Mostly, I Write – Telegram
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
Per iscriversi alla newsletter Mostly Weekly: https://tinyletter.com/MostlyIWrite
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A quanto pare c’è una distribuzione di Linux con una interfaccia che fa la differenza. Ma c’è sempre il solito problema dietro: la mancanza di coerenza.

Money quote: "There is a very real problem in the GNU/Linux ecosystem but it’s not the App Menu in Gnome 3. The problem is lack of consistency. Or maybe, more precisely, a culture that celebrates lack of consistency as a feature, confusing it with “choice”.

Beautiful, consistent defaults are not mutually exclusive with choice. Choice is about having the option of diverging from the defaults, not whether or not those defaults mandate a certain cultural cohesion or consistency."

https://ar.al/2018/07/26/popos-18.04-the-state-of-the-art-in-linux-on-desktop/
Una analisi molto interessante del mercato del lavoro americano, che ha raggiunto la quasi occupazione ma a prezzo di una sistematica precarizzazione dei lavoratori. Insomma, a piena occupazione non ha fatto seguito un innalzamento dei salari (per la ricerca di nuovi lavoratori) ma una loro eccessiva possibile mobilità.

Money quote: “The typical American worker now earns around $44,500 a year, not much more than what the typical worker earned in 40 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Although the US economy continues to grow, most of the gains have been going to a relatively few top executives of large companies, financiers, and inventors and owners of digital devices.

America doesn’t have a jobs crisis. It has a good jobs crisis”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/29/us-economy-workers-paycheck-robert-reich
C’è una vera e propria epidemia di narcisismo collettivo e c’è un nuovo libro, Selfie, che racconta quel che succede negli Usa. Il tema è rilevante se non altro per l’impatto della cultura americana. La domanda però è un’altra: da noi chi racconta queste cose? Chi ci aiuta a guardarci da fuori per capirci meglio?

Money quote: “Storr, a British novelist and journalist, has previously written about human credulity and how the stories we tell ourselves about the world color our beliefs about what’s true. A book like Selfie seems like a departure from this, but it’s not. This, too, is a book about beliefs and their consequences. And it’s not merely a snapshot of internet culture; it’s really a survey of the history of individualism in the Western world, and how it contrasts with the more community-minded cultures in the East.”

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/7/19/17518086/selfie-will-storr-book-psychology-west
Il mondo dei colori. E soprattutto dei loro nomi. Come “orange”, che in inglese è sia colore che frutto. Ma quando nasce? Purtroppo la nostra Accademia della Crusca non è più in grado (se mai lo è stata) di parlare a dei lettori più giovani dei novecentenni suoi abituali fruitori.

Money quote: “Orange, however, seems to be the only basic color word for which no other word exists in English. There is only orange, and the name comes from the fruit. Tangerine doesn’t really count. Its name also comes from a fruit, a variety of the orange, but it wasn’t until 1899 that “tangerine” appears in print as the name of a color—and it isn’t clear why we require a new word for it. This seems no less true for persimmon and for pumpkin. There is just orange. But there was no orange, at least before oranges came to Europe.”

https://lithub.com/color-or-fruit-on-the-unlikely-etymology-of-orange/
Un editor di codice molto semplice ma nient’affatto banale, che lavora con il Python ed è pensato per chi impara: bambini e non solo. Io con il Python ci sto giocando e trovo Mu ottimo pure per uno zuccone come me.

La frase portatrice sana di valore di questa breve meteora di contenuto su Mostly, I Write, è una citazione che appartiene ad Alan Kay, coioè a una generazione precedente a chi ha fatto questo editor, ma ha ispirato gli autori di Code with Mu.

Money quote: “It’s not a fake version of math. It’s kind of like little league, or even T-ball. In sports they do this all the time. In music, they do it all the time. The idea is, you never let the child do something that isn’t the real thing—but you have to work your ass off to figure out what the real thing is in the context of the way their minds are working at that developmental level.”

https://codewith.mu/
Non so se avete presente i fumetti di Julia Evans, ma sono spettacolari e informativi (su Linux, riga di comando, etc). Adesso sono anche testo universitario. Anche da noi https://jvns.ca/zines/
Parlare in modo critico e cospiratorio di grandi multinazionali del farmaco è come fare gol a porta vuota un mercoledì mattina quando gli avversari sono ancora a casa loro. Però ogni tanto ci vuole. Perché dopotutto capire che il business delle grandi multinazionali de farmaco è avere un pubblico di malatici cronici dipendenti un giorno ci farà capire che l’approccio stile cartello di Medellín all’industria farmaceutica è profondamente da ripensare.

