A Bodega Bay, nord di San Francisco, c’è uno spazio emozionante, una torre campanaria, che è nato per l’uccisione di un bambino americano in Italia

Money quote: “The Children’s Bell Tower, just off Highway 1, is dedicated to all children, but was erected as a memorial for one young boy, named Nicholas Green. During a visit to Italy in 1994, seven-year-old Nicholas was killed in a botched armed robbery, their family car mistaken for a jeweler’s. Nicholas’s parents donated his organs and corneas, and seven Italian patients (four of whom were only teenagers themselves) received the precious gift from Nicholas.”

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/childrens-bell-tower

Magari vi capita di prendere l’aereo. C’è Wallet di Apple per iPhone che è il contenitore naturale per i biglietti elettronici. Magari non è intuitivo arrivarci perché molte compagnie aree passano prima dalla propria app, ma si può fare praticamente con tutti o quasi. Eccolo qui, spiegato bene.

Lo metto nel mio canale perché, anche se non siete dei viaggiatori abituali sicuramente vi capiterà - magari nelle prossime settimane o questa estate - di viaggiare un po’ in aereo. E i cambiamenti sono notevoli, perché ormai si può fare tutto con il telefonino, dalla prenotazione al check-in fino al biglietto. Solo bisogna organizzarsi un po’ prima. Qui c’è praticamente tutto.

Money quote: “I’m sure many of you are nodding your heads in agreement, or wondering why I’m telling you all this. I’m no frequent flyer, so I’m sure that these improvements have been obvious to road warriors for a while. But I wanted to document how to do all this because I saw a lot of people still relying on paper boarding passes on that last trip. The experience of relying on an iPhone is so good, and so much better than dealing with paper, that if you’ve avoided it so far, I urge you to give it a try next time. But feel free to print a paper boarding pass as a backup until you’re comfortable with using your iPhone instead!”

http://tidbits.com/e/17103#comments

Viviamo nell'Antropocene, iniziato sessant'anni fa e forse destinato a concludersi drammaticamente in pochi decenni

Money quote: "The concept of ‘deep time’ was first described in 1788 by the Scottish geologist James Hutton, although only coined as a term 200 years later, by the American author John McPhee. Hutton posited that geological features were shaped by cycles of sedimentation and erosion, a process of lifting up then grinding down rocks that required timescales much grander than those of prevailing Biblical narratives. This dizzying Copernican shift threw both God and man into question. ‘The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time,’ was how John Playfair, a scientist who accompanied Hutton on several crucial expeditions, described the effect of looking over the stratified promontory of Siccar Point in Scotland."

https://aeon.co/ideas/deep-time-s-uncanny-future-is-full-of-ghostly-human-traces

Se dovete rispondere a delle eamil in inglese e vi serve un template (magari per quelle mail in cui siete oltretutto in ritardo) questo è un ottimo punto di partenza

Money quote: “Sorry for the delayed response. I opened your e-mail on my phone while my date was in the bathroom, but then I saw that it required more than a “yes” or “no” reply, decided that was too much work, marked it as unread, and then forgot about it entirely until just now!”

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/sorry-for-the-delayed-response

Un’intervista di un po’ di tempo fa del Believer con Robert Coover. Se ricordate il link di ieri l’altro su CAVE, era lui.

Old Money Quote “A number of institutions have constructed CAVEs, which are primarily used for scientific research and visualization. Brown University’s Center for Computation and Development installed a CAVE in 1998, and in 2002 the Cave Writing workshop was initiated by Robert Coover, novelist, hypertext fiction writer and co-founder of the Electronic Literature Organization.”

New Money Quote: “The post–World War II era was a transformative time for American literature. It brought, among many other things, postmodernism, metafiction, and maximalism. Most often grouped with other muscular male writers like Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, William H. Gass, and John Barth, Robert Coover was one of the prominent practitioners of this period, publishing the wildly controversial The Public Burning (a Cold War phantasmagoria that includes Richard Nixon masturbating to Ethel Rosenberg) as well as countless other ecstatically weird, daring books.”

