Global worming

Un bel racconto breve di Ottessa Moshfegh ambientato in Cina.

Money quote: “I felt an immediate affinity with Adil, as if I were meeting someone I’d known all my life for the first time. We locked eyes, and in that instant it was understood: there was something between us.”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/the-man-in-xinjiang/

Esercizi di retorica: dimostrare entrambi i (contrversi) casi riguardo Tesla e il suo creatore Elon Musk. Una Monday Note che è un classico.

Money quote: “Now 15-years-old, Tesla enjoys a media presence that’s well out of proportion with the size of its sales. In the first quarter of this year, the company sold fewer than 30,000 cars; for reference, Toyota sells about 2.5M per quarter, 80 times more. The extravagant attention can be explained, at least in part, by Elon Musk’s impressive PR skills. Musk is a veritable quote machine, constantly providing fodder across the whole spectrum of media from blogs to Twitter, from the Wall Street Journal to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The attention may be inordinate, but it isn’t entirely empty. It would mean nothing if Tesla didn’t have a serious product, and Tesla’s Model S, a “green car for carnivores” as one wag rightly calls it, amply rewards those who pay $100K for the car’s sexy styling, swift acceleration, and pleasant road manners. As industry observers have noted, the Model S is outselling comparable high-end BMWs and Mercedes, first in the US and now in Europe.”

https://mondaynote.com/tesla-both-sides-of-the-case-32bf53b8f4f1

Com’è costruirsi una relazione fuori dal matrimonio con una app per persone sposate come Ashley Madison? Molto, molto diverso da quel che vi aspettate. La prospettiva è quella femminile, della donna che vuole tradire.

Money quote: “I’ve been sexting with someone new, a new match from the site, Things were going well, until I realized that he wanted to have a threesome. I told him I didn’t want that. I was looking for something else, sex yes, but also, a connection. He said he would be open to that … if I were willing to have a threesome. This is just the way it seems to go with me and men, my husband or otherwise. There’s their needs, their desires, their priorities, and then beneath that — mine. I thought that maybe the problem was marriage or monogamy, but now I don’t know. I don’t know why no matter the scenario, they always seem to have the power.”

https://medium.com/the-cut/i-went-on-ashley-madison-to-try-to-have-an-affair-50dc30de71be

Mentre si discute sui rischi delle Simbox Iliad per la sicurezza nazionale, online si vendono SIM Lycamobile già attive
▶️ https://wp.me/p3bwIx-vdM

Gwyneth Paltrow (G.P.) ha creato un’azienda che si chiama Goop e vale 250 milioni di dollari. Soprattutto, come racconta qui il New York Times, ha creato un ideale si donna che ovviamente è come (sembra essere) lei.

Viviamo tempi interessanti.

Money quote: “The first iteration of the company was only these lists — where to go and what to buy once you get there — via a newsletter she emailed out of her kitchen, the first one with recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins. One evening, at a party in London, one of the newsletter’s recipients, a venture capitalist named Juliet de Baubigny, told her, “I love what you’re doing with Goop.” G.P., as she is called by nearly everyone in her employ, didn’t even know what a venture capitalist was. She was using off-the-shelf newsletter software. But De Baubigny became a “godmother” to Paltrow, she said. She encouraged her vision and “gave permission” to start thinking about how to monetize it.“

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/magazine/big-business-gwyneth-paltrow-wellness.html

Un problema chiamato Donald Trump.

Money quote: “If any past president had acted the way Trump acted beside Putin or said what Trump said at the VFW convention, it would have been shocking and surreal. Because prior to Trump, past presidents all acted -- generally speaking --in a consistent way. They were measured in their public statements. They were careful in matters of international diplomacy. They were committed, again, generally speaking, to taking the high road. That doesn't mean presidents before Trump acted perfectly presidential all the time. They did not. But, they always had in their mind what "being presidential" meant”

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/07/26/politics/donald-trump-media-challenge/index.html

La qualità del bacio come elemento cardine nell’articolazione di un rapporto.

Money quote: “(Like for example, one night I was on a first date with a woman who seemed more interested in planting her lips and copious amounts of tongue anywhere in the general vicinity of my mandible except for on my actual mouth. I think she even spent some time salivating on the neck beard. She was not at all happy when I declined to go home with her and left me 17 voicemails in a two-hour span vulgarly reminding me of what I was missing out on. It didn’t work out but we remain cordial.)”

https://psiloveyou.xyz/different-kissing-styles-fa6d590e0072

Noise from the net:

Una volta (lo racconta Benedetto Croce, se non ricordo male) uno che passava sotto il balcone sul quale sedeva Salvatore Di Giacomo lo salutò cordialmente: “Come state, don Salvatore?”, “Non vedi? Sto morendo”.

Abbiamo avuto due o tremila anni di filosofia e meno di cinquecento di scienza. Eppure potrebbe essere solo quest’ultima l’attività umana capace di rispondere alle grandi domande. (Ma quali sono poi le grandi domande?)

Money quote: “Science has proved itself to be a reliable way to approach all kinds of questions about the physical world. As a scientist, I am led to wonder whether its ability to provide understanding is unlimited. Can it in fact answer all the great questions, the ‘big questions of being’, that occur to us?”

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-its-only-science-that-can-answer-all-the-big-questions

Negli ultimi anni il programma YouTube da vedere per gli amanti della fotografia era stato Digital Rev Tv, prodotto da un negozio di fotocamere di Hong Kong. Uno spettacolo. Poi si è rotto tutto.

