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Mostly, I Write
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Storie e pensieri suoi e di altri, raccolti da Antonio Dini http://www.antoniodini.com
Per contatti su Telegram: @antoniodini
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Emacs, che io non uso, appartiene alla centralità del software open e anche alla centralità del software in generale, per come è costruito. La sua storia e affascinante.

Money quote: “Someone posted a chapter from Sam Williams’ book Free as in Freedom (online here), that discusses the early history of Emacs. The chapter, The Emacs Commune, is full of things I didn’t know about how Emacs evolved from the TECO editor”

http://irreal.org/blog/?p=7308
Darsi agli acidi: è l’unica risorsa.

Money quote: “It’s 7 a.m. on the U-Bahn. Eyes still puffy from the night before. A woman slowly nibbles her morning brötchen while staring into the static on the broken TV above. Everyone is silent. And in this crowd of straight faces, there I am, grinning like an idiot.

Why? I have a little secret. There’s acid under my tongue.”

https://medium.com/s/story/the-mental-and-metaphysical-effects-of-microdosing-lsd-72819896215d
Sono critico nei confronti degli uffici open space (open office plan, in inglese) a prescindere da chi li organizza. Soprattutto, non li tollero quando lo spazio personale diventa virtuale e l’ufficio viene gestito in modalità provvisoria istituzionalizzata. Ogni mattina si cerca lo spazio dove lavorare e il posto di lavoro diventa l’armadietto.

Adesso ci sono anche delle valutazioni empiriche a supporto del mio stato d’animo.

Money quote: “Knowing that others are watching us limits the degree to which we might creatively solve a problem, and therefore be more productive, according to a study he conducted with factory workers. ‘Do I look busy?’ becomes more important than ‘Am I doing my best work?’”

https://work.qz.com/1322146/a-harvard-business-school-study-found-open-plan-offices-have-a-surprising-effect-on-our-collective-intelligence/
Il gusto per l’Art Deco è forse ancora più strano di questo stile eclettico e trasversale, nato in laboratorio (per l’esposizione universale di Parigi del 1925), diventato il precursore del modernismo (nonché un elemento di base del nostro razionalismo) e poi rivalutato negli anni sessanta e in seconda volta negli anni ottanta.

Moda, design, tessuto, materiali (il legno laccato!) arte povera e arte africana. Mi piace, ne ho letto tanto e visto anche un bel po’ (dal Radio City Hall di New York al concomitante Chrysler building), lo mangio con gli occhi. Ma l’idea che Bombey (Mumbay) sia la seconda città al mondo per architettura in stile e con gusto Art Deco mi intriga e intristisce al tempo stesso. Già. Chissà.

Money quote: “But in Mumbai, believed to host the world’s second-largest collection of Art Deco buildings, such interest is hard to find. Tourists tend to focus on established landmarks, such as the Gateway of India, while residents, some of whom even live in Art Deco apartments, are hardly aware of their historical significance. Besides, in a city starved for space, conservation efforts haven’t always been able to save these heritage structures from damaging restoration or repair work, or even outright demolition”

https://qz.com/1014414/mumbai-has-the-worlds-second-largest-collection-of-art-deco-buildings-but-no-one-notices-them/amp/
Questo articolo di Aeon è fenomenale. Più del solito. Tratta due argomenti che adoro, la cultura hacker e la gentrificazione. E li incrocia in modo magistrale. Se potessi prendermi qualche anno per scrivere un libro, magari un dottorato, questo sarebbe esattamente uno dei pochissimi argomenti che vorrei seguire.

Money quote: “This is not just about property. In cosmetics shops on Oxford Street in London you can find beauty products blazoned with pagan earth-mother imagery. Why are symbols of earth-worship found within the citadels of consumerism, printed on products designed to neutralise and control bodily processes? They’ve been gentrified. Pockets of actual paganism do still exist, but in the mainstream such imagery has been thoroughly cleansed of any subversive context.

At the frontiers of gentrification are entire ways of being – lifestyles, subcultures and outlooks that carry rebellious impulses. Rap culture is a case in point: from its ghetto roots, it has crossed over to become a safe ‘thing that white people like’. Gentrification is an enabler of doublethink, a means by which people in positions of relative power can, without contradiction, embrace practices that were formed in resistance to the very things they themselves represent.

We are currently witnessing the gentrification of hacker culture”

https://aeon.co/essays/how-yuppies-hacked-the-original-hacker-ethos
Altro che dinosauri. Cloniamo cani da salotto in Corea del Sud.

