Do you know that saying about how man only uses a small percentage of his intellectual faculties? 

Lately, I’ve found myself reflecting on how it’s the same thing with our smartphones that cost hundreds of dollars (sometimes even thousands). The average user exploits only a small portion of their computational capabilities—or rather, exploits a small portion of what they could potentially do. 

Among the various features of my iPhone that I’ve always paid little attention to is the one called Profiles. And although my attempt to distance myself from social media as much as possible is progressing, knowing that those apps are just a thumb’s reach away doesn’t help my brain resist the urge to check news and various updates. 

I decided that to slow down at the end of the day, completely abandon the phone, and only reach for it in emergencies, I needed a drastic and clear action. And so I did. Now, as soon as my iPhone geolocates to home, it automatically activates the “Personal” profile, and what appears before my eyes is this: the bare essentials.

It’s remarkable what we take for granted our phones can do and simply forget to use. Why? Because the narrative that now accompanies technology has to be about doing more, being more productive, instead of amazing us and serving to help us slow down, reclaim our spaces, or conquer new ones. 

Do you use different profiles? Let me know here, and if you’d like to support the blog, you can do so here.

I like to start each year by keeping track of the albums I listen to every week. It’s a little tradition of mine that I’ve been carrying on for a while. Usually, the designated place to collect them would have been social networks.

This year, I’ve decided to create a dedicated playlist to manage everything. As soon as a released album suits my taste, it’ll be added there: 2025 Best Albums. I’ve done the same for the singles I’m enjoying the most: 2025 Best Songs.

Save them if you’re interested, I will be working on those all year long.

Btw how do you organize your songs?

In the last few weeks, I’ve tried to stay as far away as possible from any kind of social network. I’ve focused on eFootball, interacted with various communities related to the game, and haven’t had any inspired spark to post here on the blog.

I’ve decided to give space only to what excites me and fuels my passion, and to write here only when I feel like it. This is my dimension now.

I’ve also barely opened Feedly to read updates from my favorite bloggers. I did it today after almost two weeks and stumbled upon something interesting on the blog of Louie:

So perhaps the answer to Luka’s question is that I mitigate the pressure of always being pleasant online by providing much more about me on my own website

The key part of the previous sentence is this: “pressure of always being pleasant online.” I’ve stopped doing that and stopped having to follow the dictates of engagement. So if you see me posting little or nothing in the coming days, you’ll know why, it’s just a period of creative fatigue where all my energy is being sucked up by gaming.

I don't even have a title for this post and that's ok.

Last week I posted on Threads that I would have stopped using that account. I uninstalled the app everywhere. I did the same with Mastodon and Bluesky. I stopped posting photos on Instagram and I will just use foto from now on, which seems a very good and promising-algo-free alternative. 

Unfortunately X will be the only one I have to be in, the gaming community is still there, or at least the one I need to work with. 
Now, it’s too soon to tell you what and how I feel. So far, the most common answer I am giving to myself: I haven’t missed anything.

Also, I am already coming from a situation where my usage of Social Networks was very limited, so I don’t feel that much of a difference. Not just yet. But the trend I’m noticing makes me feel I am not the only one. I was inspired by this post by skoobz: 

I'm tired of algorithms. I'm tired of doom scrolling. I don't mind text messaging most of the time, but it doesn't replace human connection

It opened me up to some essential reflections, for example:

• Do I have the strength to avoid checking my social media accounts every few hours?
• Do I have the strength to not feel compelled to post every photo taken with my phone?
• Does it help me, improve me as a person, change the constant need to appear on platforms whose sole purpose is to profit from our content?
• What I receive back from this platforms?

The answers to those questions were pretty obvious. That’s why I find way more compelling to discover more blogs, reach out to more people via email (something I did already twice these past days) and try to establish new relationships with people I don’t know but that have the will and time to go deep instead of being superficial. 

Therefore I leave you here the easiest ways to reach out to me: 

• email me here
• reach me out on Signal
• reach me out on Discord

We are going to talk a lot about tech, gaming, blogging and music and whatever interests you the most. 

Don’t be shy!

Every Sunday, a copy of the Los Angeles Times is left at the foot of our condominium stairs. It's a complimentary copy not addressed to anyone; whoever wants can take the copy and bring it home.

And so we did with last Sunday's issue.

While reading the Culture section, Noemi discovered this show: Memoryhouse

Memoryhouse is an abstract ballet composed of vignettes commemorating the 6 million Jewish lives lost during the Holocaust; the ballet is set to Max Richter's powerful album of the same name in its entirety. The ballet has 18 movements, totaling the number of tracks on the album. Some movements connect with others while some live on their own. No alterations were made to the score, the electronic voices, sounds, and touches are part of the original recording. This haunting piece blends modern, traditional, and abstract dance forms taking audiences on a journey of emotional reflection.

