Un cattivo maestro, retoricamente piacevole
Money quote: "A sad fact is that many people are now spending huge portions of their lives at work that, they know, is not benefitting society (see Graeber, 2013). It leads to such cynicism that people begin to stop even thinking that jobs are supposed to benefit society. We have the spectacle of politicians on both sides of the aisle fighting to keep munitions plants open in their states, to preserve the jobs, even when the military itself says the weapons the plant is building are no longer useful. And we have politicians and pundits arguing that fossil fuel mining and carbon spewing factories should be maintained for the sake of the jobs, let the environment be damned."
http://evonomics.com/less-work-job-creation-peter-gray/
Money quote: "A sad fact is that many people are now spending huge portions of their lives at work that, they know, is not benefitting society (see Graeber, 2013). It leads to such cynicism that people begin to stop even thinking that jobs are supposed to benefit society. We have the spectacle of politicians on both sides of the aisle fighting to keep munitions plants open in their states, to preserve the jobs, even when the military itself says the weapons the plant is building are no longer useful. And we have politicians and pundits arguing that fossil fuel mining and carbon spewing factories should be maintained for the sake of the jobs, let the environment be damned."
http://evonomics.com/less-work-job-creation-peter-gray/
Evonomics
Economists are Obsessed with “Job Creation.” How about Less Work? - Evonomics
increased automation has not reduced our workload. Why not? What if it did?
Rendere facile una attività per "liberare il talento delle persone" magari facendole collaborare permette spesso di raggiungere ottimi risultati. Ma il concetto non può essere "stirato" all'infinito, soprattutto perché non sempre è prevedibile che ci sia del talento da impegnare.
Questo esempio di videogioco in cui l'obiettivo è divertirsi insieme a realizzare un videogioco, cioè un meta-gioco, è singolare, intrigante ma anche totalmente discutibile sia per gli obiettivi che si dà che per i risultati che raggiunge.
Money quote: "What if creating games could be as easy and fun as playing them? What if you could enter a virtual world with your friends and build a game together in real time? Our team within Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental projects, took on this challenge. Our prototype is called Game Builder, and it is free on Steam for PC and Mac."
https://www.blog.google/technology/area-120/create-3d-games-friends-no-experience-required/
Questo esempio di videogioco in cui l'obiettivo è divertirsi insieme a realizzare un videogioco, cioè un meta-gioco, è singolare, intrigante ma anche totalmente discutibile sia per gli obiettivi che si dà che per i risultati che raggiunge.
Money quote: "What if creating games could be as easy and fun as playing them? What if you could enter a virtual world with your friends and build a game together in real time? Our team within Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental projects, took on this challenge. Our prototype is called Game Builder, and it is free on Steam for PC and Mac."
https://www.blog.google/technology/area-120/create-3d-games-friends-no-experience-required/
Google
Create 3D games with friends, no experience required
Game Builder is an experimental game-building sandbox available now for free on Steam for PC and Mac.
Se state per passare del tempo dentro la shell e dovete trovare delle cose, è arrivato il momento di imparare Grep. Ho li libro che fa per voi.
Money quote: "You are likely to be familiar with using Ctrl+F to quickly locate where a particular string occurs. grep is similar, but much more versatile and feature-rich version of the search functionality usable from command line. Two different implementations - GNU GREP and RIPGREP are discussed in this book."
https://leanpub.com/gnugrep_ripgrep
https://gumroad.com/l/gnugrep_ripgrep
Money quote: "You are likely to be familiar with using Ctrl+F to quickly locate where a particular string occurs. grep is similar, but much more versatile and feature-rich version of the search functionality usable from command line. Two different implementations - GNU GREP and RIPGREP are discussed in this book."
https://leanpub.com/gnugrep_ripgrep
https://gumroad.com/l/gnugrep_ripgrep
Leanpub
CLI text processing with GNU grep and ripgrep
The grep command is a versatile and feature-rich version of search functionality usable from the command line. The most notable feature is regular expressions, a mini-programming language to precisely define a matching criteria. In this book, you'll learn…
La strana vita dell'Avocado: frutto (e seme fuori scala) che è sopravvissuto all'estinzione dei grandi mammiferi sino ad arrivare ai giorni nostri. Ancora non abbiamo capito bene come abbia fatto a sopravvivere, dato che il nocciolo di un frutto - il seme - ha dimensioni adatte ad essere ingerito e defecato a distanza: è il metodo con il quale la natura permette alle giovani piante di crescere lontano dai loro generatori e quindi non competere per la stessa particella di suolo e rettangolo di luce nel bosco. Solo che se il seme è troppo grosso, chi se lo ingoia?
