Quelli che colorano il cibo (credevate fossero colori naturali? Pensateci di nuovo)

Money quote: "IFC Solutions in Linden, New Jersey, makes both natural and artificial food coloring in “almost any desired shade,” according to the company. This variety of colors would have been tough to imagine in the mid-19th century, when the first artificial food color (purple) was produced from coal by-products. These “Color Bits” are prized by candy manufacturers because they are easy to mix into hot masses of candy but are low in moisture, which makes for a long shelf life."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/18/1013963/food-coloring-ifc-solutions-colorbits-christopher-payne/

Se avete bisogno di qualche componente per il vostro nuovo progettino di elettronica...

Money quote: "Access price, inventory, unique market intelligence and advanced analytics for all your parts."

https://www.findchips.com/

Ehi, Mostly Weekly è praticamente pronta: esce domani, come al solito

https://antoniodini.com/newsletter/

La cosa bella della scienza è che continua a modificare le scoperte che vengono fatte, arrivando ad approssimazioni crescenti della realtà. Come l'atmosfera terrestre, che si estende fino alla Luna.

Money quote: "A recent discovery based on observations by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, shows that the gaseous layer that wraps around Earth reaches up to 630 000 km away, or 50 times the diameter of our planet.

“The Moon flies through Earth’s atmosphere,” says Igor Baliukin of Russia’s Space Research Institute, lead author of the paper presenting the results."

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Earth_s_atmosphere_stretches_out_to_the_Moon_and_beyond

Se avete una macchina fotografica della Canon (una reflex EOS) ecco a voi il modo per doparla e darle più funzioni con aggiunte software open source dicono molto facili (si caricano con la SD card). È Magic Lantern.

Money quote: "Magic Lantern is a free software add-on that runs from the SD/CF card and adds a host of new features to Canon EOS cameras that weren't included from the factory by Canon"

https://www.magiclantern.fm/

Più che poeti maledetti, li definirei poeti molto ricercati

Money quote: "[I]n April, Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, will sell a notebook containing what appears to be original poetry written by Bonnie and Clyde."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/for-sale-original-poetry-by-bonnie-and-clyde

Perché l'Italia ama gli orologi e ha una notevole tradizione nel progettarli, produrli e anche nel gestirli (un sacco di executive di maison svizzere sono in realtà italiani). Questo articolo, che parla in realtà di Panerai e di Sylvester Stallone, offre una spiegazione.

Money quote: " Italians are renowned for many things but not necessarily precision. Maybe it’s because of that, rather than in spite of it, that there’s constantly been a thriving business in watchmaking. After all, in any country characterised by arid desert, selling water is always a good idea."

https://www.watchgecko.com/how-rambo-put-two-italian-watches-on-the-map/

Progettare una interfaccia aziendale: una storia dolorosa, e alcuni utili consigli invece su come fare.

Money quote: "Enterprise designers can take a lot of great cues from consumer design, but functionality must always be our primary concern. That’s because our users don’t have a choice, they have to use the tools we design—if they don’t think a system is usable, they can’t decide to just go download a different one. So we owe it to them to put their daily productivity first—always."

https://uxdesign.cc/how-white-space-killed-an-enterprise-app-and-why-data-density-matters-b3afad6a5f2a

Casomai aveste dei dubbi, mentre noi festeggiamo la fine della pandemia, negli Usa hanno autorizzato il secondo booster agli over 50

https://www.axios.com/fda-second-booster-shots-moderna-pfizer-c132e5a5-8e8a-4e62-bafc-5af61d1dee08.html

A quanto pare la prossima variante di Omicron si chiama BA.2 ed è diventata rapidamente dominante negli Usa (pare che sia in piena ripartenza anche da noi).

https://www.axios.com/fda-second-booster-shots-moderna-pfizer-c132e5a5-8e8a-4e62-bafc-5af61d1dee08.html

La sua trasmissibilità è del 30% superiore a quella delle varianti precedenti anche se per fortuna non è più virulenta.

Money quote: "The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized a fourth COVID-19 vaccine shot for people 50 and older, which could further help protect the most vulnerable from the subvariant.

"CDC says the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron is now dominant in the US," tweeted Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University. "Reminder that while this appears to be even more contagious than the original Omicron, it is not more virulent than previous strains, and existing vaccines still protect well against severe disease."

Il fantastico mondo delle calcolatrici. Sembra un articolo che parte facile e forse noioso, ma poi diventa fantascienza pura. Credetemi.

