Posts

Yesterday I went for a walk in the mountains. This tour starts from Bocconi (on the road to Muraglione Pass) and the nice humpback bridge that is just below the village (I think it’s called “della Brusia”). Ponte della Brusia, Bocconi (FC) It is a nice hike, with the ascent that becomes quite challenging in the final part, towards the ridge tops, which, once reached, you’ll follow for a long time, partially on a forest road, before plunging back downhill, initially following a lovely descending ridge da makes most of the descent quite pleasant. During the ascent, several detours were necessary to get around the landslides that originated during the infamous May floods (there are still several traffic lights on the roadway leading up from Forlì, all due to the restoration works following the flood). Hats off to the volunteers who maintain the trail: they have had to work hard this year. At some point, they had to ‘dug out’ complete new sections to get around the more enormous landslides. ...

In a beautiful essay published in Waiting for God, Simone Weil reminds us that study serves to develop attention, and almost no matter what is studied, even a mathematical exercise that turns out to be incomprehensible is fine. “Without feeling or knowing it,” Weil writes, “that seemingly sterile and fruitless effort has brought more light into the soul. One day one will find the fruit of it (…) in any sphere of intelligence, perhaps entirely unrelated to mathematics.” ...

As it appears, cannibalism was much more widespread than previously thought, and perhaps for more complex reasons than we think. To honor the dead, for example. Our ancestors have been eating each other for a million years or more. In fact, it seems that, down the ages, around a fifth of societies have practised cannibalism. While some of this people-eating may have been done simply to survive, in many cases, the reasons look more complex. In places like Gough’s cave, for example, consuming the bodies of the dead seems to have been part of a funerary ritual. Far from a monstrous affront to nature, cannibalism may be a way of showing respect and love for the dead, say some archaeologists. ...

I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: “May be dangerous to your health.” One of the most dangerous presidents we had in this century was John Kennedy because people said “Yes Sir Mr. Charismatic Leader what do we do next?” and we wound up in Vietnam. And I think probably the most valuable president of this century was Richard Nixon. Because he taught us to distrust government and he did it by example. ...

Take care of yourself. Sleep. Eat. Exercise. Rest. Relax. Take care of other people, as best you can. People are important. Software is just fun. – Lars Wirzenius, in his noteworthy 40 years of programming

I recently bought Dirty Rat, the absolute banger from Orbital’s 2023 Optical Delusion. It couldn’t be anything different, given that it’s a collaboration between the seminal electronic duo that emerged from the rave era and one of my British favorites, Sleaford Mods. Sleaford Mods’ barbed lyrics perfectly augment Orbital’s concrete-heavy digitalism. Mods’ James Williamson lambasts the people, “blaming everyone in the hospital, everyone at the bottom of the English Channel, and everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.” ...

Most people likely already know and use the voice dictation feature in iOS and macOS all day, but I’ve only now seen the light. Yesterday, I discovered I could dictate text notes to my iPhone, even offline. It works with Obsidian, WhatsApp, and any other app where I need to enter text, like the Safari search box. I suck at entering text on the phone. I also hate WhatsApp audio messages, but I often recur to them as, again, I suck at typing text on the phone. I can instead dictate those messages, and they will render as text as if I typed them; what a revelation! ...

Medieval monks also needed help with focus and attention. Joel J Miller discusses this in What Monks Know About Focus, the latest issue of Miller’s Book Review, which I recently discovered and shows great promise. While technology has evolved in the last fifteen hundred years, the human brain has not. And few people in the ancient world cared as much about the challenges of attention and distraction as monks. Our reasons might differ today, but we have much to learn nonetheless. ...

I am speaking about OAuth2 and Open ID Connect with ASP.NET Core 8 at Rome .NET Conference 2024 on March 22 and then, less than a week later, at WebDay 2024 in Milan. I am always particularly excited when I can present the stuff I’m currently working on. Being forced to share as I learn encourages me to go deeper into the topic to reinforce my comprehension and better explain it to the audience—a win-win situation. ...