La storia delle origini di Riccardo Palombo, che poi è il mio socio nel podcast Tilde: ha scritto un libro questa estate e varie altre cose.

Money quote: "**Ci racconta le sue origini?** «Il mio lavoro è nato nel 2005 -- racconta --, quando mia cognata mi portò un netbook dall'America. Io aprii un blog per parlarne che ebbe successo, nel giro di pochi mesi quadruplicai gli introiti monetari e nel 2007 mollai il lavoro che avevo, iniziando a fare questo mestiere. Ancora non c'era YouTube, ma continuai creando il sito "eeevolution", che poi ho venduto a un network. Da lì sono andato a lavorare per Hd Blog, il più grande network di tecnologia in Italia. Nel frattempo sono stato uno dei primi da quando ha aperto YouTube Italia a fare video, sin dal 2010. Addirittura i primi erano senza parlato, solo con la musica."

https://www.lanazione.it/grosseto/cronaca/youtuber-e-lelettronica-racconto-i-13fb33fa

La vita fragile delle garibaldine, le ragazze dei maranza. Gran storia, raccontata in modo magistrale da Allegra Ferrante per il Corriere.

Money quote: "**Yasmine conosce Orwell, ma preferisce García Márquez**. Ha 15 anni, metà tunisina, metà marocchina; va bene a scuola, liceo delle scienze umane di Legnano. Indossa una tuta Lacoste, ha un chakra dipinto con l'eye-liner sullo zigomo sinistro. Figlia più piccola di una famiglia numerosa, un complicato percorso migratorio. Sua madre fa la cuoca di giorno e
la badante di notte. Padre muratore. «Esce di casa presto, non lo vedo mai». Il fratello più grande, 26 anni, elettricista, lavora col padre. «Io e i miei fratelli più piccoli siamo maranza. Col cazzo che ci infiliamo in questa vita di merda!».** Maranza è la rottura di un'aspettativa sociale e familiare. Scelta di un'identità forte, che si impone, che ha già dei codici**: per allontanarsi rabbiosamente dalla vita dei propri genitori. Nichilismo (molto appariscente) in alternativa a restare invisibili. «Non voglio fare la lavapiatti/ma voglio andare in giro in Bugatti», suona la cassa JBL che le ragazze ascoltano nel parcheggio di Piazza Freud."

https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/25_settembre_14/vita-fragile-delle-garibaldine-le-ragazze-dei-maranza-tra-spray-al-peperoncino-liberta-sessuale-e-orsacchiotto-nel-letto-matte-3a84ba69-876a-491f-a160-569db1679xlk.shtml

Letture per la domenica: molto interessante per noialtri creativi/lavoratori della conoscenza

Cosa può fare l'AI? Una giornalista del Financial Times si è messa d'impegno per vedere se potrà sostituirla. L'idea è che no: non la sostituirà.

Moey quote: "I started by giving ChatGPT Plus a road map of how to work in collaboration on a book, a template developed by a technologist friend who is likewise experimenting with AI’s creative capability.

The template laid out in detail what long-form narrative writing is and how to expand on an author’s existing ideas and/or body of work. As someone who had rarely used AI, and never done so in my professional life, I was amazed by how much preparation is required just to get ChatGPT to understand the basics.

LLMs can give you answers to precise questions, but they don’t necessarily understand how to land on tone, style, tension or originality, nor do they have the power to benefit from serendipity, all of which are components of good writing.

ChatGPT took about 48 hours to churn out a first chapter after gobbling up several samples of my own 33-year body of work, a detailed book proposal with footnotes, a chapter outline of where I wanted to go, taped interviews with sources and plentiful background reading selected by me.

Sadly, what I got back was a kind of Muzak version of myself — predigested, relatively accurate, but thoroughly uninspired. This result was both amusing and depressing."

https://www.ft.com/content/0b56a85d-e71e-49c4-802f-316ed83cb386

archivio: https://archive.is/4IXkL

La strategia della Cina per l'AI, spiegata bene

Money quote: "Ten years later, with the rise of generative AI, China is shifting from “Internet Plus” to “AI Plus.” According to some experts, “Internet Plus” was about “connection” (连接)—linking information to redesign processes and improve efficiency. “AI Plus” builds on that by adding cognitive ability, moving from “information connection and diffusion” to “knowledge application and creation.” Its essence is “empower”(赋能). It promises to reorganize production factors, upgrade value creation models, transform organizational structures, and reshape governance."

https://www.geopolitechs.org/p/china-releases-ai-plus-policy-a-brief

L'impatto dell'AI in Africa: intanto, aiutare i contadini

Money quote: "Artificial intelligence has the potential to uplift agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 33-50 million smallholder farms like Maere’s produce up to 70-80% of the food supply, according to the U.N.'s International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Yet productivity in Africa — with the world’s fast-growing population to feed — is lagging behind despite vast tracts of arable land."

https://apnews.com/article/malawi-ai-farmers-climate-weather-agriculture-31979c49ed66b8222ea6afe7e3247770

Quando lo spirito di osservazione fa tutta la differenza.

