Ogni tanto torna fuori, anche perché la gente continua a commentare la recensione che la (ora ex) moglie di Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie, ha scritto di un libro che raccontava la storia di Amazon, polverizzandolo

Money quote: "One of the biggest challenges in non-fiction writing is the risk that a truthfully balanced narration of the facts will be boring, and this presents an author with some difficult choices. It may be that another telling of the Amazon story—for example, that people at Amazon have no secret agenda they’ve been able to keep hidden for 19 years, really do believe in the mission they keep repeating, and are working hard and of their own free will to realize it —would strike readers as less exciting than the version offered here. I sympathize with this challenge. But when an author plans to market a book as non-fiction, he is obliged to find a suspenseful story arc that doesn’t rely on mischaracterizing or avoiding important parts of the truth. I am grateful this is the era of the Internet, when characters in non-fiction can step out of books, as Jonathan Leblang and Rick Dalzell have done, and speak for themselves. Ideally, authors are careful to ensure people know whether what they are reading is history or an entertaining fictionalization. Hollywood often uses a more honest label: “a story based on true events.” If authors won’t admit they’ve crossed this important line, their characters can do it for them."

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2I0T26SV0ELPP/

Uno dei punti principali delle startup è avere almeno due fondatori, altrimenti gli investitori non investono. L'idea è che un neo-imprenditore da solo non ce la possa fare. E invece, c'è chi dice di sì

Money quote: "In their recent working paper "Sole Survivors: Solo Ventures Versus Founding Teams," Greenberg and Mollick show that “companies started by solo founders survive longer than those started by teams.”"

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/2-founders-are-not-always-better-1

Un tizio che si occupa della parte più laboriosa degli orari e biglietti dei treni: la parte internazionale

Money quote: "Train travel is a more rewarding, low-stress alternative to flying, which brings us closer to the countries we visit and reduces our contribution to climate change. It's time to rediscover the pleasure, romance & adventure of travel by train or ship. This site explains how to travel comfortably & affordably by train or ferry where you might think air was now the only option. For help with train travel, ask the Man in Seat 61"

https://www.seat61.com/

Il vero miracolo della maternità a quanto pare è il papà...

However, there is one aspect of human behaviour that is unique to us but is rarely the focus of these discussions. So necessary is this trait to the survival of our species that it is underpinned by an extensive, interrelated web of biological, psychological and behavioural systems that evolved over the past half a million years. Yet, until 10 years ago, we had neglected to try to understand this trait, due to the misguided assumption that it was of no significance – indeed, that it was dispensable. This trait is human fatherhood, and the fact that it doesn’t immediately spring to mind is symptomatic of the overwhelming neglect of this key figure in our society."

https://aeon.co/essays/the-devotion-of-the-human-dad-separates-us-from-other-apes

Alla fine, una certezza rimane: anche la pubblica amministrazione americana è una capra a gestire i dati della gente

Money quote: "“The total number and current status of all children separated from their parents by [the Department of Homeland Security] and referred to ORR’s care is unknown,” the report reads. It lists the “lack of an existing, integrated data system to track separated families” as a central obstacle to reunification."

https://www.wired.com/story/oig-report-trump-separated-children-border/

Ecco a voi il numero di questa domenica di Mostly Weekly (l’email segue tra qualche ora)

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/145/

Pensiamo ai pulsanti che vogliamo e non vogliamo premere. Che dobbiamo e non dobbiamo premere. Pensiamo alla società moderna.

Money quote: "This distaste for buttons, combined with a nostalgia for a pre-button past and a belief that action involved directed contact with the world, continued to bubble up in popular discourse well into the 1900s. In the story The ‘Push-the-Button Man’ (1924) by Frank Dorrance Hopley, the protagonist, Carey, begins by being enamoured with the prospect of sitting behind a desk and pushing buttons all day to command others to do his work, but ultimately he has to excise buttons from his life to reclaim it through a dramatic act of anti-button sabotage"

https://aeon.co/essays/what-would-a-world-without-pushbuttons-look-like

Camminare fa bene, molto molto bene. Parola di James Joyce (tra gli altri).

Money quote: "What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them."

