Sfondi della scrivania (su Mac) come forma d’arte

Money quote: “In 2015, I finally solved the problem by building an app called Backgroundifier, which converted arbitrary-size images into wallpapers by superimposing them onto attractive, blurred backgrounds. By pairing an Automator Folder Action with the native wallpaper cycling functionality of macOS, I could now drop arbitrary images into a directory on my desktop and have them automatically show up in my wallpaper rotation. Peeking at an image was as simple as invoking the Show Desktop shortcut, and if I wanted to see something new, all I had to do was switch to a new Space”

http://archagon.net/blog/2018/05/02/a-native-art-gallery-for-your-mac/

Un australiano, che ha le sue idee su come va il mondo, sull’uso che vuole fare del suo computer autocostruito e per quanto tempo, e che vuole andare “off the grid” in un paio di anni, si è assemblato il suo perfetto computer silenzioso. Ed è uno spettacolo.

Money quote: “This computer makes no noise when it starts up. It makes no noise when it shuts down. It makes no noise when it idles. It makes no noise when it’s under heavy load. It makes no noise when it’s reading or writing data. It can’t be heard in a regular room during the day. It can’t be heard in a completely quiet house in the middle of the night. It can’t be heard from 1m away. It can’t be heard from 1cm away. It can’t be heard — period. It’s taken nearly 30 years to reach this point, but I’ve finally arrived. The journey is over and it feels great.”

https://tp69.blog/2018/04/17/completely-silent-computer/

Sono molto rare da trovare, ma sono le uniche che diano degli insegnamenti secondo me veramente validi (è un mio vecchio pallino). Sono le storie di fallimenti, casi di aziende che non ce la fanno, non ci riescono. Perché l’essere umano impara dagli sbagli, non dai successi. Ma non è buon marketing parlare di quella volta che la vostra azienda è fallita. Peccato.

Per fortuna che qualcuno di Fieldbook pensa che ne valga la pena

Money quote: “Would a more upmarket, sales-driven approach have worked? There were a few things pointing in this direction: Our most enthusiastic customers had some of the largest and most complex use cases, and offering custom manual setup seemed to get people over the activation hump.

We happily did manual onboarding for early customers, even though it doesn’t scale. It’s a great way to learn and to build a brand. But as growth strategy, it inexorably turns into a sales model, which requires a higher price point, around $300/mo.

We tried to nudge ourselves upmarket, offering higher-priced plans with custom manual setup, but we didn’t have enough takers. We just weren’t getting the right leads. To make this work, I think we would have had to relaunch as almost a different company. I concluded that you can’t nudge upmarket—you have to leap.”

https://medium.com/the-fieldbook-blog/what-happened-at-fieldbook-d70bf25b3968

Prendere un capello e spaccarlo un sacco di volte, con intensa decisione. Quale saggezza? Quale intelligenza?

Money quote: “This is, of course, a very simplified scenario, but the point is that knowledge is relational and the understanding of wisdom recognizes that rather than treating it simply as an isolated information point.”

https://qz.com/1284878/the-difference-between-intelligence-and-wisdom-and-how-to-acquire-both

Ci stanno togliendo anche le ultime certezze: che l’intelligenza sia/non sia innata

Money quote: “On a recent visit to DNA.Land, I scanned down the list of traits they offered to tell me about. I stopped at intelligence.

I took a breath before I clicked.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/561392/

Uso fin dal principio Scrivener, che ha decisamente modellato il mio modo di lavorare. Questo tizio però esagera un po’.

Money quote: “Just being able to have one document that was a few hundred pages long seemed like a dream, but let’s face it: when your writing style is one that hops about a timeline like a jackrabbit on cocaine, that’s still not terribly efficient. There was a lot of “CTRL+F ‘Chapter XX'” going on.

Enter Scrivener.”

https://www.thedebutanteball.com/how-tech-controls-my-chaos/

Le proteine non fanno male, dice la BBC. Costa solo troppo farle.

Money quote: “The risk of consuming too much protein is small, but the bigger risk might just be falling for overpriced products offering us more protein than we need. “Some products labelled as high protein aren’t, and they’re quite expensive. Anyway, consuming more protein than need is wasteful in terms of money, and it’s paid down the toilet,” says Johnstone.”

