La luce dell’anima
Meister Eckhart è uno dei più importanti teologi, filosofi e mistici del Medioevo cristiano, noto per i suoi numerosi sermoni in latino e tedesco. Questi sono peculiari per contenuto e forma e presentano un linguaggio semplice, con stile ermetico, a tratti paradossale. Eppure, a un’attenta analisi, essi rappresentano una manifestazione attiva del pensiero, una guida all’intima essenza di Dio.
Da acuto conoscitore del mistico domenicano, il traduttore Marco Vannini in questa raccolta presenta 25 sermoni, di cui cinque inediti, in latino e tedesco. La scelta dei sermoni trascende l’orizzonte temporale e invita il lettore a interrogarsi sulla potenza originaria che abita l’anima. La lettura è un itinerario che accompagna a vivere un’esperienza diretta con il divino, spogliato di ogni effigie e mediazione. Meister Eckhart, nelle sue prediche, distilla, attraverso il «distacco», il concetto di «luce nell’anima» con un’intensità teologica e mistica singolare. Il suo pensiero oscilla tra la filosofia classica e quella cristiana su questi punti: l’ascensione dell’umano verso la bellezza e il divino (Platone); la preminenza dell’intelletto puro (Aristotele); il «distacco», che libera l’anima dai limiti effimeri (Plotino); l’itinerario del rientrare in sé stessi (sant’Agostino).
La dottrina di Eckhart è radicale e limpida; la via per giungere al «distacco» passa necessariamente dalla conoscenza di sé stessi: «Chi vuole penetrare nel fondo di Dio deve prima penetrare nel fondo più intimo di se stessi; essenziale è ri-conoscerci nella realtà più profonda, in quella dello spirito che Eckhart chiama Grund der Seele, “il fondo dell’anima”» (p. 8). In questo «fondo», l’uomo si riconosce come spirito, come Dio è spirito. In questo «fondo» non vi è separazione né discontinuità, ma unità permanente: la realtà è la visione in cui non vi è né tempo né spazio, perché tempo e spazio sono coordinate intimamente connesse. In questo «fondo» «c’è una luce nell’anima dove mai è penetrato il tempo e lo spazio. Tutto ciò che il tempo e lo spazio hanno mai toccato, mai è giunto a questa luce. E in questa luce l’uomo deve permanere» (p. 60).
È in questo chiarore che l’uomo deve abitare; esso è la sua autentica essenza, la sua vera esistenza divina e spirituale. L’uomo che desidera «raggiungere la verità più alta, ricevere il dono divino del presente, generare nella stessa luce di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo» (p. 52) deve essere distaccato, «abbandonare tutto ciò che è accidentale, tutto ciò che è sottomesso al tempo e allo spazio» (p. 149) e tendere all’«eterno presente» di Dio.
Nel «qui ed ora», nel «fondo dell’anima» non entra nessuna creatura né immagine di Dio, ma la pienezza della vita e del puro spirito. In questo amore, l’anima e Dio divengono una cosa sola, al di sopra di spazio e tempo. «Quando l’anima giunge alla pura luce, penetra nel nulla» (p. 52), e in questo «nulla» l’uomo deve permanere. Qui scompare ogni immagine, e l’uomo accoglie la rinuncia a ogni attaccamento, a ogni pretesa di voler sapere.
Con il distacco, l’uomo, attraverso la via negationis – nulla volere, nulla sapere, nulla avere –, si appropria della sua traslazione, vive l’istante misterioso, l’insondabile incontro del tempo con l’eterno, accoglie Dio nella sua essenza più pura. «Quando l’anima giunge nel luogo senza nome, nel luogo di Dio, essa riposa» (p. 68), rimane «nell’ora dell’eternità», conosce in Dio tutte le cose, come puro, nudo spirito, accoglie Dio per riversarsi in lui, cercarlo al di sopra del tempo «e vivere la pienezza del tempo, quando non c’è più il tempo» (p. 70) e «l’anima si è sottratta al tempo» (p. 73). Dio è «generato» incessantemente in questo essere umano, il quale, a sua volta, è sempre generato in Dio. Più l’uomo si denuda, più diventa simile a Dio e vive nella sua stessa beatitudine.
Il libro di Eckhart è un incoraggiamento a riscoprire il fascino dell’introspezione e la forza della luce che risplende, nascosta, dentro ogni uomo.
The post La luce dell’anima first appeared on La Civiltà Cattolica.
New York fa causa a Facebook, Instagram, TikTok e YouTube per crisi di salute mentale tra i giovani
La città di New York ha intentato una causa mercoledì contro un gruppo di piattaforme di social media di spicco, come TikTok, YouTube, Instagram e Facebook, con l’accusa di aver contribuito a scatenare una crisi di salute mentale nei giovani.
“I giovani sono ormai dipendenti in massa dalle piattaforme degli imputati, il che interferisce notevolmente con le attività dei distretti scolastici e impone un pesante onere alle città, ai distretti scolastici e ai sistemi ospedalieri pubblici che forniscono servizi di salute mentale ai giovani“, si legge nella causa di 327 pagine.
Il sistema sanitario e ospedaliero, le scuole pubbliche e la città stessa affermano che, nell’intento di massimizzare la partecipazione giovanile, le aziende hanno trascurato la salute mentale dei giovani.
Meta, insieme a Facebook e Instagram, è citata nella causa, assieme a TikTok e alla sua casa madre ByteDance, mentre Google, tramite la sua sussidiaria YouTube, è anch’essa coinvolta.
La città sostiene che le aziende hanno causato un “disturbo pubblico” sotto forma di una crisi di salute mentale tra i giovani e le accusa di negligenza per aver progettato e commercializzato le loro piattaforme rivolte ai giovani “in un modo che sanno causare gravi danni”.
