May 2012
5 posts
Nothing to regret
Compression —that’s the first word that comes to mind when I think of this collection of poems —her first english translation— by Vera Pavlova. Compression. She packs so much emotional powder, so much passion in just a couple of lines. Two lines, that’s all she seems to need to bring her emotions, and yours, to the surface. After reading them, you can no longer take...
Cambridge dreams
We spent this weekend in Cambridge… and we fell in love with the place. There are museums, Harvard, MIT, startups, the Media Lab, ideas, music, people from all over the place and from all different classes, noise, life. Intelligence is what you breathe —so different from the city across the river, focused on “prestige” and “aristocracy”, tamed by Miltown.
And...
“So amazed I was by them that I couldn’t trust my memory when they...”
– Open City, by Teju Cole —I’m really liking the writing.
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April 2012
4 posts
3 tags
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“Memories are most powerfully triggered by sensory stimuli: lipstick traces on a...”
– Dan Hill on his SuperNormal Domus column about the Facebook Timeline.
I have the same feeling when I revisit my Tumblr entries of the past : old photos of Teo with a balloon, a video of traffic around Madrid, the large font of quotes —they all trigger rich memories of where I was,...
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December 2011
2 posts
“Fascinating riff by +Paul Saffo at Singularity University about the future of...”
– Tim O’Reilly on Google+
November 2011
5 posts
The Big Short
I just finished reading Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short”, about the 2008 financial crisis (and the fact that nothing’s changed, really). It’s an incredibly exciting book that describes with frightening clarity the combination of greed, corruption, and mediocrity behind the subprime loans instruments, and the multiplying effects of a highly globalized and connected...
“Maybe the best definition of “investing” is “gambling with the odds in your...”
– Michael Lewis, “The Big Short”
“For example, while the Greek to kalon marks an appreciation of the perfect human...”
– Six Names of Beauty by https://findings.comSARTWELL. CRISPIN (via Findings.com)
“I truly believe that capitalism was created to help people live better lives,...”
– (Only a bit?)
Richard Branson, quoted by The Guardian
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Coming back
My experiment with Tumblr last year lasted barely two months. I started writing in February of 2010, and suddenly stopped in the middle of April when I was diagnosed with cancer —on April 28th, the day before I had surgery to remove my right kidney, the postings suddenly stopped. I remember the experience of writing and posting as very pleasurable, but my attention was completely diverted...
March 2011
3 posts
Great conversations this morning with @arpit, about the future of Twitter, about @jonhkestner ‘s work, and about “the slow web”
Visiting @ifttt in SFO next month. It’s currently focused on end-users, but this may be the next great piece of #internet #infrastructure
The great @anitalicis ‘s b-day tomorrow. Taking her to the @habib_koite show tonight at #umass (http://ow.ly/46gMe)
April 2010
13 posts
The origin of mind
That one there is the maker of things. That old man. His name is Old Man Alone. The name of this one is Kapkimyis. Kapkimyis is dreaming something up. That’s why he is partly marked with black. This girl is the first thing he created. When this girl first opened her eyes, the old man is the only person she saw. She saw black markings on his body, feathers in his headband, signs...
“I’d like to write something that comes from things the way wine comes from...”
– Walter Benjamin, On Hashish [protocol of March 7, 1931] from Berlin Childhood around 1900 (via bobulate)
Do-It-Yourself Biology - Brown Bag Seminar at...
Just heard from my friend Ana Maria that this coming Wed. (April 7th) there will be a brown bag seminar at UMass on Do-It-Yourself Biology, by a Charlie Schick, who according to his website is currently a CS guy (Senior Web Producer for Children’s Hospital Trust), but who apparently also has a graduate degree from UMass in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Sounds like a great combination.
I...
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be...”
– Can anyone put it in better terms than T.S.?
This is, indeed, the way things look like these days, looking for the paths and choices that would give the most meaning to life, and discovering that yes, they are the same as ten or fifteen years ago —except that this time there’s a lot...
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March 2010
18 posts
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WatchI read and liked Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice (although, to be fair, I thought it was too long and that his —very valuable— point could have been made in 50 pages instead of 250).
This talk that he gave last year at TED, around the time of Obama’s inauguration, was both inspiring and a perfect articulation of what I believe to be important: the desire and the courage to...
Time flies
How did we go from this
to this
and now to this?
That’s less than two years, from top to bottom.
Just submitted my offer to be a mentor @rubysoc . Would love to advise young students and help with their projects.
Back from a weekend in NYC —was cold & rainy, and we stayed @ a horrible apt. … but it was great to spend time together away from work
In NYC, staying at an apartment in SoHo that we found via airbnb. Sometimes doing “the adventurous thing” ends up being much worse that the obvious thing (staying at a hotel). Ah well.
WatchLisbon. 1534 vehicles in a single day of October ‘09, leaving route trails.
Rapid transit arteries are drawn with greenish and cooler colors, while the sluggish ones are reddish and hotter. Traffic intensity is mapped in the thickness and brightness of the arteries.
Beautiful art by Pedro M. Cruz for his Masters’ thesis at MIT Portugal. Some of the visualizations coming out of...
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“Y yo que me la lleve al río
creyendo que era mozuela,
pero tenía marido.”
Canal Encuentro available on the web! http://bit.ly/cNUhuM —one of the things I miss from argentina, great programming (via @martinvars)
“- Rhythm makes the endurance you’ll need bearable.
- A network of people...”
– Extracts from Gary McGraw, Seven Things I’ve Learned About Running Companies —good advice for new startups, and in general I think that it’s good advice for any project.
There’s nothing in the world like seeing somebody’s eyes shine with understanding —the moment of insight is precious
Being a mentor for the @rubysoc (http://ow.ly/1qAym) — the opportunity to help younger developers that I’ve been looking for all this time.
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“Obama was elected “on a platform of universal health care, ending the Iraq war,...”
– Lawrence Lessig, The Moment
just removed my FB picture in memory of the desaparecidos.