Libri digitali gratuiti e open, fatti anche bene per i veri amanti della tipografia. Imperdibile

Money quote:

"Standard Ebooks is a volunteer driven, not-for-profit project that produces lovingly formatted, open source, and free public domain ebooks.

Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and make them available for the widest number of reading devices. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style guide, lightly modernizes them, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to take advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.

Standard Ebooks aren’t just a beautiful addition to your digital library—they’re a high quality standard to build your own ebooks on."

https://standardebooks.org/

L'economia è diventata una religione. Ma i suoi preti, gli economisti, sono se possibile ancora peggio di quelli veri a fare previsioni.

Money quote: "Yet if history teaches anything, it’s that whenever economists feel certain that they have found the holy grail of endless peace and prosperity, the end of the present regime is nigh. On the eve of the 1929 Wall Street crash, the American economist Irving Fisher advised people to go out and buy shares; in the 1960s, Keynesian economists said there would never be another recession because they had perfected the tools of demand management."

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/11/how-economics-became-a-religion

Donald Trump piace molto ad alcuni ma non a tutti. Soprattutto, non piace all'establishment americano. Quali problemi sorgeranno?

Money quote:

"His nutty behavior is bad enough at home; it’s even worse abroad when he is supposed to be representing not just his rabid base of “deplorables” but, rather, the whole country. That is something Trump simply does not know how to do.

Thus, in the course of this trip, he trashed his predecessor, the U.S. intelligence community, and the “fake news” media. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan in 1981 going abroad and attacking Jimmy Carter for not doing more to stand up to Soviet aggression? Or attacking the press for being hostile to him in the 1980 campaign (as they were) and the intelligence community for not predicting the Iranian revolution (as they did not)? It’s unimaginable, yet Trump somehow thinks that it’s appropriate."

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/09/trump-has-picked-americas-enemies-in-russia-over-its-friends-in-europe/

Nel caso dovesse servire, una cronologia generale e completa della storia della matematica. In anni recenti diventa molto densa.

Money quote:

"About 30000BC
Palaeolithic peoples in central Europe and France record numbers on bones."

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Chronology/full.html

Con quale tempo verbale (tense) si fa sexting in inglese? Non è una domanda banale, anche se ovviamente è più rivelatoria per un parlante inglese che per un italiano o un francese o uno spagnolo (a causa anche del particolare tipo di costrutti verbali in gioco). Beh, questo articolo offre con leggerezza risposte non banali.

Money quote: "According to philosophers of language like Jaakko Hintikka, sentences with desire verbs shift our perspective to a world in which our desires come true. Or, as my boyfriend paraphrased it: “He basically says that ‘I want to take off your clothes’ means ‘In those worlds where my desires are realized, your clothes are off.’” You can see which one looks hotter."

https://theawl.com/dont-sext-me-in-the-present-tense-447be1895c25

Un lungo, complesso articolo sull'inclusione nel posto di lavoro e sull'idea stessa del lavoro e su mille altre cose apparentemente piccole e casuali ma in realtà gigantesche, se ci pensate bene. Un articolo difficile da seguire perché il tono diaristico-personale offre pochi spunti di sintesi e astrazione della riflessione. Ma molto, molto interessante lo stesso.

Money quote: "See, here’s the thing: there are many ways to build an inclusive environment, and to enjoy the diversity that often follows from it. One great way, that I think might’ve been overlooked, is to keep things professional. When our office culture is focused on business rather than socializing, we reduce the number of ways in which we all have to be the same. When we do that, we allow diversity to flourish. If your culture expects people to work long hours or hang out off-hours, the strain on the people who are different, in whatever way, is increased, and your ability to retain a diverse work force is reduced."

https://hackernoon.com/for-inclusive-culture-maybe-less-is-more-87b663662cea

Papa Francesco, le ostie senza glutine e un problema di dottrina che sembra banale ma tale, per il credente, non è.

Money quote: "Now, Francis and the Church that he presides over are taking steps to ensure that the holy ceremony of the Eucharist is not besmirched by any gluten-free products. In a recent letter to bishops written by Cardinal Robert Sarah, "at the request of Pope Francis," gluten-free bread is deemed "invalid matter" for the celebration of the Eucharist.

The Eucharist, or Holy Communion, is the ceremony instituted by Jesus Christ himself at the Last Supper, which consists of consuming bread and wine in order to commemorate Christ's sacrifice. Catholics believe that bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ through a process called transubstantiation."

https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/bjx7z4/vatican-takes-a-stand-against-gluten-free-communion

Automattic, quelli di Wordpress, hanno chiuso il loro super ufficio di San Francisco, che più che un ufficio però era un bellissimo spazio di appoggio per dipendenti da sempre abituati a considerare il loro MacBook il vero posto di lavoro. Interessanti considerazioni strategiche su questo particolare aspetto dello smart working: il nomadismo

Money quote: "Automattic has always given its 550 employees the choice of working remotely; the San Francisco space was an optional co-working space, spokesman Mark Armstrong said. The company maintains similar offices in Cape Town, South Africa, and outside Portland, Maine, and gives employees a $250-a-month stipend if they want to use commercial co-working offices elsewhere. And if they’d rather work at Starbucks, Automattic will pay for their coffee."

https://qz.com/1002655/the-company-behind-wordpress-is-closing-its-gorgeous-san-francisco-office-because-its-employees-never-show-up/

Bentornato, Sanantonio - Un mio vecchio articolo per Il Post

http://www.ilpost.it/antoniodini/2013/05/23/bentornato-sanantonio/

Alieni, pianeti abitati, universi paralleli e multipli. Ecco le piccole sorprese che vengono da alcuni filosofi e studiosi medioevali che cercavano di non farsi scomunicare rimettendo in discussione alcuni elementi centrali del pensiero di Aristotele.

