Oggi un po’ di critiche ad Harari e ai pensatori totali. Voi che ne pensate? https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-dangerous-populist-science-of-yuval-noah-harari?fs=e&s=cl

Ho PROVATO  MacBook Air M2 e SI PUÓ AVERE in SCONTO!
https://youtu.be/g66nWo_2jsQ

L'illusione della coscienza, spiegata bene (direbbero al Post).

Money quote: "If you can’t shake your conviction that phenomenal consciousness is real, then there are two broad options here. One is to say that phenomenal consciousness is an extra feature of the brain, in addition to the physical properties described by science. (This view is called property dualism, since it holds that the brain has dual properties, physical and nonphysical.)"

https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-your-consciousness-is-an-illusion-created-by-your-brain

Dopo il disegno e la fotografia è il momento di imparare la musica. Ableton (avete presente? Suoni elettronici...) ha il suo sistema online. Non male.

Money quote "In these lessons, you'll learn the basics of music making. No prior experience or equipment is required; you'll do everything right here in your browser.

To get started, check out the boxes below. Each one contains a small piece of music. Click a box to turn it on or off."

https://learningmusic.ableton.com/

Non a tutti piace Linkedin. Uno sono io, un altro è questo tizio qui

Money quote: "Every time this LinkedIn commercial pops up on YouTube I am reminded of how low the company has fallen to."

https://medium.com/@lancengym/the-endgame-for-linkedin-is-coming-31d4a8b2a76

Come cambia la fotografia con il digitale? Ecco, provate a vedere qui

Money quote: "The Ken Burns effect allows animating still images with a virtual camera scan and zoom. Adding parallax, which results in the 3D Ken Burns effect, enables significantly more compelling results. Creating such effects manually is time-consuming and demands sophisticated editing skills. Existing automatic methods, however, require multiple input images from varying viewpoints.

In this paper, we introduce a framework that synthesizes the 3D Ken Burns effect from a single image, supporting both a fully automatic mode and an interactive mode with the user controlling the camera. "

http://sniklaus.com/papers/kenburns

C'è gente che ha nostalgia di Microsoft Encarta, una delle cose peggiori che siano mai state prodotte. Mamma mia

Money quote: "In a world of 4k streaming video, global wireless, and high-speed everything, there's really no analog to the feeling we got watching the Moon Landing as a video in Encarta - short of watching it live on TV in 1969! For most of us, this was the first time we'd ever seen full-motion video on-demand on a computer in any sort of fidelity - and these are mostly 320x240 or smaller videos!"

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/IMissMicrosoftEncarta.aspx

Vogliono fare un Raspberry Pi in forma di tablet portatile. Good luck with that.

Money quote: "CutiePi is an all-in-one Raspberry Pi tablet. Liberate your Pi project from the desk, and start creating wherever the idea strikes."

https://cutiepi.io/index.html

È in corso una profonda rivisitazione e revival del genere musicale country, negli Usa e non solo. Una storia che annoia per quanto è lunga ma se non altro getta la luce su scenari piuttosto inediti. Cominciamo dal principio, da quando è iniziato tutto, prima della pandemia.

Money quote: "Before they released “Wichita Lineman,” the greatest unfinished song of all time, Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb lived surprisingly parallel lives."

https://longreads.com/2019/09/02/the-story-of-country-musics-great-songwriting-duo/

Ho un problema con la meritocrazia da tempo, ma non avevo mai pensato a casi clamorosi in cui funziona molto male. Ad esempio, tra gli orchestrali di musica classica

Money quote: "The world of classical music is neither noble nor fair, though its reputation says otherwise. This is partly because to be classically trained means being regarded among the highest caliber of skilled musicians. Those who achieve such heights are capable of playing the most complex, technically difficult music on equally complex instruments that take decades to master. The prestige that comes with this mastery is, of course, heavily dependent on rankings—orchestra rankings, seating charts, a general fetishization of skill and dedication. And classical music itself is considered the highest echelon of institutional art music, its practice spanning centuries, its history a tapestry of colorful personalities and political upheaval. Like fine art and classical literature, it is considered a high-water mark for culture, a pastime enjoyed largely by the rich, the old, and the snobby. "

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/strike-with-the-band-wagner

Dovremmo prenderla in modo molto, molto meno personale. Ci farebbe bene a tutti. Un articolo lungo ma decisamente interessante.

Money quote: “There are several problems with these errors in thinking. The first, of course, is that they’re inaccurate, driven more by feelings, personal histories, ambiguity and conspicuously negative information than by objectivity. Another is that, if you commit to these biased beliefs, you limit your emotional options to feeling sad about your perceived flaws, anxious about your ability to withstand upcoming social challenges, or angry at others for not being nicer. Finally, they limit your behavioural options. If you accept these thoughts as facts, it can be hard to see past giving up, avoiding or lashing out. In short, these tendencies to take things too personally restrict your emotional and behavioural options and increase the likelihood that you’ll struggle with distress or dysfunction.”

