Interesting stuff that happened on this day, between 2008 and 2023.

(to know what this is, who does it and why, read the last paragraph)

2008

• THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS

2011

• Walter Bonatti, mountaineer, journalist and Italian hero, dies aged 81

2012

• Ancient Egyptian faience may be key to printing 3D ceramics
• Neoliberalism, Degrowth and the Fate of Health Systems
• Open Data, Technology and Government 2.0 - What Should We, And Should We Not Expect
• The Balance Between Open Data and Privacy
• The challenge for the Church in a digital culture
• Why the 3D printing revolution won’t happen in your garage

2013

• German Pirate Party Sinks amid Chaos and Bickering
• Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to Computerization
• The perils of extreme democracy

2014

• Article in “Science” about using rewilding against defaunation
• The Case for Kill Switches in Military Weaponry

2015

• How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem

2018

• Driverless Cars and the Cult of Technology
• Google China Prototype Links Searches to Phone Numbers
• Looking for enlightenment on the intellectual dark web
• Maybe This Financial System Can’t Be Fixed
• Scientific publishing is a rip-off. We fund the research: it should be free
• The Age of Primal Rage
• The Smart City and other ICT-led techno-imaginaries: Any room for dialogue with Degrowth?
• The second blockchain bubble is now complete: what’s next?
• ==> Why I share OLD bookmarks
• Why Incumbents Fail, And What that Means for Sustainability
• Why We Still Need Innovation in Successful Clean Energy Technologies

2019

• ==> Address, or you will not be addressed, part 2
• This is your smartphone on feminism

2020

• ==> Coronavirus, Italian schizophrenia
• The Heavy Anglo Orthodox: Labour history is patriotic
• When Math Gets Impossibly Hard

2021

• ==> Facebook does opposite of what I said
• Natalism for progressives
• The housing theory of everything

2022

• ==> Apple airtags as stalker tools
• Decline in math, reading scores tip of iceberg
• EU aims to lessen dependency on China with Raw Materials Act
• The Problem with “Decolonizing” Global Health

2023

• Defense Tech Shouldn’t Be Sexy
• Elon Musk to meet with Bibi Netanyahu over antisemitism on X
• Generative AI Eats Search and Productivity
• High-Tech Cars Might Be More Trouble Than They’re Worth
• The Statistic No One’s Allowed To Study
• Tim Gurner’s spray about “arrogant” workers lays bare the economic sadism of our time
• What damaging belief has pervaded Western societies?
• Who in the EU gets to decide what can or cannot be said online?
• Why Are Youth Dissatisfied with Democracy?

What’s this, and who does it?

I am Marco, tech writer and aspiring polymath, researcher and popularizer of “Digital-Human Studies in many ways, including my newsletter.

Over the years, I have bookmarked thousands of articles and news of all sorts related to those studies, or to my personal interests. This post is a selection of the bookmarks that were published on this day, in several years (1).

I share them as a public service, because memory of what happened and serendipity MATTER. A lot. We are all too distracted and stressed by stuff that has no other merit than being “new”, or limited to our work, instead of being important (if you find broken links, please let me know).

You may follow this Almanac and my work via Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn or X/Twitter, not to mention RSS, which remains the most efficient, less distracting, more private and more future-proof way to follow news online. If you don’t know why, read here. Last but not least, thanks for supporting my work in any way you can.

1. This is in the spirit of the “Almanac of the next day”, an italian TV program aired from 1974 to 1994 that presented the most important historical facts happened on each day. This is a snapshot of its opening titles: