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Aragosta
Quando l’aragosta era cibo per detenuti
Domiziano, da “dominus et deus” alla damnatio memoriae
World Press Photo 2023, il mondo raccontato per immagini
PerCorti di Vita a Torino
Lucia Annunziata racconta gli “inquilini” degli ultimi 10 anni
Hybris di Rezza e Mastrella a teatro, i due lati della porta
Eminem, 50 anni del bianco che ha segnato il rap
Rachel Carson, agli albori dell’ambientalismo moderno
Il Pride di Bologna e il suo orgoglio
Sheila Ribeiro, arte che invita al “non-dominio sulle cose”
World Press Photo, il fotogiornalismo del 2021
Dario Argento al Museo del Cinema di Torino
Non mi lascio commuovere dalle fotografie – la mostra per i 100 anni di Pasolini
Anni Interessanti, l’Italia 1960-1975
Armi biologiche: da Wuhan alla guerra in Ucraina
Romics, dai Millennials alla Generazione Z
Sport e politica, l’arma del boicottaggio
Se i proverbi se la prendono (solo) con le donne
Il dispotico smartphone
biancaneve
La “dittatura” del politicamente corretto (nun se po’ più dì)
Perché ci sentiamo in obbligo di giustificare il violento?
0 like prateek katyal
Il giornalismo sui social e la gestione del conflitto
logo mundialito 1980
Uruguay 1980, the P2 Lodge, football and the Gold Cup (on TV)
“Definire è limitare”
Bambine-streghe, quando le “catene del pregiudizio” sono reali
Inferno a Roma, quando il Diavolo non ci faceva paura
Trascrittori forensi, “chiediamo giustizia alla Giustizia”
“Duel” a Palazzo Merulana, Amici miei vs Compagni di scuola
new york skyline 11 settembre torri gemelle
11 settembre 2001, i 20 anni dall’attentato
rambaldi profondo rosso
Horror movies, the fine line between trash and cult
Europei di calcio, dalla Guerra Fredda all’edizione condivisa
Trap, giovani e società

Stereotype-in-English

 

john cazaleJohn Cazale, an unlucky Midas

On March the 13th 1978, at the age of 42, John Cazale died. This great and unlucky actor only appeared in five movies, each of them nominated for an Oscar for best movie…

logo mundialito 1980Uruguay 1980, the P2 Lodge, football and the Gold Cup (on TV)

Authoritarian regimes often used sports, especially football, for propaganda. For example, Mussolini did it in the 1934 World Cup, and was “copied” by Brazil in 1950 – except they lost the final match. Other times the kermesse is created out of nothing. This is the case of the Gold Cup played in Uruguay between 1980 and 1981. A basically useless competition, wanted by the deviated Masonic Lodge P2 and the Uruguayan dictatorship…

rambaldi profondo rossoHorror movies, the fine line between trash and cult

Horror movies have been interpreted differently according to times and places or the filters created by a specific cultural vision. Sometimes they moved along the fine line which separates trash and cult, but somehow we all had to do with them. In the end, exorcising fear is an activity as old as humanity…

Portugal, European champion in fatalism (2)

The second and last episode of a traveling story between places, stereotypes and legends. Stereotypes are passed down. But how were they formed? Fortunately, every now and then, beyond our conjectures and inferences, there is someone who studies them…

 

Portugal, European champion in fatalism (1)

“A lot of stereotypes from many European countries come to mind, but I have total emptiness on Portugal and the Portugueses,” an American guy comments on Reddit (social news site). To this a Spaniard replies as someone who knows a lot: “the Portugueses are rather sad, pessimistic and melancholy…”

Provo, the Dutch 1968 (three years earlier)

When we think about 1968 demonstrations, we got Paris or San Francisco in our minds. Or maybe the Prague spring, when Czechoslovakia tried to rebel against the Soviet Union (unsuccessfully). Someone, though, three years earlier, had already passed through all these requests for a better, fairer, more equal society: Holland. And that’s thanks to Provo…

Football and homophobia, a taboo hard to overcome

Homosexuality in sports can still be a taboo, especially for male athletes. Those (statistically) hiding it aren’t to blame. They’re probably scared that both teammates and supporters might turn their career and life to hell, as precedents aren’t comforting…

 

Well, the one on the left was on the right…

Fluidity teaches that in the reality black and white exist, but more often there are shades of them, and that the key to living well is adapting to them. Not everything is ethics, there is also the real, but not everything is individualism, there is also a world to be preserved together. This approach would virtuously combine left and right in a policy that does not become an immobile and formless center, but is able to think about everyone without forgetting “how things are”…

Arpad Weisz, from the Championship to Auschwitz

News about Arpad Weisz ended in 1938, when Mussolini promulgated the racial laws. Jewish foreigners living in Italy after 1919 are forced to leave the country. At that moment, Weisz is at the top of his career. Thanks to Matteo Marani’s work, Arpad Weisz’ personal history came out of an oblivion to which he and his family had been forced by the aberrations of the History (with the capital H) of the first half of the twentieth century…

Femicide, men used to hate women

We can guess that (almost) all of us went through this at least once in our life. It might not strictly a violence, but maybe a boyfriend a little too “jealous” (not to say “possessive”), a husband who checks your email, the one who likes making scenes in the middle of the street, the ex who calls you a thousand times to find out where you are, the half unknown who has decided to skulk outside your house…

iran usaUSA and Iran, good guys are not in the script

In less than 70 years the overturning of relationships between USA and Iran, the texture of twisted plots, the fickleness of the players kept the world in apprehension. But that also confirmed both the validity of cause and effect links and the absurdity of keeping rigid position in support of one side or another, whether it’s for ideology or nationalism…