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/walking-helps-us-think

L'ultima storia del Professionista - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

https://www.fumettologica.it/2021/12/obiettivo-sconosciuto-segretissimo-di-marino/

Quello della circoncisione è un tema sensibile, se mi permettete il gioco di parole. È legato a pratiche religiose e supposte pratiche igieniche ma è sostanzialmente una forma di mutilazione rituale dei genitali maschili dettata dalla superstizione e dal pregiudizio. La rappresentazione simbolica (il patto di Abramo, se si guardano le ragioni della mutilazione in Occidente) non è un modo valido per nobilitare una pratica dettata dalla superstizione religiosa.

È fede? No, è mutilazione di neonati (e non solo neonati) pura e semplice. Tanto che l'altra corrente che cerca di dare un fondamento giustificatorio alla circoncisione, soprattutto negli Usa, è un igienismo altrettanto abietto.

Quella che segue è una storia di protesta all'interno del solco dell'ortodossia (il New Yorker non è esattamente un giornale di militanza comunista) che cerca di far emergere la contraddizione della piccola mutilazione genitale maschile ritualizzata. Non ci riesce, ma è un buon tentativo.

Money quote: "Most poorly performed circumcisions stem from two misjudgments on the part of the circumciser: either too much or too little foreskin is removed. In my case, it was too little (and, one might add, given that I was seven years old instead of the eight days prescribed by the Torah, too late). After the infection had subsided, the shaft of my penis was crowded by a skyline of redundant foreskin that included, on the underside, a thick attachment of skin stretching from the head to the shaft of the genital, a result of improper healing that is called a skin bridge. A small gap could be seen between this skin bridge and the penis proper. In texture and appearance, the bridge reminded me of the Polly-O mozzarella string cheese that got packed in the lunchboxes of my generation. It produced no pain on its own after the infection had died down and the two years of difficult urination were over, but the strangeness of my penile appearance—and the manner in which it was brought about—became lodged in my consciousness."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/11/a-botched-circumcision-and-its-aftermath

David Pogue, che è uno dei più famosi giornalisti tech americani (anche se con una traiettoria molto, molto particolare) si scopre che da grande voleva fare il compositore. Ed è finito a dare lezioni di computer a Stephen Sondheim in cambio di un po' di tempo per farsi rivedere il lavoro dal maestro.

Money quote: "Finally, Sondheim lived by the adage, "Be willing to kill your darlings." That means, if you have a line, or a song, or even an entire show that's not working, you've gotta be willing to throw it out, no matter how much you love it."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lessons-from-stephen-sondheim-the-teacher/

Sono ipnotizzato dal video di questo pesce che ha la testa completamente trasparente e gli occhi dentro, per poter vedere da più parti grazie anche alla bioluminescenza. Favoloso e stranissimo.

Money quote: "Thousands of feet beneath the surface of Monterey Bay off California, scientists recently captured footage of a fish with a bulbous, translucent head and green orb-like eyes that peer out through its forehead."

https://lifeboat.com/blog/2021/12/bizarre-transparent-fish-that-sees-through-its-own-head-captured-in-rare-footage

"Spider-Man: No Way Home", la mia recensione per Fumettologica con polemica finale con chi organizza le anteprime per la stampa

https://www.fumettologica.it/2021/12/spider-man-no-way-home-recensione-film/

Vertical Walking è una singolare ma intrigante soluzione di mobilità verticale per persone anziane o parzialmente disabili.

Money quote: "Vertical Walking is a new system to move yourself between floors in a building. By exploiting the potential of the human body and materials, only a fraction of effort is required, compared to taking stairs. No external energy is needed.

Following presentation at the Venice Architecture Biennale, various trials with people like Jannie (see video), and research with medics and academics, Vertical Walking is developing as a solution that can help a growing population of people to live independently at home, as well as to provide healthy exercise and a great sense of pleasure and quality of life."

https://www.vertiwalk.com/

"Diabolik" è un film lento ma ben riuscito - la mia recensione per Fumettologica

https://www.fumettologica.it/2021/12/diabolik-film-recensione/

Il popolo più ubriacone di tutti? È quello australiano. Brutto record

Money quote: "The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education chief executive, Caterina Giorgi, said the statistics were “concerning”, and that a clear picture of the impact of harmful alcohol use during the pandemic was only just emerging.

“Australia tops the world in both the number of times people report getting drunk and in seeking emergency medical treatment for alcohol … Both of those indicators suggest people are drinking at fairly risky levels,” she said."