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180522-we-dont-need-nearly-as-much-protein-as-we-consume

Sapere scegliere i manager giusti fa la differenza tra il successo e il fallimento. Più passa il tempo e più me ne convinco. Questa donna, Jennifer Bailey, ad esempio, è la ragione del successo di Apple Pay.

Money quote: “We launched in Japan [in October 2016]. One of the really important categories of payments there is for its rail system, so we [linked with the country’s] JR East and Suica transit cards. Add those to Apple Wallet and tap to go through the gate. Just last week, we were busily working on launching transit in Beijing and Shanghai. When we talk about replacing the wallet and not just payment cards, this is what we’re working on”

https://www.fastcompany.com/40571650/most-creative-people-2018-jennifer-bailey

Rilassiamoci, la vita è facile: bastano cinque cosette e siamo a posto. Siamo noi scemi che non l’avevano capito.

Money quote: “A good life is from seeing it as a series of constructive — not reductive — thoughts. It’s about being self aware enough to know what we want. It’s about taking action, every day, to get there. And it’s about doing all of this even though we’re scared, trusting that there’s good shit on the other side”

https://medium.com/@krisgage/5-ways-to-have-a-good-life-55b62c9e964d

Gli smartphone, cioè le app, stanno facendo fuori il web così come lo conoscevamo.

Money quote: “Young, distracted and styled just-so, Anissa Kheloufi is part of a growing genus of Instagram junkies”

https://medium.com/bloomberg/smartphones-are-doing-to-websites-what-amazon-did-to-the-mall-d789a6cee119

Gli smartphone, cioè le app, stanno facendo fuori il web così come lo conoscevamo.

Money quote: “Young, distracted and styled just-so, Anissa Kheloufi is part of a growing genus of Instagram junkies”

https://medium.com/bloomberg/smartphones-are-doing-to-websites-what-amazon-did-to-the-mall-d789a6cee119

È arrivato il nuovo BlackBerry Key2 ma a quanto pare non piace.

Money quote: “The Key2’s biggest problem is its devotion to nostalgia, despite BlackBerry Mobile’s efforts to modernize it. The dual-camera system, gesture-equipped keyboard, and BlackBerry app suite are all attempts at updating an old platform, but not creating a new one.”

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/27/17504714/blackberry-key2-review-smartphone-android

Se volevate sapere come sta Johnny Deep, Rolling Stone ha pubblicato il suo ritratto definitivo

Money quote 1: "During my London visit, Depp is alternately hilarious, sly and incoherent. The days begin after dark and run until first light. There is a scared, hunted look about him. Despite grand talks about hitting the town, we never leave the house. As Depp's mind leads us down various rabbit holes, I often think of a line that he recited as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland: "Have I gone mad?""

Money quote 2: "A constant in Depp's business was his older sister Christi, who managed his day-to-day affairs. (She never responded to requests for comment for this story.) In 1999, they realized that his current management company couldn't handle his rapidly expanding financial affairs and they needed to move to a bigger firm. By then, Depp had moved above Sunset Boulevard to an 8,000-square-foot estate nicknamed "Dracula's Castle." He spent a day interviewing financial managers. His last meeting, he says, was with Robert and Joel Mandel, brothers who ran TMG. Depp says he immediately took a shine to Joel, the youngest child of an Auschwitz survivor. Depp saw a kindred spirit. "He was a nervous wreck," says Depp. "He was pouring sweat. He was broken." (TMG disputes this portrayal).

I ask him why he would place his money in the hands of a person he would describe as a "broken toy." Depp says because he felt a kinship: "The monofilament that goes through all my characters, if you really look, they're all fuckups. They're broken.""

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/johnny-depp-lawsuit-marriage-w521671

(Ps: praticamente c'è gloria quasi in ogni paragrafo di quest'articolo. Da un punto di vista giornalistico è una figata!)

Quel genio (tossico) di Pascal, morto a 39 anni, e la sua straordinaria intuizione sul vero problema dell'umanità: riuscire a stare seduti da soli in silenzio. Ma come si fa a stare seduti in silenzio, da soli, magari in una stanza, senza guardare il telefonino? Vale lo stesso?

