Donald Trump e il suo segretario alla Difesa. Un rapporto che sta funzionando parecchio bene (anche per questo a quanto pare non ne sentiamo mai parlare)

Money quote: “As President Trump nears the 100-day benchmark, it’s a good moment to examine the relationship that has evolved between the mercurial and inexperienced commander in chief and his unflappable defense secretary, Jim Mattis.

It’s an unlikely partnership, but so far it mostly seems to work. Trump may have relatively few domestic-policy accomplishments to show after three months, but he can take credit for selecting a generally solid national-security team and for listening to its advice.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/mattis-and-trump-the-odd-couple-that-works/2017/04/25/5e01adf0-29ef-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html

WhatsApp è insicuro? In molti si sono espressi più volte sull’argomento, con posizioni diverse più o meno fondate. Chi dice cose sensate?

Basterebbe leggere i blog degli esperti per sapere come stanno le cose, ma è difficile capire le parti tecniche, occorre inoltre sapere chi sono gli esperti credibili e fare comunque un lavoro che un semplice lettore che vuole informarsi raramente ha tempo e competenze per fare. Per questo esistono i giornalisti. E le testate sono autorevoli proprio quando sanno fare bene questo lavoro, al di là degli scoop e delle notizie del giorno.

Ecco perché la postura adottata dal Guardian rispetto alla presunta insicurezza di WhatsApp è inspiegabile. E produce conseguenze nel mondo reale (pensate agli oppositori ai regimi autoritari e dittatoriali). Per questo, se come pare il Guardian sta scrivendo sciocchezze, questo dovrebbe avere conseguenze anche sulla sua credibilità.

Leggendo qui potete farvi un’idea.

Money quote:

"Dear Guardian Editors,

You recently published a story with the alarming headline “WhatsApp backdoor allows snooping on encrypted messages.” This story included the phrasing “security loophole”.

Unfortunately, your story was the equivalent of putting “VACCINES KILL PEOPLE” in a blaring headline over a poorly contextualized piece. While it is true that in a few cases, vaccines kill people through rare and unfortunate side effects, they also save millions of lives.

You would have no problem understanding why “Vaccines Kill People” would be a problem headline for a story, especially given the context of anti-vaccination movements. But your series of stories on WhatsApp does the same disservice and perpetrates a similar public health threat against secure communications.

The behavior described in your article is not a backdoor in WhatsApp."

http://technosociology.org/?page_id=1687

Com'è romantica l'idea di andare a vivere in un camper. Lo racconta il New Yorker

Money quote: "King and Smith, who are thirty-two and thirty-one, respectively, had grown up watching “Saturday Night Live” sketches in which a sweaty, frantic Chris Farley character ranted, “I am thirty-five years old, I am divorced, and I live in a van down by the river!” But, the way Huntington described it, living in a vehicle sounded not pathetic but romantic. “I remember coming home and telling my mom, ‘I have something to tell you,’ ” King said. “She thought I was going to say we were getting married or having a baby. But I said, ‘We’re going to live in a van.’ ”"

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/vanlife-the-bohemian-social-media-movement

L'ossessione per la felicità. Una cosa recente, nasce nel Settecento e continua fino ad oggi soprattutto nell'edonismo materialista americano. Ecco un articolo illuminante, una specie di bigino per l'orientamento del pastore afghano appena conquistato alla libertà di mercato, che voglia capire quel senso di vuota depressione che segue l'acquisto di otto paia di scarpe da ginnastica (che non sono scarpe ma cultura, come dice una mia amica) da sommare alle altre otto paia già comprate.

Ecco la storia della felicità. Rabbrividite pure.

Money quote: "And yet the logic of the revolution in human expectations worked in a countervailing sense, encouraging the belief that happiness was not something we earned, but something we deserved."

https://qz.com/958677/happiness-a-history-author-darrin-m-mcmahon-explains-when-the-idea-of-happiness-was-invented/

Arriva la Coca-Cola con le fibre. In Giappone, perlomeno

Money quote: "Most of Coca-Cola's reformulations have created successful new beverage brands simply by cutting sugar or calories from pre-existing drinks. For example, the company reported that the revamped Coca-Cola Zero Sugar experienced double-digit growth in the last quarter, after growing 9% by volume in 2016"

http://www.businessinsider.com/coca-cola-with-fiber-reveals-soda-revamp-2017-4?IR=T

Come ha scoperto anche Donald Trump quando glielo ha spiegato il presidente cinese Xi, la storia della Corea è un po' più complicata di come ce la raccontiamo. Non solo per la secolare tradizione e il regno, etc etc, ma anche solo per quello che è successo prima della rivoluzione. Ad esempio, mezzo secolo di presenza americana (tra gli altri) per evangelizzare i nativi.

