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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
Per iscriversi alla newsletter Mostly Weekly: https://tinyletter.com/MostlyIWrite
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C'è un astronauta della Nasa, abbastanza anziano (83 anni) e che si chiama Harrison Schmitt e che è stato l'ultimo uomo a camminare sulla Luna (per adesso). Il punto è che lui è un negazionista per quanto riguarda il riscaldamento globale causato dall'uomo. È un geologo e sostiene che non ci sono prove che siamo stati noi a causare il riscaldamento globale con le emissioni delle fabbriche e tutto il resto.

È una testimonianza shock, anzi un vero e proprio scandalo nel mondo della scienza degli Usa, anche perché che il climate change sia causato da noi è un dogma. Non si può mettere in discussione. Cosa che di per sé è decisamente poco scientifica, no?

Money quote: “Right now, in my profession, there is no evidence. There are models. But models of very, very complex natural systems are often wrong. The observations that we make as geologists, and observational climatologists, do not show any evidence that human beings are causing this. Now, there is a whole bunch of unknowns. We don’t know how much CO2, for example, is being released by the Southern Oceans as the result of natural climate change that’s been going on now since the last ice age."

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/apollo-17-moonwalker-harrison-schmitt-stirs-buzz-climate-change-views/
L'archivio degli aeroplanini di carta. C'è anche l'F-18. Non ho parole.

Money quote: "A database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions."

https://www.foldnfly.com/
I razzisti di solito non hanno una grande capacità di astrazione, e questa cosa gli passerà sopra senza che neanche se ne accorgano. Però non esistono le razze. Ovvero, quando c'erano non c'eravamo noi, perché non nasciamo come un singolo gruppo, ma (forse) come meticciato di una molteplicità di gruppi differenti. Insomma, alla faccia della purezza della razza.

Money quote: "The origins of our species have long been traced to east Africa, where the world’s oldest undisputed Homo sapiens fossils were discovered. About 300,000 years ago, the story went, a group of primitive humans there underwent a series of genetic and cultural shifts that set them on a unique evolutionary path that resulted in everyone alive today.

However, a team of prominent scientists is now calling for a rewriting of this traditional narrative, based on a comprehensive survey of fossil, archaeological and genetic evidence. Instead, the international team argue, the distinctive features that make us human emerged mosaic-like across different populations spanning the entire African continent. Only after tens or hundreds of thousands of years of interbreeding and cultural exchange between these semi-isolated groups, did the fully fledged modern human come into being."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/11/no-single-birthplace-of-mankind-say-scientists
Nancy Pelosi è sotto attacco perché vecchia. O forse perché donna? Dopotutto, a differenza degli uomini, alle donne non perdoniamo lo scorrere del tempo, cioè il loro “sfiorire” che interpretiamo non solo dal punto di vista estetico (cosa che ha un significato sessuale-riproduttivo piuttosto evidente) ma anche intellettuale ed esistenziale.

Money quote: “This is less crude than the sexism Pelosi has gotten from the GOP, but it is more insidious. Instead of heaping disgust on Pelosi’s aging, female body, Democrats are casting her as a desperate crone, clinging to relevance at any cost. In both cases, her age supposedly explains everything that’s wrong with her.”

https://medium.com/s/story/nancy-pelosi-is-old-good-e7b7d8a4a2fc
Quando vai a Hong Kong la prima cosa che noti, assieme agli stretti grattacieli, sono le impalcature di bambù. Ovunque. C’è chi ne ha fatto un progetto fotografico ventennale.

Money quote: “One of the first photographs of this distinct, dynamic process is an image created by John Thomson in Hong Kong in 1871. It shows a man climbing up an intricate network of bamboo surrounding a building. The scene, rendered in black and white, reveals the apparent durability of a seemingly delicate support system”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cocoons-hong-kong-bamboo-scaffolding
Se la scrittura è uno strumento per esplorare il pensiero, oltre che per comunicarlo, le etichette servono ad aggiungere ordine. Forse.

Money quote: “Tags suck. On paper, they look like a great solution to everything. But in practice, they just add an additional burden to any content management system. With tags, content managers do not only have to organize the content and the hierarchy but also the category systems. Writing good content is already hard enough.”

https://ia.net/writer/blog/write-to-organize
Lettura per il sabato pomeriggio. Il libro di chi parla L’ Atlantic deve essere fenomenale. Perché aspettare ha senso. Perché il contrario è male. E comunque perché aspettiamo sempre di più e sempre con maggiore sofferenza.

Money quote: “So waiting, within that context, is often understood as wasted time: When someone makes me wait, they’re wasting my most valuable resource, my time, and preventing me from living up to that moral expectation of using time wisely. My book, then, tries to flip that on its head, to look at how waiting can be an antidote to some of these notions of acceleration and productivity that we actually just can’t keep up with”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576181/
Patti Smith racconta il libro più rivoluzionario della sua vita: “Piccole donne”

Money quote: “Many wonderful books captured my imagination, but in Little Women something extraordinary happened. I recognized myself, as if in a mirror, the lanky headstrong girl, who raced on foot, ripped her skirts climbing trees, spoke in common slang, and denounced social pretensions. A girl who could be found leaning against a great oak with a book, or at her desk in the attic bowed over a manunoscript. She was Josephine March. Even her name breathed freedom, a girl called Jo.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/09/24/a-responsible-freedom-patti-smith-on-little-women/
Certo che tutta quella bella letteratura distopica, migliaia di film e romanzi che mostrano che fine facciano quando cerchiamo di costruire degli incubi del controllo, è veramente passata invano. Forse i manager di questi progetti leggevano solo Topolino, chissà.

Money quote: “Soon enough, we’ll have a smart city: Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is building one “from the internet up,” with help from a series of private-public real-estate partnerships in the downtown Toronto neighborhood Quayside (pronounced Key-side).”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/575551/
Cresce l’attesa per il finale di Game of Thrones...
Ebbene sì, anche le donne si eccitano senza bisogno di uno che cominci prima di loro.

Money quote: “And finally, women can just be horny and not know why. Random horniness is, again, a universal experience, and sometimes while sitting in a meeting or falling asleep at night, a woman will realize her entire clitoral situation is throbbing like a neon sign for no clear identifiable reason. She’s just… horny. Just like you.”

https://melmagazine.com/potential-reasons-why-your-girlfriend-is-suddenly-horny-f0312a5eafb2
Abbiamo un problema con l’obesità. Non abbiamo capito come trattarla e stiamo massacrando generazioni di persone grasse una dopo l’altra.

Money quote: “Which brings us to one of the largest gaps between science and practice in our own time. Years from now, we will look back in horror at the counterproductive ways we addressed the obesity epidemic and the barbaric ways we treated fat people—long after we knew there was a better path.”

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
Stiamo completamente sbagliando il senso e il modo per cui e con cui si disegna

Money quote: ““We have misfiled the significance of drawing because we see it as a professional skill instead of a personal capacity,” he writes. “This essential confusion has stunted our understanding of drawing and kept it from being seen as a tool for learning above all else.””

https://qz.com/quartzy/1381916/drawing-is-the-best-way-to-learn-even-if-youre-no-leonardo-da-vinci/