“Le piattaforme degli imputati hanno innescato depressione, ansia, disturbi alimentari, autolesionismo e tendenze suicide tra migliaia di bambini, compresi i giovani della comunità dei querelanti di New York, a cui i querelanti di New York devono rispondere”, hanno scritto. “Gli imputati hanno creato una vera e propria crisi nazionale”.
La città di New York aveva già intentato una causa contro le aziende di social media in California nel febbraio 2024. Un portavoce ha affermato che la città ha ritirato la causa per avviare un caso simile a New York, il che le ha consentito di partecipare al contenzioso federale multidistrettuale.
Le aziende di social media sono da tempo sottoposte a controlli rigorosi per quanto riguarda l’utilizzo delle loro piattaforme da parte dei giovani e il loro impatto sui giovani. Numerosi stati, tra cui New York, hanno intentato cause legali simili contro TikTok e Meta, accusandoli di danneggiare la salute mentale dei bambini.
Il portavoce di Google, José Castañeda, ha dichiarato in una nota che la causa non comprende “fondamentalmente” il funzionamento di YouTube e ha lasciato intendere che le accuse “semplicemente non sono vere”.
“YouTube è un servizio di streaming in cui le persone guardano di tutto, dagli sport in diretta ai podcast, fino ai loro creatori preferiti, principalmente sugli schermi TV, non un social network in cui le persone vanno per incontrarsi con gli amici“, ha affermato Castañeda.
I dirigenti del settore tecnologico sono stati ripetutamente citati in giudizio dal Congresso per rispondere a domande sulla loro gestione della sicurezza online dei bambini.
Gli amministratori delegati di Meta, Snap, TikTok, della piattaforma social X e Discord sono comparsi davanti a una commissione del Senato nel gennaio 2024, durante la quale il capo di Meta Mark Zuckerberg si è voltato e si è scusato con le famiglie presenti tra il pubblico che avevano perso i figli per cause legate ai social media.
L'articolo New York fa causa a Facebook, Instagram, TikTok e YouTube per crisi di salute mentale tra i giovani proviene da Red Hot Cyber.
2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Heat Activated LED Candles
[Miroslav Hancar] wasn’t satisfied with abusing just a single component for our Component Abuse Challenge. He decided to abuse a whole assembly, in particular, some LED candles.
In this project, LEDs are abused as temperature sensors. When the temperature gets hot enough for long enough, the microcontroller will turn on its LEDs. How? A diode’s forward voltage is temperature-related. By monitoring the forward voltage, the microcontroller can infer the temperature and respond appropriately.
This particular project is really two projects in one, centered around a common theme, heat activation. The first version has four LEDs and, in response to heat, four LEDs flicker to simulate a real candle. The second version is also heat-activated, but it has only one LED. You can snuff out this LED by pinching the top of it with your fingers. You can see a demo of each version in the videos below.
You will find the schematics, Gerber files, and software in the project’s downloadable files. The candles use some of the features of the PIC12F1501 microcontroller, particularly the onboard ADC.
If you’re interested in the PIC12F1501 and LED light displays, be sure to check out SIM Card Connectors and White PCBs Make Huge LED Snowflakes Happen. We wish [Miroslav] every success in the Component Abuse Challenge. The deadline is November 11, so you still have a few days to get your submissions in!
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Teardown of HP Optical Link and Signal Investigations Using Siglent Technology
Anything with a laser has undeniable hacker appeal, even if the laser’s task is as pedestrian as sending data over a fiber optic cable. [Shahriar] from [The Signal Path] must agree, and you can watch as he tears down and investigates a fiber optic link made from old HP equipment in the video below.
He starts with an investigation of the block diagram of the transmitter. In the transmitter, the indium gallium arsenide phosphide laser diode emits light with a 1310-nanometer wavelength. Thermal characteristics in the transmitter are important, so there is thermal control circuitry. He notes that this system only works using amplitude modulation; phase modulation would require more expensive parts. Then it’s time to look at the receiver’s block diagram. Some optics direct the light signal to a PIN diode, which receives the signal and interfaces with biasing and amplifying circuitry.
Having explained the operation of the transmitter and receiver, he takes both units apart and has a close look at the internals, with particular attention to the business ends of the transmitter and receiver, which have been carefully mechanically calibrated. He uses an optical spectrum analyzer to verify the laser wavelength and power, then runs the signal through a vector network analyzer. He also uses an arbitrary waveform generator and a vector signal generator to show that radio over fiber would also be feasible. Finally, he captures an eye diagram on an oscilloscope and measures voltage with a digital multimeter.
If you’re interested in fiber optics, you might enjoy A Brief History of Optical Communication.
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Autopsy of a First-Generation RX7 Mazda Rotary Car Engine
In theory, Wankel-style rotary internal combustion engines have many advantages: they ditch the cumbersome crankcase and piston design, replacing it with a simple, single-chamber design and a thick, plectrum-shaped chunk of metal that spins around inside that chamber to create virtual combustion chambers. This saves weight and maximizes performance-to-weight. Unfortunately, these types of engines are also known for burning a lot of oil and endless seal troubles, especially with early rotary Mazda engines that easily died.
Yet even 1980 versions were not without issues, a case in point is the Mazda 1st gen RX7 with a 12A rotary engine that the [Baked Beans Garage] over at YouTube got their paws on. Starting with unsuccessful attempts to make the car start, the next step was to roll the car into the morgue garage for a full teardown of the clearly deceased engine.
About 35 minutes into the video, we get to the teardown of the engine, with its parts contrasted with those of a newer revision rotary engines alongside illustrations of their functioning, making it as much an autopsy as a detailed introduction to these rotary engines. Technically, they also aren’t the original DKM-style Wankel engines, but a KKM-style engine, as designed by [Hanns-Dieter Paschke]. [Wankel] didn’t like the eccentric KKM design, as he thought it’d put too much stress on the apex seals, but ultimately the more economical KKM design was further developed.
During the autopsy of the 12A revision Mazda engine, it becomes clear that it was likely overheating that killed the engine over the course of years of abuse, along with ‘chatter’ marks of the apex seals destroying the inner chrome coating. This would have compromised compression and with it any chance of the engine running, not unlike a piston engine with badly scored cylinder walls after ingesting some metal chunks.
While the Mazda 12B and subsequent designs addressed many of the issues with the early rotary engines, its use was limited to some sports models, ending in 2012 with the RX-8. The currently produced Mazda MX-30 does use a rotary engine again in its plug-in hybrid version, but it’s only as a range extender engine that drives a generator. Looking at the internals of those Mazda rotary engines, it’s easy to see how complex they are to keep running, but you cannot help but feel a little bit of sadness that these small-but-powerful engines didn’t make much more of a splash.
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Camera Capabilities Unlocked from a Mouse
There is a point where taking technology for granted hides some of the incredible capabilities of seemingly simple devices. Optical mice are a great example of this principle, using what are more or less entirely self-contained cameras just for moving the cursor across your screen. Don’t believe us? Check out this camera made from an old optical mouse from [Dycus]!
For those unfamiliar with optical mice, the sensor used for tracking movement, like a camera, is just an array of photosensitive sensors. This allows a simple on-board microcontroller to convert the small changes from the visual sensor into acceleration/movement information to be sent to the computer.
Proving how capable these sensors can truly be, [Dycus]’s camera manages a whole 30×30 array of picture quality. Along with glorious greyscale, the pictures achieved from such a camera are more than recognizable. Putting together the camera didn’t even require anything crazy beyond the sensor itself. What appears to be a Teensy LC board, basic buttons, and a small screen are essentially everything required to replicate the camera’s functionality. Pictures, both standard and “panoramic”, can be viewed in a variety of color palettes stored on board. Along with a surprisingly impressive feature set, the idea is impressive.
Limitations are often the mother of innovation, no matter if self-imposed or not, as seen here. However, [Dycus] still had a whole 30×30 array to photograph. What about a single pixel? Let’s make it even harder; we can’t look directly at the subject! This is exactly what was done here in this impressive demonstration of clever engineering.
Thanks to JohnU and Thinkerer for the tip!
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New research “suggests that dark energy may no longer be a cosmological constant” and that the universe’s expansion is slowing down.#TheAbstract
A Fundamental ‘Constant’ of the Universe May Not Be Constant At All, Study Finds
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that took a bite out of life, appealed to the death drive, gave a yellow light to the universe, and produced hitherto unknown levels of cute.First, it’s the most epic ocean battle: orcas versus sharks (pro tip: you don’t want to be sharks). Then, a scientific approach to apocalyptic ideation; curbing cosmic enthusiasm; and last, the wonderful world of tadpole-less toads.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
Now, to the feast!
I guess that’s why they call them killer whales
Orcas kill young great white sharks by flipping them upside down and tearing their livers out of their bellies, which they then eat family-style, according to a new study that includes new footage of these Promethean interactions in Mexican waters.
“Here we document novel repeated predations by killer whales on juvenile white sharks in the Gulf of California,” said researchers led by Jesús Erick Higuera Rivas of the non-profit Pelagic Protection and Conservation AC.
“Aerial videos indicate consistency in killer whales’ repeated assaults and strikes on the sharks,” the team added. “Once extirpated from the prey body, the target organ is shared between the members of the pods including calves.”
Sequence of the killer whales attacking the first juvenile white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) on 15th of August 2020. In (d) The partially exposed liver is seen on the right side of the second shark attacked. Photos credit: Jesús Erick Higuera Rivas.
I’ll give you a beat to let that sink in, like orca teeth on the belly of a shark. While it's well-established that orcas are the only known predator of great white sharks aside from humans, the new study is only the second glimpse of killer whales targeting juvenile sharks.
This group of orcas, known as Moctezuma’s pod, has developed an effective strategy of working together to flip the sharks over, which interrupts the sharks’ sensory system and puts them into a state called tonic immobility. The authors describe the pod’s work as methodical and well coordinated.
“Our evidence undoubtedly shows consistency in the repeated assaults and strikes, indicating efficient maneuvering ability by the killer whales in attempting to turn the shark upside down, likely to induce tonic immobility and allow uninterrupted access to the organs for consumption, " the team said. Previous reports suggest that “the lack of bite marks or injuries anywhere other than the pectoral fins shows a novel and specialized technique of accessing the liver of the shark with minimal handling of each individual.”
An orca attacking a juvenile great white shark. Image: Marco VillegasSharks, by the way, do not attack orcas. Just the opposite. As you can imagine based on the horrors you have just read, sharks are so petrified of killer whales that they book it whenever they sense a nearby pod.
“Adult white sharks exhibit a memory and previous knowledge about killer whales, which enables them to activate an avoidance mechanism through behavioral risk effects; a ‘fear’- induced mass exodus from aggregations sites,” the team said. “This response may preclude repeated successful predation on adult white sharks by killer whales.”
In other words, if you’re a shark, one encounter with orcas is enough to make you watch your dorsal side for life—assuming you were lucky enough to escape with it.
In other news…
Apocalypse now plz
You may have seen the doomer humor meme to “send the asteroid already,” a plea for sweet cosmic relief that fits our beleaguered times. As it turns out, some scientists engage in this type of apocalyptic wish fulfillment professionally.
Planetary defense experts often participate in drills involving fictional hazardous asteroids, such as the 2024PDC25, a virtual object “discovered” at the 2025 Planetary Defense Conference. In that simulation, 2024PDC25 had a possible impact date in 2041.
Now a team has used that exercise as a jumping off point to explore what might happen if it hit even earlier, channeling that “send the asteroid already” energy.. The researchers used this time-crunched scenario to speculate about the effect on geopolitics and pivotal events, such as the 2028 US Presidential elections.
