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

Il colore dell'anima? Eheheh

Money quote: "An extraordinary experiment on mice and leaves from two different plant species has uncovered direct physical evidence of an eerie 'biophoton' phenomenon ceasing on death, suggesting all living things – including humans – could literally glow with health, until we don't.

The findings might seem a little fringe at first glance. It's hard not to associate scientific investigations into biological electromagnetic emissions with debunked and paranormal claims of auras and discharges surrounding living organisms."

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-emit-a-visible-light-that-vanishes-when-we-die-says-surprising-study

Se vi interessa, una guida per fare a meno del software statunitense, forse questa dovreste evitarla perché mi sembra di una approssimazione notevole. Azzera moltissime delle conquiste di altri tipi di software e servizi, e confonde un po' tutto, facendo un minestrone che ha poco senso. Comunque, eccola qua: tenete conto che chi l'ha scritta è la persona senza grandi conoscenze tecnologiche.

Money quote: "In questo articolo metterò insieme tutto quello che ho imparato negli ultimi mesi, così da darvi un’idea di quali siano le opzioni disponibili per cominciare il vostro allontanamento dalle aziende tecnologiche statunitensi.

Prima di cominciare, voglio mettere in chiaro una cosa: questa guida è pensata per le persone che non hanno grandi conoscenze tecnologiche. Non ho intenzione di proporre alternative impossibili per chi non sa programmare, anche se ogni tanto cercherò di citare anche opzioni del genere.

Inoltre, la mia non è una lista esaustiva, ma solo una rapida panoramica delle possibilità che ho sperimentato personalmente e che ritengono valide, anche se alcune hanno piccoli svantaggi. Alla fine dell’articolo trovate altri suggerimenti, nel caso voleste approfondire la questione."

https://www.internazionale.it/notizie/paris-marx/2025/08/08/tecnologie-app-programmi-non-americani

Ha vinto il premio Nobel per la letteratura l'ungherese László Krasznahorkai

https://elpais.com/cultura/2025-10-09/premio-nobel-de-literatura.html

Stanno andando di moda gli anni Novanta. A un certo punto temo andranno di moda anche gli anni Venti del Duemila. Sigh.

Money quote: "Nostalgia Cat is not alone. Video creators throughout social media are using tools like Midjourney and DaVinci Resolve to make increasingly impressive movies. And to thousands of people who aren’t looking closely, and don’t know better because they had yet to be born in the 1990s, these nostalgia posts might as well be the genuine article.
“There’s a real curiosity about a time before phones dominating social life,” said the trend forecaster Sean Monahan. “A.I., weirdly, is a backward-looking technology,” he added. “All these large language models are ultimately composites of information from the past.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/style/ai-nostalgia-tiktok-90s-80s.html

archivio: https://archive.is/2QEEO

Tecnologia, memoria e responsabilità: tre fili che si intrecciano per raccontare un caso che continua a pesare sul presente. L’anteprima di Mostly Weekly 345 è online

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/345/

Articoli pericolosi: le ragioni contrapposte secondo le quali è meglio fare la doccia la sera o la mattina.

Money quote: "The benefits of a nighttime shower also only apply if you regularly wash your bed linen. Bacteria can survive on duvets, sheets and pillows for weeks. Dust mites also can accumulate over time, as can fungi, especially on moist areas such as your pillows. While people with a fully functioning immune system can cope with this microbial assault, up to 76% of people with severe asthma are allergic to at least one fungal species. Exposure to A. fumigatus can cause chronic lung disease in people suffering from TB or smoking-related lung disease."

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250919-is-it-better-to-shower-in-the-morning-or-at-night

Philip José Farmer, il maestro del pastiche che ha rivoluzionato la fantascienza - finalmente ho potuto raccontare la storia di uno dei miei autori preferiti di sempre su Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2025/10/philip-jose-farmer-fantascienza-libri/

Letture per la domenica

Avete presente il New Yorker? Bene, il suo stile è stato modellato per oltre un secolo da Henry W. Fowler e dal suo manuale di lingua.

Money quote: "Despite the manual’s exalted reputation, the magazine’s style sometimes diverged from its prenoscriptions. In spelling, Fowler favored “judgement”; The New Yorker has “judgment.” And, whereas The New Yorker’s most famous style choice is probably the diaeresis in a word like “coöperate,” Fowler was against it, preferring the clean “cooperate.” But the magazine fell in line on other matters, including doubling the “l” in “travelled” and “marvellous,” banning the word “transpire” to mean “happen,” and placing a comma after the penultimate item in a series. (Fowler wanted a comma after the final item as well, giving the example “Every man, woman, & child, was killed.” Neither The New Yorker nor, as far as I know, any other publication followed him there.)"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/29/the-autocrat-of-english-usage

archivio: https://archive.is/gkkhp