"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/

Se uno fonda un'azienda, poi se la porta avanti tutta la vita? L'idea dalle nostre parti è quella, ma in realtà non è così. Anzi, c'è chi si chiede: qual è il momento giusto per cui i fondatori mollino il colpo? Dopotutto, se le aziende sono come i figli, a un certo punto bisogna pure lasciarle andare, no? Per loro e anche per noi.

Money quote: "Specifically, our preliminary results indicate that founder-CEO leadership is associated with an almost 10% higher company valuation at IPO, but that the value of having a founder in the top seat rapidly deteriorates after that. We found that the value added by a founder-CEO essentially dwindles to zero approximately three years after firms go public, and they then start detracting from the value of the company in the longer term. Of course, these are only trends, and there will always be exceptions. But our data provides strong evidence to suggest that there is a shelf life to the founder-CEO — and it’s likely shorter than many might hope."

https://hbr.org/2021/12/research-how-long-should-a-founder-remain-ceo

12 cicli di fantascienza che dovreste leggere assolutamente - i miei consigli per gli acquisti natalizi su Fumettologica. Roba "vecchia" ma buona.

https://www.fumettologica.it/2021/12/cicli-di-fantascienza-libri-da-leggere/

Scrivere come soluzione "lo-social" per chi è introverso

Money quote: "There is a solution: be famous. You lose the ability to filter out who you want to talk to, but at least everyone starts the conversation with some context; you’re outsourcing the extroversion to them.

Fame is hard, and it has other costs. But there’s a second alternative: be microfamous. Microfame is the best kind of fame, because it combines an easier task (be famous to fewer people) with a better outcome (be famous to the right people)."

https://byrnehobart.medium.com/writing-is-networking-for-introverts-5cac14ad4c77

Inclusione e sindrome dell'impostore, sono due cose che forse non vanno d'accordo.

Money quote: "My point is this: if we expect everybody who is a little bit different to think of themselves as an impostor, we’ve totally lost the plot on this whole inclusion thing. Let’s add the notion of healthy self-doubt to the conversation so that we can distinguish between that which propels us forward and that which holds us back."

https://nerdygirl.com/2020/07/02/healthy-self-doubt

Ci sono un sacco di uomini single. Molte relazioni non funzionano, non decollano, semplicemente non c'è la possibilità di aprirne di nuove. Internet e i siti di dating stanno rendendo l'approccio sempre più tossico e disfunzionale. Una serie di scenari che non conoscevo per quanto riguarda gli under 30 (e non solo). Interessante.

Money quote: "Most of the advice you get is borderline abusive. If you have to lower a person’s self-esteem to sleep with you, that’s setting the groundwork for an emotionally abusive, controlling relationship. Moreover, THAT HURTS WOMEN. This makes this advice incompatible with an actual loving relationship."

https://medium.com/@ossiana.tepfenhart/i-work-in-porn-i-know-why-so-many-men-are-single-626810d98b1f

Poster che vorrei e non vorrei in casa

Le metafore ci definiscono. Quelle che derivano dalle macchine e che applichiamo alla nostra mente e al nostro modo di comportarci sono tossiche

Money quote: "The language alone suggests a new way for human beings to function in the digital media environment. Projecting human qualities onto machines — like seeing a car grille as a face or talking to a smartphone A.I. like a person — is called anthropomorphism. But this is the opposite: We are projecting machine qualities onto humans. Seeing a human being as a machine or computer is called mechanomorphism. It’s not just treating machines as living humans; it’s treating humans as machines."

https://medium.com/team-human/the-damage-we-do-to-ourselves-when-we-try-to-function-like-computers-6ef7b85b6277

Cose interessanti da scoprire sui propri padri: erano attori porno.

