La migliore descrizione di cosa sia il potere e come funzioni secondo il Guardian viene da un libro improbabile, intelligente, inutile, pericoloso. È "Adults in the Room" di Yanis Varoufakis, l'ex ministro economico greco. Ve lo ricordate? Pochi sono stati più discussi di lui. Per questo probabilmente vale la pena leggerlo.

Money quote: "Elected politicians have little power; Wall Street and a network of hedge funds, billionaires and media owners have the real power, and the art of being in politics is to recognise this as a fact of life and achieve what you can without disrupting the system. That was the offer. Varoufakis not only rejected it – by describing it in frank detail now, he is arming us against the stupidity of the left’s occasional fantasies that the system built by neoliberalism can somehow bend or compromise to our desire for social justice."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir

Provare a creare una app per scrivere con il computer con un output in finto corsivo è un esercizio di riscoperta del perché la scrittura a mano, oggi sempre meno praticata, sia in realtà tremenda (per la maggior parte di noi). Considerazioni alquanto interessanti, devo dire.

Money quote: "Being a lazy programmer I decided that the next project that I can have fun with can be creating your own handwriting typeface and just type in your handwriting using a keyboard. So I picked up the book “Thinking with Type” and started working on an app which allows the user to send messages in their handwriting. The app is chugging along slowly but I know a lot more about typefaces than I used to and the above mentioned book has been invaluable. All this preface brings me to this post. I thought it would be fun to analyse my own pathetic handwriting from the point of view of a designer and actually point out why it sucks. So here goes"

https://artplusmarketing.com/why-my-handwriting-sucks-a-typographical-analysis-9e0fc4756b71

Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo dei pirati? Non dei film della Disney: i pirati veri, di lingua inglese, i cui racconti romantici e avventurosi ci sono noti fin da bambini. L'attività non è stata molto praticata dagli storici, nonostante la pirateria sia stata fondamentale per lo sviluppo delle colonie nordamericane. Per questo, almeno quando si parla di pirati inglesi e americani, qualcosa da sapere ci sarebbe. Uno storico americano ha scritto il libro di riferimento sul tema. Scoprendo che molto di quello che pensiamo dei pirati non è assolutamente vero.

Money quote: "Pirates could be found in nearly every Atlantic port city. But only particular locations became known as “pirate nests,” a pejorative term used by royalists and customs officials. Many of the most notorious pirates began their careers in these ports. Others established even deeper ties by settling in these cities and becoming respected members of the local elite. Instead of the snarling drunken fiends that parade through children’s books, these pirates spent their booty on pigs and chickens, hoping to live a more placid and financially secure life on land."

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/lot-what-known-about-pirates-not-true-and-lot-what-true-not-known

Tutti parlano di Apple e dei suoi 800 miliardi di dollari di capitalizzazione di mercato, che presto potrebbero diventare mille (un trilione, secondo le misure anglosassoni). Ma qualcuno potrebbe anche notare, come avviene in questo pezzo, che anche Amazon è decisamente avviata in quella direzione, nonostante i suoi "soli" 400 miliardi.

Money quote: "Amazon, for my money, is the most interesting company operating today. Even valued north of $400 billion, it feels cheap. Because they’re not only doing so much, they’re doing so much well. They’re out-executing pretty much everyone, and they’re doing it at incredible scale. A trillion dollar valuation doesn’t seem absolutely insane. Which is insane"

https://500ish.com/the-whale-38c3cfa2cc3e

Il design non è la forma di un oggetto, ma come funziona. Per questo soprattutto la sua interfaccia ha bisogno di avere uno studio particolarmente curato e dinamico. Torna utile la tecnica dello storytelling e, per capire cosa si sta facendo, in particolare l'arte dello storyboard.

Money quote: "Storyboarding in UX is tool which help you visually predict and explore a user’s experience with a product. It’s a very much as thinking about your product as if it was a movie in term of how people would use it. It would help you to understand how people would flow through the interaction with it over time, giving you a clear sense of how to create a strong narrative."

https://uxplanet.org/storyboarding-in-ux-design-b9d2e18e5fab

La foto della domenica

Un piccolo errore nelle mappe di Flight Simulator, storie dal passato

Money quote: “Bill Gates actually reads his email, and he forwarded the message to the head of the Flight Simulator team with the note, "Please look into this."

Now, if you're the head of the Flight Simulator project, you have plenty of things to deal with already, and one of the last things you want to get is a piece of email from Bill Gates asking you to look into something.”

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170418-00/

Il cimitero delle piattaforme petrolifere. Storia lunga ma affascinante: prendetevi del tempo.

Money quote: "Of those 864 vessels sent for demolition that year, 668 went to yards in that region. “The incentive is to go to south Asia,” said Patrizia Heidegger of Shipbreaking Platform, “because the highest price paid per tonne is there.” Whether individual shipowners took up that incentive depended, in her view, on a moral-financial reckoning. How much they cared about profits, as against how much they cared. “The reason you have owners going to beaches in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is money,” said Petter Heier, head of Grieg Green, a subsidiary of the Norwegian maritime group Grieg established to promote and advise on responsible shipbreaking"

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/02/where-oil-rigs-go-to-die

Come gestire un superiore gerarchico narcisista. Ma anche piuttosto violento e incontrollato. Non sono d'accordo perché mi pare una postura non sostenibile eticamente. Comunque, per la cronaca...