Kajillionaire, the scam (of feelings) is in the family

She makes one movie every 5 – 10 years, but when it comes out… she strikes again: Miranda July with her third feature film “Kajillionaire”, presented for schools at the Rome Film Festival. In Italian it is presented with the addition of the subtitle “La truffa è di famiglia!”, (“The scam is in the family!”), trying to put a meaning next to a word that has none even in English… pure American slang to indicate “someone absurdly rich”. After billions and trillions, only the “ka-jing” sound from the comics remained! It could be heard when the old cash registers were opened…

streghe d'oriente olimpiadiWhen Japan started over thanks to women’s sport

Japanese women obtained two important sport achievements, 1964 Olympic volley and 2011 football world cup, that went beyond a normal success. Those victories helped an entire country to lift up the national spirit in delicate moments for the country…

The stereotype, “a snap judgment against the imperfect perfection”

“Stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination are often conceived as correlated, even if they express different concepts: stereotypes are a cognitive component, it is how our brain normally handles information, often without real awareness; prejudice is the affective component of this “stereotype”; finally, discrimination is the behavioral part that follows the prejudicial reactions”…

Life in the abyss, more than “primordial monsters”

There was a reason if before 1872, when the Challenger Expedition was over, it was thought that the oceanic abyss was inhabited. How can a living being survive without solar energy and light and with an unbearable pressure? Then the British oceanographic study brought to light thousand of undiscovered species and that started a slow yet inexorable progress in scientific research, adding more and more pieces to the puzzle…

Mahi Binebine, the “big jump” of suicide bombers

“Maybe Hell is the inability to change things. Instead faith made us see Heaven”. A kamikaze speaks and does so in the book by Mahi Binebine, a former student and professor of mathematics in Paris and today a painter and writer in New York. Born in Marrakech in 1959…

Contractors, not heroes nor mercenaries

The history of this security contractors is relatively recent and has, at the very least, questionable roots. In 1989, in South Africa and Namibia, the apartheid is about to collapse and the army of these two countries will be reorganized soon. Among the new unemployed soldiers there is Eeben Barlow, former colonel of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a unit (basically a death squad) responsible for the murder of many political opponents. Barlow decides to put his strategic know-how at the service of privates, foreseeing the business potential: war zones are always a lot and, after the Cold War, less and less ideological….

New media, old issues

We’re used to think that first internet and then the social media revolutionized and democratized the entertainment and the information world, making any other previous media obsolete. But that’s not fully correct, because, if the tool is surely way faster and more widespread, dynamics behind its use are basically the same as always…

A quick history of soap

Known to Babylonians and many other populations three thousand years before Christ, soaps as we use them today come from the Arabian Peninsula and specifically Alep. The area was rich of olive and bay trees, whose oils were necessary for their preparation. Once luxury goods, soaps began to be produced industrially and therefore popular in the XIX century, also thanks to the progress in chemistry…

A joke is a serious thing

Jokes have a double reputation. If many people consider them the heritage of a long gone sense of humor, other ones underline their historical and popular value, like any form of culture passed down orally, a sort of collective patrimony made of folk songs, proverbs, traditions, maxims and principles…

Genoa, stingy and generous

Closed, cold, grumpy, but also tenacious, prudent, gifted… every great city and Italian region has its own, and these are the first negative and positive stereotypes that you hear about the Genoese. “Some are sampdorians”, someone jokes. But above all they are said to be stingy (the famous “little short arm”), and at the same time, they are said to be generousbut the negative stereotype is often more famous! And that’s all the proof we’d need of the fallibility of the stereotype itself, being able, over time, to affirm everything and the opposite of everything…

Our brain takes 66 days to adapt to change (more or less…)

Change is usually scary itself, just imagine after a global pandemic. However, our brain has a great adaptability, more than we think. We just have to remember that we don’t respond in the same way, someone will be faster, other ones will be slower. Statistics, in cases like those, can only give a general idea…

Entertainment and its responsibilities

Iconoclasm towards historical figures may have sense if it makes us have a less idealized vision and pulls down our granitic certainties. But we can’t reason in the same way when it comes to art or, even worse, pure entertainment.It’s been a little while since more recent or older movies and TV series are watched with current standards. The last victim is Gone with the wind, that has been suspended from HBO catalog and will reappear with disclaimers for “ethnic and racial prejudices” and “product of its times”. But even popular and apparently harmless shows like How I met your mother and Friends had been criticized for their (alleged) sexist, homophobic, transphobic messages and/or fat shaming…

Princesses, (social) mirror on the wall

Beautiful and thin, graceful and harmonious, romantic and always in search of love, kind and helpful, affable and loving, obliging and attentive. The Italian (and English) provide an infinite number of synonyms to describe the gender role, always the same, of fairytale princesses: characters that are basically unreal in which, however, many girls still try to mirror themselves. But it is useless to blame the choices of the last century. From 2012 things have changed more in the entertainment rather than in the women’s head…

Tourette’s syndrome and the stereotype of coprolalia

Tourette’s syndrome had been diagnosed for the first time in 1884 by the French doctor George Gilles de la Tourette, but its causes are not utterly known, unlike the symptoms. The main stereotype concerns the association with coprolalia, a compulsive behavior that forces to use foul language. Coprolalia is surely one of the symptoms, but is not the only one and it’s not that frequent. Case studies can be really different, too much to have a typification…

Diary from a Roman quarantine… and a half

We are fine, capable to adapt and see the good things anyway. We are having a lot of time to think about everything happened in our lives. I’m sure that we’ll miss this calm, once we will come back to our daily routine life. But this will not happen soon. So I think that is better to adapt at this new daily life a bit different. We are already closer to a society that is capable to grow without losing its heart…

The bat is not a “plague-spreader”, it’s more like an “antivirus”

Bats carry a sinister reputation, starting from their appearance of a winged rat that sleeps upside down. Even if they are basically harmless for humans and domestic animals, with only a few hematophagous species out of the thousands existing, they inspired the legends about vampires. Once again, during this pandemic, bats have to shake off their negative reputation: they’re not the problem, they can actually be the solution…

Coronavirus, why Italy?

