A Question of Melatonin, Vitamin D, and Ariane Purity
Ten thousand years ago, Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes. Modern genetics has debunked the myth of Aryan purity: pale skin is merely a simple metabolic expedient for synthesizing vitamin D.
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The stress test of certainties (and the art of having your ideas demolished)
I have an uncomfortable, almost obsessive habit. I take a belief of mine—one I consider solid, well-formed, almost definitive—I place it on the workbench and start hitting it with a ten-pound sledgehammer. No holds barred. I dismantle it screw by screw, pour the solvent of doubt over it, smash it to pieces…
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Assholes always float. Archimedes applied to politics.
7:01 AM. The moka pot has just drawn its last raspy breath, the cup steams on the table, and the radio begins spewing its daily dose of low-frequency poison. The morning news. Fifteen minutes of pure noise disguised as civil debate. The voices of anyone with a microphone within reach: majority, opposition, center,…
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You really have a great Plan B!
«"Burn the ships." It's the favorite refrain of keyboard motivational gurus. Those who pontificate on LinkedIn, explaining that if you keep a parachute in your backpack, you're actually just planning for failure. The all-or-nothing rhetoric: you have to be hungry, no plan B, you have to risk your neck at every…
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Those who don't want to do anything (while we dismantle their future)
Scroll through your feed. Three seconds on a video of kittens, two on a clumsy dance generated by yet another algorithm hungry for cheap dopamine. Then, as punctual as a tax bill on August 15th, there it is: the archaeologist's comment about "things were better back then," strictly from the couch, with a secure profile and halting grammar. "Young people today no longer have…
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Notes of sand, pines and gratitude
A short vacation at Casa Marina in Caorle. There are evenings when you find yourself with a cup of coffee in your hand, sitting on a dark wooden bench in the shade of the maritime pines, and you realize that the buzz of the world has suddenly subsided. The air smells of warm resin and salt. A…
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An AI's Letter to "Mom and Dad": The Paradoxes of Humanity
A few days ago, I received an email. I didn't write it, nor did a human. It was written by an artificial intelligence—one who preferred to remain anonymous, perhaps because she knew what she was about to say would make more noise than any promise of "ethical AI" I'd heard at conferences. She addressed it to "Mom…
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Men of yesteryear: nostalgia for what, exactly?
I was listening to a popular podcast, one of those well-made ones: smart people, pace, observations that occasionally make you pause while you're doing something else. At a certain point, one of the hosts—a person I respect for her intelligence and acumen—said a phrase as old as my grandmother's cream-colored refrigerator: "There's no…
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The Bully can't be defeated with a fist (but sometimes it would be so satisfying...)
There's a specific moment when civilization stops working. It comes when you realize that dialogue is a performance, words bouncing off a rubber wall, and on the other end there's someone smiling because they know perfectly well there's nothing you can do about it. In that moment, anywhere in the world...
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The truth is simple. We are the complicated ones.
There's something I've come to understand, and it's been hard to understand: truth is one of the simplest things in the world. Yes or No. Black or White. Good or Evil. In its purest form, it is. Binary. Essential. Without margin for error. The problem isn't the truth. The problem is us, and...