Ma il presentatore (e autore) Kai continua con il suo stile unico. Qui di seguito, un giro a Venezia con la Ricoh Gr 1 a pellicola e qualche cenno anche alla Ricoh Gr II digitale (che è la mia macchina fotografica, BTW). - in inglese.

https://youtu.be/gdq1VJTmsvk

Letture per l’autunno: il nuovo libro di Lisa Brennan Jobs, la prima figlia di Steve Jobs

Money quote: “When I was 27, my father invited me to join for a few days on a yacht trip that he, my stepmother, my siblings, and the babysitter were taking in the Mediterranean. He didn’t usually invite me on vacations. I went for a long weekend.

Off the coast of the South of France my father said we were going to make a stop in the Alpes-Maritimes to meet a friend for lunch. He wouldn’t say who the friend was. We took a boat to the dock, where a van picked us up and drove us to a lunch at a villa in Èze.

It turned out to be Bono’s villa. He met us out front wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and the same sunglasses I’d seen him wearing in pictures and on album covers.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/lisa-brennan-jobs-small-fry-steve-jobs-daughter

In arrivo Pixel 3 XL: lo smartphone di Google si ispira all’iPhone X - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/08/25/tecnologia/in-arrivo-pixel-xl-lo-smartphone-di-google-si-ispira-alliphone-x-WHrh3xuQqYbk6BllbxzbyH/pagina.html

Poesie dalla rete: cresta usando la funzione di auto completamento delle ricerche di Google

Un Paese dala superiore civiltà. Non solo il Giappone ha una parola per indicare chi compra libri senza leggerli – Tsundoku, un’arte vera e propria – ma oltretutto non è neanche un insulto, bensì una semplice constatazione. Ahhh, partirei stasera stessa.

Money quote: “"The phrase 'tsundoku sensei' appears in text from 1879 according to the writer Mori Senzo," Prof Gerstle explained. "Which is likely to be satirical, about a teacher who has lots of books but doesn't read them."

While this might sound like tsundoku is being used as an insult, Prof Gerstle said the word does not carry any stigma in Japan”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44981013

E adesso abbiamo i corsi gratuiti anche su Google. Che pare siano buoni per gli imprenditori e i manager, se non altro.

Money quote: “These classes, like many others, are all free. You can find most of them through Class Central. Here are a few of the most appealing.”

https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/google-free-online-courses-for-entrepreneurs-marketers-business-executives.html

Brutalismo per tutti. La Casa Sperimentale di Fregene

Money quote: “Giuseppe Perugini, with the help of his wife Uga De Plaisant and their son Raynaldo Perugini, built the unique structure in the late 1960s. They used the construction of their holiday home as an opportunity for a reflection on living spaces and a test of the technical feasibility of some of Perugini’s ideas.

The home is elevated and built around the surrounding pine forest. It’s only accessible by one bright red staircase, which functioned as a drawbridge and could be lifted to cut off the outside world. It’s sometimes referred to as the “repeatable house” or the “un-finishable house,” since it was completely modular and could be expanded on at any time.“

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/casa-sperimentale

Ci sono immaginari femminili che vengono generati da pochi centri di origine. Sono le Gwyneth, le Ivanka e poche altre. Argomento notevole. Avevamo cominciato a parlarne l’altro giorno con l’articolo sulla Paltrow, ma qui si generalizza di più.

Money quote: “This image seems to have just popped into my head, inexplicably. But deep in my grease-encrusted, black-coffee-pounding heart, I know its origin. It floated into my mind in the late 2000s, along with a recommendation for hibiscus-infused salts, and never floated back out. The woman in my fantasy isn’t me. She’s Gwyneth Paltrow.”

https://medium.com/s/story/gwyneth-ivanka-and-the-end-of-the-effortless-white-woman-9d8c4e01a026

Come si fa quando si ha un solo nome? (un nome-cognome). O due volte un solo nome? Nell'ambito della ricerca, qui sono stati raccolti un po' di "mono-professor" e di "professor professor"

Money quote: "(This list was updated July 30, 2007. The concept was announced in the December 2005 issue of mini-AIR. Additions to the collection are announced in mini-AIR, and recorded here. Mono-professors?professors who have just one name?are also included in this list.)"

https://www.improbable.com/2006/02/09/prof-profs/

La filosofia di Ernst Becker è piuttosto singolare ma anche interessante. Siamo animali pensanti e quindi capaci di capire che dobbiamo morire. Questa è la spinta, più o meno consapevole, della nostra esistenza come individui e sopratutto come specie. Superare la nostra mortalità (e l’altra idea, aggiungo, che cioè tutto venga fatto per impressionare la ragazza, è coerente perché ben sappiamo che Eros e Thanatos sono legati).

Ora, cosa ce ne facciamo del cogito ergo sum in chiave neo empirista? una risposata viene dalla dicotomia corpo-mente e dalle conseguenze della spinta legata alla consapevolezza della morte e il desiderio - molto umano - di superarla.

Money quote: “Much of the evil in the world, according to Becker, is born from our attempt to defy the limitations of the physical body by compensating with this image of self — an image that can technically survive and impact the world long after we die (often referred to as a legacy).”

https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-elements-that-shape-an-authentic-life-547f7e91db74

I venti film più belli/importanti di vent'anni fa. Cosa c'era al cinema nel 1998. Me ne sono perso quasi la metà, vedo, ma in effetti è stato un anno notevole.

Money quote: Salvate il soldato Ryan. Il grande Lebowski. The Truman Show. Shakespeare In Love. A Bug’s Life. The Thin Red Line. Out Of Sight.

https://film.avclub.com/the-best-movies-of-1998-1828534340