Just yesterday the official confirmation from an Italian study conducted by Sima: “We can confirm that we have reasonably demonstrated the presence of viral RNA of SARS-CoV-2 on atmospheric particulate matter”. This increase “the persistence of the virus in the atmosphere as already hypothesized on the basis of recent international research. In the so-called ‘phase 2’ it is necessary to take into account the need to keep particulate emissions low”. And this explains better why Lombardia in particular…

Coronavirus, how to navigate the confusion of data

An English study has recently claimed that there will be like 6 millions of infected only in Italy. Others say that they are now probably around 1 million. Everything is plausible, but most of the numbers that we chase everyday, fed by journalists, are only a guess that must be taken with a grain of salt. Especially today, every “expert” claims this while giving new data. So what should we look at to better understand the situation? The few certain facts and one deeper study that can give a far more positive perspective…

What does the bunny have to do with Easter

From central Europe to the United States, one of the Easter symbols is the bunny, or better yet the hare. Apparently, this animal has nothing to do with eggs, emblem of birth, or, for those who believe, with resurrection and Christianity. But it actually does…

 

Coronavirus and the war rhetoric

During this global pandemic and quarantine, we hear a lot of talking about a war-like situation. Sure, there are some similarities between the two emergency circumstances. On the other hand, psychology, strategy and social system play a total different role…

Coronavirus, a chance to walk on the other side

When the whole world was looking at Italy with worry, the virus was spreading everywhere else. This is because that worry wasn’t always “genuine”, but more often led by a stereotypical consideration of Italy, (one of) the“open flank” of Europe. With all the lack of controls and weak structures… (allusion by some news from England), being the country of disorganization and slowness “par excellence” (tacit from some French news). This is always fastidious because it doesn’t tell the whole story…

Nouri Bouzid, facing any taboo in the Arab world

“In our tradition there is a strange reversal of roles, where the rapist is proud and the victim must be ashamed”. I remember once, when I returned to my city in Sfax, I met my brother and other friends and acquaintances playing cards in a bar. I joined them, and I recognized someone who had been a rapist when we were younger, even though he was a few years older than me. Well, at a certain point he said to me, and repeated it several times, without anyone reacting in any way: “if I had raped you as a young man, you would not have had the courage to open your mouth now”…

The mad (female) scientist

Thinking about great women scientists, in these hours, we especially have in mind Katherine Johnson, the woman who brought the man on the moon, recently deceased at the age of 101, and Ilaria Capua, well-known virologist that absolves Italy from its brand new “infective stereotype”…

barber dentistThe barber and his pivotal role in societies

More than just taking care of style, the figure of the barber historically dealt with a lot of aspects that, apparently, had nothing to do with razors, scissors or shaving foam: from managing places where people went to discuss about everything, to perform basic surgical operations, to extracting teeth…

Beard trends through History

The symbolism assumed by the beard affected trends and fashion throughout centuries. Growing one could have been seen as a sign of poverty like in ancient Egypt, of rebellion like during the Italian Risorgimento or of a lack of hygiene like during proto-Christianity. The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate even wrote a satire against the beard detractors (Mispogon)…

The vegan is not an idiot

It’s a classic: vegetarianism (no to meat) and veganism (no to any animal derivative), have just defeated the oldest stereotype of “they are bad for children health” and are almost recognized as better diets. TV and media in general are starting to unleash the baddest “carnivores” (usually men) against the most docile and defenseless herbivores (usually women). As if the clash between these, if then a clash must exist, were placed on the level of “sensitivity” and “being strong”, and so on with other cliches…

Mass tourism, detrimental and democratic

Changing is scary, it’s a natural feeling. Mass tourism is a product of social, economic, geographic transformations and adjustment takes time, resources and efforts. So, in the name of an unbearable status quo, the problem is reduced to elitist positions that go against those who, just few years ago, could only have dreamed of a day trip…

I hate the mobile phone, don’t you?

On the subway, in the streets and theatres, at the table, in the bathroom, in bed and even in the sauna… cell phones appear everywhere. And if everyone has it – you would seem crazy not to have it – only a few dare to admit it: the mobile phone is a real curse…

 

If a symbol is still needed (Greta Thunberg iconoclasty)

Symbols had been fundamental to build individual or collective identities and for the storytelling which gathered clans, tribes, states, religious communities, sport supporters. And all the technology we have didn’t change things very much.

 

To live and die on the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean Sea had been relevant, in different ways, throughout history: civilizations, wars, commerce, exclusive tourism, now it’s a crossroad of migratory routes. And it’s more and more a cemetery…

 

The evil God of multitasking (which doesn’t exist)

The stereotype of “knowing how to do more things together”, once assigned to women because they are “forced to juggle work and family”, and once to men because “they have so many responsibilities on them” (but perhaps the women’s stereotype wins in diffusion), it is generally seen as a quality, albeit tiring. Too bad that we are not machines, and therefore the infamous multitasking does not actually exist neither for women nor men…

The Middle Ages weren’t just “dark”

When you think about the Middle Ages you usually picture dearth and pestilence, violence, tortures and wars, peasants under the rule of a sadistic king or feudatory, creepy monks, scheming popes, inquisitors, ignorance, superstition, the end of the world in the year 1000 a.D. A long period too quickly labeled as “dark”, just a time of passage between the splendor of the classic era and Renaissance. That’s another misinterpretation, because history itself is a constant transition, an ongoing process, not only the Middle Ages. But this is what we learn at school…

Ice cream politics

From Cuba to the middle-East, is hard to separate anything from politics. And even a “normal” dessert like the ice cream is double-edged connected to the geopolitical situation…

 

Jineology, the Kurdish science that frees women

Jineology is a new science of women (in Kurd Jin means woman) that dismantles the concept of homo oeconomicus (a pillar of western economic rationality) as a dominant actor in social relations”…

 

Kurdish Women’s Movement: “patriarchy is not natural”

“Have any of you ever studied the origins of patriarchy at school?” Dilar Dirik asks, researcher in Sociology at Cambridge University and activist of the Kurdish Women’s Movement. The rhetorical question slips into silence, so Dilar tries to summarize only 6.000 years of humanity on Earth, when, during Neolithic, the first “modern” societies were formed in Mesopotamia, India, China… matriarchal organizations, where women carried out internal, social, economic and political functions, and men external, subsistence and defense ones. At that time women had an enormous prestige, probably stemmed from the fact that they were considered the only procreative members of the group, prestige that it was taken away from them precisely when the men discovered their paternity…