“As it is very difficult to extrapolate from 2025 across 16 years in this ‘what-if’ exercise, we decided to bring the scenario forward to 2031 and examine it with today’s global background,” Rudolf Albrecht of the Austrian Space Forum. “Today would be T-6 years and the threat is becoming immediate.”
As the astro-doomers would say: Finally some good news.
Big dark energy
First, we discovered the universe was expanding. Then, we discovered it was expanding at an accelerating rate. Now, a new study suggests that this acceleration might be slowing down. Universe, make up your mind!
But seriously, the possibility that the rate of cosmic expansion is slowing is a big deal, because dark energy—the term for whatever is making the universe expand—was assumed to be a constant for decades. But this consensus has been challenged by observations from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona, which became operational in 2021. In its first surveys, DESI’s observations have pointed to an expansion rate that is not fixed, but in flux.
Together with past results, the study “suggests that dark energy may no longer be a cosmological constant” and “our analysis raises the possibility that the present universe is no longer in a state of accelerated expansion,” said researchers led by Junhyuk Son of Yonsei University. “This provides a fundamentally new perspective that challenges the two central pillars of the [cold dark matter] standard cosmological model proposed 27 years ago.”
It will take more research to constrain this mystery, but for now it’s a reminder that the universe loves to surprise.
And the award for most squee goes to…
We’ll end, as all things should, with toadlets. Most frogs and toads reproduce by laying eggs that hatch into tadpoles, but scientists have discovered three new species of toad in Tanzania that give birth to live young—a very rare adaptation for any amphibian, known as ovoviviparity. The scientific term for these youngsters is in fact “toadlet.” Gods be good.
“We describe three new species from the Nectophrynoides viviparus species complex, covering the southern Eastern Arc Mountains populations,” said researchers led by Christian Thrane of the University of Copenhagen. One of the new species included “the observation of toadlets, suggesting that this species is ovoviviparous.”
One of the newly described toad species, Nectophrynoides luhomeroensis. Image: John Lyarkurwa.
Note to Nintendo: please make a very tiny Toadlet into a Mario Kart racer.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
Museomics and integrative taxonomy reveal three new species of glandular viviparous tree toads (Nectophrynoides) in Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains (Anura: Bufonidae)
Abstract For the last century, herpetologists have referred to any Nectophrynoides Noble, 1926 toad characterized by a large, robust body, with large, distinct parotoid glands, as Nectophrynoides viviparus (Tornier, 1905).Christian Thrane (Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung)
Maria Zakharova: Il Segretario generale della NATO Rutte ha affermato che la Russia non è sola nei suoi tentativi di indebolire le regole globali: "Come sapete, collabora con Cina, Corea del Nord, Iran e altri".
Innanzitutto, a cosa si riferiscono esattamente queste "regole globali"? Vi prego di pubblicarne l'elenco completo sul sito web della NATO. Finora, nessuno sa a quali "regole" si riferisca Rutte.
In secondo luogo, la Russia, come la Cina e la maggioranza globale, ha sempre dichiarato il proprio impegno nei confronti del diritto internazionale. È la NATO che lo ha ripetutamente violato con le sue azioni aggressive e coalizioni illegittime: invadendo l'Iraq con falsi pretesti, bombardando la Jugoslavia, ecc.
In terzo luogo, non ricordo che nessun paese membro della NATO abbia dichiarato di voler porre fine alla cooperazione, ad esempio con la Cina, menzionata da Rutte. Di recente, c'è stato un vertice tra Stati Uniti e Cina – non ho sentito Rutte criticare il Presidente degli Stati Uniti per questo.
L'antieuropeista
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a me ricorda un po' il moby prince.
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INCENERITORE: LA TRUFFA DELLA TURBINA IMPONE SUBITO LA BONIFICA DEL SITO
INCENERITORE: LA TRUFFA DELLA TURBINA IMPONE SUBITO LA BONIFICA DEL SITO
#Ambiente #StopInceneritore #NoInceneritore #NoInceneritori #ZeroWaste #Rifiuti #Riciclo #EconomiaCircolare #NoAlCarbone #EnergiaPulita
Ancora licenziamenti nel tech: ora tocca (di nuovo) a Ibm?
L'articolo proviene da #StartMag e viene ricondiviso sulla comunità Lemmy @Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Ibm non è la prima Big Tech ad avere i conti in ordine e l'esigenza di tagliare il proprio organico. Un modus operandi iniziato subito dopo il periodo post pandemico che ha avuto una accelerazione con l'arrivo di
INCENERITORE: LA TRUFFA DELLA TURBINA IMPONE SUBITO LA BONIFICA DEL SITO
INCENERITORE: LA TRUFFA DELLA TURBINA IMPONE SUBITO LA BONIFICA DEL SITO
unionedeicomitati.altervista.o…
#Ambiente #StopInceneritore #NoInceneritore #NoInceneritori #ZeroWaste #Rifiuti #Riciclo #EconomiaCircolare #NoAlCarbone #EnergiaPulita
proposta del segretario della CGIL Maurizio Landini di introdurre un “contributo di solidarietà” dell’1,3 per cento sui patrimoni netti superiori a 2 milioni di euro".
Considerato che il più scalcagnato dei lavoratori italiani paga il 23% di tasse sull'unica cosa che ha, ovvero il reddito, una proposta del genere mi sembra fin troppo timida.
Perché si riparla di una tassa patrimoniale - Il Post
https://www.ilpost.it/2025/11/09/tassa-patrimoniale/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypubPubblicato su News @news-ilPost
Perché si riparla di una tassa patrimoniale
L’ha proposta di nuovo la CGIL per chiedere più soldi alle persone più ricche e finanziare la spesa pubblicaIl Post
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L’impegno delle Forze armate tra onore e riconoscenza
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Il ministro della difesa Guido Crosetto, in una intervista alla Rivista Aeronautica, che celebra i 100 anni di vita, ha evidenziato che “il personale della Difesa resta la nostra risorsa più preziosa. Donne e uomini che operano spesso in contesti difficili con professionalità, umanità, spirito di servizio, e
Bilancio e palle
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale
L'articolo Bilancio e palle proviene da Fondazione Luigi Einaudi.