Money quote: "But this 13th century disagreement between two university departments, arts and theology, would prompt medieval thinkers to consider ideas that might seem surprisingly modern. By rejecting a key Aristotelian principle, Tempier inspired later medieval scholars to develop a multiverse theory and to consider the possibilities of faraway planets and alien beings."

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-multiverse-theory

Cercasi stagista in Social Media per la Night’s Watch.

Money quote: "If you love telling brand stories through digital mediums, can think very conceptually about social media, and love working alongside hardened criminals wearing identical black cloaks, then this might be the perfect step in beginning your career"

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/social-media-intern-wanted-at-the-nights-watch

Il nuovo capitolo de Il pianeta delle scimmie non è un film leggero: racconta un’America profondamente mutata, in cui noi siamo diventati loro, le scimmie.

L'articolo di Antonio Dini: http://www.fumettologica.it/2017/07/war-pianeta-scimmie-recensione-film/

L'orgasmo come non l'avete mai né pensato né sperimentato (se siete donne).

Money quote: "Orgasm works its ecstatic ways by triggering some of the deepest regions of the brain, such as the amygdala and the hypothalamus, to produce neurotransmitters that cause pleasure, such as dopamine and oxytocin as well as endorphins. In fact, scientists say that an orgasm is the most powerful event that can happen in the brain short of an epileptic seizure, which to a large degree it resembles"

https://aeon.co/essays/delayed-orgasm-the-sexual-technique-thats-better-than-sex

È morto George A. Romero. Un ricordo di Sentieri Selvaggi

Money quote: "Se in questi giorni hai già letto qualche articolo commemorativo in sua memoria, sono sicuro che ti sarai appuntato tutti i titoli da vedere. Non lasciartene sfuggire nessuno, mi raccomando, è importante. Ma se stai leggendo da uno smartphone, com’è probabile che sia, allora non perdere per nessun motivo al mondo Diary of the Dead, e sono sicuro che guardandolo capirai perché."

http://www.sentieriselvaggi.it/in-memoria-di-george-a-romero/

La linguistica ha un problema. Come scienza non funziona. E le cose si stanno facendo sempre più complicate. Anche perché si regge tutto su Noam Chomsky, a quanto pare. E noi non riusciamo neanche a capire se il linguaggio sia una necessità biologica o un costrutto sociale.

Money quote: "You might think that a simplifying turn would be easy to explain to a lay audience, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Even linguists have trouble understanding it. Frankly I’m not sure I really understand it myself. The drive toward minimalism here is actually a drive toward abstraction. Not boiling down the facts to see what they all share in common, but abstracting away from observations until what we have is so remote that it defies appeals to concrete models, metaphors or even formal, mathematical-type statements"

https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-study-of-language-a-science

Se quando modero un evento me ne trovo uno del pubblico che fa così, gli faccio spegnere il microfono, altroché

Money quote: "When you stand up, speak to the attendees, not just the speaker. Take the opportunity to connect with the audience. If you are sitting towards the front of the room, angle yourself so you can look at others."

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/heres-how-you-can-make-an-impact-at-a-conference

Se ne parla poco - da noi piace di più riempirsi la bocca con la "app economy" - ma c'è un problema. Il modello emergente di abbonamento anziché vendita (al limite distribuzione gratuita con acquisti in-app) sta creando non pochi mal di pancia. Le app (mi riferisco a quelle per iOS e macOS) date con un canone mensile si trasformano in servizi ma tali, in realtà, non sono quasi mai.

Money quote: "Subscription-based pricing isn’t a suitable model for every app, and it places a big burden on developers. They must iterate and update frequently to justify the cost of a subscription, but they must not alienate existing customers by doing too much — consider every angry tweet and status update every time Twitter or Facebook make a major change."

https://pxlnv.com/linklog/harmer-lightroom-manifesto/

Non ho avuto tempo di segnalarlo ieri, ma se n'è andato Martin Landau, l'attore aveva 89 anni e da noi lo ricordiamo soprattutto per "Spazio 1999".

Money quote: "The lanky, offbeat-looking veteran of the Actors Studio, for he which he was currently West Coast co-artistic director, had many ups and downs in his career. His greatest successes (three Oscar nominations and one win) came later in life when he returned to character roles like the one that first won him notice, as James Mason’s sinister gay henchman in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.”

He was Emmy-nominated five times, and most of his leading man roles came on television, most notably as Rollin Hand, a master of disguise on “Mission: Impossible.” He later spent a couple of years starring in syndicated sci-fi series “Space: 1999,” on which, as with “Mission: Impossible,” he co-starred with then-wife Barbara Bain."

http://variety.com/2017/film/news/martin-landau-dead-dies-ed-wood-mission-impossible-1202497128/

Come vengono interpretati i parametri provenienti dalla riga di comando? Una cosa per nerd nerd nerd. (*nix, Windows e C/C++)

Money quote: "On *nix, you launch a program using the execve API (or it's cousins execvp, execl, execlp, execle, and execvp). The interesting thing about these APIs is that they allow the caller to specify each of the command line arguments"

http://daviddeley.com/autohotkey/parameters/parameters.htm