The Goldsboro nuclear mishap (how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)

“Nuclear mishap”. The commemorative sign in Goldsboro, North Carolina, uses a word that indicates a minor accident. Like a B-52 erroneously dropping two atomic bombs on a small town in the south of the United States was something classifiable as “minor”. Major risks for the United States never arrived from its enemies like USSR, Iran or North Korea. The USA did all by themselves and the Goldsboro accident is the most famous example…

Rites of passage, how to become an adult

Becoming an adult is a gradual process, but is conventionally defined by a specific moment in which a young kid suddenly turns into a useful member of a society – even just with his or (more likely) her fertility. Populations in any time and place organized public celebrations that certified the entrance in adulthood, named “rites of passage” by the French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep…

Suicide and its ethics in societies

Societies throughout history gave different meanings to suicide. It was considered acceptable, to a certain extent, by the Romans; it was in Mayans pantheon and in Norse mythology; it was codified by the Japanese in the Bushido. On the other hand, the idea of killing yourself was strongly rejected by the main religions, affecting secular laws too: in the United Kingdom and Ireland, suicide had been illegal until 1961 and 1993…

Igbo-Ora, Nigeria: the home of twins

Twins were historically given supernatural capabilities, for better or worse. Multiple deliveries were something hard to understand with the scientific notions of thousand of years ago, so they had to be phenomena that forewarned inauspicious or happy events. In both case, something beyond the ordinary…

Kissinger, diplomacy and sport: from ping pong to USA ’94

From the famous “ping pong diplomacy” to the soccer world cup USA ’94, Henry Kissinger understood before many others the importance of sport in international balance. If the first event changed the relationships between United States and China (and the Cold War), the second one gave birth to a new (but not better) concept of world cup…

New tango in Paris

Tango was inscribed in 2009 on the Represantative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It’s commonly considered Argentinian, but we need to clarify a few things. It’s actually platense, from the mouth of Rio de la Plata, region shared between Argentina and Uruguay; it was born as a fusion of different sounds, rhythms and traditions from South America, Caribbean, Africa and even Europe; as a matter of fact, the current variations of this dance had been “cleaned up” by the Old Continent parlors – especially Paris…

Peak TV, saturation of the shows

We are leaving in a peak TV era. John Landgraf, president and general manager of FX Network, came up with this definition in 2015, when the United States had 421 shows on air. Now they are more than 500…

 

We Women: beautiful, dirty and bad

Certainly the life of a woman can be depressed in various ways, more or less large or serious: without immediately touching the bottom of physical violence or stoning, there is perhaps depilation. And the “bikini-test”, for example, that contribute to reducing women to bodies, obsessed by few functions: pleasure, loyalty, motherhood, kindness, perfection…There is the fact that women often serve men, and then maybe they eat alone and last, consuming their scraps. Quite normal in certain countries, because this is what the “natural generosity” imposes on women. At least Shantala (the dancers are called by name) seems to be convinced of this…

The role of fear in society

At a social level, fear is a tool of political and religious control. It’s used to build a society which may respond to our concerns about safety and security, guaranteeing a community life. In a present-oriented society, fear prevents from the lost of significance of the daily routine, creating consensus and legitimacy, keeping an unstable order just to avoid to consider new social forms…

If you don’t want terrorism, think about animals

Every aspect of this world is connected to the others and taking care of one issue, let’s say the environment, is anything but marginal. The planet is so cohesive that there is a relation even between endangered species and Islamic terrorism…

 

Women rights and gender equality: the case of Switzerland

Switzerland is considered one of the best examples of advanced country: neutral in wars, often turning to the main tool of direct democracy (the referendum), civil rights such as euthanasia, headquarter of the Red Cross and host of international treats like the Geneva Conventions. But they have their contradictions as well, banks who accepted tax evaders or Nazis money, a pinch of intolerance and, last but not least, an incredible delay in giving women equal rights. Perhaps not everyone knows that Swiss women got the right to vote only in 1971…

It was a dark and stormy night. And it brought counsel

“It was a dark and stormy night”, Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote to start his novel Paul Clifford, in 1830. This famous beginning became more popular after it was repeatedly taken by Snoopy, turning into a classic of literature. Actually, most of the civilizations who developed thousand of years ago, used that kind of scenario to picture the birth of the world…

Roma reacts by telling itself

Reaction Roma is a social movie about the Italian capital city from a suburban point of view, but what it consists of, from the web, it is not clear that much. So I went where they would explain the project, in Renato Nicolini library, and this is my suburban trip in Roma…

 

A smile is universal communication. But not that much

In 2015, a group of researchers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison formulated their own theory on why, somewhere, people are more inclined to smile. The answer is to be found in immigration and multiculturalism. The United States and Canada have a diverse population, composed by 83 and 63 different national or ethnic groups each. Non verbal communication played a central role in socializing and building trustful relationships among communities…

Tips hide  a wage problem

Tips are a cultural habit, or so we are told. They are mandatory and conspicuous in the United States, offensive in Japan, a half way in Europe, where they are well accepted but waiters don’t rely on them. Actually, the difference is not only about traditions, it’s mostly contractual…

bonsky we are all fakeMedia does not tell the reality

About how media magnifies the news… take one article at random subsequently to the year 1998. Something has changed in the news: there is more gossip and nothing really to talk about. But misinformation didn’t begin with the poor internet that everyone blames…

Kleptocracy, the inverse Robin Hood politics

Kleptocracy, from the Greek words “thief” and “government”, is a term created in the XIX century in reference to the Spanish politic of that time. It became particularly popular in the second half of the successive century thanks to Mobutu Sese Seko, dictator of Zaire…

 

Santa Muerte, a misinterpreted icon

Hood and crown, sickle in one hand and a globe in the other one – or an hourglass as variant. And an infinity of tunics of different shapes and colors above all. Santa Muerte, half Virgin Mary half grim reaper, half Christian and half heathen: she recently became an icon, famous all over the world, because of the erroneous association with Mexican narcos. Her worshippers swing between 5 and 10 millions, there are 1500 altars only in Mexico City and this cult has deep historic and socio-cultural roots…

