Letture per la domenica.

Quando uscì Barbie (sembra ormai una vita fa) ci fu un gran parlare di quel film e anche di quello che c'era dietro. Cioè il rapporto tra Mattel e l'autorialità. Beh, all'epoca si prevedeva anche l'arrivo di una valanga di film che coprivano il mondo dei giocattoli come se fosse una delle grandi realtà della vita.

Money quote: "As the Vulture article put it, “It’s plenty of fun to imagine teams of screenwriters, locked away on major-studio lots, chugging coffee while grappling with how to graft plots onto stuff like the View-Master.” A View-Master film, as it happens, is one of Mattel’s current projects. But in other respects the company has apparently learned from Hasbro’s misadventure, by partnering with a range of studios and enshrining a series of timed “development gates” in each contract. If the creative team that Mattel assembles doesn’t deliver, and quickly, it can be disbanded, allowing the toymaker to move on."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/after-barbie-mattel-is-raiding-its-entire-toybox

archivio: https://archive.is/XSmaP

Gli americani - e non solo loro - si sentono sempre più soli. Ed è nata un'industria digitale attorno a questo senso di solitudine. Ma è più complesso di così. E io spero sempre che ci sia anche chi riconosce il senso esitenziale della solitudine come parte della vita (in dosi contenute).

Money quote: "But as it always goes, an old problem creates new opportunities, and in the 20 months since the surgeon general’s report, an influx of founders and entrepreneurs have joined Belong Center in jumping into the growing market for human-to-human connection. Some loneliness solutions are even emerging from the very companies that arguably contributed to the erosion of connection in the first place. Dating app Bumble now has the Bumble for Friends app and, in late 2023, added the “Plans” feature to help people transition to offline meetup groups. Hinge has invested $1 million to fund nonprofits that create opportunities for people to connect in person for reasons other than dating. Many of these companies seem to approach loneliness the same way they have approached dating: as a problem of search optimization."

https://www.thecut.com/article/how-to-deal-with-loneliness-epidemic-startups-companies.html

Devo dire la verità che quando leggo storie come quella che segue del National Geographic è difficile che la mia mente non vaghi tra punti e prospettive diverse. Ad esempio, interessante raccontare il mondo percorrendolo a piedi, ma dal punto di vista personale questo cosa significa? Per un buon inviato ogni reportage è qualcosa che ti cambia, ti resta dentro, diventa parte della tua esperienza. In questo caso, però, l'incarico diventa letteralmente la tua vita. Poi non ce n'è un'altra a casa con gli amici, la famiglia e tutto il resto. Hai visto cambiare le stagioni del mondo, ma sei uno straniero a casa tua.

Money quote: "Journalist and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has been walking across the planet at the pace of his footsteps. Setting out from Ethiopia, with his finish line in South America’s Tierra del Fuego, he is entering year 13 of retracing Homo sapiens’ first migration out of Africa around 60,000 years ago in a slow listening, storytelling project — The Out of Eden Walk — which stories the human experience by people who seldom grace the pages of history.

More than halfway through a 24,000-mile (38,000-kilometer) odyssey, he’s spent over a decade assembling a “global mosaic” of stories in a blend of journalistic and poetic prose.

At the pace of 3mph (5km/h) the Out of Eden Walk isn’t an expedition or an assignment. Salopek’s trek and storytelling, during what he calls “the golden age of information and movement,” has so far taken 12 years. “It’s turned into my life.” "

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/impact/article/paul-salopek-explorer-story

Alla fine i videogiochi non fanno né bene né male. Dipende. Come la Tv. (I social no, quelli fanno male e basta: sono progettati così)

Money quote: "Recent academic focus has shifted to exploring how gaming affects mental well-being. The results are mixed: some studies associate gaming with improved mental health, while others highlight potential risks like addiction or negative emotions."

https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/study-finds-video-games-improve-mental-well-being/

Ci arrivo un po' tardi, perdonatemi. Ma a gennaio di 25 anni fa (all'inizio del mese, però) Steve Jobs presentò Mac OS X, il sistema operativo che stiamo ancora usando sul Mac ma anche negli iPhone e iPad, e con quella mossa ha cambiato tutto per Apple e non solo.

Money quote: "It’s funny. What’s remarkable about the moment is actually how uneventful it seems. When I watch the video back, it’s almost surreal how Steve Jobs keeps doing utterly normal, boring things in Mac OS X while the crowd completely loses its collective mind. Viewed by someone without any historical context, it would seem like a cult being whipped into a frenzy by its leader.

But I was there, and I can tell you that it wasn’t that. This was the moment, after 16 years of classic Mac OS–and let’s face it, the last five of those were pretty rough–when all the failings of the Mac were swept away and replaced with something modern, ready for the challenge of the 21st century."

https://www.macworld.com/article/2568010/looking-back-25-years-later-even-steve-was-wrong-about-mac-os-x.html

L'opera è solo opera - la mia rubrica su Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2025/01/opera-artista-distinzione/

Un bel profilo di Lorne Michaels, il creatore e demiurgo del Saturday Night Live Show, che è una fettona enorme della tv e del costume americano.