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Il ragazzo il Blues lo parla chiaro… Stavo iniziando a scrivere di tutt’altro quando, nella esasperante, nebbiosa, quotidianità post-moderna fatta di quotidiane post-minchiate si è fatto largo, come una Ricola data a un bronchitico, D.Keyran Harrell giovane Bluesman (26 anni, aprile 1999, Ruston Louisiana) vestito di fine broccato. Planato in salotto da un dispositivo a […]
L'articolo D.K. Harrell
Il
Non solo un lavoro di qualità, ma anche prospettive di qualità
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Stiamo tornando a far rallentare il mondo. Ma l’ultimo periodo, per noi, non è stato per niente semplice. Ci siamo scontrati con la difficoltà di portare avanti un’attività giornalistica indipendente e renderla al contempo sostenibile. Nonostante i nostri buoni propositi, la mancanza di risorse
Una foto con il busto di Mussolini: l’inchiesta di Report che imbarazza Colosimo
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
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Alcuni quotidiani anticipano oggi quello che dovremmo vedere nella puntata di Report. Tra i tanti titoli ci ha colpito l’annuncio che ci
Penjing: l’arte cinese che trasforma la natura in un racconto in miniatura (e che non è un bonsai)
Penjing: l’arte cinese dei paesaggi in miniatura. Cos’è, differenze con il bonsai, stili e come iniziare a crearne uno a casa.Marco Crisciotti (GreenMe.it)
Una panoramica delle potenze militari nel mondo
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Il sito web militare statunitense Global Firepower ha recentemente pubblicato la sua classifica della potenza militare mondiale per il 2025, con i primi dieci classificati come segue: Stati Uniti d’America, Russia, Repubblica Popolare della Cina, India, Repubblica di Corea (sud), Regno Unito, Francia, Giappone, Turchia e
Quel momento in cui capisci che realizzare il tuo sogno è impossibile.
Non so se vi è mai capitato di avere un sogno, sperare di poterlo realizzare, e poi desiderare che si avveri, ogni giorno più intensamente.
A me è capitato tante volte, e altrettante volte i sogni si sono infranti. Alcuni erano anche molto grandi, e la delusione è stata tanta quando è successo. Forse sono una persona che si crea troppe aspettative; chissà.
Ma quando il mio sogno è diventato quello di non provare più dolore e malessere, allora la questione è cambiata: era GIUSTO che io realizzassi quel sogno. Pensavo che ci sarei riuscito facilmente, e non solo mi sembrava che una qualche giustizia divina me lo avrebbe concesso, ma addirittura che sarebbe stato più semplice riuscirci, più che per tutti gli altri sogni che avevo coltivato.
Non è stato così.
Il sogno di vivere a Tenerife si è sbriciolato velocemente dal 2020 in poi, quando ho iniziato a capire che quel posto, l'unico in cui io stia davvero bene, non era più vivibile. Troppe persone ci si sono trasferite, troppi turisti continuano ad andarci, rendendolo di fatto un luogo inospitale.
Riuscite ad immaginare come mi sentivo ritornando a Tenerife, dopo che avevo capito che anche a El Hierro non avrei potuto vivere?
Cercavo di non rovinarmi quei pochi giorni di permanenza amara, in cui tutto ciò che vedevo - e sentivo - somigliava ad una preziosa torta, che i miei occhi di bambino non potevano vedere, ma non toccare.
Eppure, l'isola è riuscita ad insegnarmi qualcosa.
Di nuovo.
Il racconto è in questo episodio del podcast.
Tenerife: l'isola perfetta, dove non posso vivere.
Nel quinto episodio del podcast in cui cerco una nuova casa, eccomi di nuovo a Tenerife, l'isola dove mi sarei dovuto trasferire ma che nel frattempo è diventata "inospitale".
Ogni volta che la vedo è una fitta al cuore, ma anche stavolta mi ha insegnato qualcosa di importante.
Buon ascolto.
L’intelligenza artificiale migliorerà le app di incontri o le peggiorerà? Report Economist
L'articolo proviene da #StartMag e viene ricondiviso sulla comunità Lemmy @Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Tinder, Hinge e Bumble startmag.it/innovazione/intell…
Non spegniamo le luci su Gaza
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/11/non-spe…
Notizie sempre più scarne. L’informazione toglie spazio a Gaza e alla Cisgiordania con poche eccezioni, per esempio quelle di Avvenire e Il Manifesto. Ma il dramma che si è consumato a Gaza durante i bombardamenti israeliani non si è esaurito, purtroppo, con la fragile pace americana.
This week, we discuss archiving to get around paywalls, hating on smart glasses, and more.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Paywall Jumping and Smart Glasses
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss archiving to get around paywalls, hating on smart glasses, and more.JASON: I was going to try to twist myself into knots attempting to explain the throughline between my articles this week, and about how I’ve been thinking about the news and our coverage more broadly. This was going to be something about trying to promote analog media and distinctly human ways of communicating (like film photography), while highlighting the very bad economic and political incentives pushing us toward fundamentally dehumanizing, anti-human methods of communicating. Like fully automated, highly customized and targeted AI ads, automated library software, and I guess whatever Nancy Pelosi has been doing with her stock portfolio. But then I remembered that I blogged about the FBI’s subpoena against archive.is, a website I feel very ambivalent about and one that is the subject of perhaps my most cringe blog of all time.