Against all odds

Football (or soccer for those who live in the U.S.) is loved and treated like a religion by many fans, because it’s based on emotions and it’s far from being an exact science. So, even if it’s not likely, sometimes happens that the underdog takes the trophy home, against all odds. There are many Cinderella stories, like Denmark 1992, Greece 2004, Iraq 2007…

Open space, “closed” attitude

Open space offices were created as common working areas where ideas can circulate easier than in classic places with cubicles. Or so we thought. But the real and the ideal don’t always coincide and facts lead to an unexpected direction…

 

Keep calm and… “the future is still unwritten”

If only we could look beyond this daily sense of induced panic, according to the journalist and writer Steven Kotler, we will glimpse four forces of change that are “acting together and will make possible what was previously unthinkable: Abundance for al. …try to imagine what awaits us in the future“…

Keep calm and… present is not that bad

“Many of today’s dangers are generic and potential, but Amygdala cannot perceive the difference”, Steven Kotler writes, “or even worse: the system is designed to stay alert until the threat ceases altogether, but the potential dangers, by their very nature, never completely disappear. Add media that frightens us constantly with the aim of gaining market share to this and what we get is a mind convinced of living in a perennial state of siege”…

Water Wars

More than oil, feedstock, raw material, religion, ideology, nationalism. Wars, gradually, aim at the control of the most precious resource: water…

 

Work of freelancer, be flexible or die

Work of freelancer, that means working from home. From a teenager’spoint of view it may seem like something really cool. And also from the point of view of all those who have to wake up early to get somewhere in a sad office. But thinking about the “real situation” and being inside it, it can often be completely different…

Fast fashion, if ethics is not a trend

Fast fashion was created in the Nineties thanks to brands that proposed a recognizable and low cost dressing style. It developed through these decades following high-fashion, but remaining much cheaper and most of all it changed timing. Collections went from two cycles a year (basically summer and winter) to almost weekly ones, for a constant renovation of the store shelves. Sustainability is the other side of the coin, though…

Hollywood, from a prohibitionist village to the star system

Looking at all the stories of alcohol and/or drugs addiction that affect the showbiz, it’s hard to believe that Hollywood was founded with the purpose to create a prohibitionist town. At the end of the XIX century, the entrepreneur Harvey Henderson Wicox, during the honeymoon, is convinced by his wife Daeida Hartell to buy an area of 50 hectares to establish an oasis free from alcohol…

From Dylan Dog to Morgan Lost, media and narcissism of evil

We were already used to the lonely, mysterious and handsome hero, but with Morgan Lost it’s like Dylan had passed through Alice’s mirror. Claudio Chiaverotti, historical collaborator of Bonelli, author of more than 50 books of Dylan Dog, makes us jump directly from a close enough past into a futuristic present of an undetermined metropolis, gothic and decadent like the old London of Dylan, but completely fictional…

The traditional family is the one which evolves

Even if we talk of a “traditional family”, the basic concepts which historically defined and described family relationships had been very fluid and connected to economy more than blood lineage or love…

This is Halloween

Not totally pagan or Christian, Halloween is one of the many examples of religious syncretism. Rooted in Celtic and therefore pre-Christian traditions, Halloween was “resumed” during the VIII century by the monk Alcuin of York, who superimposed All Saints’ Day to the celebrations of Samhain, a joyful memory of the dearly departed. The name itself Halloween is the contraction of All Hallow’s Eve…

You can’t be neutral on a moving train

Historians, such as journalists, focus on the most important people. “What really matters are the countless small deeds of unknown people who lay the basis for the events of human history”, Howard Zinn once said. Why did he write a history book? Because there wasn’t any like it. It’s A people’s history of the United States, published in 1980 and corner stone of this specific sector. Because Zinn was one of those who changed the narration perspective, placing the last ones with the greatest characters…

The Law of Jante

Despite the Danish origin, the Law of Jante affected in particular the Swedish culture, especially for what concerns working environments, to guarantee harmony and uniformity. Obviously, Swedish people deny that and refer to it in a negative way, as it ruins personal initiatives. Anyway, the strong rejection indicates that somehow everyone has to do with it…

Fake news, fake problem

Fake news are the alarm of the last few years. A BBC survey, conducted in 18 countries, revealed that 78% of the interviewed feels worried because of the spreading of misinformation. But the real question, in the end, is: do fake news have an actual role in influencing elections, like Donald Trump or Brexit? Or is it just an easy scapegoat to divert attention from personal responsibilities and much deeper social and cultural issues?

Iconography of hair

According to some surveys, becoming bald is the greatest fear that men face when they are getting older. Even worse than loosing teeth, gaining weight or becoming impotent. We can understand a fact from that: the status associated with the hair when it comes to personality, self-esteem, seduction and sensuality…

1816, the year without summer

1816 had been the year without summer because of the eruption of Tambora, that caused hundred thousand dead people all over the world for dearth and famine, due to the sudden cooling. But even from such a catastrophe, something positive stem. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, for the dark mood of the season, the Flemish painters got inspired by the particular sunsets, the ancestor of the bicycle was invented…

Closed for vacation

Moving has always been part of the history of humanity. First of all, because nomadism was the normal condition before sedentary civilizations. But even after that, populations kept wandering: to escape dearth, to explore, to develop trades. Going on vacation is sure different, yet has ancient root as well…

The International Army Games or the anti-Olympics

It’s well known that in the ancient times the Olympics were so important to stop wars. Less famous than those, the International Army Games were born and raised in Russia in 2015 and they arrived at their third edition in the summer 2017, right in between Rio 2016 and Pyongchang 2018. They look scary and they are exactly what they seem: a competition among armies to display who has got the strongest potential and arsenal…

Utopias

None of the utopian experiments around the world completely succeeded in a way that could have been exported. But even if the ideal community is vainly pursued by centuries, doesn’t mean that one day utopia can come true, changing its meaning on the dictionary…

 

