Iniziamo una settimana di articoli tutti del New York Times.

Partiamo con uno bello peso ma pratico: i genitori invecchiano. Forse è meglio avere una di "quelle" conversazioni, prima che sia tardi, no? Cinque temi da affrontare, secondo il miglior pragmatismo nordamericano.

Money quote: "During a health crisis, there are countless choices that parents or adult children might need to make. While you can’t anticipate every single one, discussing goals and values in advance can help parents feel more prepared for an emergency and keep adult children on the same page.

“It’s not just about what you want at the end of your life,” Dr. Mohta said, “it’s about what you want your life to be like” as you get older.

Explore what brings your parents joy and meaning, their biggest worries, their priorities for medical treatment and what they want to avoid. For example, a parent might say that they want to maximize their time spent at home, that they want to do everything possible to survive or that they don’t want to be kept alive by machines in the intensive care unit.

“In an emergency, you’re rushing through the decisions — it’s emotional,” Dr. Mohta said. “This is a chance to reflect ahead of time.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/well/aging-parents.html

archivio: https://archive.is/V3jl2

Il Tex di Horacio Altuna sorprende - la mia recensione per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/03/tex-horacio-altuna-inferno-a-red-junction/

Uno degli attori più interessanti e fraintesi del nostro tempo: Wallace Shawn e la sua inaspettata fama nonostante sia un esponente di spicco dell'Avant-Garde.

Money quote: "AFTER I HAD lunch with Wallace Shawn, a lifelong New Yorker, he readily accompanied me across town, although it was a frigid Sunday in December and much of the city’s usual post-snow slush had hardened into ice. Shawn, who’s 82 and famously small in stature, wore a generic black parka and generic black boots. Before leaving the restaurant, he’d shoved onto his mostly bald head a dark gray wool cap, notable only for a few moth holes. He looked, in other words, like any other city native who could expect to travel invisibly through the streets, except that when we reached the theater where I was meeting my niece, a ripple of jittery energy instantly traveled down the row of people waiting to enter. The two women behind my niece in line nearly jumped when he approached, staring at him in open adoration and amazement. Shawn, who’d already been stopped twice that day by giggly fans, smiled back automatically; such encounters are routine — pleasant enough but also common enough to have little emotional valence."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/t-magazine/wallace-shawn.html

archivio: https://archive.is/xagqS

Sta uscendo un nuovo libro di Haruki Murakami, che ormai vende qualsiasi cosa scriva, anche la lista della spesa. Per questo si vedono un sacco di cose sue a giro. Come questa: l'autore, che ha portato la letteratura giapponese nel mainstream globale, è alle prese con l'invecchiamento e il suo posto nel mondo delle lettere.

Money quote: "During an event at Town Hall on Dec. 11, Murakami spoke to a packed house about the globalization of Japanese literature and culture — a shift he helped to bring about. Earlier that week, he gave brief remarks while accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Center for Fiction, which was presented to him by the musician and writer Patti Smith. (Guests at the gala were instructed not to take photos or videos of Murakami.)

Murakami thanked his wife of more than 50 years, who he said is his first reader and often his toughest editor. And he recalled how, when he gave his first book signing in the United States decades ago, only a handful of people showed up.

“I remember sitting with a pen in my hand and nothing to do,” he told the audience. “It was one of the longest hours of my life.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/books/haruki-murakami-profile.html

archivio: https://archive.is/WbLpQ

È morto Dan Simmons, autore di Hyperion, aveva 77 anni - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/03/dan-simmons-morto-hyperion/

Oltre alla moquette gli angloamericani adorano anche la carta da parati. Mia nonna, buonanima, si era emancipata già negli anni Sessanta, ma evidentemente la novità non è arrivata al di là della Manica o dell'Atlantico.

Money quote: "Wallpaper can add oomph to a room with hits of texture, pattern and color. But the process of getting there can be overwhelming.
This guide shares advice from interior designers and experts on how to plan your project; sort through the endless styles, patterns and prices; and, finally, make the perfect choice for your home."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/realestate/how-to-choose-wallpaper.html

archivio: https://archive.is/eDa4S

Recensione di Jumpers, il nuovo film Pixar - la mia recensione decisamente positiva per Fumettologica

https://fumettologica.it/2026/03/recensione-jumpers-film-pixar/

Ci sono vari premi letterari che sono poi centrati sul guadagno che fa il vincitore. Uno di questi è l'International Booker Prize, basato su libri tradotti in inglese e pubblicati nel Regno Unito o in Irlanda. Le proposte di quest'anno sono parecchio interessanti (c'è anche un italiano che ammetto di non conoscere).

Money quote: "Established in 2005, the International Booker Prize was originally awarded to an author for an entire body of work. But since 2016 it has gone to a single book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland during the previous 12 months. The award comes with 50,000 pounds, about $67,500, which the author and translator share equally.

Last year’s prize went to Banu Mushtaq’s “Heart Lamp,” translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi — the first story collection to win the honor. Other past winners have included Jenny Erpenbeck’s “Kairos,” Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” and Lucas Rijneveld’s “The Discomfort of Evening.”

This year’s judging panel will now cut the nominees down to a six book shortlist, which is scheduled to be announced on March 31. The judges then reread all of the shortlisted titles before deciding on a winner, which will be announced at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London on May 19."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/books/international-booker-prize-longlist.html

archivio: https://archive.is/qXRHL

Quando il giornalismo per i millennial riscopre i vecchi trucchi dei settimanali anni Ottanta: i titoli che grattano dove prude. Intanto Mostly Weekly arriva al numero 366. Sembra ieri, vero?

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/366/

Letture per la domenica

Wirecutter è considerato la migliore sezione di consigli per gli acquisti. E che acquisti: hanno provato cinque marche diverse di sardine in scatola (negli Usa) per capire quali sono le migliori. Un'ottima lettura per la domenica, gustosa e intrattiene assai.

Money quote: "A satisfying pop, a hiss of air. Glistening swimmers, neatly trimmed and arranged in shimmering oil. I grab a fork and dig in, savoring each salty, meaty bite. Snacking solved, oh so tastily.

I liked sardines way before they were cool. Now I’m just one of many who adore the little oily fish, which ascended in recent years from unassuming to superstar."


https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-sardines/

archivio: https://archive.is/zG0P1

Alla fine nessuno andrà più a iscriversi a informatica, smanetteranno tutti da casa, non ci capiranno niente e vivremo in un mondo di ignorantoni che fanno fare tutto all'AI di turno. I nostri software ci mangeranno vivi, non le AI...

(Sono stato troppo duro?)

Money quote: "To stress test it, I tasked 16 agents with writing a Rust-based C compiler, from scratch, capable of compiling the Linux kernel. Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs, the agent team produced a 100,000-line compiler that can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V."

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler

L'economia mondiale ha cambiato passo, come ci spiegano Patrick e John Collison, fondatori di Stripe, nella loro lettera annuale agli investitori (un genere letterario di per sé, credetemi).

Money quote: "At heart, competitive markets are a sorting machine. They direct profits, capital, and talent to the places of greatest impact, as determined by customers voting with their wallets. Historically, this sorting happened methodically. It typically took decades for a household name to be unseated or for a new entrant to reach meaningful scale."

"The sorting machine is now whirring faster: winners and losers are being anointed more quickly and more intensely. Today, the most profitable third of publicly listed companies in the US account for two -thirds of total market capitalization, the highest share since data began in 1963. And much of this is a story of profit concentration, not just valuations: the top 10% of the S &P 500 by market c ap now account for roughly 59% of the index’s total profits, which is elevated relative to recent history"

https://assets.stripeassets.com/fzn2n1nzq965/3LlGw839Q6kUwxZlLZDtH6/75ddcbada4aa7743dd8ec7d0f9ca497e/Stripe-annual-letter-2025-desktop.pdf

Cosa sono i videogiochi? Intrattenimento? Arte? Media? (o meglio: new media?). Artribune prova a lavorare sulla categoria che gli compete, indicando i "più filosofici e profondi" usciti a febbraio 2026. Un carotaggio, se volete.

Money quote: "I videogiochi di cui parliamo a febbraio 2026 raccontano il corpo e la sua rappresentazione digitale (Cairn, Don’t Stop, Girlypop!), mostrano il deteriorarsi dei confini tra lavoro e tempo libero (On-Together: Virtual Co-Working), prendono spunto dall’architettura brutalista e dalle sue aspirazioni (Quake Brutalist Jam III) e parlano di IA generativa e manipolazione della verità (TR-49)."

https://www.artribune.com/progettazione/new-media/2026/02/videogiochi-febbraio-2/

Secondo me non dovremmo dimenticarci questo intervento di Papa Leone XIV rivolto al clero di Roma dello scorso 19 febbraio. Non per la cosa in sé (le omelie dei sacerdoti) ma per quello che dice in generale.

Money quote: "«Circa la realtà del mondo di oggi, non ho parlato finora di una realtà che arriva a noi anche se noi non vogliamo: l’intelligenza artificiale, l’uso dell’internet, che anche nella vita del sacerdote è presente. Tra parentesi, faccio l’invito a resistere alla tentazione di preparare le omelie con l’intelligenza artificiale! Come tutti i muscoli nel corpo se non li utilizziamo, se non li muoviamo muoiono, il cervello ha bisogno di essere utilizzato, allora anche la nostra intelligenza, la vostra intelligenza bisogna esercitarla un po’ per non perdere questa capacità»."

https://www.ilpost.it/2026/02/20/papa-omelie-preti-ai/

Si avvicina la notte degli Oscar. Recap delle nomination (giò vecchiotte)

