Chasing new skills

But since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, more than 600,000 US tech workers have lost their jobs, according to the tech layoff tracker Layoff.fyi. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for computer science graduates rose to 7% in 2024, up from 6.1% the previous year, and their underemployment rate was more than 19%, data from the New York Fed shows. US tech job postings on Indeed also dropped 36% from 2020 to 2025.

Experts are unsure what’s next for software engineers, but they agree on one thing: coding skills may be losing value, but the ability to evaluate AI-written code is becoming more important. Varsha Bansal, The Guardian

Story Killers

 

Killing the journalist won’t kill the story. We are a network of journalists whose mission is to protect, pursue and publish the work of other journalists facing threats, prison, or murder. It is the only existing program with this mission. Story Killers

si tratta di un sito molto interessante e inquietante che presenta le indagini di un centinaio di giornalisti provenienti da tutto il mondo sulla disinformazione  e l'uso che se ne fa in politica, finanza e altri settori. 

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and activist, dies at 101

SAN FRANCISCO — Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher, bookseller and activist who helped launch the Beat movement in the 1950s and embody its curious and rebellious spirit well into the 21st century, has died at age 101.

Ferlinghetti, a San Francisco institution, died Monday at his home, his son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti said. A month shy of his 102nd birthday, Ferlinghetti died “in his own room,” holding the hands of his son and his son’s girlfriend, “as he took his last breath.” The cause of death was lung disease. Politico

L'ho conosciuto, all'inizio degli anni '80, quando stavo a San Francisco e ricordo bene la sua libreria, City Lights, nel quartiere italiano - almeno allora - della città.

The New American Status Symbol? A Second Passport

As the pandemic has ravaged the United States, some Americans are finding that a second citizenship or permanent residency has a renewed appeal. Valeriya Safronova, NYT.

Verrua Savoia sul NYT

Qualche giorno fa il NYT ha dedicato un lungo articolo a Verrua Savoia, il villaggio piemontese (provincia di Torino) più cablato d'Italia.

"After all, roughly a third of Italians have never used the Internet, giving the country one of the lowest rates of usage in Europe. Residents can recall providers laughing over the phone at their request for an Internet hookup, or the perplexed look of technicians upon arriving in Verrua Savoia, where just 1,500 residents live in dozens of small settlements spread over nearly 20 miles of valleys and steep hillsides in northern Italy.

Even so, some here believed they had the right to join the digital world, to pay their bills, do their banking or make a doctor’s appointment online.

One was Daniele Trinchero, a professor at the nearby Polytechnic University of Turin, who helped set up a nonprofit association that started last week and that offers fellow citizens what both the state and telecommunications companies have so far failed to deliver. The group may be the first of its kind in Italy". Gaia Pianigiani, nyt.

First Editions/Second Thoughts

PEN America has launched a new website for First Editions/Second Thoughts, for which seventy-five authors and artists personally annotated their own books. Highlights include Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, Angela Davis’s If They Come in the Morning, John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath, Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, Don DeLillo’s Underworld, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Ed Ruscha’s Past Stuff. Some of the handwritten annotations are quite elaborate, such as the ones on the TOC page of George Saunders’s Civilwarland in Bad Decline, which incorporates footnotes and various colors of ink. The works will be auctioned at Christie’s on December 2.

Il caso Ayaan Hirsi Ali e Brandeis University

Brandeis University’s decision to withdraw an honorary degree from the activist and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali is yet another shameful reminder of how limp the commitment of Jewish institutions to open discourse has grown, and how threatened we’ve all become by a public conversation that permits the expression of nuanced, complicated, even at times offensive ideas—meaning, any ideas at all worth their salt. tablet