Slow TV, the other side of entertainment

In a TV scene voted to entertainment, where the attention of the public is held with interactivity – social media comments, vote and much more – there are some, less known, exceptions. Almost 10 years ago Norway invented a new format, the slow TV: a sort of marathon of hours that broadcasts live a very common portion of life…

Japan, no Country for old men

Japan is one of the countries with the highest rate of longevity and health, but with longer life expectancy come problems related to senility, such as dementia or the Alzheimer’s disease. Shinzo Abe’s administration is struggling to find effective measures to improve the assistance to a population that is progressively aging. Sometimes the weight falls only on the families, who bear it less and less willingly, being a constant effort…

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be

Fading Affect Bias (Fab) is a common mechanism well explained by the scientific community. In a nutshell, we tend to make negative recollections fade away. This unconscious manipulation makes nostalgia so popular…

 

The sixth branch

The fourth branch of the Government is free press, the fifth is about free speech. The internet can combine them, creating a sort of sixth branch. But the real and the ideal not always coincide…

 

The “lone wolf”, an erroneous phenomenology

During the last century, the “lone wolf” evolved from a repented outlaw to a criminal, to a right-wing terrorist, to an Islamic terrorist. This is the erroneous phenomenology of an erroneous metaphor…

Africa, magic and football, the hat of Robert Mensah

It’s the final of the African Champions League of 1971 and Asante Kotoko is leading, until the corrupted referee gives a penalty to the home team, Englebert. The coach of Asante wants to pull back the team, to protest, but the goalkeeper Robert Mensah stops him. He’s got his magic hat, but the opponents say it’s juju, therefore against the rules. If he will defend the goal, he will have to take it off…

Africa, magic and football, the curse of Ivory Coast

Africa has the stereotype of being the most superstitious continent, since the colonizers defined “juju” the sum of beliefs, traditions and rituals. Actually they are banned, to give a more secular image, but somehow they still can have their powerful effects…

Joan Mulholland, the Southern white woman who challenged KKK

Usually only leaders of revolutions are those who “make History”, for better or worse. So, a Joan Mulholland is less famous for the majority than a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X, but is also and especially for people like her that those fights succeeded. Because she was white and from the South, an area which was generally more conservative than the average…

Is the American dream dead?

According to what you can hear about, to leave for America (from Italy) was becoming quite scary. “They all have guns”, “there are a lot of serial killers”, “as soon as you say – I would like to visit the Country – they begin to control you at every step”, then “there’s Trump that’s worse”…

Satire, a sword, a medicine and a shield

Satire is probably the most controversial form of expression. We tried to describe it, to define it, even to regulate it, but in vain. It will always escape from the limits we try to drawn…

The internet is not Che Guevara nor Charles Manson

Technology progresses, but human mentality is basically the same since millenniums. Without understanding this we can’t argue on the internet with objectivity, without demonizing it or worshipping it and dropping our personal responsibilities that we all have to our actions…

Hate crime, a society failure (Hobbes was right)

The more a legislation is complex, the worse is the situation. We should just keep in mind those few basic principles, like don’t hurt or harm or damage nobody, in a phisical and psychological way. A “nobody” that includes “everybody”, no matter what. And hate crimes are another way to divide society, labelling it in opposing groups,when what we need is more unity, acting as one…

Maracanaco, the birth of legendary Brazil

In Brazil soccer is way more than just a sport. It’s unconditional partecipation, faith and sometimes a reason to live and to die for. What happened in the World Cup played in their homeland in 1950, luckily, in unparalleled in the history of this competition. 90 certified deaths among suicides and heart attacks, due to the emotional charge of the final against Uruguay…

New scapegoats

Not only people, or direct productions of humanity such as machines, have the privilege of being labeled as scapegoat. It happens to plants, substances, animals (this time as food, not as living beings). Gluten, palm oil, red meat are no worse than many other products, but somehow have an indelible mark…

The fried beetle (or methods for combating “alien species”)

Along the railways, bananas and vegetables boxes, exotic insects like various kind of beetle, seedlings or tropical seeds, more rarely spiders, reptiles and other subjects… continually fall down. They are the so-called “invasive alien species” that would have contributed almost 40% of all extinctions in the world. In Roma we’re having since years “alien” parrots, squirrels, snakes, mosquitoes and the terrible red palm weevil…

Rise of the machines

The rise of the machines is a fear with ancestral roots, if we mean, by extension, the rebellion against your own creator. Ancient Greeks developed this topic with the myth of Prometheus and Zeus’ mistrust towards humans, dangerous because in constant evolution. With the a.i. the relationship humans-gods shifts into machines-humans The creator starts the sparkle and civilization goes on by itself, until there is no more need of deity…

Waiter, there are many flies in my soup!

Eating insects. Surely it’s a disgusting picture for most of us (Europeans). In fact, we tend to undermine them and judge “backward” the societies that (still) eat them. (Pre)judgements that might come from those who consume animals that can suggest the same disgust, such as snails, oysters, prawns and shrimps…

 

The quiet revolution of Marion Dougherty

If we think about the history of cinema, dozens of directors and actors come immediately to our minds. Maybe we know a few screenwriters. But probably none of us laymen can mention a casting director. Here, in this field, Marion Dougherty has been a milestone, one of those people who can change the course of events…

Personal Hells

Each religion and society had its own vision of hell. For soEme was just the absence of light, the Ancient Egyptians and Latins introduced punishment. But it was Judaism which changed the concept of the battle between good and evil, influencing the other monotheistic religions…

 

Conspiracy, a scientific religion

Conspiracy theories are a way of thinking, almost a surrogate of religion. Rational and scientific until they can be, conspiracies reinforce themselves when the final piece to the puzzle is missing. Of course something can’t be explained, “they” are able to hide evidence. And that’s a substantial difference with plots. Conspiracies attribute to generic groups (“they”) the course of events…

 

The vir(tu)al democracy disorient us

One of the first and coolest stand up comedian in Italy talks about “a disoriented train of life, the confusion created today by a virtual and viral form of democracy we were not prepared for: there’re so many opportunity of expression offered by technology. 7 billion people, suddenly, speak, express opinions, and add information. The result is an agglomeration of contradictions that ends up disorienting us”.

