Si, perché oggi in America c'è chi si comincia a chiedere se tutti quei giovani con i capelli a spazzola non vogliano dire qualcosa

Money quote: "n the 1930s, Nazis distinguished themselves by wearing swastikas, an easily identifiable marker that made their odious politics clear. The only defining look of today’s white nationalists — a movement that seeks to form a whites-only state — is the haircut, so popular that the leader of one nationalist group tweets under the handle “Fashy Haircut,” short for “fascist.”"

Does this haircut make me look like a Nazi?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/11/30/does-this-haircut-make-me-look-like-a-nazi/

La foto della domenica

Vivere down under. Letteralmente.

Money quote: "There are a handful of Vietnamese men and women, roughly in their early 40s, who share a very unusual distinction: They were all born in the Vinh Moc tunnel complex in the Quang Tri region, when their families were taking shelter from bombs raining down on their village during the Vietnam War."

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/v-nh-m-c-tunnel-complex

Negli Usa è iniziata l’apocalisse del settore retail vittima dell'e-commerce - il mio articolo per Macity

http://www.macitynet.it/negli-usa-iniziata-lapocalisse-del-settore-retail/

Cos'è la vita nomade? Perché diventa ogni giorno più interessante da studiare e da capire? Stiamo vivendo un'epoca piuttosto particolare, di transazione, con un privilegio che è quello di viverla in maniera accelerata: anziché due o tre secoli qui cambia tutto in 50 anni secchi, e siamo già oltre la metà.

Al netto di questo, la pancia degli artisti, la loro sensibilità contrapposta alla testa dei tecnici, è lo strumento adatto per sentire prima ancora che per capire cosa succede. Per questo ho trovato affascinante questo lavoro di Nieuwenhuys: "New Babylonia"

Money quote: "For the next 15 years, the artist dropped everything to work on a set of far-out, multimedia plans for what he called New Babylon, which he described as “a camp for nomads on a planetary scale.” After sitting in storage for decades, the artworks resurfaced last fall in an exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, in the Netherlands. According to Laura Stamps, the curator of the exhibition, it was right on time: “What he called [nomadism] has, in a way, become a reality for a number of groups of people,” from freelancers to refugees, she says. “The world is struggling to deal with this.” In her view, Nieuwenhuys’s work can help us explore the consequences and possibilities of our ultra-mobile, connected world."

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-babylon-future-cities-constant-nieuwenhuys

Una pista di attrrraggio e decollo circolare. Perché no? Lo propongono in Olanda.

Money quote: "Dubbed the “endless runway”, Hesselink’s brainchild is a 360-degree landing strip measuring more than two miles in diameter. Since airplanes would be able to approach and take off from any direction around the proposed circle, they wouldn’t have to fight against crosswinds. And three planes would be able to take off or land at the same time."

http://www.curbed.com/2017/3/24/15043986/endless-runway-airport-design

Una foto di Amsterdam risalente ai primi anni 30. #fotodelgiorno

Vi avevo detto di segnarvi i 28 marzo. Ci siamo, S·Town è un nuovo podcast (sette puntate, verranno rilasciate tutte questa sera). Iscrivetevi, ascoltatelo. https://stownpodcast.org

Negli Usa le persone hanno sempre più fiducia nella pubblicità e sempre meno nelle news. Ci credete?

Money quote: "Why it matters: The most recent Gallup poll on trust in media shows that 68% of Americans don't trust the news - the lowest rate ever measured. The shift shows that as people trust established media brands less, they are turning towards unconventional sources of information, like social platforms. It also makes sense that digital ads are less likely to be trusted, because most are sold in an automated way that over 1/3 of consumers find invasive."

https://www.axios.com/ad-trust-rises-as-news-trust-sinks-2331904426.html

Niente più televisione e fa di tutto: dalla maratona alla tesi del dottorato. Io che non l'ho più da sei anni dovrei essere sulla Stazione spaziale internazionale, a questo punto.

