Chiudiamo l'anno con una domanda: esiste vita fuori dalla Terra? Il punto con gli alieni è che non hanno punti di contatto con la vita della Terra. E quindi per cercarli dovremmo dimenticare quel che sappiamo e partire con un approccio molto più aperto. Ammesso che li vogliamo trovare, gli alieni.

Money quote: "The search for exotic life therefore must begin close to home. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter offer a test case of whether biology could exist without an atmosphere. Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus both have inner oceans and internal heat sources. Enceladus spews huge geysers of water vapour from its south pole; Europa appears to puff off occasional plumes as well. Future space missions could fly through the plumes and study them for possible biochemicals. NASA’s proposed Europa lander, which could launch in about a decade, could seek out possible microbe-laced ocean water that seeped up or snowed back down onto the surface."

https://aeon.co/ideas/to-find-aliens-we-must-think-of-life-as-we-dont-know-it

Ciao! Fine dell'anno! Ultimissime cartoline! Prima che l'omaggio per chi dona finisca, fai ancora in tempo (passa da qui https://antoniodini.com/cartolina/ ). Invece, io voglio ringraziare tutte voi che avete donato: siete tantissime, mi avete travolto, wow! Grazie! Buon 2023!

Auguri di un 2023 nuovo e migliore!

Su questo canale cerco di toccare i temi della sessualità e dell'affettività tra adulti perché ritengo siano uno degli aspetti che la scrittura liberata da Internet possa arricchire di più. Cose che di solito non si trovano, insomma, e che vanno sempre lette in modo critico. Ma adesso si può scegliere. Questo che segue è un buon esempio. Una donna pansessuale racconta la sua identità e la relazione che ha costruito con il marito etero.

Con un minimo di onestà intellettuale credo che milioni di maschi eterosessuali non riescano a immaginare niente di più (o niente di meglio) che "essere il pene nella vita della propria compagna". Ahimé e ahiloro (le compagne, intendo).

Money quote: "He keeps coming back to this assumption — or is it insecurity ?— that I’ll be sexually unfulfilled without a female sexual partner, no matter how many times I tell him that pansexuality is not about having multiple partners. (Pan people — just like straight or gay people — can be poly or monogamous.)

To me, being with another person would mean transitioning to a poly relationship, and this would be the case regardless of gender. But to him, my being with a woman vs. my being with another man are two completely different things.

He’s a trans ally, but I doubt he’d be so supportive of me being with a woman if that woman had a penis. I want him to be the person in my life. He wants to be the penis in my life."

https://humanparts.medium.com/i-dont-understand-straight-people-even-though-i-m-married-to-one-f63a762fc66c

C'è un pezzetto di Francia che è stato talmente tanto devastato durante la Prima guerra mondiale da essere tuttora non abitabile. Benvenuti nella Zone Rouge. Questo anche, visto che sono passati settant’anni, per rendersi conto di cosa sta succedendo in Ucraina.

Money quote: "In an attempt to salvage this land, a special munitions-clearing agency was created. Called the Department du Deminage, it has, over the decades, helped to reduce the extent of the Zone Rouge, destroying hundreds of thousands of munitions and chemical shells, and returning some land to civilian and agricultural use. Their overwhelming task is aided by French farmers, who each year collect a huge amount of unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnel, and bullets during the annual “Iron Harvest.”

Despite these efforts, the Zone Rouge is unlikely to be restored completely any time soon."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/zone-rouge

Missioni impossibili: insegnare ai giornalisti a usare Excel (e poi Big Data e Data Visualization, why not?). Da noi è praticamente impossibile.

Money quote: "Even with some of the best data and graphics journalists in the business, we identified a challenge: data knowledge wasn’t spread widely among desks in our newsroom and wasn’t filtering into news desks’ daily reporting.
Yet fluency with numbers and data has become more important than ever. While journalists once were fond of joking that they got into the field because of an aversion to math, numbers now comprise the foundation for beats as wide ranging as education, the stock market, the Census and criminal justice. More data is released than ever before — there are nearly 250,000 datasets on data.gov alone — and increasingly, government, politicians and companies try to twist those numbers to back their own agendas."

https://open.nytimes.com/how-we-helped-our-reporters-learn-to-love-spreadsheets-adc43a93b919

Una lista interessante per gli appassionati di intelligenze artificiali facili da usare

I migliori AI TOOLS da provare nel 2023! Altri da segnalare?

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/giulianoambrosio_innovation-ai-magictools-activity-7015962983721807872-0RWL

Alla fine è così: Slack ha costruito una quotazione miliardaria e tutta la sua fama, adesso lentamente tramontata, sull'idea di poter rimpiazzare la mail. Poi è stato acquisito da Salesforce e ha perso il suo potenziale rivoluzionario. Ma anche ai tempi c'era chi non è d'accordo. Una lettera aperta piuttosto rissosa.

Money quote: "I love what Slack has accomplished and think its success revealed a true need in the world — better work communication. However, I must say:
Your goal of replacing email with Slack is in complete conflict with the efficient flow of communication that gets real work done."

https://medium.com/swlh/why-slack-will-never-replace-email-873a20856716

L'idea da aperitivo del giorno: il sito frizzante fatto direttamente dal telefonino. Oh yeah. Gattini inclusi.