“La guerra del fùtbol”, kicking diplomacy away

In 1969, Honduras and El Salvador contend the qualification to the World Cup of 1970 in Mexico. But the matches take place in an already dramatic political situation. And made things even worse…

Sex and power, the Rasputin takeover

In a male chauvinist society, we are used to see powerful men taking advantage of their status for sex, rarely the opposite. The most famous case of a man who used his body to climb the social ladder is surely Rasputin…

 

big sofo maccabi tel avivBig Sofo, the giant who climbed Mount Olympus

If you check in the hall of fame of basket, you probably won’t find his name. Too unstable in his performances, too unstable in his weight control. But if, by chance, you watched a game and he was in a state of grace, then you’ll never forget him. Sofoklis “Big Sofo” Schortsianitis, born in Tiko, Cameroon, in 1985 by a greek father…

Envy, an engine for social justice?

Envy is considered a negative, reprehensible feeling: it’s part of our education we receive. But in the right proportions, can it be a driving force for development, justice and social equality?

 

Life on Mars

One of the biggest dreams of humanity, space colonization, specifically of Mars, could be reality soon. Well, maybe not really, but it’s years now that scientists are finding answers to overcome those obstacles, starting from lack of water and oxygen, that seemed to make life on the “red planet” a pure utopia. According optimistic predictions, everything will be technically possibile in 20 years…

 

Fairy tales are not for children

“Let’s start from here: fables were meant for adults, not for children. In fact, they were very rough, also ironic, but above all moralistic, stories that adults told other adults to admonish them”…

 

The shark is nothing like Spielberg told us

The average number of victims of a shark attack is six per year. Hippos, although vegetarians, cause 3000 deaths in Africa every year. In United States only, bees, wasps and hornets kill by the hundreds. Indirectly, a simble of meekness like the deer kills more…

 

Freak show

In contemporary times we replaced the freak shows… with other freak shows. Sure, now is nothing like a human zoo, this tv shows aim to talk about medical conditions and increase awareness about the challanges for a “normal” integration in everyday life. But the reactions of the audience is still the same of 100 or 200 years ago…

 

You don’t have to be happy (by force)

How many stereotypes do you face in Inside Out? First of all, “in life you have to be happy”. When ever. In life, at best, you have to aspire to happiness, but if bad things happen, and they happen, it’s really useless, damaging, suppressing what they make us feel…

 

Humans vs animals

Humans vs animals, a dichotomy old as the evolution. A brutal behavior is still labeled as “beastly”, on the other hand animalists say that those “beasts” are better than humans. We put a lot of efforts to distinguish: we use bathrooms, we write, articulate words, we dress and make art. But deep down we got the same instinct: eat, reproduce, defend the territory. It’s always like a final step is missing…

 

Amy Winehouse, the bad luck to become famous

Amy felt like a bomb. How it was amplified. As if words came from pain alone. As if she tried all the improvised, but only if it hurts, as if she should love without thinking who actually contributed to killing her. Because she actually hated herself, loving only those who could destroy her…

 

Laziness moves the world

We could say that laziness and technology go along. Technology, infact, answers to many needs making life more comfortable – or at least tries to – in a cause/effect concatenation. The lazy one desires improve technology, which make us even lazier. Is that the price to pay to progress? Well, each one of us has to find his own limit…

 

The sea, the book and internet

The Swedish writer Bjorn Larsson can’t believe. Why any journalist, since he published his first book The true story of the pirate Long John Silver, always asks him the same question: “How and how much does the sea inspire your writing?” This stubborn curiosity, which annoyed him at first, like all those questions to which it’s …

 

Atheism in religious wars

Atheism, in religious wars, is even more despised than the rival cult. In the eyes of extremists, any rival would be better, as at least he believs in something. The “wrong” god, sure, but with a moral. Preconcepts are at their lowest rate in scandinavian countries, where atheism is more scattered. Because knowledge is always the best antidote. Not having a religious ethic doesn’t mean not having an ethic at all, Humanism should have thaught a little something…

Maam, art from outerspace to Rome

Nihil difficile volenti, “nothing is difficult for those who desire it” The Latin motto becomes a warning here. A long reportage on one of the most unique museums in the world, Maam – Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere of Metropoliz in Roma, and its residents…

 

If women had power and ruled the world

If women had power and ruled the world, there will be peace and social justice. It would be true if everybody was like Benazir Bhutto or Aung San Suu Kyi. But the reality is more complex, of course not every woman is the same and the few examples we had (Thatcher, Condoleezza Rice and so on) suggest that nothing would change. A totally different thing would be talking about the inequalities of women in access, opportunities and payment…

A tattoo is forever

When we say that a tattoo is for ever, we really mean it. Removal operations aside, the discovery of tattoed up mummies showed how the ink survives better than the skin thousend of years after the death. Embalming procedures are less frequent nowadays, of course, so “for ever” is limited to the life of the person who decides to decorate his or her body, until decay overcomes…

Master of the universe, men being prostituted for finance

“Sooner or later the collapse will take place and then, of course, something will have to be invented”. In the documentary by Marc Bauder awarded at Locarno 2013, Master of the universe, Rainer Voss, “ruthless” former German financial trader, worked for that market that now seem to command everything: “I know that I will depress everyone with this story but probably a much worse crisis will come. Certainly the finance’s market alone won’t learn from its mistakes, but people can stop it…”

Italy, best country in complaint

In Italy we’re doing what comes naturally, the complaint. For us complaining is a mono or dia-logical outburst over the impatience that comes from seeing that nothing goes as it should… day by day. The problem is that often we do absolutely nothing the change the situations we don’t like. We must also say that we’re very self-critical, when progress occur we aren’t able to see it, but this is the other side of the coin…

Is unreal really unreal?