Money quote: "Michaels rules “S.N.L.” with detached but absolute power. His office is decorated with a sign that Rosie Shuster, his first wife and a writer on “S.N.L.” ’s early seasons, found in a West Village antique shop: “the captain’s word is law.” It’s a joke that isn’t really a joke. But he doesn’t micromanage every moment. “I’ve never been able to tell whether Lorne is driven by a managerial philosophy or a life-style philosophy,” Robert Carlock, a writer who went on to help Fey develop “30 Rock,” told me. “He’ll let everyone fight things out while he’s at Orso”—a midtown Italian restaurant—“and he’ll come back after a nice dinner and make the decision.”"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/20/lorne-michaels-profile

archivio: https://archive.is/b4HQH

Il mio punto di vista per quello che succede con DeepSeek e le altre AI.

Money quote: "L’impatto del “momento Sputnik” di DeepSeek per adesso si è tradotto invece in una reazione di shock e nel timore di un “AI Gap” evidenziato da tutte le più autorevoli testate internazionali, a partire da quelle statunitensi. I giornali hanno sostanzialmente ufficializzato lo stupore per questa “new entry” cinese, sconosciuta ai più, nel settore dell’intelligenza artificiale, che non solo è riuscita a raggiungere e superare il campione del settore (OpenAI), ma lo ha fatto mettendone in discussione gli assunti tecnologici ed economici."

https://www.guerredirete.it/come-deepseek-ha-riconfigurato-la-corsa-allintelligenza-artificiale/

Il senso del DNA dipende dalla cultura o dalla natura? Se volete annoiarvi per bene, c'è Mostly Weekly, la newsletter che parla di bacchette giapponesi, videogiochi e altre cose così

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/309/

Lettura per la domenica: la storia delle Backrooms

Money quote: "Quella delle Backrooms (retrobottega in italiano) è una delle leggende metropolitane più diffuse su internet. Nei primi anni Zero, il web era ancora troppo piccolo per ospitare leggende proprie e veniva usato perlopiù per creare e diffondere storie legate alla realtà, come nel caso delle teorie del complotto sull’11 settembre, che andarono forte nei blog e nei primi video su Youtube. Oggi però la rete è grande, abitata e infestata abbastanza da potersi permettere delle proprie leggende: i racconti dell’orrore di internet, per internet, su internet. Li chiamano creepypasta, crasi di “creepy” (inquietante, pauroso) e “pasta” (dal verbo “to paste”, ovvero incollare, nel senso di copia-e-incolla). Perché è così che funzionano: sono brevi testi inquietanti e paurosi, alle volte corredati da un’immagine, che vengono copiati e incollati, spacciati per veri, mescolati ad altre storie. Viralità."

https://www.rivistastudio.com/backrooms-cosa-sono/

Se avete voglia di sentire un buon programma radio della Svizzera italiana che parla di teatro, cinema, cartoni animati, robot, ai e tecnologia, eccolo qua: Charlot, condotto da Mario Fabio e intitolato "Al di là dell'umano".

Nella terza parte, indovina chi c'è :-)

https://www.rsi.ch/rete-due/programmi/cultura/charlot/Al-di-l%C3%A0-dell%E2%80%99umano--2481811.html

A primavera inoltrata su Netflix esce la serie dedicata all'Eternauta.

Money quote: "Netflix ha annunciato la data in cui la serie tv L’Eternauta, ispirata all’omonimo fumetto fantascientifico di Héctor Oesterheld e Francisco Solano López degli anni Cinquanta, esordirà in tutto il mondo sulla propria piattaforma streaming: il 30 aprile 2025."

https://fumettologica.it/2025/01/l-eternauta-data-serie-tv-netflix/

C'è un nuovo documentario su Hayao Miyazaki, e pare sia notevole. Anche perché il suo autore per venti anni ha avuto accesso al regista.

Money quote: "Arakawa’s latest work, “Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron,” is his fourth documentary centered on Studio Ghibli and the man behind it, and it offers an unflinching and intimate look at Miyazaki as the now-octogenarian auteur grapples with his legacy, personal mortality and the herculean challenge of creating a masterpiece that could very well be his swan song."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2025/01/31/film/kaku-arakawa-hayao-miyazaki-interview/

Una prospettiva interessante. Cosa succede con i pazienti quando il terapista divorzia un attore noto alle cronache e finisce sui giornali di gossip?

Money quote: "Everyone knows that therapists try to keep their private lives out of your sessions with them. But what is a therapist supposed to do when their personal business starts blowing up in the tabloids? This is the predicament Dr. Lilly Jay, a clinical psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health and child development, found herself in after news of her divorce from *Wicked* actor Ethan Slater (and his relationship with co-star Ariana Grande) went public. Lilly realized she had no idea what her patients might know about her, or how it could impact her ability to help others in her practice. In this vulnerable essay for the Cut, she gracefully writes that while she's still learning to accept the inevitability of uncertainty in life, there is a unique power in sharing those insights with others."

https://www.thecut.com/article/lilly-jay-divorce-essay-therapy.html

L'impero delle pippe

Money quote: "Onlyfans is the only big company in its market with any real transparency: as a UK private company, it publishes a detailed set of accounts (as 'Fenix International') every year. There are now 4.1m creators and 305m users, both growing at close to 30% year on year; $6.6bn user payments, $1.3bn take rate; $485m net income and $172m in taxes. There's no chance of an IPO, so the owner pays himself all the profits as a dividend".

