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

Sull'elaborazione del lutto e sulla nostra capacità di lasciare andare, secondo gli stoici

Money quote: "How should we grieve when someone close to us dies? Should we wail and gnash our teeth? Should we swallow our pain? Some would say there is no right answer. You feel whatever you feel, and heal however you heal, and that’s okay. But according to the ancient Stoics – those Greco-Roman philosophers making a comeback as preachers of practical wisdom in a self-help world – there is a correct answer to the question of how we should grieve. And the answer is that we shouldn’t. What’s done is done. There is nothing you can do to change the situation – so move on."

https://aeon.co/essays/do-not-weep-for-your-dead-how-to-mourn-as-the-stoics-did

Alcune cose su John McCain da leggere da chi ha lavorato con lui a lungo

Money quote: “ First, whoever’s been talking about John McCain’s funeral is doing no one any favors. There’s no need for that right now, and the McCain family will announce any details about the funeral. But the general principle here is this: One of things McCain says in this book, and something he would like the country to appreciate better, is that we have so much more in common than we have that divides us. George Bush and Barack Obama defeated him. He knows this. But he knows that they are fellow Americans with the same values and interests that he shares. He may disagree with how they served those values and interests, but he knows that we are all Americans”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/john-mccains-greatest-fear/560915/

Lo considero un mio vecchio classico!

Per Fumettologica

Money quote: “Sappiamo che in questa colonna metafisica e digitale, Science Friction, si parla di fantascienza, argomento che dovrebbe essere off-limits per i protagonisti del Vecchio West a fumetti. Invece, a sorpresa per alcuni, il vecchio Tex entra in questo spazio dalla porta principale, anche se vedremo tra poco in che modo”

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/02/fantascienza-tex-fumetto-bonelli/

Ok, questa notizia ve la rovino, non c'è bisogno di andare a leggerla. Il senso è: da dieci anni va a giro con il suo iPod, compagno di viaggi e sirena dei suoi stati d'animo. Con annesso gigantesco adesivo del duo Gaspard Augé e Xavier de Rosnay, a.k.a. “Justice”. Poi iPod si rompe, lui ne fa un mini funerale su internet e, a sorpresa, i due musicisti gli scrivono: te ne regaliamo uno con un po' della nostra musica, che ne dici?

Carramba che sorpresa! (e che marketing, devo dire! di quello come lo insegnano nei corsi fighi: ascolta il tuo cliente e avvia la conversazione, partecipa a quel che dice).

Money quote: "The user in question was named Effennekappa. “I’ve spent 10 years with this 160gb monster in my pocket, it’s been with me in every single trip, journey and commute I’ve made since I was 20,” the user wrote. “Today it played its last song. Farewell, you magnificent bastard.”

Justice is served
An accompanying image showed the battle-worn silver iPod, complete with a rear sticker for the French electronic music duo Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, a.k.a. “Justice.”

The post got quite a bit of attention as fellow iPod users shared their thoughts on what it was like to lose a beloved MP3 player. Somewhere along the way, however, Justice stumbled across the thread, and paid their respects — as well as offering to replace the iPod in question.

“Hello u/effennekappa! Sorry to hear about your iPod,” Xavier de Rosnay posted. “Would it be possible for us to send you a new one? We’ll put some new music on it.”"

https://www.cultofmac.com/556293/ipod-memorial-earns-one-reddit-user-a-sweet-surprise/

In una stupenda rappresentazione grafica basata su dati provenienti dallo Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, le vendite di armi da parte di USA e Russia al resto del mondo.

Link: http://bit.ly/2MUbgi6

Ogni tanto penso che dovrebbero mandare a scrivere questi articoli giornalisti che hanno una vaga idea di cosa sia un computer. Comunque è godibile, soprattutto se avete una predilezione per la scrittura melodrammatica. Però non corretto tecnicamente.

Money quote: “Algorithms have changed, from Really Simple to Ridiculously Complicated. They are capable of accomplishing tasks and tackling problems that they’ve never been able to do before. They are able, really, to handle an unfathomably complex world better than a human can. But exactly because they can, the way they work has become unfathomable too. Inputs loop from one algorithm to the next; data presses through more instructions, more code. The complexity, dynamism, the sheer not-understandability of the algorithm means that there is a middle part – between input and output – where it is possible that no one knows exactly what they’re doing. The algorithm learns whatever it learns. “The reality is, professionally, I only look under the hood when it goes wrong. And it can be physically impossible to understand what has actually happened.””

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/ridiculously-complicated-algorithms/