Money quote: "How the avocado still exists in the wild after surviving its evolutionary failures remains a puzzle. But once Homo sapiens evolved to the point where it could cultivate the species, the fruit had the chance to thrive anew. Back when the giant beasts roamed the earth, the avocado would’ve been a large seed with a small fleshy area—less attractive to smaller mammals such as ourselves. Through cultivation, humans have bulked up avocados so there is more flesh for us to eat."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-avocado-should-have-gone-the-way-of-the-dodo-4976527/
Money quote: "How the avocado still exists in the wild after surviving its evolutionary failures remains a puzzle. But once Homo sapiens evolved to the point where it could cultivate the species, the fruit had the chance to thrive anew. Back when the giant beasts roamed the earth, the avocado would’ve been a large seed with a small fleshy area—less attractive to smaller mammals such as ourselves. Through cultivation, humans have bulked up avocados so there is more flesh for us to eat."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-avocado-should-have-gone-the-way-of-the-dodo-4976527/
Smithsonian Magazine
Why the Avocado Should Have Gone the Way of the Dodo
Its large pit and fleshy deliciousness are all a result of its status as an evolutionary anachronism
Salman Rushdie su Mattatoio numero 5 e Comma 22, e un paio di altri ragionamenti non male per il New Yorker
Money quote: "It hadn’t occurred to me until I read them that antiwar novels could be funny as well as serious. “Catch-22” is crazy funny, slapstick funny. It sees war as insane and the desire to escape combat as the only sane position. Its tone of voice is deadpan farce. “Slaughterhouse-Five” is different. There is much comedy in it, as there was in everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote, but it does not see war as farcical. It sees war as a tragedy so great that perhaps only the mask of comedy allows one to look it in the eye. Vonnegut is a sad-faced comedian. If Heller was Charlie Chaplin, then Vonnegut was Buster Keaton. His predominant tone of voice is melancholy, the tone of voice of a man who has been present for a great horror and lived to tell the tale. The two books do, however, have this in common: they are both portraits of a world that has lost its mind, in which children are sent out to do men’s work and die."
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-kurt-vonneguts-slaughterhouse-five-tells-us-now
Money quote: "It hadn’t occurred to me until I read them that antiwar novels could be funny as well as serious. “Catch-22” is crazy funny, slapstick funny. It sees war as insane and the desire to escape combat as the only sane position. Its tone of voice is deadpan farce. “Slaughterhouse-Five” is different. There is much comedy in it, as there was in everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote, but it does not see war as farcical. It sees war as a tragedy so great that perhaps only the mask of comedy allows one to look it in the eye. Vonnegut is a sad-faced comedian. If Heller was Charlie Chaplin, then Vonnegut was Buster Keaton. His predominant tone of voice is melancholy, the tone of voice of a man who has been present for a great horror and lived to tell the tale. The two books do, however, have this in common: they are both portraits of a world that has lost its mind, in which children are sent out to do men’s work and die."
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-kurt-vonneguts-slaughterhouse-five-tells-us-now
The New Yorker
What Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” Tells Us Now
Salman Rushdie on what the books “Slaughterhouse-Five,” by Kurt Vonnegut, “Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller, and others tell us about the nature of war and humanity.
Quando arriva il momento - per voi utenti Chrome (io sto con Safari) - di passare a Firefox, serve sapere alcune cose. Sono tutte qui
Money quote: "Switching to Firefox is fast, easy and risk-free. Firefox imports your bookmarks, autofills, passwords and preferences from Chrome."
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/switch/
Money quote: "Switching to Firefox is fast, easy and risk-free. Firefox imports your bookmarks, autofills, passwords and preferences from Chrome."
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/switch/
Mozilla
Switch from Chrome to Firefox in just a few minutes
Switching to Firefox is fast, easy and risk-free, because Firefox imports your bookmarks, passwords and preferences from Chrome.
Uno dei motivi per cui bisognerebbe andare a vivere a Tokyo è che c’erano i Gundam nelle piazze.