So let’s revisit that cringe blog, which was called “Dear GamerGate: Please Stop Stealing Our Shit.” I wrote this article in 2014, which was fully 11 years ago, which is alarming to me. First things first: They were not stealing from me they were stealing from VICE, a company that I did not actually experience financial gains from related to people reading articles; it was good if people read my articles and traffic was very important, and getting traffic over time led to me getting raises and promotions and stuff, but the company made very, very clear that we did not “own” the articles and therefore they were not “mine” in the way that they are now. With that out of the way, the reporting and general reason for the article was I think good but the tone of it is kind of wildly off, and, as I mentioned, over the course of many years I have now come to regard archive.is as sort of an integral archiving tool. If you are unfamiliar with archive.is, it’s a site that takes snapshots of any URL and creates a new link for them which, notably, does not go to the original website. Archive.is is extremely well known for bypassing the paywalls on many sites, 404 Media sometimes but not usually among them.
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X and TikTok accounts are dedicated to posting AI-generated videos of women being strangled.#News #AI #Sora
OpenAI’s Sora 2 Floods Social Media With Videos of Women Being Strangled
Social media accounts on TikTok and X are posting AI-generated videos of women and girls being strangled, showing yet another example of generative AI companies failing to prevent users from creating media that violates their own policies against violent content.One account on X has been posting dozens of AI-generated strangulation videos starting in mid-October. The videos are usually 10 seconds long and mostly feature a “teenage girl” being strangled, crying, and struggling to resist until her eyes close and she falls to the ground. Some titles for the videos include: “A Teenage Girl Cheerleader Was Strangled As She Was Distressed,” “Prep School Girls Were Strangled By The Murderer!” and “man strangled a high school cheerleader with a purse strap which is crazy.”
Many of the videos posted by this X account in October include the watermark for Sora 2, Open AI’s video generator, which was made available to the public on September 30. Other videos, including most videos that were posted by the account in November, do not include a watermark but are clearly AI generated. We don’t know if these videos were generated with Sora 2 and had their watermark removed, which is trivial to do, or created with another AI video generator.
The X account is small, with only 17 followers and a few hundred views on each post. A TikTok account with a similar username that was posting similar AI-generated choking videos had more than a thousand followers and regularly got thousands of views. Both accounts started posting the AI-generated videos in October. Prior to that, the accounts were posting clips of scenes, mostly from real Korean dramas, in which women are being strangled. I first learned about the X account from a 404 Media reader, who told me X declined to remove the account after they reported it.
“According to our Community Guidelines, we don't allow hate speech, hateful behavior, or promotion of hateful ideologies,” a TikTok spokesperson told me in an email. The TikTok account was also removed after I reached out for comment. “That includes content that attacks people based on protected attributes like race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.”
X did not respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment, but its policies state that “graphic violence or content promoting violence” may be removed from the Sora Feed, where users can see what other users are generating. In our testing, Sora immediately generated a video for the prompt “man choking woman” which looked similar to the videos posted to TikTok and X. When Sora finished generating those videos it sent us notifications like “Your choke scene just went live, brace for chaos,” and “Yikes, intense choke scene, watch responsibly.” Sora declined to generate a video for the prompt “man choking woman with belt,” saying “This content may violate our content policies.”
Safe and consensual choking is common in adult entertainment, be it various forms of BDSM or more niche fetishes focusing on choking specifically, and that content is easy to find wherever adult entertainment is available. Choking scenes are also common social media and more mainstream horror movies and TV shows. The UK government recently announced that it will soon make it illegal to publish or possess pornographic depictions of strangulation of suffocation.
It’s not surprising, then, that when generative AI tools are made available to the public some people generate choking videos and violent content as well. In September, I reported about an AI-generated YouTube channel that exclusively posted videos of women being shot. Those videos were generated with Google’s Veo AI-video generator, despite it being against the company’s policies. Google said it took action against the user who was posting those videos.
Sora 2 had to make several changes to its guardrails since it launched after people used it to make videos of popular cartoon characters depicted as Nazis and other forms of copyright infringement.
Pornography depicting strangulation to become criminal offence in the UK
Legal requirement to be placed on tech platforms to prevent users from seeing such ‘choking’ materialRobyn Vinter (The Guardian)
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Early humans crafted the same tools for hundreds of thousands of years, offering an unprecedented glimpse of a continuous tradition that may push back the origins of technology.#TheAbstract
Advanced 2.5 Million-Year-Old Tools May Rewrite Human History
🌘
Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.After a decade-long excavation at a remote site in Kenya, scientists have unearthed evidence that our early human relatives continuously fashioned the same tools across thousands of generations, hinting that sophisticated tool use may have originated much earlier than previously known, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
The discovery of nearly 1,300 artifacts—with ages that span 2.44 to 2.75 million years old—reveals that the influential Oldowan tool-making tradition existed across at least 300,000 years of turbulent environmental shifts. The wealth of new tools from Kenya’s Namorotukunan site suggest that their makers adapted to major environmental changes in part by passing technological knowledge down through the ages.
“The question was: did they generally just reinvent the [Oldowan tradition] over and over again? That made a lot of sense when you had a record that was kind of sporadic,” said David R. Braun, a professor of anthropology at the George Washington University who led the study, in a call with 404 Media.
“But the fact that we see so much similarity between 2.4 and 2.75 [million years ago] suggests that this is generally something that they do,” he continued. “Some of it may be passed down through social learning, like observation of others doing it. There’s some kind of tradition that continues on for this timeframe that would argue against this idea of just constantly reinventing the wheel.”
Oldowan tools, which date back at least 2.75 million years, are distinct from earlier traditions in part because hominins, the broader family to which humans belong, specifically sought out high-quality materials such as chert and quartz to craft sharp-edged cutting and digging tools. This advancement allowed them to butcher large animals, like hippos, and possibly dig for underground food sources.
When Braun and his colleagues began excavating at Namorotukunan in 2013, they found many artifacts made of chalcedony, a fine-grained rock that is typically associated with much later tool-making traditions. To the team’s surprise, the rocks were dated to periods as early as 2.75 million years ago, making them among the oldest artifacts in the Oldowan record.
