Alex Bertani dal 2017 è il direttore di Topolino e lo sta cambiando alla grande. Se volete rimettervi in pari (e dovete farlo) quest'articolo scritto da Alberto Brambilla su Fumettologica è semplicemente fondamentale. Topolino sta tornando il giornale a fumetti da leggere.

Money quote: "L’intervento più importante, e riuscito, sui personaggi classici di Topolino durante i primi anni di direzione Bertani riguarda i nipotini di Paperino. Qui, Quo e Qua sono sempre stati, se non indistinguibili, almeno intercambiabili. Nelle storie d’epoca parlavano addirittura all’unisono; in quelle più moderne non più, ma, a parte rarissimi casi, facevano sempre tutto in tre. La maggior parte dei lettori (ma anche degli autori) fino a pochi anni fa non avrebbe nemmeno saputo abbinare i nomi ai colori dei cappelli. Dopo che l’avevano fatto gli sceneggiatori della nuova serie delle Ducktales nel 2017, era tempo di differenziare i nipotini anche nei fumetti, anche se in modo indipendente e diverso."

https://www.fumettologica.it/2022/02/topolino-alex-bertani/

Un economista sostiene che sia possibile tornare a un’analisi di quello che succede senza usare la matematica. Perché a guidare gli eventi è l’economia della comunicazione (gossip, fake news, siti di autoaiuto). L’unico problema è che a dirlo è il premio Nobel Robert Shiller.

Money quote: “Now, Shiller is upsetting the ceasefire with his new thesis. “We are developing a new side of economics,” says Dennis Snower, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany, who collaborates with Shiller. “The standard statistical analyses are no longer valid. They assume that we know the probabilities with which everything will occur. In reality, we are almost never in that position.””

https://marker.medium.com/robert-shiller-says-economics-needs-to-go-viral-to-save-itself-f157eceb4c7d

Il sesso, se fatto bene e con una certa lenta sicurezza, fa molto bene. Così sostengono almeno gli antichi.

Money quote: " A poem in those texts, The Union of Yin and Yang, may be the first sex manual the world has preserved. Throughout these works, colourful metaphors describe the unhurried and careful approach to the joys of sexual intercourse. The emphasis was on exceedingly slow and gentle movements, beginning with caressing what seem to be the mysterious energy meridians within the body."

https://aeon.co/essays/lovemaking-for-longevity-a-recipe-from-tokyos-imperial-archives

Il metaverso di Meta/Facebook/Oculus/Quest parte subito con il piede sbagliato.

Money quote: "Some apps in the virtual-reality metaverse are "dangerous by design", the NSPCC has warned in response to a BBC News investigation.

A researcher posing as a 13-year-old girl witnessed grooming, sexual material, racist insults and a rape threat in the virtual-reality world.

The children's charity said it was "shocked and angry" at the findings."

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60415317

È consolante sapere che c'è gente che sta messa molto peggio di te. Ti fa sentire normale.

Money quote: "These days, each time Gaudet makes her weekly rounds, she returns with more than 2,000 books but now she has "no place to put them." In late December, she posted on her store's Facebook page searching for a solution. She has a tentative plan to build a small storage building, but there are limits to what she can afford. "Nobody gets rich running a bookstore," she said. "You do it because you love books.""

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/cornwall-200-000-books-barn-red-cart-books-1.6314275

Nella guerra economica con la Cina gli Usa stanno facendo un grosso errore. Hanno perso di vista l'obiettivo finale.

Money quote: "Unfortunately, in its competition with China, the U.S. is protecting its pots and recipes while putting legal pressure on the cheesecake experts within its own borders—thereby limiting the country’s ability to create new intellectual property. This is a worrisome sign that U.S. authorities are failing to understand something important: The most useful technology is not intellectual property in the form of written documents, but the unwritten knowledge in people’s heads."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/china-initiative-intellectual-property-theft/621058/

Stevie Nicks è viva e lotta assieme a noi. La musicista, una delle anime dei Fleetwood Mac (che è uno dei miei gruppi preferiti, tra parentesi) è attiva più che mai: è diventata un simbolo per molte giovani donne. E non solo. Bella intervista.

