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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 una intera generazione di cinesi che non ha idea di cosa siano Facebook, Google e Youtube. Perché il governo di Pechino - anzi il Partito comunista cinese - sta giocando la carta dell'autarchia culturale e non solo. A mio avviso è stata e sarà la mossa vincente: l'America verrà sconfitta sul piano culturale prima che militare, economico o demografico.

Money quote: "For American and other Western internet giants, the hope of getting a piece of the huge China market is increasingly a pipe dream. China’s Communist Party has demonstrated clearly that it will walk down a path of tighter ideological control under President Xi Jinping. In the first half of this year, the internet regulator Cyber Administration of China said it had shut down or revoked the licenses of more than 3,000 websites."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/technology/china-generation-blocked-internet.html
Devo dire la verità: sono d'accordo con questo giornalista. Ho fatto fatica ad abituarmi (la prima generazione era terribile) ma non penso che la "nuova" tastiera ultrapiatta di Apple sia terribile. E il "bad sentiment" che ha in rete secondo me è eccessivo.

Money quote: "For what it's worth, here's my story.

I've personally used (and often reviewed) at least eight different MacBooks with butterfly keyboards over the past four years. There's at least one in almost constant rotation in my laptop lineup at any given time. I've used this style of keyboard almost daily for the past four years.

After all that time, and all that typing, my experience can be summed up as: "Not great, but not as bad as people say.""

https://www.cnet.com/news/in-defense-of-the-apple-macbook-keyboard/
Alla fine, se siamo tristi e ci deprimiamo, è una buona cosa. Anche se, fermo restanto l'esistenza dei sentimenti e delle emozioni, il modo con cui li viviamo e gli amplifichiamo dipende molto dalla nostra cultura. Almeno, così pare seguendo il filo logico di questo articolo che però è debole - come quasi tutta la letteratura di questo genere - dal punto di vista delle definizioni: cos'è una emozione? Quali sono le manifestazioni positive e negative delle emozioni? E via contando...

Money quote: "According to Brock Bastian, author of The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living (2018) and a psychologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the problem is partly cultural: a person living in a Western country is four to 10 times more likely to experience clinical depression or anxiety in a lifetime than an individual living in an Eastern culture. In China and Japan, both negative and positive emotions are considered an essential part of life. Sadness is not a hindrance to experiencing positive emotions and – unlike in Western society – there isn’t a constant pressure to be joyful."

https://aeon.co/ideas/dont-worry-about-feeling-sad-on-the-benefits-of-a-blue-period
Uno dei principali terrori di chi scrive è lavorare male e non fare una buona ricerca per le ambientazioni...

Money quote: “I had a whole gaggle of 100-point bucks in my sights, sleeping peacefully on their feet, like cows. The way they were lined up, I could take down the whole clan in a single shot of gun, clean through their magnificent oversized brains. That’d be enough (deer) meat to last Nora and the baby through the harsh Amarillo winter. I shifted my weight in my hidey spot, snapping a twig and pouring more pepper on the fire by muttering, “God dammit all to hell.” But like any hunting man worth his salt, I was wearing camouflage — that swirly brown-and-green stuff you sometimes see on bandanas. The deers, famously self-assured creatures, didn’t budge. They were awake now, munching happily on some squirrels they’d killed for food, the carnivores.”

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/poorly-researched-mens-fiction
A dicembre 2020 potreste avere tra le mani un gioco dell’orrore tutto italiano, con la supervisione di Dario Argento e realizzato nientepopodimenoché un team di talentuosi programmatori e artisti digitali che leggono Mostly (onorato!) e mi/lo ritengono abbastanza interessante da chiedermi se posso dargli un po’ di visibilità. Molto volentieri!

Money quote: “Dario Argento’s Dreadful Bond, the first game created under the creative direction of famed Italian horror director Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red, Phenomena/Creepers, Opera, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) today premiered “For Bridget” – a six-minute short film based on the game that sheds light (and shadow) on the gruesome past of Wharton Manor.”

Tra l’altro, sono su kickstarter e servono persone desiderose di comprarlo. Quindi, se vi piace l’horror e volete fare un regalo al voi stesso del futuro, fear no more: ecco la vostra occasione!

https://mailchi.mp/novypr.com/dreadful-bond-short-film

E qui c'è invece il link per kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dreadfulbond/dario-argentos-dreadful-bond
Un progetto semplice ma con dentro talmente tante cose che sono veramente stupito. Per anni l'autore ha chiesto a amici e perfetti sconosciuti di disegnare una bicicletta. Salta fuori innanzitutto che la gente non sa come sono fatte le biciclette (peraltro una macchina particolarmente complessa, anche se apparentemente semplice). Però, tentando di uscierne fuori, molti disegni sono straordinari pezzi di "design spontaneo". E dicono molto di noi. Dopodiché, il nostro uomo ne ha selezionati alcuni e, armato di software per la modellazione 3D, ha cominciato a crearli digitalmente. Uno spettacolo. Consiglio vivamente di scorrere la gallery.

Money quote: "I collected hundreds of drawings, building up a collection that I think is very precious. There is an incredible diversity of new typologies emerging from these crowd-sourced and technically error-driven drawings. A single designer could not invent so many new bike designs in 100 lifetimes and this is why I look at this collection in such awe."

http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html
La cosa che continuo a ripetere ogni volta che mi capita di parlarne. Il punto delle Ai è che non sappiamo come mai prendono le decisioni che prendono. E questa cosa non va bene.

Money quote: “AI is software that can learn from data or experiences to make predictions. A computer programmer specifies the data from which the software should learn and writes a set of instructions, known as an algorithm, about how the software should do that—but doesn’t dictate exactly what it should learn. This is what gives AI much of its power: It can discover connections in the data that would be more complicated or nuanced than a human would find. But this complexity also means that the reason the software reaches any particular conclusion is often largely opaque, even to its own creators.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/artificial-intelligence-has-some-explaining-to-do
Brexit e Irlanda, chiariamo bene da dove cominceranno i problemi.

Money quote: “The customs and security border between Northern Ireland and the Republic inthe south has vanished. People who live on the island of Ireland cross the border to work, to shop, or to visit a doctor as easily as Americans cross state lines. Vehicles cross the border an estimated 30 million times a year, slowed only by traffic. A retired senior official told me of rural milk routes in which truck will cross the border 20 times in a day as it transits from farm to farm. The hospital in Londonderry is funded by the EU to serve Irish people across the line in Donegal, on the same basis as National Health Service patients of British nationality.

The currency differs on the two sides of the border. So do the cellphone carriers. VAT rates diverge. Ireland is not united. But Irish people can live as if it were, if they wish—or not, if they don’t wish.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/584338/
È il momento un nuovo numero di Mostly Weekly: il sesto per la precisione.

https://tinyletter.com/MostlyIWrite
Negli Sati Uniti in generale si possono commettere pochi peccati mortali. Uno di questi è invecchiare. Soprattutto nel settore della tecnologia, sopratutto se si è donna (i non-bianchi neanche li rileviamo).

Sorprendentemente anche là si lavora per il governo.

Money quote: “The rest of us are like the fifty-somethings we knew early in our careers— people no one really hangs out with, who sit alone, who come and go quietly each day, and who eventually disappear without a goodbye party. I’ve been laid off twice in my career: at the beginning and near the end. The first time I was too young and inconsequential, and the last I was too old and overpaid.”


The Truth About Aging in the Tech Industry – Member Feature Stories – Medium
https://medium.com/s/story/aging-in-the-tech-industry-6a0e116bdf09