La rabbina italiana

Tablet dedica un interessante articolo a Barbara Aiello, l'unica rabbina italiana.
"When Rabbi Barbara Aiello founded the synagogue Ner Tamid del Sud six years ago in Serrastretta, a mountain town of 3,600 in Italy’s Calabria region, there weren’t many self-identified Jews around. The closest congregation was in Naples, a four-hour drive away.
But Aiello—an Italian-American whose father was born in Serrastretta, and who moved from Florida back to her ancestral village in 2006—suspected many locals had Jewish roots, even if they didn’t know it. ... 
As Aiello traveled throughout the region, she was astounded to discover that many local Catholic families kept Jewish traditions: candles lit on Friday night, mirrors covered for mourning, a red string tied around a baby’s wrist to ward off evil—a Kabbalistic ritual. To her, it was evidence that despite centuries of persecution, mass conversion, and forced exile, Judaism had managed to survive in Italy". tablet.

Il primo libro d'America

Il primo libro stampato in inglese d'America è "The Whole Booke of Psalmes". Alla fine di novembre una delle undici copie rimaste è stata venduta all'asta da Sotheby's a Manhattan per 14.2 milioni di dollari. A comprarla è stato David Rubenstein. "Rubenstein, a co-founder of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, whose worth Forbes has estimated at $2.5 billion, has given away tens of millions, if not more, in philanthropy, and is famous for buying important copies of iconic documents such as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation and loaning them to branches of the federal government". huffingtonpost.

"Brokeback Mountain" Opera

Annie Proulx ha scritto il libretto dell'opera tratta dal suo famoso racconto, "Brokeback Mountain". "Ms. Proulx has written the libretto for Charles Wuorinen’s long-awaited new opera of “Brokeback Mountain,” based on her story of the doomed love of two cowboys, which will have its world premiere Jan. 28 at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Ms. Proulx said in a statement that one of her goals in writing it was “to preserve the dry and laconic western tone” of the story", nyt.

The Simon & Schuster Suite at the Algonquin

The Algonquin Hotel, known for its rich literary roots and famous former Round Table regulars (including Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley) and Simon & Schuster announced a partnership that will bring hotel guests and New Yorkers an enhanced visit.

The two brands are celebrating the partnership by unveiling the Simon & Schuster Suite and a series of author events. A Simon & Schuster package will offer guests the chance to book a stay in the suite to enjoy its creature comforts from its well-stocked bookcase of classics and advanced copies of new releases as well as book memorabilia. pw.

Il nuovo romanzo di Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon sta scrivendo un nuovo romanzo. Così riporta il suo editore. "The secretive novelist Thomas Pynchon is back. He will publish a new book, titled “The Bleeding Edge,” his long-time publisher, Penguin Press, said. No publication date has been set". nyt.

Una pagina della Bibbia al giorno

You might have seen them on the train during your daily commute: On the Long Island Railroad they’ve been known to sit together and speak in low voices; on the subway they tend to sit side by side and just read to themselves. For almost eight years they’ve kept up the same routine, and on Wednesday [Aug. 1], these commuters, along with tens of thousands of Jews all over the Tri-State area, will flock to the Meadowlands. There isn’t a football game and no one will be protesting the Internet (that was Citi Field); instead, they’ll be celebrating the siyum hashas, or the completion of daf yomi, the seven-and-a-half year cycle of studying all 2,711 pages in the Babylonian Talmud.

While the New Jersey celebration will be the largest—the MetLife Stadium holds around 100,000 and most of the seats are expected to be filled—smaller festivities are scheduled in Toronto and many European cities, while a weeklong convention is taking place in Tel Aviv. Daf yomi literally translates to daily page, and if you stick to the schedule, in just under eight years you can finish all 36 tractates of the Talmud. Often misunderstood as a rulebook, the Talmud is better described as a compilation of years of rabbinic discussion of Jewish law—including arguments, allegorical stories, and the occasional joke. slate.

In Defense of Cursive

As of Independence Day, 2012, forty-five of the fifty United States have adopted the Common Core curriculum in their public elementary schools. Those states are now in the process of phasing out the teaching of cursive writing, which, apparently, does not accord with the mission statement of the curriculum’s framers: to impart skills that are “robust and relevant” to the modern world. newyorker.

