Come si riorganizza Urania. Intervista a Giuseppe Lippi

Se volete leggere qualcosa che vi dica dove sta andando la fantascienza in Italia, dovreste leggere la mia intervista a Giuseppe Lippi. C'è anche il mini-scoop (casuale, come sempre), perché da gennaio diventa l'ex curatore di Urania, e collabora assieme ad altre tre figure interne di Mondadori per fa andare avanti la collana

Money quote: ""Il successo dei film e serie TV non si riflette che in minima parte sulla sf letteraria, ma la tecnologia c’entra solo indirettamente. La società dei mega-trend ci vuole sempre più passivi, questa è la realtà. Sempre più consumatori di gadget e quindi meno colti, meno educati in senso umanistico. Ora, la lettura non può prescindere da un minimo di ecletticità nella formazione.""

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/02/intervista-giuseppe-lippi-urania/

L'altro giorno avevo segnalato una delle cose più belle di David Foster Wallace, "Roger Federer come esperienza religiosa". Ma la prima cosa che ho letto dell'autore americano è stata in realtà "Considera l'aragosta", il libro che prende il nome da questo lungo e drammatico articolo-saggio pubblicato dalla rivista "Gourmet" nell'agosto del 2004. non so se poi mangerete ancora le aragoste. È un pdf, tenetelo da parte per il fine settimana o per quando avete un po' di tempo: in inglese vale il doppio.

Money quote: "For practical purposes, everyone knows what a lobster is. As usual, though, there’s much more to know than most of us care about—it’s all a matter of what your interests are. Taxonomically speaking, a lobster is a marine crustacean of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws used for subduing prey. Like many other species of benthic carnivore, lobsters are both hunters and scavengers. They have stalked eyes, gills on their legs, and antennae. There are dozens of different kinds worldwide, of which the relevant species here is the Maine lobster, Homarus americanus. The name “lobster” comes from the Old English loppestre, which is thought to be a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe, which meant spider."

http://theessayexperiencefall2013.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2013/11/Consider-the-Lobster_david-foster-wallace.pdf

Le differenze nei motivi per cui le due metà scelgono il partner in una coppia eterosessuale stanno assottigliandosi. Un tempo si riteneva che i maschi scegliessero le femmine per la bellezza (cioè l'aspetto fisico, con riferimento indiretto alla fertilità) mentre le femmine scegliessero i maschi per la capacità di provvedere (binomio ricchezza/forza pensato per fornire supporto nel secondo periodo della gravidanza e nei primi mesi dalla nascita della prole). Adesso, studi recenti mostrano che non è più così e che i criteri a quanto pare non sono biologici in senso deterministico ma costrutti sociali. E che alla fine i maschi e le femmine si scelgono per gli stessi motivi. Oppure, si potrebbe anche ipotizzare, sono invece i motivi convergenti di scelta ad essere dei costrutti sociali. Chissà.

Money quote: "The results from the research are clear: mating preferences among men and women look increasingly similar. The trend is directly tied to increasing gender equality, as women gain greater access to resources and opportunities in business, politics, and education. In more gender-unequal nations, such as Turkey, women rate the earning potential of partners as twice as important compared with women in the most gender-equal nations, such as Finland. As with Josh and Mia, Finnish men are now more likely than Finnish women to select partners based on their high level of education."

https://quartzy.qz.com/1171584/dating-preferences-among-men-and-women-are-looking-increasingly-similar/

Creature molto, molto confuse sull'alimentazione e l'idea di "vita sana"

Money quote: "The truth, of which I am not proud, is that until then I’d not given animal welfare more than a passing thought in my life. I loved meat. In as much as I’d ever paid attention to veganism, in my mind it was a bit precious and a massive palaver. The obvious question would therefore be: couldn’t I just eat healthily without becoming a vegan? Why not simply listen to my body, and eat what it asks for? I can see that for lots of people – maybe most – this would be the sensible solution. In my case, however, it is a terrible idea, the message I consistently get from my body is that a great breakfast menu plan would be two Mars bars and a Cadbury’s finger of fudge."

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/06/ice-baths-vegan-diet-year-living-healthily

Una storia incalzante e commovente, epica ma anche lirica, dal pennello di uno dei più grandi mangaka contemporanei.

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/02/billy-bat-naoki-urasawa-manga/

Se volete leggere una cosa accademica piuttosto interessante sulle videoscritture

Money quote: "The word processor is a stupid and grossly inefficient tool for preparing text for communication with others"

http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

Breve ma illuminante articolo di Ugo Arrigo sulla Voce che spiega come mai il cambiamento di passo di Meridiana - acquistata da Qatar Airways e ribattezzata Air Italy, con una nuova strategia per il lungo raggio anziché una eredità di vettore regionale - avrebbe dovuto farlo Alitalia. Invece Etihad Airways voleva un vettore regionale come Air Berlin ma per entrambe le compagnie europee questa scelta è stata micidiale: Alitalia è tenuta in vita dallo Stato mentre Air Berlin è morta ufficialmente il 28 ottobre dell'anno scorso. Ed era il secondo vettore tedesco...

Money quote: "Sembra tuttavia che nessuno, in primo luogo chi dovrebbe pensare a una politica industriale di settore, si sia accorto che questo identico progetto di rilancio bisognerebbe attuarlo anche per risanare Alitalia. Meridiana non è più sostenibile come vettore regionale, dunque non le resta che crescere sino a divenire un vettore nazionale focalizzato sul lungo raggio. Anche Alitalia è troppo piccola e la soluzione è di crescere come vettore di lungo raggio, non certo di divenire il vettore regionale di un grande gruppo europeo. Possibile che i ministri competenti sul tema non si siano accorti che la soluzione migliore è la stessa?"

http://www.lavoce.info/archives/51435/air-italy-alitalia-un-modello-due/

Countries with the highest number of fatal civil airliner accidents since 1945
https://telegram.me/SalaAurora

Il New York Times racconta la storia della donna che fa da portavoce della NRA, la lobby americana delle armi. Una portavoce bella e telegenica.

Money quote: “Dana Loesch has a biblical innoscription tattooed on her forearm, a reference to a passage in the Book of Ephesians that calls for Christians to wear holy armor to protect themselves from a dark world. It is an apt precept for Ms. Loesch, a 39-year-old conservative radio talk-show host and political commentator who views the world through a lens of fear and violence”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/20/style/dana-loesch-national-rifle-association.html

Nei giorni scorsi era venuto fuori che Apple ha deciso di estrarre direttamente il cobalto utilizzato per i suoi apparecchi. Da molti è stato letto come una mossa di carattere economico, legata alle strategie industriali dell'azienda. La penso diversamente: credo che il vero motivo sia umanitario, e la ragione ultima sia che si fa perché si può fare.

Money quote: "At one cobalt mine, children toiled in the drenching rain carrying huge sacks of the mineral.

Dorsen, eight, had no shoes and told us he hadn't made enough money to eat for the past two days - despite working for about 12 hours a day.

His friend Richard, 11, talked about how his whole body ached every day from the tough physical work.

The mine tunnels are dug by hand by miners who have no protective equipment. The tunnels have no supports and are prone to collapse, especially in the rain.

At one mine we travelled to, workers had downed tools in support of a fellow miner who had died after one such collapse.

There are thousands of unofficial, unregulated, unmonitored mines where men, women and children work in what can only be described as slave conditions.

In one group, we found a circle of children with a four-year-old girl picking out cobalt stones."

https://news.sky.com/story/meet-dorsen-8-who-mines-cobalt-to-make-your-smartphone-work-10784120

Una storia molto, molto particolare: lo sviluppatore di iDefrag e altri software per Mac che stanno andando a fine vita (non servono più) cercava da tempo una cosa alternativa da fare. E, per un colpo di fortuna, pensa a un sistema per trasmettere audio 5+1 dai Mac usando l’uscita audio analogico/ottica. Però c’è un problema di brevetti e licenze. E poi... beh poi entriamo nella fantascienza: non vi voglio anticipare niente. Un colpo al cuore dopo l’altro.

Money quote: “That was when I had my bright idea — I could write a Dolby Digital (aka AC-3) encoder, that took 5.1 channel audio from Core Audio in my Mac, compressed it in real time, and squirted it out over the optical interface. I managed to find the necessary specifications (not too hard, because AC-3 is part of various other published standards), and started work.

I was, of course, aware that I’d have to license the AC-3 codec from Dolby Laboratories, so I also started talking to them about that while I worked on my encoder.”

https://alastairs-place.net/blog/2018/02/21/aura/

C’è questo paesino upstate New York in cui ci sono più libri che abitanti e comunque ben 5 piccole librerie indipendenti. Alla faccia del Kindle.

Momey quote: “You might expect neighboring bookstores to compete with one another, like side-by-side movie theaters or department stores. But Dales suspected that the opposite was true. Readers, like shoppers at the mall, often wandered back and forth between the shops. As more bookstores came to town, one of Hobart’s original booksellers (no one can quite remember who) began to describe the town as “the only book village east of the Mississippi.” (Other American book towns include Stillwater, Minnesota, and Archer City, Texas.) By 2005, when a New York Times writer passed through, Hobart had earned its moniker: “Hobart Book Village.””

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hobart-book-village

Troppi aggeggi smart: ci stiamo dimenticando come si fa a leggere

Money quote: “Books were once my refuge. To be in bed with a Highsmith novel was a salve. To read was to disappear, become enrobed in something beyond my own jittery ego. To read was to shutter myself and, in so doing, discover a larger experience. I do think old, book-oriented styles of reading opened the world to me – by closing it. And new, screen-oriented styles of reading seem to have the opposite effect: They close the world to me, by opening it.

In a very real way, to lose old styles of reading is to lose a part of ourselves”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/i-have-forgotten-how-toread/article37921379/

Ve lo ricordate Brendan Fraser? Era un attore fantastico, particolare, amichevole, molto fisico ma non faceva paura né incuteva timore né minaccia. E poi ha fatto un sacco di cose, fino alla Mummia. E poi è scomparso. Com'è, come non è, ecco la sua storia. La storia di molti di noi.

Money quote: "He wasn't worthy of being Superman. He wasn't even worthy of being Brendan Fraser. And this feeling ate at him as the decade wore on, and he starred in movies he was less and less proud of, and his body deteriorated, and his marriage fell apart, and he kept thinking about what had happened to him in the summer of 2003: “The phone does stop ringing in your career, and you start asking yourself why. There's many reasons, but was this one of them? I think it was.” And that, he says, is why he ultimately disappeared for a while. “I bought into the pressure that comes with the hopes and aims that come with a professional life that's being molded and shaped and guided and managed,” he says now. “That requires what they call thick skin, or just ignoring it, putting your head in the sand, or gnashing your teeth and putting on your public face, or just not even…needing the public. Ignoring. Staying home, damn it. You know, not 'cause I'm aloof or anything, but because I just felt I couldn't be a part of it. I didn't feel that I belonged.”"

https://www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser

La fantastica storia di come la Cina stia diventando un Paese di grandi innovazioni

Money quote: "But a few years ago, China’s leaders decided they wanted the country to be known for a new kind of electronics– not only “Made in China”, but “Designed in China”. The authorities can’t exactly whip up innovation by decree, but the local government can influence real estate – and through a series of incentives and edicts, it began swapping out tenants. Many of the cheap electronics vendors packed up their boxes, while new technology businesses moved into refurbished office spaces: startups, investors and even patent attorneys."

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-china-became-tech-superpower-took-over-the-west

La creatività è come un gas: se la comprimi diventa esplosiva. Se la lasci libera, si disperde. Ma la stessa idea si può applicare anche al business? Io sono perplesso, mi sembra un ragionamento piuttosto superficiale; invece, in determinati contesi sembra funzionare.