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/03/risky-levels-australia-is-the-drunkest-country-in-the-world-new-survey-finds

Come avrete notato nel mio canale e nella mia newsletter non ci sono link con referral. C'è una sola cosa però che raccomando, mettendoci la faccia: il backup cloud del mio computer fatto con BackBlaze. Sempre quello: ve lo ripropongo adesso, tra Natale che arriva e la fine dell'anno che seguirà tra poco (è il momento ideale per occuparsi di queste cose, no?) perché c'è una promozione notevole: tre anziché uno!

BackBlaze è a pagamento ma con il mio referral di solito avete un mese di prova gratuito e poi, se vi abbonate, uno anche io. In questo caso invece se vi abbonate vi danno altri due mesi gratuiti, come me. Cioè lo usate gratuitamente per tre mesi.

Il backup serve e BackBlaze è ottimo. Vivamente consigliato! Ripeto, ci metto la faccia e me lo pago da anni di tasca mia con convinzione.

https://secure.backblaze.com/r/01ti3i

Questo articolo descrive l'uso che i francesi fanno del termine "anglosassone", che è lo stesso che facciamo noi italiani (e anche gli spagnoli, per quanto ne so). Cioè un uso profondamente improprio e comunque decisamente difficile da capire, dal punto di vista di americani, britannici, canadesi e australiani.

Money quote: "All of this can sound mildly unsettling to the untrained ear. For a start, there are the troubling racial and ethnic overtones of the term Anglo-Saxon – which, as we will see, are a vital part of the word’s history through the 19th and 20th century. Then there is the simple fact that the starkly different cultures included under the umbrella French term of Anglo-Saxon do not consider themselves as mutually compatible. The British and Americans have not seen themselves within the same broad cultural sphere for several centuries, and the unravelling of the Commonwealth in the 1960s and ’70s has severed the privileged connection that Canadians and Australians had with the British ‘motherland’. More than ever in the 21st century, the French term Anglo-Saxon seems ill-suited to describe the peoples and places it purports to describe."

https://aeon.co/essays/the-anglo-saxon-is-not-american-or-british-but-a-french-alter-ego

Alcuni predatori si cibano di carogne, dopo averle fatte cadere in trappole dove muoiono lentamente e dolorosamente per le ferite, le emorragie interne che li dissanguano. In confronto ai social ai quali abbiamo dato le chiavi per guidare la nostra società, questi predatori sono modelli di virtù e di umanità.

Money quote: "TikTok is flooding teen users with videos of rapid-weight-loss competitions and ways to purge food that health professionals say contribute to a wave of eating-disorder cases spreading across the country.

A Wall Street Journal investigation involving the creation of a dozen automated accounts on TikTok, registered as 13-year-olds, found that the popular video-sharing app’s algorithm served them tens of thousands of weight-loss videos within a few weeks of joining the platform."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tiktok-inundates-teens-with-eating-disorder-videos-11639754848?mod=djemalertNEWS

Continuo a chiedermi come diavolo sia possibile lavorare per un'azienda del genere (TikTok, Facebook, Google) e non sentirsi moralmente responsabili.

Chi cerca di entrare nella carriera accademica spesso non ce la fa e passa uno o due decenni di stenti, prima di rotolare definitivamente fuori. Pensate sia un malessere solo italiano, di un Paese corporativo e anti-meritocratico? Beh, fatevi un giro tra i precari dell'università americana, allora.

Money quote: "I was part of what the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) calls, “an army of temps.” I have a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from New York University, a novel-in-progress, an EBT card, and Medicaid. According to the AFT labor union’s 2020 report, a quarter of adjunct faculty members surveyed depend on public assistance, 40 percent struggle to pay for basic household expenses, and one-third earned less than $25,000, putting them below the federal poverty line for a family of four. As colleges and universities increasingly rely on adjuncts—with nearly two thirds of faculty members off the tenure track, according to a 2018 analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education—the vast majority of higher education instructors face alarming economic insecurity."

https://www.elle.com/life-love/a38424968/the-secret-lives-of-adjunct-professors/

L’uscita del film di “Diabolik” ci da l’occasione di parlare di quel cult che è la pellicola degli anni Sessanta diretta da Mario Bava:

https://www.fumettologica.it/2021/12/diabolik-mario-bava-film/