Money quote: "We’re not in the 1980s anymore, and the reference is not CASIO fx-82 anymore. Today we have matrix displays dubbed Natural Display, Natural Textbook Display, Visually Perfect Algebraic Method (V.P.A.M.) or Natural V.P.A.M.–the idea being that one can input formulas exactly as they are normally written on paper or in a textbook. And yet, most such calculators are used in K-12 to operate with fractions, to simplify them and to give results in fractions or generally in symbolic writing instead of numerical values, e.g. 2√2/3 instead of 0.942809041."

http://ludditus.com/2019/02/10/nostalgia-fun-with-calculators/

La grandezza di Ursula K. Le Guin. Se non vi basta questo breve saggio per correre a comprare i suoi libri e cominciare a leggere, non so cosa altro...

Money quote: "Born in Berkeley, California, in 1929, Le Guin began publishing science fiction in the early 1960s and within ten years was acknowledged as one of the most important writers in the genre, particularly with the publication of A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), and The Dispossessed (1974). Curry makes it look like Le Guin rescued science fiction and fantasy more or less single-handedly from a state of literary neglect, which isn’t exactly true. (There were other writers who saw the genre’s potential for yielding enduring literature.) But Le Guin chose this “despised, marginal” genre, she once said, for a reason she couldn’t acknowledge to herself at the time: Because it was “excluded from critical, academic, canonical supervision, leaving the artist free.”"

https://www.neh.gov/article/ursula-k-le-guin-was-creator-worlds

Tanto bella Barbie, ma sarà anche buona? Preparare degli Hot Dog un po' speciali come forma d'arte. Fico.

Money quote: "the creative handiwork of Anna Hezel and Gabriella Paiella, the resident dynamic “Deranged Crafts” duo from Lucky Peach. When they recently put their heads together and thought about what kinds of Disney princesses would inspire them most, they thought of hot dogs… “Obviously.”"

https://womenyoushouldknow.net/grossly-appealing-disney-princesses-reimagined-as-hot-dogs/

C'è da dire che in effetti è passato molto tempo da quando abbiamo visto l'ultima vera innovazione negli aerei di linea. Probabilmente il Concorde, il B747 e poi l'A380. Beh, ecco qua a voi l'aereo a freccia, il Boomerang. È un concept che probabilmente non andrà mai da nessuna parte perché come potete vedere nel video ha un discreto difetto. Però almeno un po' ci si muove, dai!

Money quote: "In this video by the YouTube channel Found and Explained, you can learn more about this futuristic aircraft. The passenger cabin, cargo compartment, and fuel tanks are all located in the wings of the Flying-V, thanks to its revolutionary design. According to some experts, the plane's aerodynamic form will lower fuel consumption by 20 percent when compared to contemporary aircraft, which is pretty significant."

https://interestingengineering.com/video/flying-v

La scienza è quella attività che non smette mai di scoprire cose nuove. Anche dove meno te lo aspetti: prendi il ghiaccio, ad esempio.

Money quote: "While experimenting with different pressures, the researchers discovered a completely new type of ice, as a transitional stage between two known forms. At around 5.1 GigaPascals of pressure, the cubic structure known as ice VII transformed into a never-before-seen phase consisting of symmetrical tetragonal crystals. This new phase was named ice VIIt. After that, it then settled into another known phase called ice X."

https://newatlas.com/science/ice-viit-new-type/

Un’altra settimana è passata, un altro numero di Mostly Weekly

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/161/

Le parole sono importanti. Contano. Servono a descrivere le cose, anche i sentimenti. Per questo quando si parla di riconciliazione e perdono bisogna capire che sono due cose diverse e che si tratta di comprendere meglio cosa vogliamo e cosa cerchiamo. Ci sono persone che non ammetteranno mai di aver fatto qualcosa di sbagliato, ma questo non vuol dire che non sia possibile perdonarle e andare avanti lo stesso.

Money quote: "Both Enright and Davis say that forgiveness exists separately from reconciliation, and also from accountability — which is why forgiving someone doesn’t require an apology or even their participation. “Reconciliation is a negotiation strategy between two or more people trying to make their way back together to mutual trust,” explains Enright, whereas forgiveness is a one-way endeavor. Put another way: Forgiveness might be a step on the path to reconciliation, but you don’t have to traverse the full route if you’d prefer not to."

https://www.vox.com/22967752/how-to-forgive-someone-who-isnt-sorry-wont-apologize

Backup. Chi segue il canale lo sa: è l’unica funzione che promuovo perché ci metto la faccia: la pago e la uso personalmente da anni. Backup completo nel cloud con BackBlaze. Perfetto. Se seguite il mio link, un mese gratuito a voi e un mese gratuito a me. Dovete usare il link, però.

