Per le nuove generazioni: la storia di Calvin e Hobbes e il prezzo che il loro creatore, Bill Watterson, ha pagato per mantenere la propria integrità.

Money quote: "This is how he likes it. The simpler things are, the more control he has over the work — which is the hill on which he’ll die and take everyone with him if he has to. For Watterson, it’s a question of maintaining artistic integrity. He derives an enormous amount of pride from the fact that he can say, “I write every word, draw every line, color every Sunday strip, and paint every book illustration myself.” The strip is a “one-man operation” because he’s convinced it’s the only way to preserve the integrity of his craft.

For Watterson, craft has never been a side dish to the main course. It’s inextricable from the truths he wants to express and the meaning he hopes his work might have for its readers. It’s his belief that half a century ago, the best comics were more than amusing to look at; they were beautiful and undoubtedly counted as capital-A Art. Here in the mid-nineties, he “can’t think of a single strip today that comes close to that standard of craftsmanship”."

https://therepublicofletters.substack.com/p/calvin-and-hobbes-and-the-price-of

Alla fine, tutto torna.

Money quote: "arry and Sergey’s 2004 letter to investors said “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” However, laying off 12,000 workers, despite having a $114B war chest, $60B in 2022 profit and growing revenue[1], was a conventional act of a company complying with minority investor demands and copying other companies, even down to their PR wording.

I was one of the workers laid off."

https://david.newgas.net/my-google-epitaph/

L'esplosione dei datacenter in Lombardia

Money quote: "Un data center, infatti, è un’infrastruttura digitale ma anche un prodotto immobiliare. Può diventare redditizio per società che fanno da “veicolo”, cioè comprano terreni, istruiscono la pratica urbanistica con i comuni e poi rivendono ad altre società del digitale prima ancora della costruzione. L’obiettivo è realizzare guadagni sulla mediazione. È un fenomeno che non può essere definito speculativo in senso stretto, ma è confermato dagli studiosi e dagli amministratori locali sentiti per questo articolo."

https://www.ilpost.it/2026/07/05/data-center-espansione-italia/

Arriva Mostly Weekly 386. Le lingue non muoiono da sole: qualcuno le rende inutili. E poi: gli agenti AI imparano a barare, i Bronzi di Riace, la città-spugna di Carlo Ratti, l'open source nell'era del vibe coding e i data center nello spazio. Tanta roba

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/386/

Letture per la domenica

Un articolo che è semplicemente geniale (ma dopotutto è Paul Graham: il Gorgia di Lentini dei nostri giorni)

Money quote: "Starting a successful startup is the most common way to become a billionaire, so in effect I've spent the last 21 years training people to become billionaires. So far about 30 of them have, but there are many more in the pipeline.

So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible.

She wasn't saying, of course, that it's impossible to become a billionaire. Obviously that's possible. Nor was she talking about the distinction between income and capital gains. She wasn't making a point about accounting. What she meant was that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way."

https://paulgraham.com/earn.html

Fare impresa in Italia si dice sempre che è problematico fra le altre cose per via dei costi e della lentezza burocratica. E in Germania?

Money quote: "I started founding my second company in Germany in late January. It is now late June.

In that time, the state, two courts, a notary, a law firm, a tax firm, and software vendors have all found a way to bill me. Every single one of them, on time.

I have spent more than 9,600 euros to start a company: a little over 7,600 in fees and bills, plus 2,000 in share capital frozen in an account I am not allowed to touch. And after five months, here is what I have to show for it:

I have not been able to send a single invoice of my own.

Not one."

https://paolino.me/founding-a-company-in-germany/

Film da vedere gratuitamente su YouTube. Nove, per la precisione.

Money quote: "They say creativity flourishes in the gaps between resources, which might explain how one comes to type “full movie free” into the YouTube search bar in the first place. Once there though, you’ll find the same can be said for the goldmine (slash cesspit) of a movie archive this summons. Parading a motley crew of low-budget stoner spoofs, rogue 80s naval movies, and wayward sci-fi blockbusters – the sort Morgan Freeman would prefer to forget – YouTube’s listing of costless flicks is unmatched.