Money quote: "Standing at 19.7 meters tall in front of the Diver City shopping complex, this RX-0 Unicorn Gundam is built on a one-to-one scale, features a movable head, and transforms between Unicorn Mode and Destroy Mode (complete with flashing lights and epic anime soundtrack) throughout the day at scheduled times."
https://grapee.jp/en/94345
Money quote: "Standing at 19.7 meters tall in front of the Diver City shopping complex, this RX-0 Unicorn Gundam is built on a one-to-one scale, features a movable head, and transforms between Unicorn Mode and Destroy Mode (complete with flashing lights and epic anime soundtrack) throughout the day at scheduled times."
https://grapee.jp/en/94345
grape Japan
This Full-Sized Unicorn Gundam Statue Is A Must-See Tokyo Attraction
This Life-Sized Unicorn Gundam Statue Is A Must-See Tokyo Attraction
Tra i tanti sistemi per cercare di reinvetarsi il libro, questo è uno dei più interessanti. (E complicati; il motto è intrigante: "The book is a program").
Money quote: "Pollen is a publishing system that helps authors make functional and beautiful digital books."
https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/index.html
Money quote: "Pollen is a publishing system that helps authors make functional and beautiful digital books."
https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/index.html
Un altro tizio che si è convertito all'iPad Pro. Io devo dire che invece ho sempre più difficoltà.
Money quote: "What I've discovered this time around is a sense of delight from the iPad that I hadn't really seen in technology for a while. Essentially, I liked the iPad because, despite its restrictions and rigidity, it actually helps me get more work done."
https://char.gd/blog/2019/i-was-wrong-about-the-ipad-pro
Money quote: "What I've discovered this time around is a sense of delight from the iPad that I hadn't really seen in technology for a while. Essentially, I liked the iPad because, despite its restrictions and rigidity, it actually helps me get more work done."
https://char.gd/blog/2019/i-was-wrong-about-the-ipad-pro
Charged
I was wrong about the iPad Pro
I already tried the iPad Pro and hated it—but I have a confession: I got another one, and it made my workflow better.
"The Art of Computer Programming" è l'opera in volumi più importante sull'informatica. È il lavoro di una vita di Donald Knuth, uno dei più grandi geni dell'informatica viventi e non (ha creato tra le altre cose Tex di LaTex proprio per stampare in maniera più efficiente i suoi libri). Eppure, secondo molti, è uno dei libri meno utili da leggere per un programmatore. Su Hacker News ne hanno fatto un dibattito molto interessante.
Money quote: "Almost anywhere on the internet people will respond to this with basically "no, it's extremely inefficient to learn how to program this way", and they're right.
But.
If you want to learn _other_ things, these books are incredible. Maybe you want to learn deeply the combinatorial ideas behind data structures, or general techniques for squeezing small optimizations out of low level code. Or even maybe you want to see simple data structures used every-which-way to efficiently solve a huge range of mathematical problems. None of this is normal programming per se. I treat these as math books, and love them for it.
Like much of mathematics, it will make you a better programmer, but only accidentally."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976957
Money quote: "Almost anywhere on the internet people will respond to this with basically "no, it's extremely inefficient to learn how to program this way", and they're right.
But.
If you want to learn _other_ things, these books are incredible. Maybe you want to learn deeply the combinatorial ideas behind data structures, or general techniques for squeezing small optimizations out of low level code. Or even maybe you want to see simple data structures used every-which-way to efficiently solve a huge range of mathematical problems. None of this is normal programming per se. I treat these as math books, and love them for it.
Like much of mathematics, it will make you a better programmer, but only accidentally."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976957
Digitalizzato grazie alla biblioteca ambrosiana, il Codice Atlantico di Leonardo da Vinci è tutto online.