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10354575/filing-history

Ci sono sicuramente ragioni drammaturgiche, relative alle formule per mettere in scena dialoghi e relazioni, e poi scelte di gusto e di stile, e magari anche altro. Però la nostalgia delle tecnologie analogiche va alla grande, a quanto pare.

Money quote: "Despite their obsolescence, however, cassettes routinely appear in popular culture four decades after their heyday, usually serving as surprising symbols of stability and truth. In modern reality, most media are streamed, digitized, and easily vaporized; not so much owned as leased; pockmarked with ads and often tweaked (or falsified) via AI. In modern fiction, meanwhile, vintage media have emerged as tactile objects that symbolize integrity, solve the crime, and radiate realness."

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/01/analog-tech-everywhere-books-and-screen/681508/

archivio: https://archive.is/w2mB4

Un sacco di cose diverse come ogni domenica con Mostly Weekly. In particolare la storia di una katana e quella dell'intrattenimento per adulti

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/310/

Letture per la domenica. E se obbligassimo le aziende tech a dichiarare i loro consumi energetici diretti e indiretti per l'uso dell'intelligenza artificiale?

Money quote: "AI is growing at a rate unparalleled by other energy systems, bringing heightened environmental risk, a report by the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) said.

The report calls for the UK government to make tech companies submit mandatory reports on their energy and water consumption and carbon emissions in order to set conditions in which data centres are designed to use fewer vital resources."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/07/call-to-make-tech-firms-report-data-centre-energy-use-as-ai-booms

Vi ricordate la prima volta di Donald Trump? C'erano i democratici alle barricate. Adesso quando va bene sono tutti zitti, sennò inginocchiati a baciare l'anello. Cosa sta succedendo?

Money quote: "Amid the “shock and awe” of Trump’s return to the White House, Budde’s and Sherman’s displays of resistance felt small and collapsible, barely big enough to accommodate hope. If Trump’s first Presidency was characterized by widespread revolt, his second term has so far been defined by the lack of dissidence. On the day after Trump’s first Inauguration, in 2017, about half a million people flooded Washington, D.C., in protest, donning pink pussy hats and chanting, “This is what democracy looks like!” Millions of protesters, from Roanoke, Virginia, to Auckland, New Zealand, joined in the global Women’s March, championing messages of equality and collective action. But come 2025, on a day so cold Trump’s Inauguration had to be moved indoors, this purposeful, pointed crisis energy was in short supply. What was it that democracy looked like, again? The outgoing President, Joe Biden, after years of warning us against Trump’s dangerous plots and deranged pathologies, warmly greeted the forty-seventh President atop the White House steps. “Welcome home,” he said."

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/what-happened-to-the-trump-resistance

archivio: https://archive.is/mmVKn

Quell'articolo pazzesco di Truman Capote che gli è costato carissimo, in termini di relazioni e accesso, ma che è anche un piccolo capolavoro di gonzo journalism o new new journalism o come si chiama: "La Côte Basque, 1965”. Per dire: Jackie Kennedy Onassis e Aristotle Onassis, oltre ai cigni

Money quote: "Côte Basque is on East Fifty-fifth Street, directly across from the St. Regis. It was the site of the original Le Pavilion, founded in 1940 by the honorable restaurateur Henri Soulé. M. Soulé abandoned the premises because of a feud with his landlord, the late president of Columbia Pictures, a sleazy Hollywood hood named Harry Cohn (who, upon learning that Sammy Davis Jr. was “dating” his blond star Kim Novak, ordered a hit man to call Davis and tell him: “Listen, Sambo, you’re already missing one eye. How’d you like to try for none?” The next day Davis married a Las Vegas chorus girl—colored)."


https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a40376194/truman-capote-la-cote-basque/

La trasformazione delle macchine da scrivere: da strumenti di lavoro e di relazioni speciali, a oggetti nostalgici romanticizzati. Ho letto di recente una bella biografia di Oriana Fallaci in cui in un passaggio si racconta del suo rapporto con la sua macchina per scrivere.


Money quote: "There was a time that nearly every home and office had at least one typewriter, ready to tap out letters or lists, invoices or inspirations. Today, of course, the machines have gone the way of vinyl records, romanticized analog nostalgia, a sometimes-useful kitschy artifact with which to wax nostalgic. But, also like vinyl records, typewriters have their enthusiasts, cult followers and collectors drawn to their character and to the mystery of all the ideas and dreams that have been poured, or, rather, pounded, into them. Actor Tom Hanks is a collector, with a rumored 200 or more."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/the-hidden-world-of-the-typewriter/279523/

archivio: https://archive.is/eiNnV