Money quote: "In the years since, Nicks’s appeal among younger generations has only grown. On TikTok, her songs provide a soundtrack to viral videos and fans pay tribute to her witchy aesthetic. Artists such as Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Rey have asked her to lend her voice to their songs, and she’s become “fairy godmother” to a wide circle of younger artists. For listeners, too, she has always acted as a kind of spiritual guide. In her music, loss is simultaneously earth-shattering and ordinary. Heartbreak is survivable, and possibly a key to self-knowledge. Many of her songs take place at night, in dreams or visions, “somewhere out in the back of your mind.” Her narrator frequently asks questions of herself and of some higher power, as if in constant conversation with her own intuition. When I said “Just be Stevie Nicks,” I was thinking of how her work had taught me to see such sensitivity as a source of strength. Nicks’s music is what you listen to when you need help listening to yourself."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/stevie-nicks-tavi-gevinson-conversation

La guerra, la disinformazione e i social marci.

Money quote: "Richards said the ease with which these videos can be created is an issue.

“I think that their infrastructure — the literal design of the platform — is part of the problem. It is amplifying fear and misinformation,” Richards said. “TikTok’s infrastructure is structurally incompatible with the moment.”"

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/war-ukraine-sparks-new-wave-misinformation-rcna17779

Il grande scandalo dell'abbigliamento: ecco cosa succede ai vestiti che compriamo online e poi restituiamo. E tra parentesi, sono tantissimi. Sempre di più.

Money quote: "“The fashion industry, for a long time, has been able to hide from the right hand what the left hand is doing,” said Elizabeth Shobert, vice president of marketing and digital strategy at e-commerce analytics firm StyleSage, referring to the asynchronous processes of sales and returns. “The pileup in the supply chain in the last six months or so has really brought this to light.”"

https://restofworld.org/2022/shein-online-shopping-returns-what-happens/

Arriva la primavera. Stagione in cui si preparano le tasse. Per i freelance, negli Usa (paese fiscalmente civile visto che uno può prepararsi le tasse da solo a casa sua, basta leggere le istruzioni, non serve una laurea in economia e commercio e un esame di stato), c'è questo nuovo software con AI che lo attacchi ai tuoi conti correnti e carte di credito, lui ravana dentro tutto e poi ti tira fuori tutte le spese che puoi scaricare. Meglio di quanto tu non sapessi fare. Dal cloud.

Quando la versione italiana?

Money quote: "Truffle finds business deductions in your personal spending history. The average freelancer finds $12,931 of business deductions on Truffle."

https://www.gotruffle.com

"The Batman" è un filmone - la mia recensione per Fumettologica

https://www.fumettologica.it/2022/03/the-batman-recensione-film/

Ancora non c'era la pandemia ma già c'era la grande fuga da Facebook (negli Usa: poi arriverà anche da noi, ricordatevelo)

Money quote: "All the bad press about Facebook might be catching up to the company. New numbers from Edison Research show an an estimated 15 million fewer users in the United States compared to 2017. The biggest drop is in the very desirable 12- to 34-year-old group. Marketplace Tech got a first look at Edison's latest social media research. It revealed almost 80 percent of people in the U.S. are posting, tweeting or snapping, but fewer are going to Facebook."

https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/06/tech/exclusive-look-numbers-showing-users-leaving-facebook-by-the-millions

Un giochino in 3D fatto con la grafica Ascii

https://yeahpython.github.io/game/game.html

Ci sono cose da sapere sulle batterie. Molte cose. Soprattutto da un punto di vista industriale. Perché, senza batterie, niente auto elettriche...

