IS THERE SOME REASON THAT MY COFFEE ISN’T HERE? HAS SHE DIED OR SOMETHING?

IS THERE SOME REASON THAT MY COFFEE ISN’T HERE? HAS SHE DIED OR SOMETHING?

May 30, 2020 | A COFFEE WITH, FASHION, MOVIES, WOMEN

How not to worship Miranda Priestly?
Meryl Streep is a great actress and her works are undoubtedly one more successful than the other, but, in The Devil Wears Prada in particular, she has been able to give a own life to her interpretation.
So, Miranda Priestly is not only the character embodied by Meryl, and it is not even a version of Anna Wintour, no: Miranda Priestly is an icon in all respects.
Unique.
With an unreachable style, she captured each of us from the exact moment the elevator doors opened.
Miranda is demanding, edgy, tough, with a subtle ironic vein that subtly manages to have a bursting effect, and her sentences have become an integral part of common language.
Perennially committed to consolidating her role in an exclusive and ruthless environment, totally careless of others, she demands the maximum from her collaborators, and does not grant any kind of indulgence.
Is she bad?
I would like to dwell on the concept of wickedness, and I also refer in some way to Philip Zimbardo’s reflection on the Lucifer Effect bringing it back to a less extreme context, and using this quote which in a certain sense schematizes:
“Anger may repast with thee for an hour, but not repose for a night the continuance of anger is hatred, the continuance of hatred turns malice.”
Francis Quarles

Unfortunately, all of us daily deal with small amounts of anger that explodes in the people we interact with, but also in ourselves.
How often do you find that anger has accumulated beyond the level, or, to use the example of the quote, is the continuance?
Bullying, hysterical outbursts, sterile arrows on the poison, craving for punishments, completely free reproaches, verbally vomited resentment, and so on, even in the bad, are manifestations of human sides anyway, what percentage of understanding would you like to attribute?
Difficult to say, especially when you are a victim …
On end of school days like these, it is easy to consider how some profiles fit well with the memories of someone among the teachers.
In your experience, can you remind some cases in which the badness you have undergone has turned into any minimum aspect of teaching?
Going back to Miranda, for example, as iconic as she is, it is not her who teaches us, at least not as much as Andrea Sacks: “her biggest disappointment”.

 

THEY DON’T WANT THE TRUTH

THEY DON’T WANT THE TRUTH

May 23, 2020 | ITALY, MEDIA, PENDING COFFEE FOR, WOMEN, WORLD

“They pass the years hoping that when my time comes there will no longer be anyone who will continue to insist on asking for truth and justice …”
These are the words, as hard as absolutely lawful, by Luciana Riccardi, spoken in an interview in March 2017 on the occasion of the twenty-third anniversary of the death of her daughter: Ilaria Alpi.
Just over a year later, in June 2018, the hour that Mrs. Luciana was waiting for has arrived, but her voice continues to speak.
Speak through all those who still believe in justice, and speak through all those who recognize admiration and respect for her:
In the meantime, the words her sister Annamaria Riccardi wrote in a letter before the archiving hearing ended in October 2019 were heard: the magistrate granted another six months of investigations to try to get to the truth. This 180-day deadline expired in April but for now it remains frozen like everything else.
In reality, the truth has been blocked for much longer, a very long time.
Who helped Jelle do what he did?
Who paid for it?
Why did they do it?
These are the three questions that Mrs. Luciana left us in her interview with Chiara Cazzaniga for Chi l’ha visto.
Chiara Cazzaniga in particular, has a fundamental role in the investigation: with unstoppable stubbornness convinces Ali Rage Amhed, known as Jelle, to come to Italy to testify for the innocence of Hashi Omar Hassan, in prison with a 26-year sentence. Federica Sciarelli, having a series of doubts about his testimony, instructs her to try to track him down.
In fact, Chiara finds him in Birmingham where he lives, where he has a family, and where he drives the buses, despite being officially unavailable for the power of attorney.
But who exactly are Jelle and Hashi?
Both Somalis, are united by the desire to escape from Somalia, and by the fact that on March 20, 1994 neither of them is on the place where Rai Tg3 correspondents Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin are murdered.
Yet in January 1998 Hashi, in Rome to testify against alleged violence by the Italian military in Somalia, was arrested for competition in the double murder, accused by Jelle.
Jelle alleges, as a justification for his lie, he did it in order to be able to expatriate: he is in fact granted a pass and a job with a mechanic who repairs the cars of the Ministry of the Interior. And he will declare to have escaped after being deposed at Digos, just trusting that it would not have been possible to convict Hashi in court if he had not presented himself: “look I did not do so much for the money … I took very few, because in any case I didn’t finish the job … but I had achieved my goal which was to go away from Somalia … and I didn’t think that if I had not presented to trial, an innocent would have ended up in prison, and above all I thought someone would have verified what I told “.
This is what would be expected from justice.
In fact, however, things went differently.
Three million euros are the amount recognized as compensation for the 17 years spent in prison by an innocent man, one would wonder if this is the price of a sidetrack.
No, unfortunately the price is much higher, the events are much more intricate and crammed with inconsistencies for which Giorgio and Luciana Alpi continued to demand explanations, invoking a truth that has not yet arrived.
A truth that was written on Ilaria’s notebook, disappeared, a truth probably buried under the Garoe-Bosaso road, a toxic truth.

