Masen’ka (or Mary) is Nabokov’s debut novel. It was written when he was in his twenties, living as an émigré in Berlin, just like the story’s protagonist. In the introduction of my Italian edition (Adelphi), the author admits that some life events poured into the narration. The depiction of Ganin’s life in a pension filled with fellow Russian ex-pats, and the relationships between them, is undoubtedly reminiscent of Nabokov’s own experience. ...

Yesterday the creator of the Python language, Guido van Rossum, tweeted about The Origins of Python, an essay by his mentor, Lambert Meertens. “On Sunday, June 21, 1970, in an office building on Great Portland Street in London, a teletype sprang to life. Under the heading “HAPPY FAMILIES,” the machine rattled out a sequence of English sentences, such as “THE DOG SITS ON THE BABY” and “UNCLE TED PLAYS WITH SISTER.” The “Happy Families” program that produced this output had been written that same weekend by someone with no prior programming experience, a participant in a workshop organized by the Computer Arts Society offering a course in “non-numerical programming.” ...

The Crow Comes Last is a collection of thirty short stories written between 1945 and 1948, primarily based on the author’s wartime experiences as a resistance fighter during WWII and then in postwar Italy. Some are brutal, others funny, and some are gritty. They all revolve around the themes he perfectly defined while talking about his book: I prefer to divide the subject into three parts, to highlight three thematic lines of my work from those years. The first is the ‘Resistance’ story (or at any rate of war or violence), seen as an adventure of suspense or terror, a type of fiction that quite a few of us did at that time. The second line is also common to much fiction of those years and is the postwar picaresque tale, stories coloured by elemental characters and appetites. In the third, the landscape of the Riviera dominates, with boys or teenagers and animals. This last line is a personal development of a ’literature of memory. Needless to say, the three lines often. ...

There’s regular hiking, and then there’s Antarctica hiking. Check out brr’s report of a Sunday’s hike from McMurdo’s base up to the tip of Castle Rock, with spectacular views of Mount Erebus and the surroundings. brr’s Antarticta blog is a recent addition to my RSS feed collection. It’s always interesting to follow people living and working in the most remote parts of the world.

I just released Eve 2.0.4, the REST API framework for #python. It’s available on PyPI and includes a relevant security fix so you might want to update ASAP. Package info Docs

Nerdy prelude. Local Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were all the range when I was a teenager. With my group of local hackers, we hacked our way into ITAPAC, the then-leading Italian packet-switching network (we are talking pre-Internet era here.) Via ITAPAC, we’d connect to so-called “out-dial systems” in the USA. From one of those, we’d finally call our target BBSes with a local call at no cost. We felt so invincible! I signed up on Channel One BBS; I think that was the name. This particular BBS was located in Cambridge, MA, and was chock-full of public domain and shareware I could download. Anyways, the SysOp sent me a postcard confirming my signup (an old-school paper postcard delivered via international postal service). Receiving a postcard from the US was exciting in itself, but what was startling was a handwritten note on the postcard. It said, “Ravenna, city of beautiful mosaics.” I was shocked that someone from Cambridge, MA, would know about my tiny, little hometown’s mosaics and let me know. ...

As someone who’s been on board with Twitter since 2009, I have to admit that I’m very concerned with recent developments. I admire and respect Elon Musk for his companies’ achievements, especially in space and electric movement industries, but the man himself, holy cow, what a drag. On The Verge, Nilay Patel’s brutal piece on the recent Twitter acquisition is chock-full of brilliant insights on what it takes to run a modern commercial social service. ...

I attended my first BJJ class a little more than a month ago. Going into it, I was hesitant. After many years doing what most people today call calisthenics, I wanted to try something new and challenging. But would it be appropriate for me to get into martial arts at the age of fifty-two? When I discovered that we have a branch of the renowned Roger Gracie Academy here in my hometown, I thought it was time to find out. ...

In 1701, in Middletown, New Jersey, Moses Butterworth languished in a jail, accused of piracy. Like many young men based in England or her colonies, he had joined a crew that sailed the Indian Ocean intent on plundering ships of the Muslim Mughal Empire. Throughout the 1690s, these pirates marauded vessels laden with gold, jewels, silk, and calico on pilgrimage toward Mecca. After achieving great success, many of these men sailed back into the Atlantic via Madagascar to the North American seaboard, where they quietly disembarked in Charleston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Newport, and Boston, and made themselves at home. ...

Last Saturday I went on a motorcycle trip with my club. We had about forty motorcycles, many coming from afar—a tremendous turnout considering how advanced the season is. This event was particularly involving for me, as my local group was in charge of the organization. We were going to visit the Foreste Casentinesi National Park, which isn’t far from our hometown. We know those roads and their surroundings well; we call them home, yet I insisted on scouting the planned route not once but twice, and I think it was crucial to the event’s success. On the narrow road that climbs to a mountain pass, we spotted a mobile traffic light (for a road construction site) with a long (six minutes!) red/green cycle. We arranged a plan in case the motorcycle’s column split at the light: almost one kilometer past the red light, there was a safe place where the forward group could safely stop off the road and wait for the rest to rejoin. All the participants were informed at the departure briefing: if you get stopped at the red light, don’t get over-stressed: we’ll be waiting for you one kilometer down the road. You won’t see us, but we’ll be waiting for you safely. Don’t rush it, and don’t stop to phone us. We won’t be at the first apparently-good parking place but at the second spot, which, despite not looking as good, is way safer (less gravel on the ground). Situations like these can cause confusion and danger to a large group of motorcycles roaming on narrow, steep mountain roads which are often in poor conditiong. The reconnaissance ride allowed us to plan for several potential pitfalls like this one. ...