In the spirit of “nothing worth having comes easy”, there’s a graft involved: sifting through clickbait, realising the movie you’ve pressed play on is a well-known title coined something elusive to evade copyright infringement. All that said, it’s part of the ride. With less pop-ups than pirate websites and far more cheap thrills."

https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/70466/1/best-films-movies-you-can-watch-on-youtube-for-free

Spider-Man: Brand New Day, la recensione - la mia recensione per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/07/spider-man-brand-new-day-recensione-film-marvel/

Poul Anderson coltivava mondi di fantascienza - il mio racconto su Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/07/poul-anderson-fantascienza/

I soldi che chi vende le AI sta facendo oppure no (spoiler alert: non li sta facendo)

Money quote: "TRACKING THE SPEND AND REVENUE OF FRONTIER AI COMPANIES (JULY 2026)."

https://isaiprofitable.com

Numero speciale Mostly Weekly 387 "L'oroscopo delle generazioni". Come ogni oroscopo, fa danni: un viaggio tra Steve Jobs, Beppe Grillo, il Drugo e Harry Potter per arrivare al motivo per cui la mia generazione non sopporta più quella dopo

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/387/

Lettura per la domenica

La storia agrodolce di un uomo che ripara i guard-rail negli Usa raccontata dal New Yorker.

Money quote: "Melissa remembers watching Hannah dress up for a party on Halloween in 2016. She was going as an obscure character from a live-action role-playing game. Hannah had told her parents that the party was in Athens, and at first they had assumed she meant Athens, Tennessee, about forty minutes away. But the party was actually in Athens, Georgia: a four-hour drive. That night, Hannah and a friend set out in Hannah’s Volvo S80, a car her father had picked because it had a good safety rating. “I remember it like a snapshot,” Melissa told me. “Hannah putting on red lipstick and a white shirt, looking in the mirror across the hall. She was super chipper. It was a singsongy goodbye.”"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/07/27/one-mans-quest-to-fix-every-deadly-guardrail

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

Nel dubbio su come i giornali italiani avessero tutti quanti tirato fuori gli spiegoni sui pirocumuli francesi, ecco uno degli originali dai quali i nostri epigoni tutti discendono

Money quote: "A huge fire in southwest France has generated the country's first recorded pyrocumulonimbus fire cloud.

Such clouds can only be seen during huge wildfires, and are often reported in Canada during wildfire season, most recently during the Boston Bar fire in B.C.

Here's how these special clouds form and how they can make wildfires worse."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/pyrocumulonimbus-explainer-9.7287545

Il mondo del design si interroga su come fare il suo lavoro nell'epoca delle AI. Ci sono sistemi per inquadrare il problema.

Money quote: "In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman described two modes of thought. System 1 is quick, intuitive and heavily shaped by past experience. System 2 is slower and more deliberate: stop, examine the problem, consider the evidence, then decide."

https://andybudd.com/archives/2026/07/designing-fast-and-slow

Apple ha fatto partire una nuova strategia di vendita degli iPhone con la formula del noleggio, pensata per contrastare l'esplosione dei prezz (in pratica pagandolo a rate e non avendone il possesso sembra di fare un affarone). Secondo Wired è una cattiva idea.

Aggiuno che, se devo giudicare Klarna dalla cavolo di terribile app per tenere le tessere del supermercato, si meriterebbero di essere chiusi stasera stessa.

Money quote: "Apple Upgrade is a partnership with the financial company Klarna, known for its buy-now, pay-later services. If you sign up, you can pay a monthly fee to get a brand-new device. After a year or 24 months, you can keep paying the monthly fee but swap the hardware for something new. If you want something sooner, there’s a fee to swap devices before the 12-month mark."