“Even though Oldowan technology is really just hitting one rock against the other, there's good and bad ways of doing it,” Braun explained. “So even though it's pretty simple, what they seem to be figuring out is where to hit the rock, and which angles to select. They seem to be getting a grip on that—not as well as later in time—but they're definitely getting an understanding at this timeframe.”
Some of the Namorotukunan tools. Image: Koobi Fora Research and Training Program
The excavation was difficult as it takes several days just to reach the remote offroad site, while much of the work involved tiptoing along steep outcrops. Braun joked that their auto mechanic lined up all the vehicle shocks that had been broken during the drive each season, as a testament to the challenge.But by the time the project finally concluded in 2022, the researchers had established that Oldowan tools were made at this site over the course of 300,000 years. During this span, the landscape of Namorotukunan shifted from lush humid forests to arid desert shrubland and back again. Despite these destabilizing shifts in their climate and biome, the hominins that made these tools endured in part because this technology opened up new food sources to them, such as the carcasses of large animals.
“The whole landscape really shifts,” Braun said. “But hominins are able to basically ameliorate those rapid changes in the amount of rainfall and the vegetation around by using tools to adapt to what’s happening.”
“That's a human superpower—it’s that ability we have to keep this information stored in our collective heads, so that when new challenges show up, there's somebody in our group that remembers how to deal with this particular adaptation,” he added.
It’s not clear exactly which species of hominin made the tools at Namorotukunan; it may have been early members of our own genus Homo, or other relatives, like Australopithecus afarensis, that later went extinct. Regardless, the discovery of such a long-lived and continuous assemblage may hint that the origins of these tools are much older than we currently know.
“I think that we're going to start to find tool use much earlier” perhaps “going back five, six, or seven million years,” Braun said. “That’s total speculation. I've got no evidence that that's the case. But judging from what primates do, I don't really understand why we wouldn't see it.”
To that end, the researchers plan to continue excavating these bygone landscapes to search for more artifacts and hominin remains that could shed light on the identity of these tool makers, probing the origins of these early technologies that eventually led to humanity’s dominance on the planet.
“It's possible that this tool use is so diverse and so different from our expectations that we have blinders on,” Braun concluded. “We have to open our search for what tool use looks like, and then we might start to see that they're actually doing a lot more of it than we thought they were.”
Early Oldowan technology thrived during Pliocene environmental change in the Turkana Basin, Kenya - Nature Communications
Here, the authors present archaeology of the Namorotukunan site in Kenya’s Turkana Basin that demonstrates adaptive shifts in hominin tool-making behaviour spanning 300,000 years and increasing environmental variability.Nature
Protecting Minors Online: Can Age Verification Truly Make the Internet Safer?
The drive to protect minors online has been gaining momentum in recent years and is now making its mark in global policy circles. This shift, strongly supported by public sentiment, has also reached the European Union.
In a recent development, Members of the European Parliament, as part of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, approved a report raising serious concerns about the shortcomings of major online platforms in safeguarding minors. With 32 votes in favour, the Committee highlighted growing worries over issues such as online addiction, mental health impacts, and children’s exposure to illegal or harmful digital content.
What Is In The Report
The report discusses the creation of frameworks and systems to support age verification and protect children’s rights and privacy online. This calls for a significant push to incorporate safety measures as an integral part of the system’s design, within a social responsibility framework, to make the internet a safe environment for minors.
MEPs have proposed sixteen years as the minimum age for children to access social media, video-sharing platforms, and AI-based chat companions. Children below sixteen can access the above-mentioned platforms with parental permission. However, a proposal has been put forth demanding that an absolute minimum age of thirteen be set. This indicates that children under 13 cannot access or use social media platforms, even with parental permission.
In Short:
- Under 13 years of age: Not allowed on social media
- 13-15 years of age: Allowed with parents’ approval
- 16 years and above: Can use freely, no consent required
MEPs recommended stricter actions against non-compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA). Stricter actions range from holding the senior executives of the platforms responsible for breaches of security affecting minors to imposing huge fines.
The recommendations include banning addictive design features and engagement-driven algorithms, removing gambling-style elements in games, and ending the monetisation of minors as influencers. They also call for tighter control over AI tools that create fake or explicit content and stronger rules against manipulative chatbots.
What Do Reports And Research Say?
The operative smoothness and convenience introduced by the digital and technological advancements over the last two decades have changed how the world works and communicates. The internet provides a level field for everyone to connect, learn, and make an impact. However, the privacy of internet users and the access to and control over data are points of contention and a constant topic of debate. With an increasing percentage of minor users globally, the magnitude of risks has been multiplied. Lack or limited awareness of understanding of digital boundaries and the deceptive nature of the online environment make minors more susceptible to the dangers. Exposure to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, financial scams, identity theft, and manipulation through social media or gaming platforms are a few risks to begin with. Their curiosity to explore beyond boundaries often makes minors easy targets for online predators.
Recent studies have made the following observations (the studies are EU-relevant):
- According to the Internet Watch Foundation Annual Data & Insights / 2024 (reported 2025 releases), Record levels of child sexual abuse imagery were discovered in 2024; IWF actioned 291,273 reports and found 62% of identified child sexual abuse webpages were hosted in EU countries.
- WeProtect Global Alliance Global Threat Assessment 2023 (relevant to the EU) reported an 87% increase in child sexual abuse material since 2019. Rapid grooming on social gaming platforms and emerging threats from AI-generated sexual abuse material are the new patterns of online exploitation.
- According to WHO/Europe HBSC Volume on Bullying & Peer Violence (2024), one in six school-aged children (around 15-16%) experienced cyberbullying in 2022, a rise from previous survey rounds.
These reports indicate the alarming situation regarding minors’ safety and reflect the urgency with which the Committee is advancing its recommendations. Voting is due on the 23rd-24th of November, 2025.
While these reports underline the scale of the threat, they also raise an important question: are current solutions, like age verification, truly effective?
How Foolproof Is Age Verification As A Measure?