Money quote: "This long-lost mission, almost unknown even to Korea experts on both sides of the Pacific, was part of a pre-Second World War American Christian presence in Korea that achieved its greatest success in Pyongyang. The current capital was then the home of the largest Christian community in Korea and the center of the Presbyterian Church in Asia."

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-pyongyang-missionaries-north-korea

Dal momento che viviamo nella snack culture, ecco lo spuntino di classicità quotidiana: leniamo le ferite del mal di vivere con un ardito paragone che sposti il bilancino della contemproaneità verso l'esperienza degli antichi saggi. Insomma, daje di Seneca e d'Epicuro...

Money quote: "Both the Stoics and the Epicureans valued the practice of virtue and the pleasures of life. The difference was one of priorities: the Epicureans, for instance, withdrew from political life because it was bound to cause pain (consider the recent US elections and you might sympathise). The Stoics, by contrast, would never trade moral rectitude for either the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain"

https://aeon.co/classics/massimo-pigliucci-on-senecas-stoic-philosophy-of-happiness

Siri è diventata attrice e recita i “Lego Batman - Il film”

Non è uscito sui giornali italiani ma nel film animato è stata per la prima volta scritturata una voce artificiale nel ruolo di se stessa. Dopo aver vinto il casting con Alexa di Amazon, Cortana di Microsoft e con quella di Google, è stata scritturata come assistente virtuale di Batman in Lego. È da giocare sull’ironia e la leggerezza, secondo me. Come Gallery, le voci di computer nella storia del cinema (da Hal 9000 in giù fino a C3P8 e R2D2 di Guerre Stellari)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2017/02/17/hello-siri-please-tell-us-about-your-feature-film-debut-in-lego-batman-movie/?utm_term=.77c359560235

Poesia. Poesia. Poesia. Voi quante poesie leggete? E quali? E quando? Qui, Roberto Corsi apre pian piano un nuovo cassetto della sua produzione...

Money quote: “psst… psst… sono filtrati titoli della prossima raccolta (quello della seconda sezione dovrebbe muovere a “risatazza immonda” (cit.) chi conosce le vicissitudini di questo blog) e un pugno di liriche.”

https://robertocorsi.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/corsileaks-inediti-su-imperfetta-ellisse/

Surreale intervento sulla Harvard Business Review del "vecchio" imprenditore del settore alberghiero (52 anni) assunto da AirBnB per portare esperienza e saggezza. Un'ode a se stesso piena di luoghi comuni e di una certa, abbondante misura di ego.

Money quote: "First, I quickly learned that I needed to strategically forget part of my historical work identity. The company didn’t need two CEOs, or me pontificating wisdom from the elder’s pulpit. More than anything, I listened and watched intently, with as little judgment or ego as possible. I imagined myself as a cultural anthropologist, intrigued and fascinated by this new habitat. Part of my job was to just observe. Often I would leave a meeting and discreetly ask one of my fellow leaders, who might be two decades younger than I was, if they were open to some private feedback on how to read the emotions in the room, or the motivations of a particular engineer, a little more effectively"

https://hbr.org/2017/04/i-joined-airbnb-at-52-and-heres-what-i-learned-about-age-wisdom-and-the-tech-industry

La propaganda nazista era talmente ben organizzata che si preoccupava anche di fornire giochi da tavolo ai fanciulli. Giochi di conquista e di sterminio, ovviamente.

Money quote: "Kenneth Rendell, the museum’s founder, says that Nazi power derived partly from such shrewd product design. Manufacturers applied symbols of anti-Semitism and death to toys, along with all manner of other household furnishings, from Christmas ornaments to lightbulb filaments. The racist objects, even if they never directly incited heinous acts, would have inured the owners to the prospect of violence all around them"

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nazi-board-games-wwii

Articolo molto "basico" su come la tecnologia abbia cambiato la vita agli imprenditori. Poi parla un giornalista, ma va bene lo stesso. Da mandare ai vecchi nonni.

Money quote: "As a freelance journalist, I’ve always worked from home. Previously though, I had to borrow the work laptop, plug it into a modem and connect to the network via Remote Desktop. Now most places, I just jump on WiFi on my tablet, laptop or phone. All of which I can make notes on, or record interviews with. Using the cloud I can backup and protect my data, and collaborate with team members anywhere in the world"

https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/how-technology-has-transformed-entrepreneurs-lives-last-10-years

Il videogioco che tratta il problema della morte e dell'elaborazione del lutto. Interessante.