Money quote: "Codex Atlanticus is the biggest collection of Da Vinci papers and it covers his entire career. It begins in 1478 (when he was working in his hometown of Tuscany) to 1519 (when he died in France). The name Atlanticus comes from the fact that Da Vinci used large sheets, similar to those used for geographic Atlases. The diverse portfolio reveals sketches and diagrams for his creative inventions such as parachutes, war machines, and hydraulic pumps. It also features his detailed architectural sketches and anatomy studies."
https://mymodernmet.com/leonardo-da-vinci-codex-atlanticus
Money quote: "Codex Atlanticus is the biggest collection of Da Vinci papers and it covers his entire career. It begins in 1478 (when he was working in his hometown of Tuscany) to 1519 (when he died in France). The name Atlanticus comes from the fact that Da Vinci used large sheets, similar to those used for geographic Atlases. The diverse portfolio reveals sketches and diagrams for his creative inventions such as parachutes, war machines, and hydraulic pumps. It also features his detailed architectural sketches and anatomy studies."
https://mymodernmet.com/leonardo-da-vinci-codex-atlanticus
My Modern Met
All 1,119 Pages of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Codex Atlanticus” Now Available Online
“Dive into the work of one of the great masterminds of history.”
👍1
La scomparsa di Olivia Newton-John è veramente un colpo basso. La sua storia però ha degli aspetti incredibili.
Money quote: "Olivia Newton-John was born on Sept. 26, 1948, in Cambridge, England, the youngest of three children of Brinley Newton-John and Irene Helene, the daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. Her Welsh-born father had been an MI5 intelligence officer during World War II and afterward served as headmaster at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys.
When Ms. Newton-John was 6, her family immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father worked as a college professor and administrator."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/arts/olivia-newton-john-dead.html
Money quote: "Olivia Newton-John was born on Sept. 26, 1948, in Cambridge, England, the youngest of three children of Brinley Newton-John and Irene Helene, the daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. Her Welsh-born father had been an MI5 intelligence officer during World War II and afterward served as headmaster at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys.
When Ms. Newton-John was 6, her family immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father worked as a college professor and administrator."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/arts/olivia-newton-john-dead.html
NY Times
Olivia Newton-John, Pop Singer and ‘Grease’ Star, Dies at 73
She amassed No. 1 hits, chart-topping albums and four records that sold more than two million copies each. More than anything else, she was likable, even beloved.
Ci metto la faccia.
Lo sapete che ciclicamente lo propongo: è il servizio di backup che utilizzo per il mio computer e che pago ogni mese. È l'unico servizio a pagamento del quale mi senta di fare l'endorsement. Se usate il mio referral qui sotto avrete (come me) un mese gratuito in più oltre al periodo di prova.
https://secure.backblaze.com/r/01ti3i
BackBlaze è l'ideale d'estate: ho iniziato a usarlo anni fa in vacanza, rendendomi conto che se avessi perso o mi avessero rubato il computer mi sarei giocato tutti i dati. L'ho attivato al volo e da allora non sono mai più tornato indietro. Ve lo consiglio.
Lo sapete che ciclicamente lo propongo: è il servizio di backup che utilizzo per il mio computer e che pago ogni mese. È l'unico servizio a pagamento del quale mi senta di fare l'endorsement. Se usate il mio referral qui sotto avrete (come me) un mese gratuito in più oltre al periodo di prova.
https://secure.backblaze.com/r/01ti3i
BackBlaze è l'ideale d'estate: ho iniziato a usarlo anni fa in vacanza, rendendomi conto che se avessi perso o mi avessero rubato il computer mi sarei giocato tutti i dati. L'ho attivato al volo e da allora non sono mai più tornato indietro. Ve lo consiglio.
La fioritura del bamboo. Una cosa di cui non sapevo niente ma alla quale adesso non posso smettere di pensare (tipo che rischio di non dormirci la notte)
Money quote: "Perhaps even more surprising than the long intervals at which they flower is the fact that all plants of the same stock of bamboo will bloom at the same time, and then die, no matter where they are in the world. Although the mechanism has yet to be explained by science, many believe there is some kind of natural "alarm clock" in the plant's cells causing the behavior. The depletion of bamboo can have considerable environmental and economic impacts."
https://grapee.jp/en/114838
Money quote: "Perhaps even more surprising than the long intervals at which they flower is the fact that all plants of the same stock of bamboo will bloom at the same time, and then die, no matter where they are in the world. Although the mechanism has yet to be explained by science, many believe there is some kind of natural "alarm clock" in the plant's cells causing the behavior. The depletion of bamboo can have considerable environmental and economic impacts."
https://grapee.jp/en/114838
grape Japan
“Once-In-A-Hundred Year” Sightings of Bamboo Blossoms Reported In Japan
"Once-In-A-Hundred Year" Sightings of Bamboo Blossoms Reported In Japan
Tex tra esotismo ed esoterismo - continua la serie delle mie recensioni su Fumettologica per la saga del ritorno di Mefisto
https://fumettologica.it/2022/08/tex-741-sierra-nevada-mefisto-bonelli/
https://fumettologica.it/2022/08/tex-741-sierra-nevada-mefisto-bonelli/
Fumettologica
Tex tra esotismo ed esoterismo
Nel quarto capitolo del ritorno di Mefisto, Tex si ritrova nella fredda Sierra Nevada, dove seguiamo le vicende del monaco tibetano Padma.
