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

Gli otto film indispensabili per conoscere il cinema d'animazione giapponese

Money quote: "Abbiamo anime per ogni target possibile e di ogni genere possibile: per bambini, ragazzi e adulti, d'azione, horror, psicologici, fantascientifici, erotici...

Seppur la maggior parte possano essere associati a mera forma di intrattenimento, alcuni possono essere definiti vere e proprie opere d'arte. "

https://www.cinefacts.it/cinefacts-top8-10/breve-storia-del-cinema-di-animazione-giapponese-8-film-indispensabili.html

La simulazione si è rotta, dobbiamo riavviarla: un po' di pensiero divergente per Fumettologica durante questi tempi strani e sempre più oscuri

https://fumettologica.it/2025/02/la-simulazione-si-e-rotta-dobbiamo-riavviarla/

Un articolo dell'Economist pre-DeepSeek che però spiega bene le dinamiche economiche del modello costruito da OpenAI e dagli altri

Money quote: "High marginal costs mean the model-builders will have to generate meaningful value in order to charge premium prices. The hope, says Lan Guan of Accenture, a consultancy, is that models like o3 will support ai agents that individuals and companies will use to increase their productivity. Even a high price for use of a reasoning model may be worth it compared with the cost of hiring, say, a fully fledged maths phd. But that depends on how useful the models are."

https://www.economist.com/business/2025/01/20/openais-latest-model-will-change-the-economics-of-software

archivio: https://archive.is/IDsnQ

Le startup di oggi, veramente tantissime (una cultura insopportabile a tratti) non sono l'eccezione o la novità, ma la regola. È che abbiamo passato un periodo in cui invece non lo erano, ma quella sarebbe l'eccezione secondo Paul Graham.

Money quote: "In 1960, most of the people who start startups today would have gone to work for one of them. You could get rich from starting your own company in 1890 and in 2020, but in 1960 it was not really a viable option. You couldn't break through the oligopolies to get at the markets. So the prestigious route in 1960 was not to start your own company, but to work your way up the corporate ladder at an existing one."

https://paulgraham.com/richnow.html

Cosa sono le finestre che si spostano? Nel nuovo numero di Mostly Weekly provo a spiegare la teoria della finestra di Overton applicata a Donald Trump (ma funziona anche da noi) e varie altre cose incluso il perché dei tabù culturali

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/311/

Letture per la domenica.

Come si fa a scrivere un best seller, ammesso che interessi ancora a qualcuno? Ecco qui le ricetta secondo l'Economist.

Money quote: "Publishing is an odd business. It is worth around $37bn in Britain and America alone, but you would not know this from the literature that it produces, which focuses on books in the brainy vein rather than anything so vulgar as volumes that actually sell. One authoritative history of English literature contains 60-odd mentions of “Shakespeare”; ten on “the sublime”; eight on “blank verse”—but a blank silence for words such as “business” and “turnover”.
In another literary history, popular novels—those “jam tarts for the mind” as William Thackeray, the British novelist, called them—are mentioned, but with a wince, under the heading: “Problems of popular culture”. When Gore Vidal wrote an article on bestsellers it opened with the observation that “shit has its own integrity”—and became more dismissive from there.
The book business, however, depends on those despised bestsellers."

https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/08/25/how-to-write-a-bestseller

archivio: https://archive.is/FormG

Ma nel mio piccolo ho tradotto un paio di articoli di Ian Fleming e Kurt Vonnegut che spiegano molto bene il loro approccio.

https://antoniodini.com/otto-regole-vonnegut/

https://antoniodini.com/come-si-scrive-un-best-seller/

Accaparrare le miglia dei programmi frequent flyer: è divertente, è una pratica utile, alle volte una mania, in generale un meccanismo di fidelizzazione gamificato che dà pure dipendenza (credetemi, se prendete spesso l'aereo, è così). Ma ne vale realmente la pena? Una prospettiva americana.

Money quote: "Here are questions to ask when pursuing airline status. No traveler’s situation, even if you fly out of the same airport and maintain a similar travel frequency, is the same as anyone else’s. How far will you go to earn miles and eventual status with an airline? Or is it like gambling, that you know to stop when you’re already ahead and before you’re financially in the hole?"

https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/is-earning-airline-status-actually-worth-the-hassle

Scrivere un romanzo è già abbastanza difficile. Progettare anche la copertina è un'attività sovrumana.

Money quote: "The authors are not in control. It’s a collaborative process, but not really, because the author is not the expert. As with professional hair and makeup, the recipient is, uncomfortably, witness to an artistic process that is about them, centered on them, yet almost entirely devoid of their participation.

But I seem to have overextrapolated from Na Kim and understood that all first book cover designs are drafts. So when my agent suggested playing with different concepts, and asked if I had some ideas or covers I liked as inspiration, my ambient productivity anxiety took over—did I ever!"

https://lithub.com/on-trying-and-really-failing-to-design-my-own-book-cover/

Grandi passi in avanti in classici problemi informatici che stanno arrivando alla soluzione perfetta. Ad esempio, il "library sorting problem".

