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Mostly, I Write
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Storie e pensieri suoi e di altri, raccolti da Antonio Dini http://www.antoniodini.com
Per contatti su Telegram: @antoniodini
Per iscriversi alla newsletter Mostly Weekly: https://tinyletter.com/MostlyIWrite
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La tesi di laurea di Italo Calvino? Su Joseph Conrad.

Money quote: "Nel suo lavoro giovanile Calvino, dopo essere partito dagli studi di Emilio Cecchi sullo scrittore anglo-polacco (in Scrittori inglesi e americani), giunge poi a valutazioni critiche del tutto personali. Cecchi, ad esempio, aveva sottovalutato Robert Louis Stevenson, giudicandolo leggero rispetto alla profondità del pensiero di Conrad. Calvino invece esalta la fluidità e la capacità evocativa di Stevenson e, dopo averlo accostato a Conrad per qualità letteraria, contrappone la nitida linearità del primo a certe disarmonie della macchina narrativa conradiana. Nella tesi, nonostante l’evidente e spesso esplicita ammirazione per lo scrittore, Calvino vuole comunque perseguire l’obiettività e il giusto distacco propri del lavoro di ricerca e critica letteraria."

https://www.doppiozero.com/calvino-legge-conrad
Il creatore del world wide web, Tim Berners Lee, nel tempo aveva provato a far evolvere la sua creatura, ma è stato superato da destra e da sinistra. Solo che l’uomo ha idee abbastanza chiare su come non dovrebbe essere la parte abitata della rete, e sta cercando di fare in modo che torni a essere aperta a tutti.

Money quote: "Part memoir, part manifesto, Berners-Lee's chirpy book *This Is For Everyone*is both an engaging history of the origins and evolution of the web and an ingenious road map for how we can reclaim control over our digital lives. His big idea, which has now become his latest personal obsession, is to restore data sovereignty to every individual by redesigning the web. To that end, he has launched a new protocol and founded a start-up to help return ownership of data to users"

https://www.ft.com/content/13e4fad3-9fa1-4534-b84e-aafed97ae073

archivio: https://archive.is/yOoAh
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Il web semantico e la ricerca semantica. Un tuffo nel passato?

Money quote: "Semantic search addresses the problem by using techniques that model relationships between words, concepts, and contexts. Instead of treating queries as bags of keywords, it analyzes intent and contextual clues. For instance, modern approaches use embeddings (vector representations of text) to map words or phrases into a mathematical space where similar meanings are positioned closer together. A model trained on large datasets might recognize that "canine" and "dog" are semantically related, even if they don't share letters. Transformer-based architectures like BERT go further by evaluating entire sentences, allowing the system to disambiguate phrases like "Java developer" (programming language) versus "Java coffee" (island/coffee bean). These models can also handle paraphrases--for example, returning results for "affordable wireless earbuds" when a user searches for "cheap Bluetooth headphones.""

https://milvus.io/ai-quick-reference/what-is-the-semantic-gap-problem-and-how-does-semantic-search-address-it
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Se siete utenti Mac e siete passati a macOS 26 Tahoe (come spero abbiate fatto, perché è ottimo) ci sono alcune cose insopportabili. Ad esempio, in Safari, con il nuovo default che cambia il colore della barra in alto a seconda dello sfondo del sito che si visita. Ecco, si può disabilitare.

Money quote: "Se non gradite la colorazione mostrata nella barra dei pannelli con alcuni siti, potete disattivare questa funzionalità. Ecco come fare:

- Aprite Safari
- Selezionate dal menu “Safari” la voce “Impostazioni”
- Selezionate la sezione “Pannelli” e da qui deselezionate la voce “Mostra colore nella barra dei pannelli”."

https://www.macitynet.it/disattivare-colori-barra-pannelli-safari/

Purtroppo, il Launchpad invece è andato. Ma forse c'è ancora un po' di speranza.

https://www.macitynet.it/ripristinare-launchpad-macos-26-tahoe/
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A quanto pare vietare l'uso degli smartphone negli Usa ha un sottoprodotto interessante: fa leggere più libri agli studenti. Io comincerei a riflettere sul significato del tempo libero e del tempo occupato delle persone e di come si costruisce il loro consumo, perché mi pare che il marketing dei social media ce l'ha chiarissimo, gli educatori e i legislatori molto meno.

Money quote: "The Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky this month announced a surprising unintended consequence of a new statewide cellphone ban. In many of the district’s schools, the number of books checked out in the first few weeks of class had skyrocketed compared with last year, before the ban was instituted.