Money quote: “Then, last March, Barbra Streisand came out as a cloner. In an interview with Variety, the singer let slip that her two Coton de Tulear puppies, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett, are actually clones of her beloved dog Samantha, who died last year. The puppies, she said, were cloned from cells taken from “Sammie’s” mouth and stomach by ViaGen Pets, a pet-cloning company based in Texas that charges $50,000 for the service. “I was so devastated by the loss of my dear Samantha, after 14 years together, that I just wanted to keep her with me in some way,” Streisand explained in a New York Times opinion piece, after the news provoked an outcry from animal-rights advocates. “It was easier to let Sammie go if I knew that I could keep some part of her alive, something that came from her DNA.””

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/08/dog-cloning-animal-sooam-hwang
Qui si parla di Tokyo, di lunghe code e di ramen. Cosa volete di più?

Money quote: “Leah and I were at Fuunji to eat tsukemen, the specialty of the tiny restaurant. The place is presided over by a wiry ramen master rocking a blond, boy-band coif, who dances around behind the counter, boiling and draining and plating his food with the percussive flamboyance of a flair bartender. Tsukemen is a type of ramen in which the cold, cooked noodles are served separately, on a plate, with a bowl of broth on the side—a dish meant to be eaten with precision, in deliberately constructed bites of noodles dipped in the broth, then slurped up”

https://www.afar.com/magazine/tokyos-long-lines-lead-to-magic-and-life-changing-ramen
​​La mia estate low-tech con la banana gialla: il Nokia 8110...
Elogio della moderazione, una virtù che abbiamo perso da tempo. Anzi, direi che abbiamo smarrito il concetto stesso che sta alla base dell’idea di moderazione.

Money quote: “What did the ancients think about all this? For one thing, they didn’t share our present skepticism toward moderation. On the contrary, they praised it and thought that the alleged ‘barbarians’ were also incapable of moderation, that is, of following a rational middle course. If classical authors agreed on the importance of moderation, they also insisted that it is not an easy virtue. Tacitus called it, in fact, ‘the most difficult lesson of wisdom’, while Horace linked moderation to the golden mean and balance, all good things in his view, but difficult to achieve in practice. Plato highlighted both the importance and difficulty of moderation in The Republic, where he defined it as the virtue that allows us to control or temper our passions, emotions and desires”

https://aeon.co/ideas/moderation-may-be-the-most-challenging-and-rewarding-virtue
Ma quelli che stanno assieme per decenni, andando ben oltre la fase romantica ed erotica dell’amore, come fanno? Forse chissà, c’è una spiegazione (sono abbastanza vecchio perché mi sfugga?)

Money quote: “I must admit that these findings puzzled me. Are we actually victims of romantic ideology? Should we cease striving for true love or hold out until a soul mate appears? In our modern times, these questions do not have an easy answer. After all, it is painfully hard to fulfil the romantic ideal while staying inside our culture’s boundaries and social norms; only dead fish swim with the stream”

https://aeon.co/essays/how-can-romantic-love-last-a-lifetime
Ammettiamolo, le città sono la nostra vera ossessione. La prova che siamo diversi da come veramente siamo. Il nostro stato di natura interiore, quello che alcuni chiamano inconscio, ci travolge e configge con l’intelligenza razionale dell’uomo debole ma coraggioso e civilizzato.

Quel che stiamo scoprendo però è che il processo che ha portato alla creazione dell’uomo che vive in città, e quindi della città stessa, è meno lineare, più lungo e più ramificato del previsto e dell’immaginato.

Money quote: “According to Scott, we know that “our ancestors did not run headlong” into the civilized life for a few reasons. First, archaeological research shows that sedentary populations existed in Mesopotamia as far back as 12,000 BCE. But it took until around 3,100 BCE before the very first stratified, tax-collecting states popped up in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley.
This massive lag proves that, once settled, cities didn’t naturally flourish as Civilization VI indicates. The collapse of ancient settlements was actually very common. Fatal disease spread rapidly in these settings, brought about by the cohabitation of animals and people. Add in the potential for crop failures, taxes, and getting sent away to fight a war for some grain-rich despot and you’ve got some legitimate concerns about abandoning your “primitive” life to hop on the human progress train.”

https://civicskunk.works/why-did-we-start-living-in-cities-5d3e21d5b28c
Quando l’estetica ti mangia dentro. La sfortunata scelta nel mondo tecnologico del blu come colore dell’interfaccia luminosa e le sue orribili conseguenze.