Money quote: "Automakers and policy makers are increasingly voicing their belief that the passenger vehicle of the future will be powered (partially or fully) by electricity. There remains, however, a lack of consensus on the timing and speed of the transition, in large part due to differing opinions on current and future lithium-ion battery costs and performance. The rise of the electric vehicle is also forcing automakers to reconsider their role in the automotive supply chain, for example by bringing more battery expertise in-house. This is counter to one of the big trends over the last 30 years whereby automakers divested their supply chain arms. Removing misconceptions around lithium-ion batteries is becoming more important than ever."

https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/

In lingua inglese c'è gente che sta cercando di rivoluzionare le notizie, sia sul versante della produzione che del consumo. Da quest'ultimo punto di vista, questo lavoro è parecchio interessante. E temibile.

Una delle cose che mi chiedo da tempo è: ma perché la gente semplicemente non legge gli articoli e i giornalisti li scrivono, senza tante complicazioni? Magari pagandoli anche, eh

Money quote: "Instead of deploying considerable efforts to go beyond an accuracy rate of 80 or 85 percent by optimizing the Deepnews Scoring Model, we decided to build another algorithm based on an entirely different approach."

https://mondaynote.com/deepnews-ai-report-4-building-an-angle-detector-for-journalism-70874d93cfe3

Sapete una cosa? L'idea che siano i ragazzini in casa a sapere come funziona la tecnologia, mentre i genitori sono dei tecno-scemi utonti, non è mica più tanto vera.

Money quote: "It’s a common stereotype: if you need to figure out a new piece of technology, you hand it to the youngest member of the family. The media has been publishing articles about adults’ apparent tech ignorance for nearly two decades. In 2000, The Economist claimed the “family tech guru” was “far more likely to be a teenager than the father of the house.” Perhaps they should have checked with the mother, because that’s never been true in my house, where I live with my husband and sixteen-year-old kid."

https://thewalrus.ca/the-rise-of-the-tech-savvy-parent/

Opera struggente di un solitario genio ritensivo anale: tutto quel che serve agli smanettoni, o quasi.

Money quote: "This list is a collection of various materials that I use every day in my work. It contains a lot of useful information gathered in one piece.

For whom?

This collection is suitable for everyone. It is aimed towards System and Network administrators, DevOps, Pentesters and Security Researchers."

https://github.com/trimstray/the-book-of-secret-knowledge

Passeggiare per Tokyo sui Navigli di Milano - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

https://www.fumettologica.it/2022/03/botteghe-tokyo-mostra-milano/

Il mistero (buffo?) della nostra risata

Money quote: "Something that sets us apart from these ancestors and primate relatives, and should be of special interest to anthropology, is our unique propensity to laugh. Laughter is a paradox. We all know it’s good for us; we experience it as one of life’s pleasures and a form of emotional release. Yet to be able to laugh, we must somehow cut ourselves off from feelings of love, hate, fear or any other powerful emotion. The fall of a pompous fool slipping on a banana skin is the cliché of comic routines; we laugh at his misfortune because we don’t really care."

https://aeon.co/essays/does-laughter-hold-the-key-to-human-consciousness

Il cinese, grande mistero. Impararlo? Evitarlo? Soffrirlo? Temerlo? È un fascio di lingue molto ricco e articolato, estremamente espressivo (di quella espressività ruspante caratteristica delle lingue antiche, strutturalmente semplici e immediate ma anche molto colorate)

Money quote: " this article I write about how Chinese is different from Indian or European languages {Hindi, English, Kannada, Tamil, German....}, and some interesting factoids that I found out. Note that this article is for those who do not know any Chinese. If you know Chinese you will likely find many flaws in this article, which you can let me know and then I can improve."

http://thevivekpandey.github.io/posts/2019-02-02-way-of-chinese-language.html

Un po' di motivi per cui il software pagato dalle pubbliche amministrazioni - cioè con soldi pubblici - dovrebbe essere open source. Ogni tanto leggere questo tipo di cose è rinfrescante.

Money quote: "The use of open standards is not the only big benefit of moving to open source. Another is transparency. Recently it emerged that Microsoft has been gathering personal information from 300,000 government users of Microsoft Office ProPlus in the Netherlands, without permission and without documentation"

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/if-software-funded-public-source-its-code-should-be-open-source