Money quote: "A small detail in a photograph led to one of the most extraordinary discoveries of Florent Jeanniard’s career. In this episode of Sotheby’s Stories, Florent — Head of the Design Department in Paris — recalls how a client reached out with a simple question about a painting, unaware of the hidden treasures that surrounded it. What began with a single image gradually revealed a remarkable collection by one of the most celebrated designers of the 20th century. Piece by piece, the story unfolded — transforming what seemed like an ordinary request into a once-in-a-lifetime find.

The collection went on to achieve a record-breaking result at auction, with more than €3.5 million realized. Join us as Florent shares how a tiny clue opened the door to an unforgettable chapter in the history of design."

https://www.sothebys.com/en/videos/the-collection-hidden-in-plain-sight-florent-jeanniard-shares-his-sothebys-story

"Critterz" è il film con cui l'AI manderà in pensione la Disney - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2025/09/critterz-film-open-ai-animazione/

Il 30 settembre se ne va TypePad, una delle prime piattaforme di blogging

Money quote: "We have made the difficult decision to discontinue Typepad, effective September 30, 2025.

What Does This Mean for You?

After September 30, 2025, access to Typepad – including account management, blogs, and all associated content – will no longer be available. Your account and all related services will be permanently deactivated.

Please note that after this date, you will no longer be able to access or export any blog content. "

https://everything.typepad.com/blog/2025/08/typepad-is-shutting-down.html

E poi dicono che non succede mai niente di nuovo. Hanno pure ritrovato un Picasso (e già lo vendono all'asta)

Money quote: "Un chef-d’œuvre de Pablo Picasso retrouvé. Il s’agit du portrait de sa compagne, Dora Maar, peint en 1943 et conservé par la famille de son premier propriétaire depuis 1944. Le tableau a été dévoilé ce jeudi 18 septembre à l’hôtel Drouot, à Paris, où il sera mis aux enchères le 24 octobre."

https://www.liberation.fr/culture/arts/un-portrait-retrouve-de-dora-maar-signe-picasso-devoile-a-paris-20250918_ULJMLSXUKRDY3HQ7RVOVW54ZQU/

Da sempre le narrazioni hanno un "problema" con la tecnologia. Nell'epoca in cui viviamo, in cui non solo il progresso è accelerato, ma si è fatto qualitativamente sempre più complicato da addomesticare e metabolizzare, per un autore capire dove mettere i social o l'intelligenza artificiale in una narrazione può essere molto complicato.

Per questo molti autori sembrano preferire ed essere legati alle tecnologie analogiche: sono facili da capire e integrare. Ma c'è anche chi va avanti in questa esplorazione.

Money quote: "This juxtaposition—tech-savvy teen, antiquated technology—may seem unusual, but it’s actually become quite common in fiction. In the 2020s, Mark Athitakis writes in an Atlantic article this week, “vintage media have emerged as tactile objects that symbolize integrity, solve the crime, and radiate realness.” Airey’s novel is just one of a number of stories that seek some kind of lost meaning in the reels, discs, and cartridges that were ubiquitous before the turn of the 21st century. Athitakis points to the popularity of Stranger Things as a catalyst for this trope, but I imagine it also reflects a more personal longing. Lyca’s quest isn’t only about investigating her familial roots. It’s the story of a person who’s never lived without the internet in their pocket envisioning a lost past—and learning what life was like when their parents were young."


https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/01/books-briefing-contemporary-fiction-analog-tech-confessions-catherine-airey/681528/

archivio: https://archive.is/ZoU4l

Letture per la domenica

Nel 1813, in piena Foresta Nera, l'inventore G.F. Roskopf creò un orologio da tasca super economico, con pochissimi pezzi (57 anziché 160 circa). Un miracolo di semplificazione, osteggiato dalla concorrenza. Lui voleva abbattere il prezzo per portare il dono del tempo al popolo, e infatti lo chiamò “Prolétaire”. Oggi è praticamente dimenticato, ma si tratta di un caso clamoroso nella storia dell'orologeria.