In just the first 17 days of the school year at Pleasure Ridge Park High School in Louisville, where only 17 percent of students are proficient in reading according to state assessments, the district said that “students have checked out more than 1,200 books, nearly half the total number borrowed during the entire 2024-25 school year.” At other schools in the district, Kentucky’s largest, the results are even more impressive: 40 percent of students at one high school have checked books out of the library, “double the number who borrowed books all last year.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/opinion/phone-bans-schools-kids.html

archivio https://archive.is/5lyFw
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Il giorno in cui il tasto Return è diventato Enter e altre cose carine da sapere sulle tastiere, scritte dall'irraggiungibile Marcin Wichary

Money quote: "The carriage return lever was similar to all the other mechanical functions of the typewriter, starting as simple as humanly (and inhumanly) possible. Tab added a few spaces or mechanically zipped the carriage to the next predetermined point. The Shift key moved the carriage up or the key basket down, applying its simple operation to every key equally. Shift Lock was a literal tooth holding Shift in place, placed right next to it for manufacturing convenience first, and ergonomics a distant second. It affected letters, digits, and punctuation in equal measure, in contrast to the later Caps Lock."

https://aresluna.org/the-day-return-became-enter/
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La morte è l’ultimo bug. E la Silicon Valley pensa di patcharlo. Ecco l'anteprima di Mostly Weekly 346

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/346/
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Letture per la domenica

Ho letto il primo romanzo di Woody Allen, "Che succede a Baum". Mi è piaciuto parecchio, perché è furbo, leggero, perfettamente in sintonia con l'autore e soprattutto l'idea che noi abbiamo di lui. E comunque, il primo romanzo a 89 anni! E pure bello! Wow!\

Alcune cose che comunica l'atmosfera le dice bene questa recensione del Guardian:

Money quote: "Reading What’s With Baum? is an eerie, almost unearthly experience, like being taken to some secret Narnia part of New York where a new Neil Simon play is about to open, or a record store where you can check out a Burt Bacharach LP in the listening booth, or a TV studio where you can watch a live taping of the Dick Cavett Show, with Robert Wagner, Rex Reed and Gore Vidal. Allen’s mannerisms, his themes, his comedy – and there are some very good gags here – are just the same as they ever were. In fact, this novel is more fluent, more plausible on its own terms, than any of his recent movies – though it finally collapses into perfunctory and unresolved farcical silliness in a very familiar way."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/24/whats-with-baum-by-woody-allen-review-the-film-makers-late-life-first-novel
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L'altro giorno avevo messo un articolo di. Poi, continuando a guardare il suo vecchio sito ho trovato questo che mi piace molto. Chissà se l'ha fatto automaticamente oppure a mano: l'idea di piccole cose sparse giorno per giorno con una progettualità comune che si trasformano in un prodotto più ricco.

Money quote: "This is an archive of a Twitter thread from 2016 (I since deleted my Twitter account) – unfortunately, you won’t see responses from other people. For context, this is also back when tweets were limited to 140 characters only."

https://aresluna.org/japan-design-details/
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Stiamo andando molto, molto bene. Proprio.

Money quote: "A major report on modernizing the education system in Newfoundland and Labrador is peppered with fake sources some educators say were likely fabricated by generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Released last month, the Education Accord NL final report, a 10-year roadmap for improving the province's public schools and post-secondary institutions, includes at least 15 citations for non-existent journal articles and documents."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/education-accord-nl-sources-dont-exist-1.7631364
Una donna meravigliosa, una attrice fantastica. Ma anche la prima a superare il doppio soffitto di cristallo delle donne e asiatiche nel cinema americano.

Money quote: "Wong Liu Tsong en 1905, la fille de blanchisseuse aimait traîner enfant sur les tournages angelins et surprend un jour l’actrice Mae Murray en haillons, sans comprendre que c’est un costume de film. «Mon ambition d’actrice est née à ce moment-là, disait-elle. Peut-être voulais-je lui apprendre comment une star de cinéma doit s’habiller.» Sacrée «plus belle Chinoise au monde» par le magazine Look en 1938, Wong donnait des leçons de grâce. «Ses lèvres bien formées, légèrement voluptueuses, contrastent avec le noir mélancolique de ses yeux […], seul un Van Eyck ou un Holbein pourraient la capturer sur un canevas», s’extasiait son costumier Ali Hubert. Elle aura aussi appris la difficulté d’exister dans une industrie d’avant-guerre l’assignant à l’orientalisme et aux stéréotypes – victime éplorée ou «femme dragon» traîtresse."

https://www.liberation.fr/culture/cinema/anna-may-wong-a-la-cinematheque-fee-dartifices-20250423_JNQMLZ72DNEQZHVJ4L2TTR4AKA/
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I francesi scoprono Milano (e le gite lampo, stile Ryanair)

Money quote: "Symbole de l’Italie industrielle, la capitale lombarde est aussi une ville de culture. La réouverture de la ligne de train Paris-Milan, bloquée depuis le 27 août 2023 par un éboulement, est l’occasion rêvée d’y passer un week-end d’émerveillement."

https://www.lemonde.fr/m-styles/article/2025/04/26/voyage-48-heures-a-milan_6600197_4497319.html
Che problemi volete che porti mettere in circolazine un servizio gratuito che permette a tutti di chattare con una entità camaleontica come una intelligenza artificiale generativa? Magari che la gente inizi a chattare con il detentore dei segreti dell'universo? Cosa volete mai che possa andare male?