https://archivioalpihrovatin.camera.it/

Justice, non-violence, human rights, these issues of investigative news reports taken into consideration for the award of the Ilaria Alpi prize.
Authoritative guests at the 2007 edition: Zoe Eroshok journalist from Novaja Gazeta and Ilya Politkovsky son of the Russian journalist murdered in Moscow, Anna Politkovskaya to whom the event was dedicated.
Different stories but with a common denominator:
“The duty of [the] journalist [is] to write what this journalist sees in the reality. It’s only one duty.“

MAYBE MAKING CASTLES IN THE AIR IS NOT WRONG

MAYBE MAKING CASTLES IN THE AIR IS NOT WRONG

May 16, 2020 | ECONOMY, ITALY, WORK, WORLD

We have had evidence of how our custom can easily collapse like a house of cards.
Have you ever thought about it in these terms?
In a whisper the daily habits went from being routine in some cases even the subject of complaints, to being a precious certainty that we would like to have again.
In this, I believe we can say that we are united on a global level, although everyone has their own story, everyone walks their own path, and everyone has their own habits.
Habits that for some had perhaps become heavy bricks like habituation, for others instead modular and elusive as sand, or, just like in the tale of the three houses, built with cards.
Cards that say who we are as documents or badges, cards that frame us, allow us access, lead us, regulate us, finance us: cards, tickets, maps, contracts, banknotes.
Cards that represent our actions, our life.
Cards that we accumulate, cards that we keep in balance.
Or balances that keep us standing.
Technically to build a castle too new or perfect cards slip: there is need of “lived” ones.
Cards that have played, cards that have been held in the hands. Hands that must be firm.
Hands that can never shake, because balance cannot be held in hand.
And never before have we had concrete and disturbing proof of this.
The question is: what exactly do we learn from this demonstration?
Who or what really has power over so many “houses” and how could we let them fall in the sudden way we witnessed?
We now have fewer cards available to rebuild, and we will have to adopt different “customs”, which will not be chosen.
Or maybe we should take the opportunity to learn to question, to ask ourselves questions, to consider all the hypotheses, always.
In the Operette Morali Giacomo Leopardi asks:
“… why is any custom, even if corrupt and bad, difficult to discern from nature?”
The answer seems to be Erasmus of Rotterdam:
“There is no practice, however infamous, however atrocious, that does not impose itself, if it has the custom on its side.”
Custom as well as a constant way of proceeding, is also a source of law. The unwritten source for excellence, which consists of two elements: one of a material type, that is, the reiteration of a certain behavior by a community; the other, of a subjective type although objectively verifiable, is instead the widespread belief that that behavior is, not only morally or socially, but legally mandatory.
So we should consider rebuilding on some unusual bases and starting first of all from the awareness of what is the true important essence of our life.

