The Marmarole mountain group is an island of quiet, where, especially at the end of the season, it’s easy not to meet anyone for entire days. Nature is harsh and wild; steep, apparently inaccessible ridges separate the slopes and basins. It follows that the elevation gains are significant and many obligatory passages are often technical, exposed and equipped with steel cables (via ferrata). Water is scarce everywhere, especially on the north face, which also lacks refuges at altitude. Up there, the support structures are spartan bivouacs, isolated and challenging to reach. The solitude up there is almost total, but frequent encounters with high-altitude wildlife compensate for it. It’s easy to spot chamois, ibex, marmots, and eagles. ...

Prompted by an old post by Bob Schwartz (2017), I revisited and reread Ur-Fascism, the essay Umberto Eco wrote in 1995 for the New York Review of Books. What are the features of Fascism? We need to know, so we can recognize them and point them out as they emerge, as they always tend to do, time and time again, as our societies struggle to evolve. Sounds like heavy reading material, but it isn’t. I mean, look at the incipit: ...

On Sunday afternoon, I suddenly decided to take my motorcycle, ride to the foothills, leave the bike there, and hike the Monte Mauro loop, including the climb to the summit. The Monte Mauro loop is a classic route in the Vena del Gesso area. Wooded areas alternate with exposed stretches below the summit of Monte Mauro, where you literally walk on chalk outcrops. The trail is well marked, but you have to pay attention to the path because there are often alternatives (also marked) that can confuse you. It is an enjoyable short tour. ...

Finally some good news for us old farts! Cognitive ability (probably) peaks between 50 and 60.

Last year, Ashley and a large team of scientists conducted an elaborate experiment on the effects of exercise on the mammalian body. In one test, Ashley put rats on tiny treadmills, worked them out for weeks, and cut into them to investigate how their organs and vessels responded to the workout compared to a control group of more sedentary rodents.1 The results were spectacular. Exercise transformed just about every tissue and molecular system that Ashley and his co-authors studied—not just the muscles and heart, but also the liver, adrenal glands, fat, and immune system ...

A few weeks ago, we accompanied Anna to Amsterdam, where she will study at the University. She is our youngest daughter. Marco left home years ago to study in France, where he graduated, and now lives in Brussels, and Giulia is in her third year of medical school, also living in another town. After twenty-plus years, the nest is empty. It’s a strange feeling wandering around the house knowing that none of the kids are around. Despite feeling nostalgic, Serena and I are doing well. We’re getting used to this new life as a seasoned couple. ...

Sometimes we feel confusion going through the code. Confusion costs time and money. Confusion is caused by high cognitive load. It’s not some fancy abstract concept, but rather a fundamental human constraint. It’s not imagined, it’s there and we can feel it. Since we spend far more time reading and understanding code than writing it, we should constantly ask ourselves whether we are embedding excessive cognitive load into our code. ...

Brent Ozar’s article below resonates with my post-COVID experience as a conference speaker. From big national and international conferences to local meetups like the one I run, attendance has been dwindling following the hiatus. Of all the proposed reasons, I believe “people switched how they’re learning” is crucial; just think about YouTube, LLMs, and the plethora of free and paid online courses. Why Aren’t People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore? ...

This is the story of the world’s most beloved programming language: Python. What began as a side project in Amsterdam during the 1990s became the software powering artificial intelligence, data science and some of the world’s biggest companies. But Python’s future wasn’t certain; at one point it almost disappeared. Python: The Documentary