Money quote: "It was an immediate success, but Swiss watchmaking competitors took it badly. They all refused to work with him, and accused him of ‘destroying’ their artisanal craft. Roskopf was forced to call on workers from the French Jura and from the canton of Bern. Presented at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, the “Prolétaire” caught the attention of Louis Breguet, who praised it highly. The international markets then began to open up. While Switzerland totally rejected the watch, France, Belgium, the Indies, Brazil and Egypt, among others, were all quick to embrace it. From 1868 onwards, Roskopf had to expand and invest to meet the demand. As he hadn’t registered any patents, his work was also quickly copied, with varying degrees of success. Poorly-made ‘fake’ Roskopfs damaged his reputation. Eventually, he registered a patent in the United States and handed over the company to his friend Charles Léon Schmidt and the Will brothers."

https://www.europastar.com/the-watch-files/archives-heritage/1004089869-roskopf-the-forgotten-proletarian-watch.html

Un po' di tempo fa sono (ri)caduto nella tana del bianconiglio-MiniCisc. Cioè, alla faccia della comodità dello streaming, ascolto la musica principalmente su questo supporto. Mai usato sistematicamente i dischi in vinile, piuttosto ascoltavo i cd. Comunque, sono di nuovo innamorato dei MiniDisc anche perché sono un ritorno alla seconda metà degli anni Novanta, quando li usavo per lavoro in radio. Poi, chiaramente: chissenefrega, quel che conta è la musica, non il suo contenitore. Però, insomma, a ciascuno la sua ossessione, no?

Money quote: "As a consumer audio format, MiniDisc actually became a massive phenomenon, at least back in Sony’s homeland of Japan. The peculiar economics of the Japanese music market, especially back in the 1990s, made CDs about twice as expensive there as they were in the United States. Enter the music-rental shop, where customers could check out a dozen albums for the cost of buying a single one of them, then go home and copy them all to their MiniDiscs. Veritably printing money, Sony and other MiniDisc hardware manufacturers came to the defense of music-rental chains when the displeased Japanese record industry took them to court. By the time the issue was settled, MiniDisc had already entrenched itself in the Japanese market to the point that its devices surpassed CD players in sales."

https://www.openculture.com/2021/06/the-story-of-the-minidisc.html

Divertente: vecchie tecnologie che oggi si vendono per un botto di soldi (così rimpiangete un po' di cose che avete buttato via nel corso degli anni).

Money quote: "Nowadays, vintage and original models that haven't been used or come with original features are highly prized. But sometimes, even used ones can command head-scratching prices. Take this clearly dinged-up 5th generation iPod that's going for five grand on eBay, for example. Who's buying this stuff?!"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/11-vintage-electronics-that-now-sell-for-a-fortune/ss-AA1wCjp5

Mamma mia quanto mi piaceva Jimbo
(occhio che questo è un articolo del 2013)

Money quote: "A blue-collar kid from Belleville, Ill., Connors, who is now 60, joined the men’s tour as the sport was shaking its country-club gentility. He strutted combatively; he pointed fingers. His displays often crossed the bounds of good taste — he knew better than anyone how to exploit the phallic possibilities of a racket — but that was decades ago. Since then, his demons have quieted; what endures is his incomparable tennis intelligence. Last month, Connors, who was mentored on the court by both his mother and grandmother, was hired to pass some of that aptitude to Maria Sharapova, currently the No. 3 women’s player in the world, who seemed to have confronted an impenetrable barrier in the form of her nemesis, Serena Williams. (Williams has won 14 of their 16 matches.)
Well, it didn’t quite work out that way"

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/magazine/jimmy-connors-ladies-man.html

archivio: https://archive.is/pBXy3

La mia generazione, la Generazione X (1964-1984) quando fa attività lavorative di tipo creativo (incluso il giornalista freelance, ma ovviamente non solo) paga pegno perché è nel mezzo tra due mondi, schiacciata da una serie di trasformazioni epocali. Tanta roba davvero, forse troppa.

Money quote: "Pam Morris, 54, a freelance prop stylist, noticed another unsettling trend a few years ago, when a U.S. client asked her to art-direct a crew in Asia remotely for a shoot. “They’re just outsourcing,” she said. “It must be cheaper.”

Ms. Morris added that, in her group chats with colleagues, the main topic lately has been the effect of A.I. and computer generated imagery on ad campaigns. “If an art director can say, ‘Give me an image of X, Y, Z,’ what does that mean for our jobs, if they don’t need to have actual photo shoots anymore?” she said.

Similar shifts have taken place in music, television and film. Software like Pro Tools has reduced the need for audio engineers and dedicated recording studios; A.I., some fear, may soon take the place of actual musicians. Streaming platforms typically order fewer episodes per season than the networks did in the heyday of “Friends” and “ER.” Big studios have slashed budgets, making life for production crews more financially precarious.

Typically, workers in their 40s and 50s are entering their peak earning years. But for many Gen-X creatives, compensation has remained flat or decreased, factoring in the rising cost of living. The usual rate for freelance journalists is 50 cents to $1 per word — the same as it was 25 years ago.

