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://antoniodini.com/iscrizione/
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Deve essere affascinante costruire il senso di una civiltà e, più in generale, di chi siamo tutti noi partendo da pochi frammenti di testo ritrovati per caso.

Money quote: “Suddenly, Shamhat and Enkidu’s marathon of love had been doubled, a discovery that The Times publicised under the racy headline ‘Ancient Sex Saga Now Twice As Epic’. But in fact, there is a deeper significance to this discovery. The difference between the episodes can now be understood, not as editorial changes, but as psychological changes that Enkidu undergoes as he becomes human. The episodes represent two stages of the same narrative arc, giving us a surprising insight into what it meant to become human in the ancient world.”

https://aeon.co/ideas/between-gods-and-animals-becoming-human-in-the-gilgamesh-epic
Questo articolo è un rebus. Vorrebbe essere un tipo di long form fatto a mo’ di “gonzo”, un po’ Gay Talese e un po’ Hunter S. Thompson. Narrazione e personalizzazione. Il giornalista è (in parte) la storia. Però è anche una specie di memoir scritto da qualcuno che evidentemente ha imparato a gestire i blocchi della narrazione (e deve aver riempito una stanza di post-it appesi a tutti i muri) ma forse non fa il suo mestiere. Una storia troppo grande, o forse inutile, chissà. Perché più che investigativo sembra long form da blogger. Però si fa leggere.

Money quote: “I first met Maria Butina at the arrivals terminal of the Orlando airport in 2015. She and Paul were sitting in the front of a large white van, which they’d rented to drive my family to a hotel outside of Disney World. They were wearing matching Mickey and Minnie Mouse hats”

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/02/224395/maria-butina-russian-spy-friend-story
A parità di ambiente di lavoro, sostiene una ricerca, essere nato ricchi aiuta e fa guadagnare e fare carriera di più. Questo in Gran Bretagna e forse anche negli Usa. In Italia non ci provano neanche a fare la ricerca

Money quote: “The result of this research is Laurison and Friedman’s new book, The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged, which shows how the customs of elite workplaces can favor those who grew up wealthier. The authors describe a series of “hidden mechanisms”—such as unwritten codes of office behavior and informal systems of professional advancement—that benefit the already affluent while disadvantaging those with working-class backgrounds.

In January, shortly before the book’s U.K. release, I interviewed Laurison, a professor at Swarthmore College, who told me that while England’s class politics do differ from those of the U.S., his and Friedman’s findings about “money, connections, and culture” broadly apply to Americans as well. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/02/class-ceiling-laurison-friedman-elite-jobs/582175/
La grande truffa attorno ad AirBnB

Money quote: “The building, on Greenwich Street, was part of a larger enterprise that made more than $20 million in revenue by unlawfully renting 130 Manhattan apartments to almost 76,000 guests through Airbnb, city officials said.

The plot was geared toward getting around city regulations that are intended to keep blocks of apartments from being turned into makeshift hotels that avoid lodging taxes and oversight.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/nyregion/airbnb-nyc-law.html
Letteratura o blog? Un racconto nella metro di New York. Buona domenica.

Money quote: “A young woman’s tragedy is the world asks too much of her and a young man’s tragedy is the world doesn’t ask enough. I shook my head in disgust. I am older than I think I should be”

https://humanparts.medium.com/i-love-trains-84380bc7f864
La "disruptive innovation", il concetto più difficile da tradurre in italiano, è stato creato da Clayton Christensen, studioso scomparso a 67 anni la scorsa settimana. La sua idea, che poi si è trasformata in una teoria, è uno dei motori della nostra epoca (nel bene e nel male).

Money quote: "The crux of Christensen’s theory is that big, successful companies that neglect potential customers at the lower end of their markets (mainframe computers, in his famous example) are ripe for disruption from smaller, more efficient, more nimble competitors that can do almost as good a job more cheaply (like personal computers). One need look no further than the biggest names in Silicon Valley to find evidence of successful disrupters, from Napster to Amazon to Uber to Airbnb and so on."

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21080578/clayton-christensen-disruptive-innovation-apple-netflix-steve-jobs