Money quote: “Alex Halberstadt’s essay on Rodney Dangerfield is a masterclass on how to improve by reduction. Dangerfield worked for decades as a comedian until he figured out the thing, his insight: “by eliminating every extraneous element, you could isolate what makes it work and just do that.”

Dangerfield reduced his act to just two lines: setup and punchline.”

http://blog.aweissman.com/2018/02/addition-by-subtraction.html

Gli archetipi dell’inconscio collettivo. Che meraviglia. Che frode.

Money quote: “According to Jung, his ‘discovery’ of a collective unconscious began in 1910, shortly after he had left his post at the Burghölzli Hospital in Zürich and set up private practice in Küsnacht, on the edge of Lake Zürich. The catalyst was a passage from Albrecht Dieterich’s 1910 translation of the Mithras Liturgy, which described the wind as emanating from a pipe or tube hanging from the Sun. The image was uncannily familiar to Jung. A few years earlier, a patient at the Burghölzli Hospital had, Jung recalled, taken him to one side, pointing out how the Sun had a phallus that was responsible for the movements of the wind. Since Dieterich’s account of the solar myth had only just been published, there was, to Jung’s mind, no ready explanation of the corresponding symbolism. The patient’s hallucination had sprung from ‘the impersonal layer in our psyche’, a collective unconscious that, ‘independently of tradition, guarantee[d] in every single individual a similarity and even sameness of experience’.”

https://aeon.co/ideas/what-was-the-beguiling-spell-of-jungs-collective-unconscious

Vivere in un mondo il cui obiettivo è quello di rendere tutto più facile sta diventando un incubo.

Money quote: "An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is easy is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we dont actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-convenience.html

⚠️ Quando mi attraversa un pensiero di quelli che il cuore comincia a battere per conto suo o mi manca il fiato faccio una di queste cose https://twitter.com/tree_of/status/967810176987385857 o una combo, tu?

Cos'è la fantascienza, perché serve, in cosa differesce rispetto al desiderio di disegnare il futuro. Vale la pena, se non altro per sentire la voce di William Gibson e quella di Vinton Cerf. L'assunto di base, cioè che chi abbraccia una tecnologia non è più in grado di giudicarla criticamente e invece la cosa interessante è guardare agli effetti che ha sulle persone, mi sta ipnotizzando.

Money quote: "the young aspiring science fiction writer William Gibson was looking for a place to set his first novel. Gibson was living in Seattle, and he had friends who worked in the budding tech industry. They told him about computers and the Internet, "and I was sitting with a yellow legal pad trying to come up with trippy names for a new arena in which science fiction could be staged."

The name Gibson came up with: cyberspace. And for a guy who had never seen it, he did a great job describing it in that 1984 book, Neuromancer: "A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.""

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/02/20/583682937/the-father-of-the-internet-sees-his-invention-reflected-back-through-a-black-mir

La matematica è un linguaggio, né più né meno, anche se un tipo di linguaggio particolare. E questo signore su Medium secondo me è ancora piuttosto confuso, anche dopo aver letto il libro di Helen Walker. E un po' ossessionato dai suoi fantasmi. Però tutti lo siamo, e il suo momento di illuminazione è divertente perché alla fine secondo me è un momento in cui vede i suoi pregiudizi dal di fuori, cioè in questo caso l'intenzione e l'espressività di quella che lui ha evidentemente confuso con una serie di procedure meccaniche e mnemoniche.

Sempre sia lodata l'illuminazione.

Dopodiché, è un pirla.

Money quote: "Before I go on, I’m pointing out this perception of women as second-class citizens of the mathematics world, to make a point about the different contributions of insiders (men) and outsiders (women). You may believe this is a gender issue, but not all of it. Like all good mathematicians, male or female, I want to reduce the problem down to its simplest form."

https://medium.com/q-e-d/that-loser-woman-mathematician-who-changed-my-life-7df96e218eb1