The precariousness has affected even those who have risen to corporate posts in the media industry. For nearly 20 years, Liza Demby managed writers in the marketing department at Nickelodeon, the children’s cable network. She started there in 2005, the year YouTube went live."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/style/gen-x-creative-work.html

archivio: https://archive.is/WeoPj

Ok, mettete che stamattina vi siete svegliati con la voglia di studiare l'algebra lineare. Ecco, questa è la risorsa che fa per voi, gratuita e online

Money quote: "A concise, beginner-friendly introduction to the core ideas of linear algebra."

https://github.com/little-book-of/linear-algebra

Insomma, l'AI per parlare con i morti. Come no.

Money quote: "The potential risks of A.I. tools for grieving are significant, not least because the companies producing them are driven by profit — incentivized to exploit desires and delusions that may be unhealthy for their users. A recent study from the University of Cambridge, for instance, evaluated the ethics of “the digital afterlife industry” and posited that these businesses may soon realize there’s even more money to be made by requiring people to pay subnoscription fees or watch advertisements in order to continue interacting with their dead loved ones’ avatars, especially after hooking them on the ability to converse. They might also have the deadbot make sponsored suggestions — like ordering a dead loved one’s favorite food via a specific delivery service."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/opinion/grief-tech-ai-optimized.html

archive: https://archive.is/1KyVo

La Silicon Valley abbraccia Trump, l’illusione collettiva si fa norma e la cultura digitale ci racconta come ci abituiamo al crollo dei sistemi. L'anteprima di Mostly Weekly 344 è online.

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/344/

Letture per la domenica

Questa è una analisi di un po' di tempo fa, ma la trovo molto utile sia per quello che dice (come misurare la bontà dei modelli di intelligenza artificiale) che per il metodo (distingue bene cose che facciamo confusione anche solo a capire che ci sono). Insomma, bravo Ben Evans.

Money quote: "Hence, the two fields where generative AI has clear, early and strong product-market fit are software development and marketing: mistakes are generally easy to see (or test for) and there aren’t necessarily wrong answers. If I ask for a few hundred words of copy about a new product or brand, there might not be a ‘wrong’ answer, and if it’s your product then you can spot the mistakes - this is still hugely useful. I always used to compare the last wave of machine learning to ‘infinite interns.’ If you have 100 interns, you can ask them to do a bunch of work, and you would need to check the results and some of the results would be bad, but that would still be much better than having to do all of the work yourself from scratch.

However, there is also a broad class of task that we would like to be able to automate, that’s boring and time consuming and can’t be done by traditional software, where the quality of the result is not a percentage, but a binary. For some tasks, the answer is not better or worse: it's right or not right."

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2025/1/the-problem-with-better-models

Filosofia o psicologia? La ricetta della felicità o il segreto contro l'infelicità?

Money quote: "A difficult truth about being human is that our brains aren’t ‘wired’ to make us feel content, or even to intuit what’s most likely to bring us contentment. However, as Laurie Santos, professor of psychology at Yale, explains in this short video for The Well, this doesn’t mean we’re doomed to spend our lives churning away on the hedonic treadmill. Drawing on relevant research, she highlights the wide gap between what many people believe will make them happy – improvements to their finances and social status – and what’s actually been shown to increase happiness over time – being ‘other-oriented’, practising gratitude, and moving one’s body. Further, Santos lays out a comprehensive, data-backed plan for readjusting one’s sails to better navigate these ‘evolutionary biases’."

https://psyche.co/videos/were-naturally-bad-at-predicting-what-will-make-us-happy-heres-how-to-adjust

Si avvicina la stagione dei vaccini (antinfluenzali, covid). Negli Usa, dove si vaccina molta più gente che da noi (perché sono molti di più) adesso girano articoli che spiegano come prepararsi a questi vaccini: cosa bere e mangiare prima e dopo.

Money quote: "One of the best ways to "feed" your immune system is to lean into more anti-inflammatory foods. Beyond acting as part of your immunity Rx, this will also help reduce inflammation in the body pre- and post- shot, Ehsani says. Over time, following an anti-inflammatory diet can help reduce your risk for other chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes, too. Anti-inflammatory foods may also help decrease feelings of fatigue and possibly reduce your risk for headaches.3

Our anti-inflammatory comfort food meal plan is packed with fresh fruits and vegetables, healthy fats like fish and nuts, hearty whole grains and protein-packed beans, lentils and more. The comfort food factor will help calm any pre-shot stress, and the cozy recipes are ideal to savor as temperatures begin to dip."

https://www.eatingwell.com/what-to-eat-and-drink-before-and-after-the-flu-shot-11815468