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-products-are-all-just-subscription-services-now/

archivio: https://archive.is/jHHEm

I miei consigli: 5 libri (e mezzo) di fantascienza da leggere questa estate - Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/08/libri-fantascienza-estate-2026-leggere/

Una rivista amatoriale, Northern Earth, racconta le storie, be', del Nord. Affrontando i temi (strutture megalitiche, per esempio) che lentamente percolano nell'immaginario, creando in ultima analisi delle strane percezioni del mondo. Almeno, così sembra.

Money quote: "The question of why megalithic structures are situated where they are is an area of research that is developing and is open to more detailed examination. The surrounding landscape of each megalithic structure is obviously its immediate context. There, a trained or sensitive eye can find evidence for the builders’ concerns and decisions. Very often the local horizon is combined with sunrise and sunset events, weaving the circle’s structure into the landscape and the heavens. This article will demonstrate that the local topographies of two megalithic structures on each side of the Irish Sea were extended at scale as part of a cohesive network of sites aimed at linking widely spread communities."

https://northernearth.co.uk/near-and-far-horizons-megalithic-networks-across-the-irish-sea/

Ma quali vacanze! Ecco Mostly Weekly 388: le parole, le lingue e le macchine; dalla mia tastiera che mette virgole all'AI che scrive le leggi, passando per l'esperanto, mezzo milione di galassie e Raymond Chandler

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/388/

Letture per la domenica

Forse l'interlocutore tra i più lucidi, in questo momento, per inquadrare il tema dell'intelligenza artificiale: padre Paolo Benanti.

Money quote: "«Chi controlla il software controlla tutto», osserva Benanti. È il potere della software-defined reality, della realtà definita dal software. Per spiegare quanto questo tema riguardi la vita quotidiana, il professore di Etica della tecnologia alla Luiss Guido Carli, a Roma, e alla Seattle University, negli States, ricorre a un’altra immagine. «Se domani volete entrare all’aeroporto di Fiumicino con un’arma, non potete farlo. Con l’Intelligenza artificiale, invece, potenzialmente sì. Con tre righe di codice si potrebbe trasformare perfino uno smartphone in un’arma, modificando il funzionamento della batteria fino a provocarne l’incendio»."

https://www.vita.it/padre-benanti-intelligenza-artificiale-contro-i-nuovi-algoritmi-del-potere-serve-una-governance-condivisa/

Argomento scivoloso: le bibite di Gesù

Money quote: "It is notable that while Christ has apparently been putting energy drinks on people’s hearts lately, he has not been putting it on many of their hearts to donate part of the proceeds to feeding the poor. Apparently, the main mission here is brand awareness.

Unfortunately, after trying the Yahweh energy drink, I don’t feel especially compelled to convert. If the goal is evangelism, Blessed Berry, with its heavy, medicinal notes, may not be the strongest missionary. In fact, the aftertaste lingered with some insistence, like Jehovah’s Witnesses evangelizing at your door even after you told them you were agnostic.

If you want a better-tasting first Christian energy drink, I recommend Preachin’ Peach from Agape."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/04/jesus-christian-energy-drink

Un ragionamento sul "nostos", l'idea del ritorno, quello omerico, bellamente mischiato alla "saudade" per tenere assieme un improbabile percorso sulla nostalgia della gioventù. Potenza del marketing dell'Odissea.

Money quote: "Because English has only a few words for nostalgia-adjacent emotions — like heartache, homesickness, or sorrow — English speakers tend to grasp thirstily for what other languages have to say. And other languages certainly seem to have richer accounts of a complex emotion.

In Portuguese, you have “saudade,” which is a deep, melancholic longing for something or someone now lost. The Germans have “Sehnsucht” for that visceral ache that comes on when you yearn for the past, or something lost. In Welsh, “Hiraeth” is a more geographical kind of nostalgia that pines for a certain land and home country. And, of course, you have the Japanese. That sense of drifting pathos for a world that’s left behind is very Japanese. And you’ll find a cottage-industry obsession with the concept of “mono no aware,” or “the pathos of things.”"

https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/how-the-wrong-kind-of-nostalgia-can-endanger-a-society/