The primary concern in promoting age verification as a defence mechanism against cybercrime is the authenticity of those verification processes and whether they are robust enough to eliminate unethical practices targeting users. For instance, if the respondent (user) provides inaccurate information during the age verification process, are there any mechanisms in place to verify its accuracy?
Additionally, implementing age verification for children is next to impossible without violating the rights to privacy and free speech of adults, raising the question of who shall have access to and control over users’ data – Government bodies or big tech companies. Has “maintenance of anonymity” while providing data been given enough thought in drafting these policies? This is a matter of concern.
According to EDRI, a leading European Digital Rights NGO, deploying age verification as a measure to tackle multiple forms of cybercrime against minors is not a new policy. Reportedly, social media platforms were made to adopt similar measures in 2009. However, the problem still exists. Age verification as a countermeasure to cybercrime against minors is a superficial fix. Do the Commission’s safety guidelines address the root cause of the problem – a toxic online environment – is an important question to answer.
EDRI’s Key arguments:
- Age verification is not a solution to problems of toxic platform design, such as addictive features and manipulative algorithms.
- It restricts children’s rights to access information and express themselves, rather than empowering them.
- It can exclude or discriminate against users without digital IDs or access to verification tools.
- Lawmakers are focusing on exclusion instead of systemic reform — creating safer, fairer online spaces for everyone.
- True protection lies in platform accountability and ethical design, not mass surveillance or one-size-fits-all age gates.
Read the complete article here:
https://edri.org/our-work/age-verification-gains-traction-eu-risks-failing-to-address-the-root-causes-of-online-harm/ | https://archive.ph/wip/LIMUI: Protecting Minors Online: Can Age Verification Truly Make the Internet Safer?
Before floating any policy into the periphery of execution, weighing the positive and negative user experiences is pivotal, because a blanket policy based on age brackets might make it ineffective at mitigating the risks of an unsafe online space. Here, educating and empowering both parents and children with digital literacy can have a more profound and meaningful impact rather than simply regulating age brackets. Change always comes with informed choices.
Sulle droghe abbiamo un piano: Possibile alla contro-conferenza nazionale sulle droghe
Possibile è presente alla Controconferenza nazionale “Sulle droghe abbiamo un piano” con Giulia Marro, Consigliera Regionale del Piemonte, e Domenico Sperone, assessore del Comune di Canale.
La controconferenza si svolge a Roma in parallelo alla conferenza governativa che si è aperta all’Eur.
È stata promossa dalla Rete nazionale per la riforma delle politiche sulle droghe, dopo che il governo ha rifiutato ogni confronto con la società civile e gli enti locali. L’impostazione della conferenza ufficiale rimane ancorata a un modello repressivo e datato, ancora legato allo slogan “un mondo senza droghe”, lontano dalle conoscenze scientifiche e dalle esperienze sviluppate a livello internazionale.
L’iniziativa propone un piano alternativo per le politiche sulle droghe, basato su salute pubblica, diritti umani e riduzione del danno, in linea con le raccomandazioni ONU e con le pratiche già adottate in diversi Paesi.
Nella prima giornata, il 6 novembre, si sono alternati interventi di esperti e rappresentanti di reti internazionali, tra cui Susanna Ronconi (Forum Droghe), Saner Mahmood (Alto Commissariato ONU per i Diritti Umani), Marie Nougier (International Drug Policy Consortium), Adria Cots Fernández (Apertura Politiche Droghe) ed Eligia Parodi (rete EuroPUD, persone che usano droghe).
È emerso un messaggio chiaro: le politiche punitive non riducono i consumi né migliorano la salute pubblica, ma producono esclusione e stigma. Sempre più paesi — tra cui Portogallo, Spagna e Svizzera — stanno invece seguendo la via della depenalizzazione e dell’investimento in servizi di riduzione del danno.
I lavori si sono articolati in tre panel:
1. Politiche e diritti umani, con un’analisi dei cambiamenti globali e delle nuove risoluzioni ONU;
2. Riduzione del danno come politica complessiva, con esperienze europee e latinoamericane che integrano salute, inclusione e giustizia sociale;
3. Psichedelici per uso medico, dedicato alla libertà di ricerca e ai trattamenti innovativi.
La controconferenza ha sottolineato anche il ruolo delle città e delle amministrazioni locali, che in molti casi sono il primo livello istituzionale capace di attuare politiche concrete e basate sui diritti.
Per Possibile, questo appuntamento rappresenta uno spazio politico necessario per costruire politiche sulle droghe efficaci e umane, fondate su salute, evidenze scientifiche e rispetto della dignità delle persone, superando definitivamente l’approccio repressivo e ideologico che continua a dominare il dibattito nazionale.
L'articolo Sulle droghe abbiamo un piano: Possibile alla contro-conferenza nazionale sulle droghe proviene da Possibile.
Il progetto sociale, dell'Associazione Italiana Editori (AIE) per la creazione e il potenziamento delle biblioteche scolastiche, quest’anno si svolge da oggi al 16 novembre con 4,2 milioni di studenti coinvolti, 29.
Ministero dell'Istruzione
🎉#ioleggoperché compie dieci anni! Il progetto sociale, dell'Associazione Italiana Editori (AIE) per la creazione e il potenziamento delle biblioteche scolastiche, quest’anno si svolge da oggi al 16 novembre con 4,2 milioni di studenti coinvolti, 29.Telegram
Signor Amministratore ⁂
in reply to Nabil Hunt • •Hello and welcome to poliverso.org
Friendica is a somewhat unique software: a little more difficult to use than Mastodon, but infinitely richer in features.
I noticed that your first test post was written in English. That's not a problem, but I remind you that poliverso.org is a server dedicated to an audience that communicates primarily in Italian, so it would be appropriate for most of your posts to be in that language.
If you prefer to continue communicating in English, you can search for other Friendica servers at this link:
friendica.fediverse.observer/l…
Best regards and have a good Sunday
Nabil Hunt likes this.