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/

Smettere di radersi le gambe per protesta contro Donald Trump. Sembra una bischerata ma, dopo poche righe, almeno per me che sono dell'altro genere, si cominciano a capire parecchie cose. Molto interessante.

Money quote: "Although my husband supported my cause, he couldn’t help the fact that my hairy legs were a turnoff. I’ll admit I was torn — removing my leg hair to appease a man would be directly at odds with its raison d’être. Still, my commitment to my marriage outweighed any short-term political statement. So I agreed to set a “shave date” for International Women’s Day on March 8, which allowed me a full four months of luxuriating in my natural outrage."

https://medium.com/bottoms-up/the-politics-of-not-shaving-my-legs-2600cd7ea23f

Oltre all'apocalisse del settore retail, negli Usa c'è un profondo cambiamento in atto anche nel settore della grande distribuzione di alimenti, i supermercati (che, se andate negli Usa, sono una esperienza di per sé). Ecco, all'interno della crisi che tocca vari aspetti ed elementi, una cosa per me è significativa: la differente cultura alimentare e commerciale non permette loro di vedere che una parte del cambiamento deriva anche da una impostazione più sana della vita di sempre più persone. Sul serio. Stai a vedere che gli americani alla fine sono migliori dell'America.

Money quote: "Nielsen, a research and consulting firm, said last month that for the first time in a decade, shoppers were making more trips to stores, but coming out with less in their baskets. “They’re not stockpiling their pantries as much,” said Jordan Rost, the company’s vice president for consumer insights. “They’re really buying more fresh produce and prepared meals.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/dining/grocery-book-michael-ruhlman-supermarket-shopping.html

Bill Clinton e un suo vecchio amico giudice hanno fatto schema e domande delle parole crociate del New York Times, di cui sono appassionati.

Money quote: "In the case of today’s puzzle, Judge Fleming constructed the grid, with some input from Mr. Clinton. The president wrote most of the clues. When the judge proposed tweaks to certain clues, Mr. Clinton objected: “Too easy and boring. Might as well print the answers in the puzzle"


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/insider/bill-clinton-new-york-times-crossword.html

Il re dell'Olanda, perché l'Olanda ha un re, come hobby pilota aerei di linea di KLM. E vuole fare il salto su quelli belli grossi, oltretutto. OMG

Money quote: ""For me the most important thing is that I have a hobby for which I need to concentrate completely," he said."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/18/europe/netherlands-king-willem-alexander-klm-pilot/

È finita l'era della scrittura iper personale e soggettiva. Un'epoca durata un decennio, vissuta tutta in rete e probabilmente figlia di un riflusso verso il privato e il banale del giornalismo americano che ha solo aiutato Donald Trump.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-personal-essay-boom-is-over

Come formichine, piano piano i giornalisti americani lavorano all'ipotesi di impeachment di Donald Trump. Anche ripercorrendo il senso storico fondante dell'istituto giuridico (e del termine stesso: to impeach vuol dire "mettere in dubbio, in discussione"). Ecco dunque la spiegazione di come ha fatto l'impeachment ad entrare nella Costituzione americana.

Money quote: "On the morning of Friday, July 20, 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, addressed the question of whether or not a President could be impeached while in office. A king might be beheaded, a Prime Minister toppled. What fate could befall a terrible President? Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, and Gouverneur Morris, of Pennsylvania, moved to strike out a proposed phrase stipulating that the President could be removed “on impeachment and conviction for malpractice or neglect of duty.” Morris thought that if a President committed crimes, he wouldn’t be reëlected, and that would be that, since no other solution accorded with the separation of powers. “Who,” he wondered, “shall impeach?” The irascible George Mason, of Virginia, found this argument absurd. “Shall any man be above justice?” Mason asked. “Above all, shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?” It was as good a question then as it is now."

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-impeachment-ended-up-in-the-constitution

Potremmo chiamarla superstizione scientifica. È l'attitudine ad applicare un determinismo dogmatico a cose di cui in realtà non si è capito il senso. Ieri era la religione, oggi la genetica. Perché no?

Money quote: "Evolutionary determinism was the first thread of the gene metaphor. Natural selection preserves only what is inherited from the successful organisms in the past. The second thread comes from Darwin’s contemporary, Gregor Mendel, who conducted his studies of peas in order to understand the nature of inheritance. His findings also fit the Newtonian worldview perfectly. If natural selection was a law of nature, like gravity, then Mendel’s laws of inheritance promised to identify the fundamental building blocks of biological causation. By choosing specific traits that he knew bred true, Mendel identified a pattern of inheritance that provided perhaps the most powerful tool for research design in the history of science. The genetic research that followed eventually led to the identification of the nature of DNA, the locations and structure of genes in DNA, and the understanding of how they code for proteins. But that same Mendelian thinking made us conceptual prisoners of the deterministic, law-like interpretation of genetic function that leads us to think of traits themselves, not just genes, as discretely packaged units, produced by discretely packaged genes. That suggests that a pea seed already contains mini-green peas, or that a fertilised human egg contains a tiny human: a kind of genetic superstition"

https://aeon.co/essays/dna-is-the-ruling-metaphor-of-our-age

A large cargo ship emits pollutants as much as 50 million cars and besides environmental issues, fuel consumption has a big impact on shipping costs, too. Meanwhile global scale shipping companies like Hanjin are getting "stuck at sea" and are reconsidering sail power, a few old sailing vessels are reviving a small scale exotic way of transporting goods around the world. Clippers are schooners are run mainly by cooperatives or syndicates of owners like once upon ago. Take a look and support the clipper's routes while sipping a cup of fairly imported chinese tea: http://fairtransport.eu