Money quote: “Interestingly enough, much of this was done in his teen years, with some of it coming in his twenties. As an adult, inspired by a religious experience, he actually started to move towards philosophy and theology”

https://qz.com/1309242/the-most-important-skill-nobody-taught-you/

Sullo scrivere e sulla difficoltà nel riuscire a farlo.

Money quote: “The work of writing a novel isn’t predicated on punching in every day, but clocking in when you can. When you can find the time. As Ciplex founder Ilya Pozin notes, measuring productivity by hours worked every day is borderline prehistoric”

https://medium.com/s/an-outsiders-guide-to-publishing/when-your-art-is-the-thief-of-your-joy-e88e1b206b89

Alla scoperta dell'affascinante mondo dei microbrand. Che, non sembra, ma tirano da matti. E questo, più che su di loro (che peraltro sono genuinamente interessanti), dice molte più cose su di noi e su come stiamo diventando.

Money code: "I think this mass of micro brands with massively efficient marketing are, in aggregate, having a much bigger impact than anyone thinks. Using hyper-targeted marketing, just-in-time manufacturing, and social media, these brands find and engage their audience wherever they may be. Of course, small brands are nothing new, but they typically remained small companies. Now I’m hearing about more and more of these brands with tiny teams generating over $10M in sales, with higher-than-normal-retail profit margins. What is driving this new wave of commerce, and what are the implications?"

https://medium.com/positiveslope/attack-of-the-micro-brands-c0b7835c3633

Se volete condividere questa storia o altre qui su Telegram o sui social, ricordate che l'indirizzo di Mostly, I Write è https://news.1rj.ru/str/mostlyiwrite

La storia di Wil Wheaton e della sua depressione cronica raccontate da se medesimo.

Money quote: “I have to tell you a painful truth: I missed out on a lot of things, during what are supposed to be the best years of my life, because I was paralyzed by What If-ing anxiety.

All the things that people do when they are living their lives … all those experiences that make up a life, my anxiety got in between me and doing them. So I wasn’t living. I was just existing”

https://medium.com/@wilw/my-name-is-wil-wheaton-i-live-with-chronic-depression-and-generalized-anxiety-i-am-not-ashamed-8f693f9c0af1

Negli Usa la monetica digitale sta evolvendo piuttosto rapidamente. PayPal, tramite la controllata Venmo, sta lavorando su cose che noi umani europei ancora non abbiamo visto, come una card che permette di condividere automaticamente il conto della cena... e non è certo l'unica.

Money quote: "The Venmo launch comes at a time when there’s a shift in how younger consumers are using payment cards and banking services. Many are turning to online banks, like Simple, Varo and Chime, and transfer money through peer-to-peer (p2p) payment apps like PayPal, Venmo and, now, the bank-backed app Zelle. Tech companies like Apple and Google are also getting into the p2p space, with their own services like Apple Pay Cash and Google Pay Send, for example.

Venmo says its new card is in limited release starting today. Beta customers will be invited to sign up, and others will need to fill out a form to reserve their spot."

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/venmo-officially-launches-its-own-mastercard-branded-debit-card/

Il vero colpo basso al giornalismo italiano: Wikipedia oscurata per protesta.

https://www.ilpost.it/2018/07/03/wikipedia-bloccata/

Ps: poi come mi fa notare giustamente Luca le pagine so vedono lo stesso, eh. Non temete (troppo).

Compito in classe: questa estate imparate a disegnare. Esercizi a seguire

Money quote: "Tip: For the following 6 exercises I suggest you stick with one pen and one particular type of paper (for instance A5)."

https://medium.com/personal-growth/a-quick-beginners-guide-to-drawing-58213877715e

Dopo tutte le strade portano a Roma, ecco tutti i voli portano a Roma (alla faccia di Alitalia). Ma ci sono poi anche tutti i voli che portano a XXX...

Money quote: "Flights to Rome is our follow up to one of the biggest unsolved quests of mobility: Do all roads lead to Rome?! We've explored this question on a global scale and found a route from anywhere in the world!

Starting at 712.425 locations spread evenly around the globe, we calculated routes from everywhere on the planet. Intermodal routes are calculated to the airport based on the OpenStreetMap road network. From there on a flight network shows all flights to Rome. The network was created with data of Flightradar24. Flights to Rome is a project between data visualisation and art."

https://flightstorome.moovellab.com/#roadsinthesky