Is unreal really unreal if, strongly believing in it, affects our lives? This could happen in many ways. Religion, economics & finance, politics, they all rely on fleeting bases of faith and trust. But they make the world turn, no matter if they right or wrong…

 

Good luck, and poor sons

Today I asked myself: why have I been shaped for a world that doesn’t exist?
I have no way to contribute to society in the way that’s more congenial to me because I haven’t a job.
On the other hand, I have a “curriculum vitae” that I couldn’t even write, let alone work.
I’m 31, I’ve been studying for more than 16 years, working for 10, done 22 different jobs, 19 “blacks” and 3 reals, regular ones and everything I mean, most of all paid.
I’m a journalist…

Females who have no choice: the phenomenon of the wives and mothers girls

“Sanna, Indian, married at 31, after a master, with a younger man, didn’t have to provide a dowry, although the family is Muslim”. This is the stereotype and what Giulia Vallese (UNFPA) says about one of the few success stories about the little-discussed issue of child brides and mothers, described in the last report (2013) by this “United Nations Population Fund”: Motherhood in childhood, face the challenge of adolescent pregnancy…

Globalization of walls

“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took into his hand to say ‘this is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow man: ‘do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”…

Lord Lhus, American, European, International

Far from the superiority complex of most Americans when it comes to rap, Lord Lhus is co-founder of the international collective Empty Handed Warriors with Unknown Mizery and the Dutch men Psl, Rob Ster and Cerebros, of the Rotterdam label Eastgarden Music. The movement got bigger, with members that goes from Iran to Slovakia and it’s ready to gather artists in many ways to build a worldwide community…

Stanley’s war

War movies follow usual outlines, blending together action, heroism, sacrifice, emotions. Because they work better if there’s a good vs evil dichotomy in which you can relate. Not Kubrick ones. In Stanley’s war there aren’t good ones…

 

Marinaleda, a realized socialist Utopia

Marinaleda is a small town in Sevilla district, 2700 inhabitants, where social economy reached a level that socialism preached but never realized. It all started with the land reform of the end of the Seventies, after Franco’s dictatorship…

 

Send in the clowns

Tantrums, extravagances, excesses, irrational manias, self celebration and cult of personality. In a normal adult the little child is not bad, in a cruel one is overwhelmed by corruption and hunger for power. Many dictators are connected by a common thread, being clownish..

 

Ashin Wirathu, the other face of Buddhism

Even Buddhism has its own temporal ways, which fit in the Western and monotheistic tradition: violence included. “Buddhism is not an ecception to fundamentalist threats, which define every religious tradition”, says Riccardo Venturini, president of the Italian Centre of Buddhist Culture of Rome…

From war on drugs to drugs in war

The finding of captagon, some kind of amphetamine, in the pockets or blood of many jihadists affiliated to Islamic State surprised the public opinion. But using drugs in wars is an ancient practice. Anyway it’s a paradox how the same Governments who spend billions in the war on drugs or groups that punish the use of narcotics with death penalty, if they have to prevail against the enemy, don’t mind to step on everyone and everything…

Work ennobles… partially

From Mediterranean Sea and below, we perfectly know the value of relax, of leisure. But we are not the ones that take advantage of it. Despite a fame of lazy people, are the northern Europeans, the Dutch ahead of them, to enjoy the benefits of part-time jobs…

 

The two Escobars

Good and evil are, in most cases, hard to be separated. They deeply coexist in each one of us. Other times, good and evil are easy to recognize, but not only coexist, they contribute to the same cause. Andrés and Pablo have many things in common: the “illness” for soccer and the last name, Escobar. But a totally opposite nature…

Mediterranean Horizons, disembark and violence against women

The documentary begins with music and text: “since the dawn of time among the world’s crossroads, men leave their land. Tears, dangers, fatigue and violence look for a way through, while fears, suspect and intolerance build barriers. But when, among the world’s crossroads or ocean’s routs, women are moving, is different. Because they are women…

Roma, a matter of filthies

One can’t speak of (gastronomic) goodies in Roma, and not start from “lo zozzone” (literally “the big slob”). Wherever you are at night or dawn, at some point, you will see your zozzone on the horizon, like a mirage. Zozzone is thousand and one vans spread for Roma selling sandwiches at the most unlikely hours…

Luigi, the Italian cook

I’m Matt Groening. Stereotypes in cartoons

Christmas of 1989 is coming, is a little bit more than a month that the opening of the border between Eastern and Western Germany – plus the demolition of the Berlin Wall – declared the end of communism. Way more important, a tv series begins, and it will be the real revolution of the year, it’ll change the manner to create and develop cartoons…

Dope D.O.D., music not for purists

Why talking about Dope D.O.D.? Basically they are the last group, in order of time, I discovered. But they’re not the last arrived that make you say: “ok, they’re just average”. They distinguish themselves, they stand out…

 

House of cards, conspiracy always wins

Best new tv series at the Writers Guild Awards 2014, same acknowledgement at Roma Fiction Fest, best direction of the first two episodes for David Fincher – just the guy of Seven and Fight Club – several nominations in several contests, famous or not. House of Cards conquered everyone, even the U.S. president Barack Obama

drug war“Land of the free”, the contradictions of U.S. war on drugs

America, “land of the free, home of the brave”, as the National anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, says. But according to the statistics, if 5% of the world citizens are American, it happens that also 25% of incarcerated people are. A blatant disproportion, is that a population particularly inclined to crime? Or, probably, the penal and judging system have some flaws…

Rome is a lie, the contradictions of the Capital city

Splendor vs urban blight, love for the monuments against the neglect of letting them getting dirty because of the smog, the spirituality of the Vatican opposed to the amorality of political power. Arrogance, popular wisdom, detachment, where is the truth?

 

Rabbi Weiss. Jewish therefore anti-Zionist

Weiss is not just the name of a kind of beer produced in Germany. It’s also a family name. To be specific of an American rabbi, Yisroel Dovid Weiss, ancient Hungarian roots, leader of the minority Jewish group Neturei Karta (city guardians in Aramaic), which is… Anti-Zionist

Hip hop ain’t dead, it just went underground

I read this thing, 28 out of 30 artists said that the major labels influenced them to talk about women, drugs, clothes and cars”, said Vinnie Paz, one the most high standing underground rappers…

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