-
My desk
-
In search of time lost reading Proust
There is a secret kept in the final pages of very long novels, whose taste can be described simply but its full force can only be understood by reaching them through the vagueries of whim, digression, appetite, humor and interruption, that is, through many accumulated sittings or as Aristotle seemed to have said about friendship,…
-
Sui bambini e le dittature
(Micro Mega) Fra le tante esternazioni di Alessandro Orsini delle ultime settimane – qualcuna anche corretta – ce n’è una che ho trovato abominevole: quella pronunciata a inizio aprile, quando il professore ha affermato che “un bambino può essere felice anche in una dittatura”. Una frase che risuona da settimane nella mia testa, mentre i…
-
Does facial recognition tech in Ukraine’s war bring killer robots nearer?
With Darian Meacham (Open Democracy) Technology that can recognise the faces of enemy fighters is the latest thing to be deployed to the war theatre of Ukraine. This military use of artificial intelligence has all the markings of a further dystopian turn to what is already a brutal conflict. Read on Open Democracy
-
Can Ukraine negotiate with ‘a war criminal’?
(Deutsche Welle) It is easy to lose sight of the manner in which the invasion of Ukraine has shifted from the supposed intention to neutralize military targets to the wholesale slaughter of civilians, the targeting of civil infrastructure and the desertification of the country. Read on Deutsche Welle.
-
Ideological Bedfellows and Useful Idiots
The American Woke Machine and the Kremlin War (Jewish Journal with Monika Osbourne) It should come as no surprise that once progressive American social justice paradigms, brewed in the guts of academia and activism, weighed in on the conflict in Ukraine they quickly became instruments of the Kremlin’s agenda. For the American woke, Ukraine can…
-
How Russia is helping the US reassert its dominance in European security
(Deutsche Welle) The crisis in Ukraine is threatening to become a new war at the gates of Europe. But the threat has yielded political dividends for the US as NATO’s supremacy is reasserted and Nord Stream 2 is on the verge of collapse. Read on Deutsche Welle.
-
The Catholic Church cannot police itself
(Deutsche Welle) Twenty years have passed since the Boston Globe report on the sexual abuse of children by members of the Boston Archdiocese of the Catholic Church. The time since has only lengthened the catalogue of horrors, with untold numbers of cases of children abused at the hands of the church across the globe. Read…
-
Per una cittadinanza europea digitale.
Un manifesto in dieci punti. (Micro Mega) Le piattaforme di social media e gli strumenti di informazione digitale sono per l’Europa la cosa più vicina a una vera sfera pubblica, transnazionale e multilingue: la proverbiale agorà europea. Gli ormai quasi due anni di crisi sanitaria globale hanno notevolmente accelerato la migrazione delle nostre vite verso…
-
A ten-point manifesto for a Digital European Citizenship
(Open Democracy) Social media platforms and digital information tools are the closest thing that Europe has to a true, transnational, multilingual European public sphere: the proverbial European agora. The now almost two years of life in a global health crisis has greatly accelerated the migration of our lives to virtual environments, moving workers from European…