It immediately intrigued us, and we decided to book for the opening night on Friday at The Wallis, former Beverly Hills post office, and now a magnificent dynamic cultural hub.

It was wonderful. I didn't know exactly what to expect. Both because I had never attended a ballet-only performance before, and because I couldn't imagine such a delicate subject adapted to ballet.

Moreover, during the show, I couldn't help but recognize the unmistakable style of composer Richter, finding many similarities with the soundtrack of The Leftovers.

I confess to having been moved and having goosebumps on more than one occasion!

Once it ended, we decided to stay in the area for dinner and from the list of saved restaurants, we pulled out: il Pastaio.

A family-owned Italian restaurant run by 3 Sicilian brothers, il Pastaio offers an absolutely non-economical menu whose specialty is certainly pasta. Despite the price certainly not proportionate to what we ate, it was an exquisite and satisfying experience. Complete with a final "scarpetta" (mopping up sauce with bread).

Not bad considering we were in Beverly Hills.

Another pleasant Los Angeles evening marked by culture and good food.

After 10 months, it finally rained in Los Angeles. Of course, we caught the heaviest downpours during the 300 meters that separated us from the entrance of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It's the largest art museum in the West and famous for the iconic lights by artist Chris Burden placed outside.

It's also the last of the great LA museums we had yet to visit. Thanks to the rain and Lorenzo's advice, who visited when he came to see us in early January, we decided today was the right day.

The first two floors are dedicated to the exhibition Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film. It examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes.

Delightful. A treasure for someone like me, who loves the intersection of technology, communication, and humanities. Among the works that struck me the most is certainly Metropolis II again by Chris Burden:

Metropolis II represents an entire urban complex, which could be Los Angeles or any twenty-first-century city.

Burden created its predecessor, Metropolis I, seven years before embarking on Metropolis II. The earlier work featured eighty Hot Wheels cars zooming around a model city on single-lane roadways. For Metropolis II, he ventured something on a much grander scale. With a team of eight studio assistants, he began working on the piece in 2006.

It includes eleven hundred custom-designed cars, eighteen highways, and a variety of architectural structures made of wood, glass, natural stone tiles, and other materials.

The artist estimated that every hour, one hundred thousand cars circulate through Metropolis Il, making it very much like a miniature Los Angeles.

Going up to the second floor, part of the exhibition is dedicated to technological design, with the first Macintosh or the first copies of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop on display. Here, advancing through the halls, I couldn't help but linger on this collection of Amigas on which Andy Warhol decided to create art:

Pop artist Andy Warhol, always interested in technologies of replication, responded eagerly when Commodore International asked him to endorse the Amiga 1000 home computer in 1985. The launch took place at Lincoln Center and featured Warhol using a bitmap drawing application to create a portrait of singer Debbie Harry. Warhol went on to make other drawings and a short film on the Amiga, which came with a camera, drawing pad, and various software programs.

Finally, speaking of art, technology, and communication, I couldn't help but focus on this IBM advertisement and compare it with Magritte's work (located at the 3rd floor), finding similarities in meaning that were all too evident.

I did really enjoy LACMA. It's an amazing experience and can't wait to see what it's incoming this next April!

I've reflected a lot lately on the evolution of social networks, specifically text-based ones. X, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky...without even mentioning all that lesser-known undergrowth strictly linked to blockchain technologies. During this period of reflection, I've repeatedly complained about how my measure was full, nauseated by too much falsehood, desire for oppression, ignorance, violence of all kinds, and the negative list could go on infinitely.

In almost all cases, my thoughts have led me to a single, certain, decisive conclusion. To free myself forever from the slavery of social networks, from the vicious circle in which one must participate to not be cut off from "real-time", trying to float to understand something of this crazy world through reading other human beings.

The fact is that very few other human beings want to be "read", many just want to be praised, always be right, read only one part of the story (usually the one they've decided to side with), to avoid confrontation altogether or, in case they want to face it, do so with the worst means at their disposal.

This week I deactivated my Bluesky account. I don't miss it. I think I'll soon do the same with Threads. And although I would very much like to get rid of X and Instagram, I still can't afford the luxury of doing so. Work reasons force me to use them because many of my business partners are there, they build community there, they give news about themselves there, and I can't do otherwise than be there to keep myself updated.

But a first step to avoid spending more time than necessary on them was first of all to hide their apps in a subfolder of my iPhone and the next step will be to completely eliminate them from my home page.

Why all these decisions? Why be so pedantic towards these places meant to connect the world? Because, save for rare exceptions, these places have amply demonstrated to bring out the worst in people. Not to enrich us, but to impoverish our ability to communicate with those who think differently from us, to build a dialogue with those who are different from us, to allow something more to be born from these places.

And that's why I've curated and nurtured this little space of mine on the web. Because here I know I can always be myself, I can do and say what comes to my mind and I'll be the only one to answer for it, for better or worse. That's why over the decades I've fixated on fonts, colors, lightness, and speed of my blog. Because as much as possible I wanted to transfer my being here and make it a peaceful space for those who are reading and sharing their pov with me (you can always write me an email here and I'll always respond).

Manu has summed up very well in a few lines these recent reflections of mine. Something I shared with him even via SMS in the past few days:

Years of social media have managed to convince us that a scrollable timeline, a comment box with a characters limit and a like button are the tools we need to use to connect with each other. That is a big fucking lie

And as I wrote in a post a while ago:

I still see few people being true, sincere, opening up without filters, even though they are aware of what they will face.

Starting a blog to be yourself. This should be the mantra. This should be obvious to everyone, without fearing judgments, without being slaves to the mechanics of some multinational company that in return only wants to sell our data for profit.

Starting a blog may seem difficult, but it's not at all, it's an act of love that you owe to yourself.

Free yourselves.

I don't know exactly why I forgot to post last year, but compared to 2023 and 2022 my iPhone home screen has changed quite a bit.

Let's start with the major differences:

• The only widget is just the calendar, and it's only Outlook. I've unified both my personal and work accounts there
• I've replaced Google Maps with Apple Maps. Here in California, it works significantly better
• I've brought the Amazon app to the home screen because we've been using it a lot in recent months, even for grocery shopping both for Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods
• Apple Sports has replaced any other app dedicated to soccer results
• Fantacalcio, Spotify, and Feedly remain unchanged
• I've unified all photography and editing apps into a single folder
• I've necessarily had to bring the Teams app to the home screen, as it's now the only app I use for any work communication
• 1Password continues to be among the most used apps, and I certainly won't switch to Apple Passwords
• I've created two more folders, one where all social networks live, completely removing every notification. I open them only and exclusively when I remember. My usage time has dropped drastically. The second with all communication apps, similarly I've disabled every notification except for important people who I know a. won't spam me b. need to reach me quickly
• I'm testing Google Tasks to quickly write my to-do list, disorganized and scattered, but for how my mind works, it's fulfilling its task very well
• UpNote is my note app of reference now
• I got access to Perplexity Pro for a year at a ridiculous price. I'm using Google less and less
• Last but not least, my default browser is now Microsoft Edge. Unbelievable, but it works very well and especially with the Collections feature I was able to eliminate another app from the list

Today is the day. From today on, I will dedicate less and less time to social networks. If my sense of nausea was already slowly growing towards places meant to create community, but which have actually transformed into the cesspool of humanity, the events of this past weekend have made me reflect a lot. Both on how we have been slaves for years now to an endless spiral of vanity, and on how we are fueling a system useful for generating disinformation and keeping alive a certain type of truth that is completely meaningless and above all anachronistic.

I have started asking around to friends for their xml files of their RSS feeds. I want to "nourish" myself with value. I want to try to hope that there will be more and more people willing to get off this madness and create their own space, where they can be themselves.

For work reasons, I will have to keep some profiles active, but I will limit myself to using them passively. Everything else will be published here. Except for my photos, for those I have decided (for now) to support foto app, in the hope that it can be free from any social media logic.

Update: very much on the same spot as Cory's here.

For several years now, the favorite sport of those who use music streaming tools has been throwing mud at Spotify and everything surrounding it. Not that Spotify is blameless; it has greatly worsened the quality of the user experience in the app, and for many, having music, audiobooks, podcasts, and videos all in one place is rather confusing.

Lately, the main topic, supported by screenshots of dubious origin, is how little Spotify pays for streaming a song. Finally, a reliable source from within the music world arrives, someone who can be trusted when it comes to these topics. Bob Lefsetz debunks this crazy narrative:

But when the hoi polloi are not bitching about the majors, they can't stop complaining about Spotify. The biggest and most innovative streamer out there. Maybe because unlike their big competitors they can't depend upon other income streams to support the effort. Spotify is not selling computers or shipping detergent, and Spotify is so good that it has the largest number of subscribers.

So why does Apple pay more per stream?

IT DOESN'T!!!

I care little about which platform is your reference. What's certain is that it would always be better to get informed beforehand and be sure of what you're claiming.