making these diagrams we can determine what is in or out, what elements or actors we need to pay attention to and we can start to see relationships between the concepts of a topic or system. These diagrams won’t explain causes and effects or WHERE you need to pay attention in order to make transformation (that’s another series of models) but they will give you a sense of the actors, elements, components, and the scope to then move to the next level of understanding”

https://medium.com/tangible-ux/using-mapping-to-scope-a-system-b467564a80e2