Lettura per la domenica.

Una ipotesi matta: che siano finite le generazioni? Cioè che Gen Z e Millennials siano la stessa cosa? Beh, non lo so. L'ultima volta che qualcuno ha detto che la storia era finita poi c'è stato l'11 settembre e la storia è tornata dalla finestra sfondando tutta la parete, già che c'era. E le generazioni? Veramente sono finite?

Money quote: "How did “the war among the generations” come to be so peaceful? Why do zoomers seem so unlikely to ever contradict the culture of millennials? You might say it’s simply too early to assess the cultural integrity of a cohort that’s just now entering the workforce. The childhoods were a bit different, but barely so: Zoomers grew up in the dawn of streaming music and social broadcasting, a series of technological advancements that have scrambled the whole notion of genre and reinvented the whole notion of celebrity. These shifts began with millennials, and zoomers are better understood to be partners, not rivals, in these transformations. The transformation from three-network broadcast television (baby boomers) to cable TV (Gen X) is much larger than the difference between Vine and TikTok."

https://www.theringer.com/year-in-review/2021/12/31/22860610/millennials-zoomers-gen-z-same-generation-olivia-rodrigo

Visto che ne parliamo proprio qui su Telegram: è davvero così brutto come lo racconta quest'articolo? A me non pare, però boh, magari sbaglio.

Money quote: “Telegram is social media for organised criminals,” says Haywood Talcove, chief executive of LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ government division, who has been tracking new means of fraud targeting US government systems that he says have gone “viral” on the platform among some hacker communities. “It’s virtually the wild west out there.”

https://www.ft.com/content/c70ef7d6-230a-4404-b854-2e75fe0f2e0a

Le parole indicano concetti che la mente è in grado di esprimere perché sa come formalizzarli. In Italia abbiamo preso "burnout" per indicare uno stato che non è solo affaticamento o esaurimento, ma qualcosa di più specifico in senso tecnico (riguardava il personale ospedaliero, all'inizio) e, per estensione, anche le persone che vanno in bomba. Gli olandesi hanno un'altra parola, "niksen", che vuol dire "non fare niente apposta" (mia libera traduzione) e a quanto pare è il perfetto antidoto alla cultura del "burnout". Solo che ci vuole una certa intenzione.

Money quote: "It’s very common, says Mecking, to struggle to define niksen. “The definition I use in the book is: to do nothing, without a purpose. Not watching a movie, not scrolling social media, not reading emails. We always have in mind some kind of outcome. When we prepare meals, we think, ‘This meal will help me lose weight or will make me healthier.’ If we go for a walk, it has to be part of our 10,000 steps. So we lose that fun of just eating or just walking. So it’s about letting go of the outcome.”"

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-art-of-doing-nothing-have-the-dutch-found-the-answer-to-burnout-culture

Il ragionamento è molto semplice: tutti, anche se vogliono avere solo una normalissima carriera, devono farsi un personal brand a causa dei social. Soprattutto se sono artisti o creativi. E questo è un problema per tutta la società.

Money quote: "The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from 9-to-5 middle managers to astronauts to housecleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand. For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections whenever you get promoted; for others, it’s asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it’s crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram. And for people who hope to publish a bestseller or release a hit record, it’s “building a platform” so that execs can use your existing audience to justify the costs of signing a new artist.

We like to think of it as the work of singular geniuses whose motivations are purely creative and untainted by the market — this, despite the fact that music, publishing, and film have always been for-profit industries where formulaic, churned-out work is what often sells best. These days, the jig is up.

Corporate consolidation and streaming services have depleted artists’ traditional sources of revenue and decimated cultural industries. While Big Tech sites like Spotify claim they’re “democratizing” culture, they instead demand artists engage in double the labor to make a fraction of what they would have made under the old model. That labor amounts to constant self-promotion in the form of cheap trend-following, ever-changing posting strategies, and the nagging feeling that what you are really doing with your time is marketing, not art. Under the tyranny of algorithmic media distribution, artists, authors — anyone whose work concerns itself with what it means to be human — now have to be entrepreneurs, too."

https://www.vox.com/culture/2024/2/1/24056883/tiktok-self-promotion-artist-career-how-to-build-following

L'importanza di Deep Space Nine, forse la più bella serie di Star Trek mai fatta. Ne parlo nella mia rubrica per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2024/03/deep-space-nine-star-trek-serie-tv/

Una storia da paura: due "uomini d'affari" irlandesi sono quasi riusciti a rubare 11 miliardi di dollari alla Nigeria. Così, uno scam al contrario (tipo "uomo morde cane"). Pazzesco.