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201508/?read=interview_coover

Un racconto breve, “Life-Hacking Isabel”, così, per alleggerire la lettura sempre di saggistica, saggistica, saggistica, almeno la domenica

Money quote: “Looking at her calendar, she saw there were two more consultations this week. Her phone began vibrating and dancing on her desk. There it is. What’s the story? Oh, his team will be working late. They’re ordering in. Who does he think he’s fooling? He thinks I am stupid. I know everything. She said all of this aloud as if she was having a conversation with her phone and the computer screen.”

https://medium.com/the-junction/life-hacking-isabel-4760f363c1dc#.qlz9v0oku

Long form domenicale: dietro casa mia hanno costruito un bolide di cemento armato che oggi è occupato da Microsoft e dalla sua idea di “Smart working” della quale non sono convinto. Qui ne parlo diffusamente e direi criticamente.

Money quote: “La costruzione del palazzo, opera dello studio internazionale di architettura Herzog & de Meuron, è stata abbastanza combattuta nella zona: ci sono voluti anni, riunioni su riunioni con i cittadini, per arrivare ad avere un blocco di sei piani che prendesse il posto di un enorme vivaio che abitava lo spazio di risulta del giro delle vecchie mura spagnole. Alla fine l’obiettivo, ammesso che fosse questo, è stato raggiunto: creare una struttura mastodontica, abbastanza sgraziata, che sembra il rendering di se stessa. Tutti i giornali che hanno parlato della nuova casa di Microsoft all’indomani dell’inaugurazione, sottolineano (come da comunicato stampa) che il palazzo ha 832 vetrate, ma in realtà ha un numero impressionante di campate di cemento a vista sulla facciata. E si notano.”

http://www.ilpost.it/antoniodini/2017/03/19/la-microsoft-house/

Real programmers set the universal constants at the beginning such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want

La vignetta di XKCD della domenica
http://xkcd.com/378/

Visto che qui alligna qualche nerd e qualche geek, e visto che in queste settimane ci sto pensando anche io (con la finalità di scrivere prosa), una domanda: Vim o Emacs? Il contatto lo conoscete: @antoniodini

Dan Brown ha quasi pronto il suo nuovo romanzo, Origin, che uscirà a ottobre. E lancia il concorso per la copertina: chi realizza la
migliore (scelta dall'autore) vince l'imperitura gloria.

Money quote: "“I absolutely loved writing Origin and watching Professor Robert Langdon explore a rich tapestry of art, codes, religion, symbols, and fascinating locations,” Brown tells EW. “In this novel, Langdon finds himself in an unfamiliar world — the world of Modern Art — and on a quest to answer two of the most profound questions in human history. It was an exciting process for me, and I’m really looking forward to people reading it.”"

http://ew.com/books/2017/03/13/dan-brown-cover-design-contest/

C’è un semaforo in Germania che è rosso da 28 anni per un solo motivo. Perché sono tedeschi.

Money quote: ““The administrative regulation as set out in section 37 paragraph 2 of the of the transportation regulations alludes to the need for an exact plan for traffic light signals,” a spokesperson told The Local.”

https://www.thelocal.de/20150615/there-is-a-light-that-never-goes-out

Altro che telefilm, i videogiochi sono la vera lettura d’evasione (assieme ai social). Anzi, da fuga in un altro mondo. Non ho altro da aggiungere, va proprio letto.

Money quote: “As video games get better and job prospects worse, more young men are dropping out of the job market to spend their time in an alternate reality. Ryan Avent suspects this is the beginning of something big”

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/escape-to-another-world

Questo tizio ha successo spiegando che per lavorare meglio bisogna lavorare meno, e non lo dice solo lui. È un truismo, come si dice, ma c’è del vero (ovviamente lui dice cose più complesse di questa, ma più o meno siamo qui) perché l’eccesso devasta tutto.