Nora Ephron

Con molta tristezza ho saputo della morte di Nora Ephron. Mi piaceva molto. La voglio ricordare con un racconto autobiografico - uscito il 5 giugno 2006 sul New Yorker - che mi ha sempre ispirato molto e che ogni tanto vado a rileggere. "In February, 1980, two months after the birth of my second child and the simultaneous end of my marriage, I fell madly in love with a huge apartment on the Upper West Side. It was on the fifth floor of the Apthorp, a famous stone pile on the corner of Broadway and 79th Street. The rent was $1500 a month, which, by Manhattan standards, was practically a bargain. In addition, I had to pay the previous tenant $24,000 in key money for the right to move in. The apartment had beautiful rooms; high ceilings; lots of light; two gorgeous fireplaces; and five bedrooms. I was planning to live there forever. Till death did us part. All stories about love begin with a certain amount of rationalization. After a few weeks, I couldn't imagine living anywhere else ...". Purtroppo per leggerlo tutto bisogna essere abbonati, comunque ecco il link newyorker.

Per gli studiosi di Joyce

The Irish National Library has digitized rare James Joyce manuscripts and put them online for the first time. The papers, which were closed guarded by Joyce’s son, James, entered the public domain last January, and consist of three main parts: The Circe episode of Ulysses, drafts of Finnegans Wake from 1923, and a collection known as the Joyce Papers which span 1903 to 1928. And the Irish Times has already provided footnotes: “A reader may well be relieved to learn that the Finnegans Wake documents can be safely ignored, or at least left for much later attention; they are mostly page proofs with some pretty modest corrections... It is in the other two categories, the “early notes” and the Ulysses notes and drafts, that the real meat of the collection is to be found.” lat.

Chris Hughes New Owner of The New Republic

The newest owner of The New Republic magazine is Chris Hughes, a new-media guru who co-founded Facebook and helped to run the online organizing machine for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. ... Mr. Hughes, 28, will become publisher and the editor in chief of the magazine, and Richard Just will remain the editor. Martin Peretz, who was editor in chief from 1975 until 2010, when his title was changed to editor in chief emeritus, will become a member of the magazine's advisory board. nyt.

Barney Rosset

Qualche giorno fa è morto, a 89 anni, Barney Rosset, il fondatore di Grove Press, un uomo coraggioso, libero e anticonformista che ha pubblicato e fatto conoscere molti scrittori controversi. "The fiery and publisher Rosset, who introduced the country to countless political and avant-garde writers and risked prison and financial ruin to release such underground classics as Tropic of Cancer and Lady Chatterley's Lover, has died ... A bon vivant who enjoyed long lunches and strong martinis, Rosset was a slightly built man with a brisk, peppery voice; and a breathless laugh, often at his own expense. His longtime editor in chief at Grove, Richard Seaver, would remember him as 'often irascible, a control freak, prone to panic attacks,' with a 'sadistic element' that shadowed his 'innate generosity.' Rosset, interviewed by The Associated Press in 1998, called himself an 'amoeba with a brain,' ever slipping into enemy territory.

Entro l'anno dovrebbe uscire presso Algonquin la sua autobiografia, dal titolo provvisorio di The Subject Was Left-Handed. wsj.

The Modernist Journals Project

Una notizia che rallegrerà gli studiosi: le riviste americane che hanno pubblicato i primi testi modernisti sono state digitalizzate e sono ora disponibili in pdf, grazie a un progetto congiunto di Brown University e The University of Tulsa, The Modernist Journals Project.

Master in Crime Fiction Writing

La City University di Londra

Volete diventare scrittori di gialli? Iscrivetevi al Master in scrittura creativa per giallisti della City University di Londra. "City University in London is turning to crime, with the launch of an MA devoted to teaching crime fiction and thriller writing. Launched in response to student demand, and to the growing popularity of the genre, the UK's first creative writing masters dedicated to crime and thriller novels is another harbinger of a 'second golden age of crime writing'.The genre is the second biggest in the UK, according to official data, with sales of £87.6m in 2011. guardian.