Money quote: "But banning TV didn’t seem to affect my social life. Water-cooler discussions don’t revolve around the previous night’s must-see TV as they once did; streaming means not everyone is watching the same episode or even the same season. I could just say I hadn’t gotten to that episode and no one thought twice about it. The only times I felt I was missing out were retellings of late-night talk-show jokes. I figured I’d watch some programs I missed when the year ended, but reruns of “The Daily Show” would just be dated."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/i-gave-up-tv-then-qualified-for-olympic-marathon-trials-and-got-my-phd/2017/03/24/6d90aafc-ee38-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.html

Come funziona l'evoluzione? Qual è il suo ritmo? A quanto pare, complesso e multidimensionale, con frequenti variazioni impetuose nel breve e un pacifico andare nel lungo. Proprio come la matematica ci suggerirebbe

Money quote: "“Think of it like the stock market,” he said. Look at the hourly or daily fluctuations of Standard & Poor’s 500 index, and it will appear wildly unstable, swinging this way and that. Zoom out, however, and the market appears much more stable as the daily shifts start to average out. In the same way, the forces of natural selection weed out the less advantageous and more deleterious mutations over time."

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/evolution-slower-looks-faster-think/

Uno di quei momenti che adoro della retorica angloamericana: quando cercano di dimostrare le tesi più paradossali riuscendo, in ogni modo, a dire qualcosa di originale e che fa pensare. Ma veramente, l'ortodossia è un concetto piuttosto acquoso dall'altro lato dell'Oceano.

Adesso, prendiamo, ad esempio, gli ortaggi freschi. Possiamo discutere se siano economicamente sensati anche per grandi popolazioni urbane, ma sostenere che quelli trattati sono in realtà meglio per il nostro organismo? Cioè, è meglio il ketchup che non il pomodoro fresco? Dai, che bello vivere così! Se qualcuno vuole spegnere Internet, io non lo fermo.

Money quote: "Since we’re on the subject of freshness, consider this: ketchup might actually be better for us than fresh tomatoes – and not just because of economics (the tomatoes used in ketchup are subgrade ones that would otherwise be destroyed). While fresh tomatoes contribute to a healthy diet, human digestive systems are not tuned to extracting most nutrients from fresh tomatoes. Tomatoes are far more nutritious when cooked or processed into ketchup or paste. So, ketchup is no bad thing – unless overloaded with sugar and salt. Indeed, a growing body of evidence suggests that the discovery of fire and cooking – that is, heating food – has been essential in the evolution of the human brain because it allowed for a better absorption of nutrients. Moreover, drying and smoking promoted the preservation of perishable foodstuffs, and perhaps facilitated the emergence of a more complex diet and division of labour."

https://aeon.co/essays/is-sustainability-sold-at-supermarkets-or-farmers-markets

Intel ha deciso di mettere ordine nelle metriche, per poter comparare di nuovo le pere con le pere e le mele con le mele. E riscoprire così la correttezza della legge di Moore

Money quote: "But recently – perhaps because of the increasing difficulty of further scaling – some companies have abandoned this rule, yet continued to advance node names, even in cases where there was minimal or no density increase. The result is that node names have become a poor indicator of where a process stands on the Moore’s Law curve"

https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/lets-clear-up-node-naming-mess/

Chiude The Deck, network di pubblicità fatta bene che per me è stata un punto di riferimento (l'ho studiata, analizzata, proposta ad alcune testate come modello). Daring Fireball, che l'ha utilizzata fin dal principio, spiega a cosa è servita e cosa ha voluto dire in questi 11 anni avere The Deck come (una) fonte dei proventi del sito.

Money quote: "I devised my original sponsorship system — a set of principles more than a set of rules — through commiseration and collaboration with my friend Jim Coudal. We shared the same deep frustration: a sense that there had to be a way to do advertising on the web that didn’t suck — something that readers would not mind (and might actually enjoy), provided good results for the advertisers, and generated good money for the publisher"

http://daringfireball.net/2017/03/the_deck_adieu

Ma I jeans molto aderenti (i modelli skinny elasticizzati) sono pericolosi? Possono davvero uccidere? È un capo di abbigliamento tendenzialmente femminile e per giovani, quindi sono doppiamente fuori target. Ma vale la pena leggere lo stesso.