Money quote: “In particular, during this interview, Harari revealed that he’s a serious practitioner of Vipassana mediation who spends 2 hours every day meditating, and goes on a 1 or 2 month meditation retreat every year.”

Qui però, al netto delle meditazioni trascendentali (che poi servono sempre), le cose si fanno molto interessanti. È breve, da leggere

http://calnewport.com/blog/2017/03/13/yuval-harari-works-less-than-you/

Sono anni che lo dico: usate la VPN...

Tech Insider spiega in un breve video perché usare le reti wi-fi pubbliche mette il tuo computer a rischio, sempre. E suggerisce anche due o tre alternative.

Link: http://42h.it/2ntRXiO

Fra le tante specie di nazi che popolano il pianeta, ancora non conoscevo i “chess-nazi”: talmente appassionati del gioco che soffrono quando vedono le scacchiere usate male nei film e telefilm. Cioè, spesso, visto che a scacchi ci gioca poca gente (almeno tra chi fa film e telefilm) con risultati piuttosto discutibili per la correttezza del gioco. Divertente.

Money quote: ““There are a ton of chess mistakes in TV and in film,” says Mike Klein, a writer and videographer for Chess.com. While different experts cite different error ratios, from “20 percent” to “much more often than not,” all agree: Hollywood is terrible at chess, even though they really don’t have to be. “There are so many [errors], it’s hard to keep track,” says Grandmaster Ilja Zaragatski, of chess24. “And there are constantly [new ones] coming out.””

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bad-chess-scenes-movies-tv

Pian piano ce ne andiamo tutti. Si dice che i migliori se ne vadano per primi. Jimmy ci ha messo un po’, ma era di gran lunga uno dei migliori

Money quote: “Poetic and profane, softhearted and unforgiving, Mr. Breslin inspired every emotion but indifference; letters from outraged readers gladdened his heart. He often went after his own, from Irish-Americans with “shopping-center faces” who had forgotten their hardscrabble roots to the Roman Catholic Church, whose sex scandals prompted him to write an angry book called “The Church That Forgot Christ,” published in 2004. It ends with a cheeky vow to start a new church that would demand more low-income housing and better posture.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/business/media/jimmy-breslin-dead-ny-columnist-author.html

Questo tizio non ho idea di chi sia, a parte che faccia il cuoco, anzi il cuoco-star, ma il modo con cui racconta la sua storia è interessante. E pensare che poi è una forma di pubblicità per un sito di investimenti è meraviglioso. Chi diceva che lo storytelling non è una cosa seria?

Money quote 1: “My books do very well, but it’s probably the least profitable thing that I do. I like writing. But writing your way to riches isn’t a reasonable life plan. For me it's responsible for everything though. I started out doing book tours; they became too big for the bookstores, so they would rent halls, which would fill. Those numbers grew and grew, and people started booking me for corporate events, which were incredibly lucrative. And then people who promote concerts and musical acts approached me. It quickly became clear that, like the record business, there ain’t no money in a record. It’s the tour. The biggest revenue stream out there for me is going out and telling dick jokes. It’s physically and mentally punishing, and takes a lot out of me, but it's over in a relatively short period of time.”

Money quote 2: “Money doesn’t particularly excite or thrill me; the making of money gives me no particular satisfaction. To me, money is freedom from insecurity, freedom to move, time if you choose to make use of time. My investments advisor understands that I’m not looking to score big on the stock market or bonds. I have zero understanding of it and zero interest. Life is too short. I like a limited amount of mail, and a limited amount of conversations with people who make the investments. If the money’s not less money every time I look at it, I’m pretty happy. If it’s a little bit more, great.”

https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/money-diary-anthony-bourdain

Apple ha fatto Clips, una nuova applicazione per fare video - l'articolo su Il Post

http://www.ilpost.it/2017/03/21/clips-apple/

O tempora o mores o Minecraft