Mostly, I Write
2.06K subscribers
492 photos
6 videos
3 files
9.34K links
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/
Download Telegram
Cose -spero- utili: tutto l'anno in una pagina sola: One page calendar 2020

https://davebakker.io/onepagecalendar/
Questo tizio scansiona indice e tavola dei contenuti di tutti i suoi libri importanti, fa l'OCR, e trasforma così la conoscienza puntuale in fili annodati a un gigantesco telaio di rimandi. Perché cercare un punto di conoscenza dentro la propria biblioteca è una cosa diversa che non cercarlo su Google.

Money quote: "Every time I tried to look up something, I have to search the index page and table of contents manually. Page by page, for every book on your bookshelf, such a PITA. Are you not believe me? Let's say you have five algorithms books, and you want to find out which book as a definition about k-d tree. Can you feel the pain?"

https://huytd.github.io/build-a-better-bookshelf.html
Storia di un uomo molto, molto peculiare. Dal rapimento degli alieno fino a tutto il resto.

https://medium.com/s/reasonable-doubt/he-was-supposed-to-be-the-next-stephen-king-then-the-aliens-came-afd7195e0b49

money quote: ““There’s a lot about my life I cannot talk about,” Strieber told me shortly after he let me into the living room of his Santa Monica apartment. “There’s more that I don’t wish to talk about.” And yet, over the next three hours, he talked about it anyway. About being a broke aspiring writer in New York in the 1970’s. About quantum physics and classical music. About the mysterious biomechanical implant behind his ear that helped him knock out a multi-volume book about Hitler that he sees as an allegory for Donald Trump’s evil deeds. About the death of his wife Anne, whose spirit, he believes, remains with him. “She’s in some ways closer to me now than she ever could have been when she was physically alive,” he told me.”
Quella furba di Marie Kondo

Money quote: “As a scholar of East Asian philosophies, one pattern in the Kondo mania is all too familiar: the susceptibility of Americans to plain good sense if it can but be infused with a quasi-mystical ‘oriental’ aura. Kondo is, in several ways, a Mr Miyagi for the anxious, late-capitalist, consumerist age. Unlike the Karate Kid, we are bedevilled by our own belongings rather than by bullies – but just as Mr Miyagi could make waxing cars a way to find one’s strength and mettle, so too Marie Kondo can magically render folding T-shirts into a path toward personal contentment or even joy. The process by which mundane activities transmute into improved wellbeing is mysterious, but the mystery is much of the allure, part of what makes pedestrian wisdom palatable. Folding clothes as an organisational strategy is boring. But folding clothes as a mystically infused plan of life is alluring. It’s not about the clothes. It’s about everything, all at once.”

https://aeon.co/ideas/tidying-up-is-not-joyful-but-another-misuse-of-eastern-ideas
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/