Money quote: "Fun, easy, beautiful, instant
Make and update your Insta website anytime. No desktops, design or web skills needed!"

https://milkshake.app

Strategie per fare meglio, consigliate da un musicista professionista

Money quote: "“I, and the other strong students in my department, did practice less than the weaker students,” he said.

He then went on to explain exactly what he and the other strong students did differently as compared to their less accomplished peers.

I reproduced his explanation below (I added the headings and edited the text slightly), as I think it offers profound insight into the difference between the type of work most of us do and what it actually takes to become so good they can’t ignore you."

http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/12/23/flow-is-the-opiate-of-the-medicore-advice-on-getting-better-from-an-accomplished-piano-player/

Non c'è più bisogno di noialtri giornalisti...

La serie di maggior successo in Giappone? In passato (pre-pandemia) era quella in cui si cerca di capire se i lavoratori riusciranno a tornare a casa per cena in orario, o resteranno imbottigliati dagli straordinari al lavoro.

Money quote: "Last month, as Americans tuned in to the final episode of “Game of Thrones,” Japan was indulging in its own television fantasy world."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/business/japan-work-overtime-tv-show.html

Quando è uscito, nel 2019, era il libro definitivo sulla storia di Tesla e quindi di Elon Musk (ma non solo). Non l'ho letto e quindi non posso giudicare. Le attese erano alte, però. Adesso è diventato una specie di testimonianza storica, una nota bibliografica per cultori della materia "Elon Musk"

Money quote: "In Ludicrous, Niedermeyer chronicles the story of Tesla, looking at what the company has accomplished and where it has gone wrong. There’s nothing inherently wrong with reaching for the stars when developing new technology of products. That’s how great products are created. But if your goal is to transform the auto industry and the way people get around, the business itself should probably be as sustainable as the powertrain."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2019/08/18/tesla-fans-will-probably-hate-ludicrous-but-they-should-read-it-along-with-the-critics/

Tesla va avanti per la sua strada senza spendere un penny di pubblicità. A quella ci pensano i suoi fan

Money quote: "Tesla fans don’t just post personal accounts - more than a few have created their own advertisements, both videos and static graphics. And of course, press coverage is arguably even more effective than advertising, and Tesla gets more of that than any other carmaker, thanks both to the revolutionary nature of its products and to Elon Musk’s fondness for making headline-grabbing statements. Even in the rare cases when other automakers try to generate publicity for their own electric vehicles, Tesla often steals the show."

https://insideevs.com/news/365726/tesla-no-advertising-social-media-wins/

La poligamia nell'America nera: famigliole con figli e un paio di mogli, o di mariti. Insomma, allegri e scoppiettanti, ma poligami.

Money quote: "Sound strange? To most people, it probably does. But for the thousands of families in the United States who practice polygamy and other poly lifestyles, it’s not only considered normal, but many of them believe it’s the best way to go. They are willing to risk societal stigma, heartache, and even being arrested to live the way they feel they should."

https://medium.com/s/story/dating-while-married-an-inside-look-at-poly-gamy-in-black-america-16049c79a96b

In alcune delle biblioteche pubbliche di New York ci sono degli appartamenti segreti. Cioè, gli appartamenti di servizio per i tempi in cui c'era una persona che rimaneva a controllare tutto. Sono mezzi devastati, ma Atlas Obscura ci fa fare un bel giro.

Money quote: "Some have spent decades empty and neglected. “The managers would sort of meekly say to me—do you want to see the apartment?” says Iris Weinshall, the library’s chief operating officer, who at the beginning of her tenure toured all the system’s branches. The first time it happened, she had the same reaction any library lover would: There’s an apartment here? Maybe I could live in the apartment."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/inside-the-new-york-public-librarys-last-secret-apartments

"The Witcher: Blood Origin" ha un grosso problema - la mia recensione per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2023/01/the-witcher-blood-origin-serie-tv-problema/

Passando da Ibm (che aveva una strategia Linux piuttosto articolata) alla cinese Lenovo, si era persa l'anima open source dei sistemi operativi per i computer della leggendaria serie ThinkPad. Adesso, dopo una decina di anni, a quanto pare Lenovo sta riconsiderando la vicenda. E sta preparando varie sorprese. Ma era già tutto previsto in questo vecchio articolo.

Money quote: "Lenovo's newly-announced 2019 ThinkPad P-series mobile workstations can be purchased with Ubuntu, according to the ordering page on Lenovo's website. ThinkPads have often been the laptop of choice for Linux users, as Lenovo historically does certify ThinkPad models for Linux use, though prior to this change, buyers were stuck paying the Windows tax for the unwanted bundled license of Windows."

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/lenovo-shipping-ubuntu-linux-on-2019-thinkpad-p-series-models/

Divertirsi un po' con la matematica

Money quote: "Do adventure games have dead ends? The author of The Teeny Tiny Mansion proves the absence of dead ends in that game via formal verification (in particular, with the help of the cbmc model-checking program). Here I’ll demonstrate how to prove the same thing via Markov theory. The Markov approach requires more mathematics, but less computer code, and lets us quantify the risk of encountering a dead end via matrix manipulation."

http://www.evanmiller.org/adventure-games-and-eigenvalues.html