Money quote: "Additionally, most people who wear skinny jeans are on the younger side, and therefore much less likely to be at risk for the sorts of health issues that wearing really tight jeans might feasibly cause. “These jeans are being worn by a younger group of people who really should not have any peripheral vascular disease or venous disease,” Kim says. “Now, if you’re talking about an 89-year-old lady who’s trying to wear this and go to church and sit down for awhile, that’s another story.” It’s worth noting, too, that the woman who was cut from her jeans had been wearing them in a crouched position for “hours” packing for a move—and that lack of movement likely played as big a role in the leg swelling she experienced as did the jeans themselves. If you’re relatively mobile, and you don’t have any sort of vascular disease, and you’re younger than, say, 89, you’re probably going to be just fine."

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/is-this-going-to-kill-me-skinny-jeans-blood-clots/520992/

Tenetevi i nanometri, addio Tick-Tock: Intel annuncia la nuova strategia a onde di prodotto - il mio articolo per Macity

http://www.macitynet.it/le-onde-intel-sulla-spiaggia-del-mercato/

Pronti per decollare dalle piste circolari? - il mio articolo per Macity

http://www.macitynet.it/pronti-decollare-dalle-piste-circolari/

La chiave è il corpo. È sul corpo che si è potuta costruire la nostra realtà di essere intelligenti. Ed è il corpo, la sua intelligenza, la sua autonomia, la sua flessibilità (conquistate con milioni di anni di evoluzione) che manca all’intelligenza artificiale.

A pensarci bene, la premessa del problema sta tutta nell’errore di Cartesio, che ha iniettato l’idea del dualismo mente-corpo nella nostra cultura.

Money quote: “What we take as intelligence, then, is not simply about using symbols to represent the world as it objectively is. Rather, we only have the world as it is revealed to us, which is rooted in our evolved, embodied needs as an organism. Nature ‘has built the apparatus of rationality not just on top of the apparatus of biological regulation, but also from it and with it’, wrote the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in Descartes’ Error (1994), his seminal book on cognition. In other words, we think with our whole body, not just with the brain.”

https://aeon.co/ideas/the-body-is-the-missing-link-for-truly-intelligent-machines

“Lo amo”. “Ha cambiato la mia vita”. È il modo con cui i recensori su Amazon.com giudicano una pentola a pressione “digitale” (oltre che elettrica: 1KW). La vendono anche da noi, peraltro, anche se non conosco nessuno che la usi. Signore e signori, benvenuti nel mondo di Instant Pot. Ma attenzione, potrebbe cambiare la vostra vita. Potreste amarla. (Ma dai!)

Money quote: “The fact that this countertop appliance was outselling TVs and tablets may come as a surprise to many people, but not to its legions of dedicated fans, who express unabashed adoration.
"If you look at the Amazon reviews, one common word is 'love'," says Mr Wang.
"Americans are very open with their emotions. Love is all over the place. Another one is that 'Instant Pot changed my life'.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39058736

Yuval Harari è una specie di astro nascente della saggistica globale-totale, quella della Grande Teoria del Tutto che cerca di spiegare qualsiasi cosa con una formula onnicomprensiva in 400 pagine vendute a 19,99 dollari/euro. In questo caso, spiega la fine dell'umanità e l'emergere di qualcosa di nuovo entro 200, massimo 300 anni.

Money quote: "Given the current pace of technological development, it is possible we destroy ourselves in some ecological or nuclear calamity. The more likely possibility is that we will use bioengineering and machine learning and artificial intelligence either to upgrade ourselves into a totally different kind of being or to create a totally different kind of being that will take over.

In any case, in 200 or 300 years, the beings that will dominate the Earth will be far more different from us than we are different from Neanderthals or from chimpanzees."

http://www.vox.com/2017/3/27/14780114/yuval-harari-ai-vr-consciousness-sapiens-homo-deus-podcast

Ps: questo lungo articolo che è praticamente la trascrizione di buona parte di un podcast spiega perché consiglio sempre di non lasciare l'audio "sguarnito" da un testo di accompagnamento, se si fanno podcast e poi li si vogliono anche pubblicare sul web.