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

Ritorna lo scontro di civiltà. O piuttosto ritorna l'orso russo, spietato e famelico come tutti gli orsi? L'abisso dell'anima russa in questo articolo del 2014, anno dell'inglobamento della Crimea.

Money quote: "Non c’è da stupirsi che questi ultimi abbiano finito per percepire la Russia come una forza distruttrice. Joseph Conrad, che nella sua nativa Polonia sperimentò in prima persona l’insaziabile fame di territorio dell’impero russo, lo definì un impero del nulla. In “Autocrazia e guerra” (1905), per esempio, scrisse che fin dalla sua nascita in Russia “la brutale distruzione della dignità, della verità, della rettitudine, di tutto ciò che è buono nella natura umana è stata la condizione della sua esistenza”. Sotto l’ombra opprimente dell’autocrazia russa “nulla poteva crescere”. Circa otto decenni dopo, in “La tragedia dell’Europa centrale” (1984), Milan Kundera avrebbe fatto un’osservazione simile: quando i russi portarono il totalitarismo nel suo paese “fecero tutto il possibile per distruggere la cultura ceca”. Infatti, per lui, la “civiltà russa totalitaria è la negazione radicale dell’Occidente moderno”. “"

https://www.indiscreto.org/i-due-abissi-dellanima-russa/

Una donna racconta la sua trasformazione: passare dall'ambizione alla ricerca dell'equilibrio, affondando nella mediocrità (dal punto di vista di chi vuol fare carriera) e nel benessere. Cos'è successo? Perché mollare adesso, dopo la pandemia? Essere sconfitti e avere una sola vita vuol dire anche capire quando staccare e cambiare direzione, prima di finire come il Titanic in fondo al mare.

Money quote: "2022 may be the year my ambition truly dies, and to that I say, “Good riddance, bitch.”

As a young adult, I had to be ambitious; it was my only chance of escaping poverty. I knew if I wanted security and stability and comfort, I had to work harder, be smarter, and strive in the most active sense. (I chose journalism, so obviously I wasn’t quite as wealth-focused as I could have been, but still.) As hard as I worked and as much as I strived, though, I watched far less capable people get promoted ahead of me. I sat through countless interviews for promotions I was more than qualified for only to hear, “We loved you, but …” I would inevitably end up training the new hire to do the job I didn’t get."

https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/post-pandemic-loss-of-ambition.html

Guardare una sola, piccola galassia (la nostra) tra le miliardi di miliardi osservabili nell'universo "conosciuto" (e chissà quante altre) ha senso oppure no? Ecco, secondo tre astrofisici, sì, ha senso. Eccome se ha senso.

Money quote: "Imagine if you could look at a snowflake at the South Pole and determine the size and the climate of all of Antarctica. Or study a randomly selected tree in the Amazon rain forest and, from that one tree—be it rare or common, narrow or wide, young or old—deduce characteristics of the forest as a whole. Or, what if, by looking at one galaxy among the hundred billion or so in the observable universe, one could say something substantial about the universe as a whole? A recent paper, whose lead authors include a cosmologist, a galaxy-formation expert, and an undergraduate named Jupiter (who did the initial work), suggests that this may be the case. The result at first seemed “crazy” to the paper’s authors. Now, having discussed their work with other astrophysicists and done various “sanity checks,” trying to find errors in their methods, the results are beginning to seem pretty clear. Francisco Villaescusa-Navarro, one of the lead authors of the work, said, “It does look like galaxies somehow retain a memory of the entire universe.”"

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/what-can-we-learn-about-the-universe-from-just-one-galaxy

Una volta li chiamavano "mestieri logoranti" e, in maniera molto democristiana (negare ma un po' provvedere) li trattavamo meglio ad esempio dal punto di vista pensionistico: si andava a casa prima. Oggi è un disastro. E c'è chi si sta rendendo conto che in realtà trattare "in maniera uguale" i lavoratori e le lavoratrici di alcune tipologie di mestieri tipo Uber è uno sfruttamento abietto e durissimo.

Money quote: "Although sleep is a need, it is a negotiable one. Societies have historically varied in their practices, and minorities have got by on less than is needed, sometimes for a lengthy period. Everyone weighs sleep against other priorities. This plasticity is what gives scope for the individual to be exploited, by herself and others, as sleep’s nonessential component is eroded. Sleep inequalities persist because their consequences can be deferred – but they cannot be deferred indefinitely."

https://aeon.co/essays/being-underslept-and-out-of-sync-is-a-political-injustice