Money quote: "On a day-to-day basis, appealing to this person’s egocentricity can be very effective. The occasional recognition of the person’s achievement, strengths, or values may go a long way in avoiding anger or demeaning comments; in some instances, you may simply want to remark upon a person’s good efforts. Fanning the embers of narcissism is particularly effective in avoiding unwanted conflict. Particularly if the Narcissus is your boss, you have to let them think that you perceive them as important. No matter how difficult it may be to do this, the Narcissus boss can make the workplace a living hell for anyone who they think is not on board with their success. Give them compliments, and try to do so without mocking them."

https://qz.com/978909/the-best-ways-to-deal-with-narcissistic-coworkers-according-to-a-psychiatrist/

Nota di servizio: sono di nuovo in viaggio (ancora negli Stati Uniti). Questa settimana il canale verrà aggiornato con meno frequenza del solito, ma spero con articoli sempre interessanti. Un saluto a tutti!

E visto che siamo in tema, almeno come destinazione culturale: il cambiamento è la chiave per evolvere assieme e mantenere vivi i sentimenti e le relazioni. Detto questo, gli americani sono decisamente un popolo di alieni, per un motivo o per un altro.

Money quote: "Several long-married people I know have said this exact line: “I’ve had at least three marriages. They’ve just all been with the same person.” I’d say Neal and I have had at least three marriages: Our partying 20s, child-centric 30s and home-owning 40s."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/style/modern-love-to-stay-married-embrace-change.html

Difendiamo i "celibi" dai soprusi e dai privilegi di chi si è sposato!

Money quote: "It seems, then, that single people have finally arrived, poised to take their rightful place alongside married couples when it comes to status, power and respect. Except for one thing: single people still don’t have access to the legal benefits and protections the government grants to those who get married. In the US, there are more than 1,100 laws benefiting married couples, and that’s just at the federal level; many states offer perks and protections as well"

https://aeon.co/ideas/marriage-should-not-come-with-any-social-benefits-or-privileges

Stephen Levy ha fatto un giro all'interno del cantiere - praticamente finito - del nuovo quartier generale di Apple. Sì, quel ciambellone che si vede anche dall'aereo. Ed è rimasto sinceramente impressionato.

Money quote: "It turns out that when you turn a skyscraper on its side, all of its bullying power dissipates into a humble serenity."

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/apple-park-new-silicon-valley-campus/

L'intervista di Donald Trump all'Economist, prima del pasticcio con l'ambasciatore russo e prima del viaggio in Medio Oriente, è un vero delirio.

Money quote:

"(Ms Hicks) And we’ll have you guys back to talk about it. Sorry

(The Economist) Thank you so much, Mr President.

(Donald Trump) I hope you had enough time.

(The Economist) You’ve been very kind."

http://www.economist.com/Trumptranscript?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/transcriptinterviewwithdonaldtrump

Buona parte di quello che Corman McCarthy ha scritto, l'ha scritto con una Lettera 22 che quasi dieci anni fa è andata all'asta. Grande scrittore, grande macchina per scrivere: è proprio il caso di dirlo.

Money quote: "When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac’s typewriter. It’s as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife"

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/great-writer-great-machine

Competenza e incompetenza. Una lettura che dovrebbe essere obbligatoria.

Money quote: "Interestingly, really smart people also fail to accurately self-assess their abilities. As much as D- and F-grade students overestimate their abilities, A-grade students underestimate theirs. In their classic study, Dunning and Kruger found that high-performing students, whose cognitive scores were in the top quartile, underestimated their relative competence. These students presumed that if these cognitive tasks were easy for them, then they must be just as easy or even easier for everyone else. This so-called ‘imposter syndrome’ can be likened to the inverse of the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby high achievers fail to recognise their talents and think that others are equally competent. The difference is that competent people can and do adjust their self-assessment given appropriate feedback, while incompetent individuals cannot"

https://aeon.co/ideas/what-know-it-alls-dont-know-or-the-illusion-of-competence

È lo scarrafone della rete, la contraddizione vivente. Vecchio design mai rinnovato. Eppure, Craiglist va come un missile. Il motivo è nella pancia di tutti noi.

Money quote: "there’s something to be said about respecting an internet user’s desire to complete a task quickly, to resist the many strategies modern websites employ to keep a person’s attention just a little bit longer."

https://theringer.com/craigslist-case-for-bad-design-silicon-valley-67e9e933764e

Sap scommette su Leonardo, accelerazione sulla digital transformation - il mio articolo per CorCom

http://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/digital/47316_sap-scommette-su-leonardo-accelerazione-sulla-digital-transformation.htm

Per chi lo ha consciuto bene, come il suo ghost writer, Donald Trump presidente degli Stati Uniti non è una sorpresa.

Money quote: "To survive, I concluded from our conversations, Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world. It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it — as he thought his older brother had. This narrow, defensive outlook took hold at a very early age, and it never evolved. “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now,” he told a recent biographer, “I’m basically the same.” His development essentially ended in early childhood"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/05/16/i-wrote-the-art-of-the-deal-with-trump-his-self-sabotage-is-rooted-in-his-past/

L’MP3 è morto solo sulla carta, lunga vita all’MP3 - il mio articolo per Macity

http://www.macitynet.it/lmp3-morto-lunga-vita-allmp3/