28 07 2026
Somewhere between a podcast and an audiobook
Come inizia l'Odissea, by Luca Misculin for Il Post
Characters, adventures, language and historical setting of the world imagined in Homer's Odyssey.
Good revision before watching Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.
OK Computer, 1997 Parlophone
There isn't anything that's good all the time for everyone independent of context.
14 07 2026
Why the world feels so weird, in a single word
Derek Thompson interviews Agnes Callard for Plain English
27 06 2026
Where nothing is what it seems.
24 06 2026
A 230-year-old Ficus magnolioides, Orto Botanico di Palermo.
Three thousand square metres of leaf.
Orto Botanico di Palermo · Go and see it here
22 05 2026
Wine tasting at La Mesma / The monumental oak at Tassarolo / Nonna Du farmhouse, Gavi
Food and wine between Gavi and Tortona, where people call themselves Ligurian or Lombard, never Piedmontese
Lamesma.it + Nonnadu.com + Boveriluigi.com
27 04 2026
You have half an hour: no looking at your phone, and no thinking about anything.
How does it make you feel?
25 04 2026
An Egyptian-themed party for two birthdays.
When fancy dress could go very badly, and then goes very well.
03 04 2026
A museum between two rivers, designed by CoopHimmelb(l)au / Haitian voodoo dolls with human skulls inside / There is rather too much of it
Musée des Confluences and Musée de l'Illusion
Lyon, France
« […] There is a direct line that starts with the Torino massacres of 1922, with Brandimarte (head of the fascist action squads: he led the killings that in Torino, on 18 December 1922, left 14 anti-fascists dead and the Camera del Lavoro destroyed […], ed.), and ends at Auschwitz. The continuity is plain enough. »
« […] The first fascist massacres are Italian... they are Torinese. Industrial extermination is German. But violence for political ends, in this century, is an Italian invention. Fascism is an Italian patent. From Torino, I mean. The massacre of '22, in short… It was a hunt, a hunt through the streets. »
« […] When I wrote "Se questo è un uomo" I was convinced it was worth documenting certain things because they were over. They are not over now, and we have to talk about them again. »
Reflections from 1973 on a rewriting of "Se questo è un uomo",
from a conversation between Primo Levi and a student, republished in L'Unità, 26 January 2011.
02 01 2026
A zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning.
Otto Piene + Heinz Mack, Gruppo Zero, 1957
A Tate Modern exhibition on artists drawn to scientific ideas and new technologies, at the Officine Grandi Riparazioni - OGR in Torino.
14 12 2025
The mind and the body come apart, and I can no longer stop these emotions.
I lay out my body in scattered pieces and begin to speak to it in my mind.
Somehow I understand that this is what it means to tie my body to the red threads.
To voice these emotions and give them a form always means destroying the soul as well.
The Soul Trembles, solo exhibition by Chiharu Shiota at the Museo di Arte Orientale, Torino.
11 10 2025
by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
BUR Rizzoli Saggi, 2018
A book about how the world is, how we humans think it is, and how a few chimpanzees picking at random would describe it better than we do.
04 10 2025
Another small gem by Cuocolo Bosetti / IRAA Theatre.
With "Private Eye", "Roberta Torna a Casa", "MM&M" and "Dickinson's Walk", that makes five of their pieces (and I can't wait for more).
Staged as part of the Play with Food 2025 festival
01 09 2025
Back to work, so
Listen at musicforprogramming.net | A project by Datassette
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02 08 2025
Oak / Possibly an acacia / Cedar of Lebanon
Marchesi Alfieri @ San Martino Alfieri and panoramic terrace @ Isola d'Asti
Monferrato, Piemonte, Italy
I'm throwing out the milk
The olives got old
I'm tired of my mind getting heavy with mold
I need to start a garden!
[...]
Gonna start a garden in my backyard
I'm gonna start a garden in my backyard
'Cause making this song up is just as hard
Haley Heynderickx
2018 Mama Bird Recording co.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
by James Matthew Barrie, 1911
Read Peter Pan for free on Wikisource
Photograph taken on 21 July 2025
@ Les Tournels, France
14 07 2025
When summer meant making things simpler.
Pittsburgh, PA, 1983 - "Passing Time" series + Buckhannon, W. VA, 1982 - "Americans Seen" series
Sage Sohier Website
Ki-woo, do you know what kind of plan never fails?
Having no plan at all, not a trace of one.
You know why? If you make a plan, life never goes the way you want it to.
Bong Joon Ho, 2019
Parasite on IMDb
The more I think about it, the stranger it seems. When the dark came, the inhabitants of Earth would simply go to their rooms and lie there, senseless. Nobody would mock them for it. Nobody would trouble a person to say: you can be cured. No parent would shed tears trying to bring their children round. No child would be ashamed of fighting this illness.
Nobody would think it needed curing. On the contrary, as night fell and the stars lit the sky, everyone would wish each other a good faint. And in the morning they would ask how last night's faint had gone.
The inhabitants of that place would faint undisturbed, as though it were the most natural thing… "Sleep" is a word I have started to use. I think it is time to reach for less negative expressions.
Brother, I know how much you care for me. I live on this planet and I want to be like the others. And at the same time I don't think of my condition as anything so grave.
It is late. Now I must sleep too, like the Earth people.
I hope that one day you will be able to accept my ideas, and perhaps even wish me: sleep well.
From "Stars Shine in Earth's Sky"
On the Origin of Species and Other Stories, Kaya Press, 2021
translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort and Sora Kim-Russell
25 05 2025
It was good to see you again, and to know you again after so long.
Two years weren't enough for everything I had in mind.
Goodbye, Bardonecchia. No: see you soon.
12 10 2024
Just a few hours / in the best colours / then good night.
Time is the Longest Distance Between Two Places
2024, inkjet print on cotton paper
Uh, com'è difficile restare calmi e indifferenti
Mentre tutti intorno fanno rumore
In quest'epoca di pazzi ci mancavano gli idioti dell'orrore
Ho sentito degli spari in una via del centro
Quante stupide galline che si azzuffano per niente
Minima immoralia, minima immoralia
E sommersi soprattutto da immondizie musicali
17 09 1981
Franco Battiato