Money quote: ""We try to set the table and let players experience [death] for themselves," says creative director Ian Dallas when I ask about the team's approach. "Players already bring so much heaviness on their own that there's no need for us to add any. It would be redundant. Also, the less we suggest how we want or expect players to feel, the more room we open up for them to consider their own family history.""

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a-video-game-that-finally-engages-with-death-and-succeeds

Come Ibernare il Mac per sopravvivere alle mancanze di corrente e salvare batteria - il mio articolo per Macity

http://www.macitynet.it/come-ibernare-il-mac/

Il problema tutto politico della scelta del tetto nella Berlino della mia gioventù

Money quote: “Flat roof advocates argued in the 1920s that they were less expensive to build and maintain, in addition to fitting in with Modernist ideas about minimalism and functionality, like using roofs as terraces. But the pitched roof partisans—including many nationalists—argued something entirely different: that flat roofs were a blight on traditional German architecture, or, as the critic Paul Schultze-Naumburg wrote, “immediately recognizable as the child of other skies and other blood.””

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-heated-highly-political-roof-war-that-captivated-berlin-before-world-war-ii

Presidenti degli Stati Uniti in zona di guerra: giubbotto antiproiettile oppure no? La risposta cambia tantissimo la percezione (e il consenso) del politico che si protegge. L’immagine conta. Talmente tanto che forse si capisce perché è venuto fuori Donald Trump. In questo pezzo interessante si spiegano un po’ di cose. Belle anche le immagini d’archivio.

Money quote: ”“You don’t put stuff on your head if you’re president,” President Obama told the US Naval Academy’s football team after they offered him a custom helmet. “That’s politics 101.””

http://www.racked.com/2017/4/25/15422992/flak-jacket-politicians-kushner

Il mastodonte ritrovato. Le tracce fossili. Una specie di homo che non conoscevamo. Forse è vero, forse ci hanno portato qui gli alieni?

Money quote: “Prehistoric humans — perhaps Neanderthals or another lost species — occupied what is now California some 130,000 years ago, a team of scientists reported on Wednesday.

The bold and fiercely disputed claim, published in the journal Nature, is based on a study of mastodon bones discovered near San Diego. If the scientists are right, they would significantly alter our understanding of how humans spread around the planet.

The earliest widely accepted evidence of people in the Americas is less than 15,000 years old. Genetic studies strongly support the idea that those people were the ancestors of living Native Americans, arriving in North America from Asia.

If humans actually were in North America over 100,000 years earlier, they may not be related to any living group of people. Modern humans probably did not expand out of Africa until 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, recent genetic studies have shown.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/science/prehistoric-humans-north-america-california-nature-study.html

Lei si chiama Gina Pell e vi avevo detto che sarebbe stata un soggetto interessante. Questo è l’articolo sulle generazioni, anzi l’azzeramento delle generazioni (i “perennials) che vale la pena di leggere. Soprattutto oggi, visto che l’ideologia delle generazioni di Strass e Kahn (una cosa un po’ più complessa di quel che non sembri) è nell’orecchio e nel cuore dell’attuale vertice governativo americano

Money quote: “The term generation used to refer to parents and their offspring every 25 years. It wasn’t until the 19th Century that it mutated to describe the social cohort we are born into. The Baby Boomers (1946–1964) are the first and only officially recognized generation by the Census Bureau because of its clearly defined characteristics. Leap forward to 1991 in Generations by Strauss & Howe and the moniker Millennial is coined. It took another decade for marketers and the media to up-spin Millennials, whose birth years fall within the range of 1982-2004 as “the next greatest generation” and begin focusing all their efforts to woo these limelit consumers, voters, and likers. As for the rest, born before 1982, well, the rest is history … irrelevant and in the past.”

https://medium.com/the-what/meet-the-perennials-e91a7cd9f65f

Non lo so, ma io questo Wikitribune, il giornalismo basato sui fatti, devo vederlo funzionare per crederci

Money quote: "Wikitribune is led by Jimmy Wales who has surrounded himself with an amazing group of people to bring Wikitribune to life."

https://www.wikitribune.com/

La sfortunata storia di Sam Caldwell e della sua solitaria e struggente opera di genio: la Sinotype: vecchie cose della Guerra fredda

Money quote: "Caldwell had not only invented the world’s first Chinese computer. He also unwittingly invented what we now know as ‘autocompletion’."

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-cold-war-rivalry-helped-launch-the-chinese-computer

Chi era Robert M. Pirsig, morto a 88 anni qualche giorno fa

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/24/525443040/-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-author-robert-m-pirsig-dies-at-88