Money quote: "Quinn was an Irish oil-and-gas man with warm eyes and a mustache; Cahill was his longtime partner, an accountant by training. The two had been working in Nigeria since the 1970s, doing small-time deals in the energy and defense sectors, like fixing tanks and siting oil wells. But in the mid-2000s, they spied a bigger opportunity. They knew that Nigeria’s refineries were burning off most of the gas that was recovered during oil drilling — a practice that poisoned the atmosphere and deprived the country of a source of electricity. Quinn and Cahill proposed a “gas leaning” plant, which would take in the “wet” gas that would otherwise be flared and spit out “lean” gas that could actually power the grid. It would transform waste into fuel."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/magazine/nigeria-corruption-michael-quinn-brendan-cahill.html

Archivio: https://archive.is/NEh2L

Fra le tante mode che tornano, c'è la passione per il buon vecchio web (e la rete) degli anni Novanta. Alcuni videogiochi lo stanno usando per ricreare quell'ambiente. È una fiction molto interessante, sia nei motivi che nei contenuti. E con tante difficoltà.

Money quote: "Games like last year’s Videoverse, 2019’s Hypnospace Outlaw and the upcoming Darkweb Streamer use chat interfaces akin to AIM or MSN, as well as fake websites that greet people with MIDI songs and text written in bold fonts. Each experience has its own nostalgic lens but is a snapshot of lost expression, creativity and independence.

Chantal Ryan, an anthropologist and the lead developer of Darkweb Streamer, a horror simulation game that merges the perils of modern streaming with the ’90s internet, bemoaned how high-quality independent services were often cannibalized by corporate interests. She pointed to sites like Goodreads and AbeBooks, both bought by Amazon.

“It reminds me of forest clearing,” said Ryan, who studied at the University of Adelaide. “You have this habitat with sustainable ecosystems, and communities of beings living harmoniously. And then the bulldozer comes in and destroys literally everything in its path with no regard to who’s being affected.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/arts/video-games-internet.html

Archivio: https://archive.is/Wf7Wm

Incapace di stare fermo a casa, son andato anche a vedere "Godzilla e Kong - Il nuovo impero": ecco la mia recensione (diciamo: mazzata sulla nuca, così soffre meno) per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2024/03/godzilla-kong-nuovo-impero-recensione-film/

Questo è uno di quegli articoloni con dentro tantissimo da spacchettare. C'è un bel po' di roba per gli appassionati di volo civile, ci sono un po' di tecnicalità da iniziati, un po' di filosofia e un po' di punti di vista e modi di ragionare sulle cose. E poi la legge, il caso, la razionalità. Tanta roba semplicemente per dire che volare non è mai stato così sicuro come adesso.

Money quote: "In the aftermath of a disaster, our immediate reaction is often to search for some person to blame. Authorities frequently vow to “find those responsible” and “hold them to account,” as though disasters happen only when some grinning mischief-maker slams a big red button labeled “press for catastrophe.” That’s not to say that negligence ought to go unpunished. Sometimes there really is a malefactor to blame, but equally often there isn’t, and the result is that normal people who just made a mistake are caught up in the dragnet of vengeance, like the famous 2009 case of six Italian seismologists who were charged for failing to predict a deadly earthquake. But when that happens, what is actually accomplished? Has anything been made better? Or have we simply kicked the can down the road?

It’s often much more productive to ask why than to ask who. In some industries, this is called a “blameless postmortem,” and in aviation, it’s a long-standing, internationally formalized tradition. In the mid-20th century, when technical investigations of aircraft accidents were first being standardized, an understanding emerged that many crashes were not the result of any particular person’s actions. Most famously, in 1956, the Civil Aeronautics Board’s Bureau of Aviation Safety, the predecessor to today’s NTSB, concluded that no one was at fault in a collision of two airliners over the Grand Canyon because the two crews likely could not have seen each other coming until it was too late. The cause of the accident, they determined, was the lack of any positive means to prevent midair collisions."

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/why-you-ve-never-been-in-a-plane-crash

Intanto, buona Pasqua a tutti gli iscritti al canale.

Poi: vi siete ricordati di rimettere l’ora?

E infine: anche oggi come al solito è uscita la mia newsletter. Eccola qua:

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/265/

Moltiplicare le matrici è un casino semplicemente perché, a differenza delle moltiplicazioni tradizionali, se si cambia l'ordine delle cifre il risultato cambia.