Money quote: "“It’s a very important problem,” said Seth Pettie (opens a new tab), a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, because many of the data structures we rely upon today store information sequentially. He called the new work “extremely inspired [and] easily one of my top three favorite papers of the year.”"

https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-book-sorting-algorithm-almost-reaches-perfection-20250124/

Abbiamo immerso talmente tanto il discorso del cambiamento climatico e della trasformazione energetica nell'arena politica che adesso è diventato totalmente manipolato. Tutti abbiamo un'opinione. E sono saltati (come era pianificato che succedesse) i progetti di grande cambiamento. Tranne che in alcuni paesi, come la Norvegia. La quale potrebbe agire forse come "memento", se avessimo voglia di ascoltare queste informazioni.

Money quote: "Despite being a major oil and gas producer, Norway aims for all new cars sold to be "zero emission" starting in 2025, which is 10 years ahead of the goal set by the European Union, of which Norway is not a member.

In contrast to Brussels' plans, Oslo has not banned the sale of cars with internal combustion engines, having instead opted for a system of generous tax breaks that have made them competitive against heavily taxed internal combustion cars.

They have also benefitted from toll exemptions, free parking in public car parks, and the use of public transport traffic lanes."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250203-norway-nears-100-goal-of-all-electric-cars

L'angolo tech.
Per i progammatori. Javanoscript sta per abbandonare il sistema piuttosto deficitario che utilizza finora per gestire il tempo.

Money quote: "To understand Temporal, we can look at JavaScript's "Date" object. When JavaScript was created in 1995, the "Date" object was copied from Java's early, flawed java.util.Date implementation. Java replaced this implementation in 1997, but JavaScript is stuck with the same API for almost 30 years, despite known problems.

The major issues with JavaScript's "Date" object are that it only supports the user's local time and UTC, and there's no time zone support. Additionally, its parsing behavior is very unreliable, and Date itself is mutable, which can introduce hard-to-trace bugs. There are other problems like calculations across Daylight Saving Time (DST) and historical calendar changes, which are notoriously difficult to work with."

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/javanoscript-temporal-is-coming/

A proposito di giudicare un libro dalla copertina. John Updike, oltre a essere stato un notevolissimo scrittore, è stato anche il progettista o comunque il primo critico di molte copertine dei suoi libri. Questo articolo è molto interessante e spiega tutto il processo, con testimonianze importanti.

Money quote: "John Updike was one of the most celebrated and prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He is best known for his Rabbit series: four novels and a novella tracing the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a middle class white man who feels alienated from the modern world. Rabbit is Rich, the third book in the series, was also its most decorated, winning the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Updike also published more than fifty other books, including novels, short stories, poetry, children’s books, and collections of art and literary criticism. His prominence as a writer has mostly eclipsed the other role he played in the publication of his work: designing the covers for several of his books and heavily art directing almost all of the rest. "

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/heres-why-john-updike-designed-his-own-book-covers/

Arriva domani nelle inbox ma l'anteprima è adesso: Mostly Weekly questa settimana parla degli sfigati al comando, il caos che ci aspetta, i segnali brutti dalla Spagna e la differenza (forse) tra lettura e letteratura. Buona lettura

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/312/

Letture per la domenica.

Per chi ha un sacco di negativi scattati dai genitori o dai nonni (tipo scatole piene) da scannerizzare e archiviare in modo sensato in digitale, qui c'è una che ha fatto tutto il giro ed offre interessanti considerazioni metodologiche, pratiche ed emotive.

Money quote: "I have spoken with several people who have similar family photo archives, so let me begin by describing I went about the project.

Before I began, I had an inexpensive Wolverine slide scanner but I knew a manual unit would not cut it. I bought a heavy-duty slide scanner to help me process the images. It’s a Canon CanoScan 9000F. I like it, in case you’re shopping for an affordable unit; in particular, I do not loathe the built-in software, which sets it apart from other scanners I’ve used.

The project, which took me about a year, became a background process. I could scan a box of slides while I was reading my daily morning e-mail, then clean up and share the images during moments of down-time (such as waiting for poky websites to load site statistics). Over a weekend I usually could get through five or six boxes of slides."

https://estherschindler.medium.com/the-old-family-photos-project-lessons-in-creating-family-photos-that-people-want-to-keep-ea3909129943

Dopo l'idea che la matematica sia sterile e priva di fantasia, c'è quella che il programmatore sia un iperpianificatore che procede dal grande verso il piccolo. Mica tanto. Cioè, mica sempre.

Money quote: "In writing (particularly fiction writing), there is a generally accepted distinction between authors who start by writing an outline and those who discover their stories through the process of writing. For some reason, we have no such distinction in programming, so I am here to introduce it."

https://jimmyhmiller.github.io/discovery-coding