Money quote: "“I don’t want to talk about your father,” my Mom said.
They had a bitter breakup in the 90s, after I was born. It was probably my fault; I was as much a pain as a toddler as I am as an adult. He took off with a woman my Mom called “The Slut.” I never saw much of my Dad. He spent most of his time climbing mountains. He did K2, Everest, all that shit. Like he was trying to prove something to somebody. I was never much impressed.
But this. Being a porn star. This was impressive. I had to see more. I wondered what his porn name was. I called up my Mom again."

https://medium.com/slackjaw/hazards-of-watching-vintage-porn-36f0df94c397

Se avete bambini piccoli o grandi, una cosa a cui pensare (il post è di dieci anni fa)

Money quote: "Late last night, inspecting Santa’s handiwork, a simple thought occurred to me. A decade or so from now, when, say, I’m waiting for my son to come home from college for his winter break, and, when he does, he wants to spend his time going out with his friends — how much will I be willing to pay then to be able to go back in time, for one day, to now, when he’s eight years old, he wants to go to movies and play games and build Lego kits with me, and he believes in magic?

How much then, for one day with what my family has right now? How much? Everything.

The truth is, I’m the luckiest person in the world today. I hope you are too."

https://daringfireball.net/2011/12/merry

Da Etcd a Kubernetes, il mondo non è necessariamente un miglioramento continuo. Anzi, il software sta diventando sempre più inutilmente complicato e scritto male, oltre ad introdurre layer di approfondimento e relazione anziché di astrazione.

Money quote: "In 2015, an unrelated tool called Kubernetes was released by Google (but, really, by Xooglers). I would go so far as to say that Kubernetes (or, as the "cool kids" say, k8s) is the worst thing to happen to system administration since systemd. It's a comprehensive suite that promises to simplify operating clusters of software and give something like the experience of Google's borg cluster manager. What it really does is:

- Add hundreds of new failure modes to your software
- Move you from writing portable software configuration to writing thousands of lines of k8s-specific YAML
- Ensnare you in a mesh of questionably-good1 patterns like containerization and software defined networking"

Money quote 2: "That's it. That's the story. Popular modern technology is taken over by expats from a megacorp and made worse in the service of a hyper-specialized (and just plain over-hyped) orchestration platform. That's the world today. Anything that has a simple and elegant feature-set ends up coöpted by people who just want to build big ungainly architecture and ends up inheriting features from whatever megacorp the coöpters came from9. The software development world would prefer to use their multi-gigabyte IDEs running on ElectronJS to build thousand-dependency Java applications targeting ungainly APIs on hard-to-operate systems than support something simpler and better. Quality is, alas, a dying art."

https://www.roguelazer.com/2020/07/etcd-or-why-modern-software-makes-me-sad

Era una storia che ci tenevo a raccontare: il figlio illegittimo di una fugace notte d'amore tra un Casio e un Patek Philippe, tra un G-Shock e un Royal Oak

Money quote: "L’orologio, soprattutto questo tipo di modelli che sono di grosse dimensioni e tendenzialmente portati da uomini più che da donne, sono gli unici gioielli che storicamente vengono portati dai maschi oltre alla vera nuziale. Certo, c’è chi ha anelli, catenine e braccialetti, persino orecchini e piercing (siamo pur sempre nel XXI secolo, signora mia) ma l’orologio è sempre stato l’accessorio che definisce l’uomo e che mostra la sua vanità."

https://www.macitynet.it/casioak-il-regalo-piu-analogico-del-2021/

Una bella ripulita al MacBook dopo quasi un decennio d'uso. Mamma mia cosa c'era dentro!

Money quote: "I estimated that I had used my mac for approximately 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, for 7 years straight, for a total for whopping 16800 hours. I have written the first versions of most of the software components of my startup using this computer. And all this time, this machine worked without a hiccup. It was never repaired, and I never opened the back cover. However, its battery is getting swollen, so it is a good time to upgrade to a newer machine. Before recycling the machine, I decided to open it for once and vacuum the fans to see if it makes a difference. Oh boy, did it make a difference! You can find the fan test in the video if you want to check it out."

https://quanticdev.com/articles/cleaning-macbook-after-16800-hours-of-use

Letture per le vacanze. A Milano c'è Gigi Carminati, un vecchio riparatore di apparecchi fotografici che ancora sa come si fa a mettere le mani in cose di un secolo e mezzo. E farle funzionare ancora.

https://antoniodini.com/il-meccanico-della-fotografia/