Money quote: “The bright blue light of flat, rectangular touch screens, fans, and displays may be appealing from an aesthetic perspective (more on that below), but from a health standpoint, it is fraught with problems. Blue light inhibits the production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates our sleep cycles. Blue light before bedtime can wreak havoc on our ability to fall asleep”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90177573/how-blue-became-techs-favorite-color-and-why-it-shouldnt-be
Ha creato il web e adesso soffre a vedere come funziona e viene usato dalle grandi multinazionali digitali e dai governi. Per questo lo vuole rifare. Storia di Tim Berners-Lee e della sua nuova visione del futuro.

Money quote: “This agony, however, has had a profound effect on Berners-Lee. He is now embarking on a third act—determined to fight back through both his celebrity status and, notably, his skill as a coder. In particular, Berners-Lee has, for some time, been working on a new software, Solid, to reclaim the Web from corporations and return it to its democratic roots. On this winter day, he had come to Washington to attend the annual meeting of the World Wide Web Foundation, which he started in 2009 to protect human rights across the digital landscape. For Berners-Lee, this mission is critical to a fast-approaching future.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets
L’autrice di questo articolo sul paradosso di Fermi è un personaggio singolare. L’ho incontrata a Las Vegas un po' di tempo fa. Laureata in astrofisica, divulgatrice, personaggio televisivo ma anche campionessa di poker. Sul serio. Fa le gare e le vince (tipo: un paio di milioni di dollari vinti). Risultato? Ti strega e poi ti incanta. Gli alieno? Una bieca scusa per parlare di lei (dal vivo rende molto meglio).

Money quote: “My excitement was short-lived as my mother explained it was a satellite catching the sun as it tumbled along its orbit. I went to bed disappointed: The X-files was on TV twice a week back then, and I very much wanted to believe.”

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/7/3/17522810/aliens-fermi-paradox-drake-equation
Block chain come se piovesse. Anche da parte della Borsa Svizzera. L’hype cresce, la bolla si gonfia...

Money quote: “"The first step is to build up a regulated exchange platform. In a second phase we will offer the service to tokenize existing bankable assets which will be followed by the tokenization of non-bankable assets. Following an agile approach to meet the needs of today's dynamic environment, the first services will be rolled out in mid-2019," the company said.”

https://www.coindesk.com/swiss-stock-exchange-to-tokenize-securities-in-new-dlt-platform/
​​Negli aeroporti americani si aggira un anonimo folle genio che attacca adesivi trompe-l’œil: simulano inesistenti prese elettriche. Sta diventando una cosa seria.
Forwarded from Fumettologica
40 fumetti da leggere questa estate, consigliati e commentati dalla redazione e dai collaboratori di Fumettologica, che ne hanno scelti due a testa: una novità pubblicata di recente e un recupero dai loro scaffali.

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/08/estate-fumetti-leggere/
Breve ma significativo articolo che spiega bene non solo l’idea che le popolazioni antiche vivessero più a lungo di quanto solitamente non riteniamo. Ma spiega bene anche i criteri statistici e scientifici per determinare l’aspettativa di vita. Bello.

Money quote: “Studies on extant traditional people who live far away from modern medicines and markets, such as Tanzania’s Hadza or Brazil’s Xilixana Yanomami, have demonstrated that the most likely age at death is far higher than most people assume: it’s about 70 years old. One study found that although there are differences in rates of death in various populations and periods, especially with regards to violence, there is a remarkable similarity between the mortality profiles of various traditional peoples.”

https://aeon.co/ideas/think-everyone-died-young-in-ancient-societies-think-again
La Cina digitale in cifre

Money quote: “China has twice as many internet users as the total population of the United States -- and it’s growing fast. This unique collaboration between Abacus, 500 Startups, the South China Morning Post, will break down everything you need to know about China’s thriving tech industry, the big players in each field, and lay out the four overarching trends that have emerged.”

https://www.abacusnews.com/china-internet-report/
La complessità delle cose semplici. Per chi conosce il C e programma, anatomia di printf()

Money quote: "The common questions fit roughly in to two forms:

Easy: How does the printf mechanically solve the format problem?
Complex: How does printf actually display text on my console?"

http://www.maizure.org/projects/printf/index.html