Money quote: "Less than a year after marrying a man she had met at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kat felt tension mounting between them. It was the second marriage for both after marriages of 15-plus years and having kids, and they had pledged to go into it “completely level-headedly,” Kat says, connecting on the need for “facts and rationality” in their domestic balance. But by 2022, her husband “was using AI to compose texts to me and analyze our relationship,” the 41-year-old mom and education nonprofit worker tells Rolling Stone. Previously, he had used AI models for an expensive coding camp that he had suddenly quit without explanation — then it seemed he was on his phone all the time, asking his AI bot “philosophical questions,” trying to train it “to help him get to ‘the truth,’” Kat recalls. His obsession steadily eroded their communication as a couple."

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/
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Da Kant alla ZTL di Firenze, passando per l’Eternauta e l'Eurostar: un viaggio settimanale tra cose serie, curiose e (quasi) inutili. Mostly Weekly 347 è online

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/347/
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Da oggi, tutti artisti!

È in corso una vera e propria rivoluzione low cost della creatività: con l'ai si può fare tutto con quattro soldi e praticamente senza talenti pratici.

Money quote: "Películas de presupuestos bajos como ‘Flow’ y ‘El brutalista’ o videojuegos como ‘Clair Obscur’ compiten con grandes producciones gracias a herramientas accesibles como la IA y el ‘software’ libre"

https://elpais.com/cultura/2025-06-28/la-revolucion-creativa-low-cost-cuando-la-tecnologia-pone-el-arte-al-alcance-de-todos.html
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Letture per la domenica\
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Stili di vita. La Francia si sta innamorando delle coppie aperte.

Money quote: "S’il reste marginal, ce modèle semble tout de même prendre de l’ampleur. En 2017, seuls 1 % des interrogés se déclaraient en couple libre. Ils sont aujourd’hui 5 %. Et beaucoup plus (15 😵 à avoir déjà été concerné une fois au cours de leur vie, sans que ça ne soit toujours le cas lors de l’étude – réalisée de mars à avril 2025 (1), en partenariat avec Gleeden, un site de rencontre extraconjugal. Un chiffre qui grimpe significativement (23 😵 chez les Parisiens et Parisiennes."

https://www.liberation.fr/lifestyle/intimites/intimite-en-france-le-couple-libre-seduit-de-plus-en-plus-20250423_EOBT4CCDFJDW7CN4P3SVFPNYHU/
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Certi articoli non passano mai di moda. ChatGPT ha ribaltato completamente il sistema scolastico non solo americano. Solo, non ce ne siamo ancora resi conto.

Money quote: "Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College. ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html

archivio: https://archive.is/ofxzl
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Un meravigioso personaggio minore iraniano: il traduttore creativo Zabihollah Mansouri. Molto creativo.

Money quote: "One of the show’s characters is a translator named Zabihollah Mansouri. He appears suddenly, talks about something he calls his “philosophy of expansionism” in translation, has an awkward interaction with another character, and then vanishes, never to be seen again. The screenwriters didn’t bother to provide an introduction for him because they knew it wasn’t necessary. Most people in Iran, even those who rarely crack open a book, know who Mansouri is, though he died almost forty years ago."

https://yalereview.org/article/amir-ahmadi-arian-zabihollah-mansouri
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L'opera struggente di un solitario genio dei trasporti pubblici.

Money quote: "Albert Guillaumes Marcer

Sóc enginyer tècnic d'obres públiques, especialitzat en transports i mobilitat. Dibuixo mapes de transport públic des que tenia 5 anys. Programo com puc."

https://www.albertguillaumes.cat
Milionesimo articolo su: "L'AI può prendere il mio posto di lavoro oppure no?". Forse sì, o forse no.

Money quote: "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/BBL7C
Money quote: "How, players wondered, did the life simulation game get so lifeless? That the world of The Sims resembled its raw, offline counterpart was important to its creator, Will Wright, who saw in it a tool for real-life education. Owing to his Montessori schooling, he viewed games as “software toys” capable of imparting practical lessons. Wright envisioned a virtual dollhouse where players faced an ever-expanding set of choices, as they navigated life and its random disasters: pranks, burglaries, electrocutions, house fires, social worker assessments — even infectious guinea pig bites. Wright hoped that through these trials, players of The Sims would learn a valuable, imaginative form of problem-solving."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/magazine/the-sims-easy-mode.html

archivio: https://archive.is/Mzl5K
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