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-take-things-less-personally-and-avoid-mind-reading

Il futuro del porno. No, sul serio

Money quote: "A common criticism of mainstream porn is that it’s unrealistic."

https://onezero.medium.com/the-future-of-porn-is-on-indie-social-media-5f8a2dffbe3

Se siete dentro Emacs, intendo dire se ci vivete dentro, ecco una cosa che potrebbe servirvi

Money quote: "After developing some little Emacs packages for a year or so, I began to notice how I'd forget little things that I learned, and then I'd have to go hunting for that information again. I also noticed how there are some issues for which there doesn't seem to be a "best practice" or "Standard Operating Procedure" to refer to.

So this is intended to be a place to collect and organize information related to Emacs package development. Built with Emacs, by Emacs package developers, for Emacs package developers."

https://alphapapa.github.io/emacs-package-dev-handbook/

Nell'ambito della sterminata letteratura di self-help, questo si distingue per la sua capacità di generare strane suggestioni. Ma la fallacia è sempre dietro l'angolo.

Money quote: "The world's greatest problem-solvers, forecasters, and decision-makers all rely on a set of frameworks and shortcuts that help make decisions and separate good ideas from bad. They're called mental models, and you can find them by scouring dense textbooks on psychology, physics, economics, and more.

OR, you can just read Super Thinking, a fun, illustrated guide to the most useful mental models. Check out the full list of mental models here."

https://superthinking.com/

Una ricerca che viene presentata al prossimo Siggraph illustra un metodo per correggere la prospettiva delle foto grandangolari, ma solo parzialmente

Money quote: "In spite of the rapid proliferation of wide-angle cameras on mobile phones, a wider field-of-view (FOV) introduces a stronger perspective distortion. Most notably, faces are stretched, squished, and skewed, to look vastly different from real-life. Correcting such distortions requires professional editing skills, as trivial manipulations can introduce other kinds of distortions. This paper introduces a new algorithm to undistort faces without affecting other parts of the photo."

https://people.csail.mit.edu/yichangshih/wide_angle_portrait/#supp

Tex nel manicomio di Mefisto - continua l'epica saga del ritorno di Mefisto, che sto recensendo per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2022/07/tex-740-bedlam-manicomio-mefisto/

Credo che qualunque commento sia inutile

Money quote: "GOP lawmaker attended gay son's wedding 3 days after voting against same-sex marriage"

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/gop-lawmaker-attended-gay-sons-wedding-3-days-voting-sex-marriage-rcna39863

Forse non lo sapevate ma la Terra non orbita attorno al Sole...

Money quote: ""Technically, what is going on is that the Earth, Sun and all the planets are orbiting around the center of mass of the solar system," writes Cathy Jordan, a Cornell University Ask an Astronomer contributor."

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/technically_the_earth_does_not_orbit_the_sun.html

Negli Usa c’è una lotta al coltello per fare più nuggets di pollo: McDonald e il resto dei fast food presenti in America ci stanno impazzendo. È difficile fare la nuggets perfetta, ma il guadagno può essere miliardario: 40 miliardi nel 2022, per la precisione. Ah, le piccole meteore sono fatte con fette di pulcino pucciate nell’antibiotico.

Money quote: “The burgeoning nugget craze is "largely driven by shifts in Gen Z consumer behavior," says Maeve Webster, president of Menu Matters, a restaurant consultancy.

"Since the pandemic, more consumers in general are snacking and looking for those easier-to-eat, smaller bites," she tells Axios.
Chicken nuggets also lend themselves to a lot of "customization and experimentation," she said — like using them as a pizza topping or as a base for flavorful sauces. (Chicken nugget poutine, anyone?)”

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/25/chicken-nugget-wars

La gravità mi ha sempre affascinato, perché... beh, perché non sappiamo esattamente come funziona.

Money quote: "Problem is, particles have quantum properties. They can, for example, be in two places at once. These particles also have masses, and masses cause gravity. But since gravity does not have quantum properties, no one really knows what’s the gravitational pull of a particle in a quantum superposition. To solve this problem, physicists need a theory of quantum gravity. Or, since Einstein taught us that gravity is really curvature of space-time, physicists need a theory for the quantum properties of space and time."

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/when-gravity-breaks-down

Facciamo un viaggio nella mente dei conservatori americani. Qui quelli di National Interest che interpretano la storia in maniera quantomeno singolare e forzata.

Money quote: "Since the early 1970s, American policymakers believed they could avoid such nurturing, cherishing and threatening by making the success of the Communist Party of China a goal of U.S. foreign policy. With interests defined this way, American presidents helped China’s communists at crucial moments."

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-america-break-beijing-63327