C'è uno che ha sviluppato un sistema per fare tutto, anche le cose più difficili. O al limite capire che non si possono fare
Money quote: "The system “always” works in the sense that “eventually” either you will find out why the objective is impossible for you or you will succeed, but it’s very much the unhelpful kind of eventually where there’s no guarantee that it won’t take an interminably long time. The more likely outcome is that either you will succeed relatively quickly or get bored and give up, but that’s OK – the system is designed so that you will have gained benefit from following it at every step along the way even if you do not achieve your final goal."
https://www.drmaciver.com/2019/05/how-to-do-hard-things
Money quote: "The system “always” works in the sense that “eventually” either you will find out why the objective is impossible for you or you will succeed, but it’s very much the unhelpful kind of eventually where there’s no guarantee that it won’t take an interminably long time. The more likely outcome is that either you will succeed relatively quickly or get bored and give up, but that’s OK – the system is designed so that you will have gained benefit from following it at every step along the way even if you do not achieve your final goal."
https://www.drmaciver.com/2019/05/how-to-do-hard-things
L'intelligenza artificiale al tempo della sua riproducibilità tecnologica - il mio commento su Fumettologica
https://fumettologica.it/2022/08/intelligenza-artificiale-midjourney-arte-disegni-fumetti/
https://fumettologica.it/2022/08/intelligenza-artificiale-midjourney-arte-disegni-fumetti/
Fumettologica
L'intelligenza artificiale al tempo della sua riproducibilità tecnologica
Perché l'intelligenza artificiale nell'illustrazione è più arte che non tecnologia e soprattutto perché il mondo sta per finire.
Cos'è la bellezza e dove sta? Una bella riflessione
Money quote: "This tells most of all in the inane and imperious axiom that says ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ It’s a well-meaning attempt at democratisation, allowing us all the power to declare beauty even where others might dissent. But this unthinking homily never interrogates the mysterious criteria by which we deem artworks, objects, even ideas, beautiful."
https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-beauty-if-not-a-jolt-that-awakens-us-to-the-world
Money quote: "This tells most of all in the inane and imperious axiom that says ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ It’s a well-meaning attempt at democratisation, allowing us all the power to declare beauty even where others might dissent. But this unthinking homily never interrogates the mysterious criteria by which we deem artworks, objects, even ideas, beautiful."
https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-beauty-if-not-a-jolt-that-awakens-us-to-the-world
Aeon
The puzzle of beauty
Rather than a golden ratio or a moral judgment, beauty is more like a radical jolt that awakens us to the world
Il fantastico business dei rapimenti. Da noi verrebbe da pensare all'Anonima sarda.
Money quote: "In the event of a kidnapping, consultants—mostly former military and law enforcement—would advise relatives or employers on the negotiations. Someone from the hostage’s family or company would be appointed to do the talking; otherwise, the kidnappers might realize they had an insured hostage and increase their demands. Once a price was agreed upon, specialists would deliver the ransom and retrieve the hostages. This quickly became the new way of doing things."
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/05/09/kidnapping-efficient-business/
Money quote: "In the event of a kidnapping, consultants—mostly former military and law enforcement—would advise relatives or employers on the negotiations. Someone from the hostage’s family or company would be appointed to do the talking; otherwise, the kidnappers might realize they had an insured hostage and increase their demands. Once a price was agreed upon, specialists would deliver the ransom and retrieve the hostages. This quickly became the new way of doing things."
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/05/09/kidnapping-efficient-business/
The New York Review of Books
Kidnapping: A Very Efficient Business
Kidnapping for ransom is almost always a deliberative enterprise. Kidnappers perform research, assess risks, manage costs, and, if they’re in it for the long term, build reputations for orderly resolution. Some groups even develop an infrastructure to support…