Money quote: "Now, three researchers — Ran Duan and Renfei Zhou of Tsinghua University and Hongxun Wu of the University of California, Berkeley — have taken a major step forward in attacking this perennial problem. Their new results, presented last November at the Foundations of Computer Science conference, stem from an unexpected new technique, Le Gall said. Although the improvement itself was relatively small, Le Gall called it “conceptually larger than other previous ones.”"

https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-breakthrough-brings-matrix-multiplication-closer-to-ideal-20240307/

Questo articolo quando è uscito, l'altro giorno, è diventato rapidamente virale. Perché è uno spettacolare assolo di una donna giovane che riflette in maniera molto libera sulla sua scelta di stare con un uomo più vecchio e come questo abbia sostanzialmente creato un equilibrio che non si trova in altre coppie e che è benefico anche per il modo con il quale donne e uomini si trasformano con il passare del tempo. E tutto questo nonostante gli attacchi o quantomeno le considerazioni delle altre donne della stessa età del suo compagno, che l'autrice Grazie Sophia Christie, ha sentito commentare piuttosto acidamente.

Money quote: "We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?"

https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-marriage-younger-women-older-man.html

Archivio: https://web.archive.org/web/20240329070214/https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-marriage-younger-women-older-man.html

Le luci della macchinina, sì, ma fatte con il legno. Quando uno è un artista bello marcio.

Money quote: "“I immerse myself in a creative game where shapes, dimensions, and perspective intertwine to challenge expectations,” Miyares says."

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/02/kiko-miyares-headlights/

La tocco piano: l'impatto delle auto sul pianeta spiegato dal National Geographic. (O forse la battuta migliore era: "Duro ma giusto"?)

Money quote: "Cars can convey a sense of freedom and movement, not to mention style and status. But they also can have a big impact on the planet. Here's a few key areas to consider."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact

Ne parlano tutti, non potevo non parlarne anche io. La mia recensione di Shogun per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2024/04/shogun-serie-tv/

Buone notizie per gli appassionati di francobolli o di fotografia o di entrambe: negli Usa sta per uscire una serie dedicata ad Ansel Adams.

Money quote: "Experience the wonder of the American West through the lens of one of America’s most iconic photographers, Ansel Adams (1902-1984). This pane of 16 Forever® stamps features some of Adams’ most famous images in his signature “straight photography” style, an approach defined by its precision and directness."

https://www.stampinformation.com/2024/stamps/ansel-adams

A me del messaggio pasquale di Donald Trump, che ha rantolato ininterrottamente con 168 parole di cui 165 fanno parte di una, delirante frase sola, la cosa che veramente manda in palla è: perché quella maledetta "s" minuscola a sette righe dalla fine?

(Quell'uomo è fuori di testa, comunque. Quest'anno sta anche peggio di quando era presidente)

C'è gente che sta male, direi. Ad esempio, la proposta che per essere felici dovremmo tornare a fare i giochi che facevamo da piccoli, mi dà l'idea che parecchie cose non tornino. Forse perché la vita da grandi è brutta. Ma di chi è la responsabilità?

Money quote: "Halfway through my 36th year, on a hamster-wheel day packed with lunchbox-making, cat feeding, working, going to doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping, vacuuming, and frantic bathing, I tried to remember what joy felt like.

What even was joy? I wondered with my gloved hands submerged in a sink full of gray water studded with a flotsam of cat food. What did that word even mean?

I couldn’t remember."

https://cupofjo.com/2024/03/12/singing-as-adult/

Una modesta proposta: eliminiamo il carburante per le auto così come abbiamo fatto per le sigarette e altro. Perché no?

Money quote: "An overnight ban on fossil fuels is effectively impossible, of course. Other sources of energy such as solar panels, wind turbines and nuclear plants aren’t nearly able to fill the gap today. The economy, starved for energy, would come to a halt.

But a ban or severe restriction isn’t entirely crazy, either, if it’s phased in as part of a long-term plan to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to zero. Why not? We’ve banned things before.

“In the last four decades, the United States has outlawed lead paint, phased out asbestos and curtailed tobacco marketing and sales. Similar policies can be used for fossil fuels,” a pair of economists, Mark Paul and Lina Moe, wrote last year for an advocacy group called the Climate and Community Project in a piece noscriptd “An Economist’s Case for Restrictive Supply-Side Policy.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/fossil-fuel-ban-climate.html

Archivio: https://archive.is/3DyY8

Quando è uscito l'Apple Vision Pro non si sapeva bene cosa scriverne e sono girati un sacco di articoli. Questo ad esempio si arrampica sugli specchi ma è interessante.

Money quote: "But this is not the first time that Apple has entered a category and completely transformed the space. Be it the Macs or iPod or the iPhone or the iPad or even Apple Watch, the company is known for creating new categories. Let’s have a look at how Apple has fared in the past with some of its iconic products, starting with one of the most important – the Mac."

https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/the-iphone-to-vision-pro-apple-history-of-products-weird-norm/

È sempre di domenica che esce Mostly Weekly, la mia newsletter (più o meno) settimanale. Questa volta si parla dei 50 anni di "Carrie", l'esordio-capolavoro di Stephen King. E un altro mezzo milione di cose. Tutto qui (ma ci si può anche abbonare)

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/266/