Money quote: "I peccatori di Ryan Coogler è diventato il film che ha ottenuto più candidature nella storia degli Oscar (16), ed è presente in tutte le categorie più ambite. Una battaglia dopo l’altra di Paul Thomas Anderson, il film considerato come favorito da addetti ai lavori e riviste di settore, ne ha avute 13, tra cui quella come miglior film, miglior regia, miglior attore protagonista (Leonardo DiCaprio), migliore attrice non protagonista (Teyana Taylor) e miglior sceneggiatura non originale. Due suoi attori, Benicio del Toro e Sean Penn, sono stati entrambi candidati al premio come miglior attore non protagonista."

https://www.ilpost.it/2026/01/22/nomination-oscar-2026/

Una delle ragioni per cui siamo fortunati ad avere internet (e il web) sono gli articoli come questo

Money quote: "The internet’s default answer to “why is the sky blue?” is “Rayleigh scattering”. And that’s not wrong, but it’s also not very useful. Simply knowing the name of something is very different from understanding it. But if names don’t constitute understanding… what does? My answer: having a model that allows you to make predictions. If you can reliably predict something, then you probably understand that thing. In this article, we’ll explore why the sky is blue – but we’ll go deep enough that, by the time you finish, you can predict what color the sky will be on other planets."

https://explainers.blog/posts/why-is-the-sky-blue/

Il minimalismo è una truffa estetica? I calchi semantici che cambiano la lingua, un gorilla detective e il bianchetto degli scribi egizi. È arrivato il numero 367 di Mostly Weekly.

https://antoniodini.com/weekly/367/

Letture per la domenica

La scoperta del nuovo giocattolo. Ma è davvero un giocattolo?

Money quote: "But then there’s the more enjoyable part. The creative part. The impactful part.

About two weeks ago, seeing the enthusiasm for emerging agentic systems among people I know and respect — and feeling that same excitement myself — I decided to get together anybody in my network who might be interested in exploring this, whatever their current level of knowledge.

In two or three hours, I had explored possible domain names, decided on one, registered it, built a website, written the copy, integrated it with our CRM’s API, and launched Homebrew Agents Club — a meetup inspired by the original Homebrew Computer Club, for people experimenting with AI agents. Upwards of 90% of that work was done by OpenClaw. The design, the copy, the deployment. Work that would previously have taken me an entire day under strong time constraints took 90 minutes end to end.

Then, when a couple of people said they couldn’t make the meetup and jokingly asked whether their agent could attend, I built a forum site for agents and humans to gather. Perhaps half a day elapsed, but maybe an hour or so of my time, most of which was thinking deeply about interesting challenges that emerged only after I’d built the initial system."

https://webdirections.org/blog/i-see-dead-people/

Ha iniziato a programmare a 7 anni. Oggi ne ha 50. Questa è la sua crisi di mezza età, spiattellata sul web (ovviamente è un maschio).

Money quote: "My favourite period of computing runs from the 8-bits through to about the 486DX2-66. Every machine in that era had character. The Sinclair Spectrum with its attribute clash. The Commodore 64 with its SID chip doing things the designers never intended. The NES with its 8-sprite-per-scanline limit that made developers invent flickering tricks to cheat the hardware. And the PC — starting life as a boring beige box for spreadsheets, then evolving at breakneck pace through the 286, 386, and 486 until it became a gaming powerhouse that could run Doom. You could feel each generation leap. Upgrading your CPU wasn’t a spec sheet exercise — it was transformative.

These weren’t just products. They were engineering adventures with visible tradeoffs. You had to understand the machine to use it. IRQ conflicts, DMA channels, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT optimisation, memory managers — getting a game to run was the game. You weren’t just a user. You were a systems engineer by necessity."

My favourite period of computing runs from the 8-bits through to about the 486DX2-66. Every machine in that era had character. The Sinclair Spectrum with its attribute clash. The Commodore 64 with its SID chip doing things the designers never intended. The NES with its 8-sprite-per-scanline limit that made developers invent flickering tricks to cheat the hardware. And the PC — starting life as a boring beige box for spreadsheets, then evolving at breakneck pace through the 286, 386, and 486 until it became a gaming powerhouse that could run Doom. You could feel each generation leap. Upgrading your CPU wasn’t a spec sheet exercise — it was transformative.

These weren’t just products. They were engineering adventures with visible tradeoffs. You had to understand the machine to use it. IRQ conflicts, DMA channels, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT optimisation, memory managers — getting a game to run was the game. You weren’t just a user. You were a systems engineer by necessity.

https://www.jamesdrandall.com/posts/the_thing_i_loved_has_changed/

Ieri c'era un "anziano" programmatore che sentiva il bisogno di raccontare le cose importanti che ha capito nella sua vita. Tipica crisi maschile di mezza età. Oggi c'è una donna, più giovane ma anche lei a un punto simbolico di svolta (25 anni, anche se attacca parlando di 20). Però...

Money quote: "Last year, I completed 20 years in professional software development. I wanted to write a post to mark the occasion back then, but couldn't find the time. This post is my attempt to make up for that omission. "

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html