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

May 9, 2020 | BOOKS, ITALY, MEDIA, MOVIES, SCIENCE, WORLD

“It is sometimes said that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane on the other side of the globe.”
This quote comes from the 2004 film The Butterfly Effect and is inspired by a theory taken up and debated in numerous areas.
Once again, as happened for the War of the Worlds: the inspiration comes from a science fiction novel, it is in fact Ray Bradbury who in his Sound of thunder attributes to the proper death of a butterfly during a journey through time, a variation of future events:

Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling,
“No, it can’t be. Not a little thing like that. No!”
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.

Another coincidence, also in this case the story was broadcast by the BBC in 2011: here if you want to find the podcast (butterfly from about 35 minutes but I would advise you to listen to it all if you have time).
The butterfly symbol was taken up by Edward Lorenz, mathematician and meteorologist professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Science and later in a 1979 lecture that went down in history.
In general, the butterfly effect belongs to quantum physics and more precisely to the basis of chaos theory.
Chaos is the most congenial aspect to me, but actually I didn’t want to talk about this … not this time, at least.
Antonietta Gatti is perhaps known to most as “the wife of” despite her respectable curriculum. Her skills add up over time, and I would list, almost a bit to summarize, this recognition: she has been awarded the title of Fellow of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering for her contribution to the progress of science. The various national societies of biomaterials and bioengineering have tens of thousands of members worldwide and the union of the various companies has elected Dr. Gatti to be part of the elite of scientists that consists of 32 members, and she was part of a parliamentary commission of inquiry as a responsible consultant. I know, difficult to read, but I found her report very interesting, perhaps because I live in a highly polluted area: here the mortality rate from tumors is terrible:
She deals with nanopathology or pathologies induced by micro and nano-sized particulate exposures, i.e. powders with dimensions less than 100nm (0.1 microns) but her research has become difficult due to the reduced availability of a suitable microscope.
Her flapping wings has not changed the world yet, but she has been able to reach the hearts of people who have made it possible to buy a new electron microscope with their donations.
Let us not stop at the fact that individually we cannot make a difference, let us not stop flying lightly on the difficulties, each of us can be the butterfly of change, let’s believe it, and do not let ourselves be crushed in the mud.

WHITE WOLF OR BLACK WOLF?

WHITE WOLF OR BLACK WOLF?

May 2, 2020 | CULTURE, SCIENCE, WORLD

In the period in which we are living, among the numerous aspects that have taken the place of what was our daily life before, we also observe forms of behavior that are not exactly social, not to say friendly at all.
The idea that the true self of some people comes out only in emergencies or forcing, has always been latent. We come into contact with it through sayings or legends, just like that of the white wolf who is joy, love of peace, hope of serenity, humility, well-being, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith; or the black wolf who is anger, envy, jealousy, displeasure, regret, self-pity, greed, arrogance, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.
The official origin is lost over time: the source has been handed down orally, but I found this Tale of the two wolves.
Each individual has within him both wolves and who will win is the one he decides to feed.
Therefore free will.
Concept as broad as it is debated.
Among the countless discussions that are lost in history, between nature and culture, between philosophy and science, one example comes out: the Stanford experiment.
In 1971 a young psychology professor from Stanford University: Philip Zimbardo recreated a prison in the basement of the university and selected 24 students from 70 candidates who had offered themselves, doing various tests that ascertained, for example, the absence of diseases, of addictions, and criminal records. These students were divided equally and randomly into two groups: prisoners and guards.
The aim was to demonstrate the impact of situational variables on human behavior.
The Lucifer effect, this is the definition given to the result of the experiment, interrupted after only 6 of the 14 days scheduled, due to harassing and violent incidents by the guards against prisoners.
This effect was also induced by de-individualization: the guards in the institutional role, behind uniform and mirrored glasses, which gave a sort of individual anonymity precisely, showed to let emerge their worst side.
Zimbardo himself said that he had taken the role of prison director and the accusation of having induced and piloted some dynamics, brought copious criticisms and tended to refute the validity of the experiment.
So now, seeing various types of outlets not only virtual, perhaps we can consider the fact that some people feel “prisoners” and others assume the role of “guards”.
What we can do is try to stay ourselves and not feed the bad wolf … and not even the Lucifer effect.

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