Money quote: “In a private report leaked to news outlets in April 2018, the Goldman Sachs analysts caution against investments in pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies aiming to develop outright cures, and cite Harvoni as a case study. It’s a simple point to make – if profit is your goal, then a product that eradicates its own demand might not be a wise investment”

https://aeon.co/essays/will-medicine-ever-recover-from-the-perverse-economics-of-drugs
Oggi con i social media non è più possibile...
Uno degli effetti della capillarità di internet è la possibilità di connettere le persone. Tutte le persone. E scoprire cose nuove. Ad esempio che, visto da vicino, nessuno è normale.

Money quote: “Every day, millions of people around the world ask Google some variation of the question, “Am I normal?” “

https://medium.com/inc./yale-research-confirms-what-youve-always-suspected-nobody-is-normal-7653dee70b49
La rivoluzione di Condé Nast International e la trasformazione digitale.

Money quote: “This summer, when Condé Nast announced it was merging the United States and international versions of its magazine Condé Nast Traveler onto a new single platform, and that it would be overseen not from its birthplace in New York, but from London, fashion and media heads were turned on both sides of the Atlantic.

After all, the world of the United States publisher and its flagships Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ had always remained resolutely aloof from its international versions. What could the Traveler decision portend?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/style/conde-nast-international-wolfgang-blau-vogue-runway.html
3D Touch, tempo e risorse sprecate per Apple? - il mio articolo per Macity

Money quote: "È presente sui nuovi iPhone Xs e iPhone Xs Max ma non sull’iPhone Xr. E potrebbe essere il primo segnale che stia scivolando fuori dalle grazie di Tim Cook. Parliamo del 3D Touch, il costoso e complesso meccanismo per dare una dimensione in più al gesto di toccare lo schermo registrando la pressione di chi lo tocca."

https://www.macitynet.it/bye-bye-3d-touch/
Verrà il caos per la troppa acqua e verrà il caos per la troppa poca. E arriverà in modo subdolo e strisciante. Almeno, così ci insegna la storia di Città del Capo.

Money quote: "“The purpose of all this (mis)information is clear: shifting blame from government,” reads an op-ed posted to the Water Crisis Coalition website shortly after the 50-liter household limit was passed by the local government. The Coalition asserted that “in fact, all tiers of Government is complicit through lack of foresight and mismanagement of our water resources.” Through a series of intense protests and heated confrontations with officials in the summer, members of the group stressed that a mobilization of citizens on the order of the old anti-apartheid movement would be required to create the political change necessary to secure the water future of the Western Cape and South Africa. A common refrain in their rallies, marches, and street arguments with Democratic Alliance politicians, the Coalition’s slogan is “water for all or the city must fall.”"

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/09/cape-south-south-africa-water-crisis/569317/
Non vedo l'ora di incontrare gente che è stata flashata dentro un computer e vive nel silicio. Non vedo proprio l'ora.

Money quote: "Though there are still technical limitations to the future Graziano imagines—namely the ability to adequately image and map the brain in its intricate detail—philosophers and entrepreneurs are already picturing an AI afterlife in which the data of the deceased might be used to serve the bereaved. It sounds like an episode of Black Mirror—in fact, it’s very much like the plot of “Be Right Back” from the show’s second season—but startups like Luka are working with real people, not actors and special-effects artists."

https://qz.com/1367185/could-ai-allow-you-to-live-forever/
Questo tizio si è incazzato parecchio con Apple. Due volte di fila. E ha le sue ragioni

Money quote: "And if Apple are going to continue making their own computers — whether as now or alongside an OS licence programme — either Jony Ive needs to stop focusing on making everything needlessly thinner (to the point they don’t work), someone needs to tell him to stop, or he needs replacing.
Goodbye for now Apple hardware, may we meet again in happier times."

https://hackernoon.com/apples-number-is-finally-up-and-why-we-ve-gone-our-separate-ways-while-i-continue-to-use-macos-5471f1935ff3
Artista bipolare abbraccia la sua natura e la traduce nel suo modo di vivere e di creare (però è verbosa assai e inutilmente dettagliata)

Money quote: "I am very conscious about having a routine in order to keep myself functioning well, like a car engine that has all of its parts greased and liquids filled. Every morning I do “the usual”: the toothbrushing, getting myself in gear, 15 minutes of yoga and 15 minutes of meditation, and coffee. I have different coffee mugs I have different associations with. I have a New York Times mug, and those are the days I am a little more analytical and need to work very hard on things that are more administration-oriented. Then there’s a mug that has art by my favorite cartoonist, Kaz, on it, and that’s when things are more creative. There are two different handmade ceramics for days off, when things are a little slower."

https://magenta.as/how-a-bipolar-cartoonist-stays-creative-6b3284c59728
Imbattibile Donald Trump

Money quote: "“I’ve always given Trump credit,” says Roberta Brandes Gratz, a journalist and an urban critic who was one of his harshest foes, “for recognizing that defeat was staring him in the face—and switching gears.”"

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/29/trump-robert-moses-new-york-television-city-urban-development-1980s-218836