#People
[marketing]
03/28/22
Celebrity!
The DMLR Guide has been updated as usual. The list is now hosting 100 websites, renewed according to the importance of some Italian classic brands.
Pirelli.com(tyres) is celebrating its 150th anniversary and has launched many toprange products for car, truck, motorbike, and bicycle. Besides, it has published again its famous calendar after a one-time stop. The Cal is hosting many celebrities of the Rock stage, from Iggy Pop to Rita Ora, pictured 'on the road' by a photograph-singer like Bryan Adams. Celebrity quite common in fact!
Baciperugina.com(chocolates) stands at the 100th anniversary and its marketing staff turn to a celebrity endorsement—launching the 'Dolce Vita' limited edition created by the stylish duo D&G! The fashionistas sign both features and packaging of that brand new product. Among the phrases written on the slip contained in each chocolate, the best suited one reads: "the important thing is always to allow for the wonder of beauty".
Actually the most familiar brand passing onto the hand of the Italian consumers is a less known trademark. Since 2020, due to the pandemic breakdown, we all are using Amuchina.it(disinfectant) everyday and all the day. During the last two years that brand recognition has reached the highest point ever, while we have found it and its well-designed dispenser on public places and toilets, on transportation vehicles and in private offices, just to help defend us when we touch outdoor objects before and after hundreds of other people. And this good habit is not going to decline, quite common in fact!
P.S. The complete review of websites is available at DMLR Guide.
#Clown
[opinions]
03/13/22
Bookmark (pt.II)
"Warning. You enter Germany!" I had read that signpost on a photograph taken from the WWII. To understand what kind of country it was shortly afterward, that is Germany of the postwar reconstruction and rapid economic growth, I trusted in Heinrich Boell. I have read almost everything by this author, sometimes directly from German. This week I have leafed again through Ansichten eines Clowns. The same old paperback with a Grosz' painting on its cover, I had bought early in 1980s (ITL. 5,000).
Bonn and Rhineland are on the background. I have never been there, rather I should say I rarely have visited Germany—so far just four times—maybe that warning had left me with some feelings of trouble?
The main character in the novel is a professional clown, truly a social outsider, in German details: skeptisch, exzentrisch, radikal. Who have a special calling to monogamy! Another accidental protagonist is the telephone directory needed to call all relatives, enemies, acquaintances by that clown faint with hunger and a condition of the soul. At the phone he would manifest signs of religious rebellion and a strange skill... Read it now!
PS. Let's celebrate DMLR 25 YEARS ONLINE!
#NetZero
[data]
03/06/22
Climate Denialism
Climate science is under attack, and it's not friendly fire. A Centre for Studies(*) investigate the so-called climate denialism in politics and the media—and who pays for it—in order to evaluate its influence on decision-making, e.g. further delay in concerted mandatory global and local actions.
The latest IPCC climate impact report isn't exactly bedtime reading. Europe's addiction to fossil fuels is driving a climate breakdown and possibly funding a war.
I'm touching upon this argument by noting that my P.O.S. (Personal Observatory and Statistics) has issued the official data of the means of transportation I used from Jan. to Dec. 2021. Data follow here: Train km.6336, Bicycle km.320, Local Bus km.264, Car km. 534, Airplane km.0, and Walk km.1452, for a total of km.8906 as aggregate moving from home to the workplace and other daily activities.
My Net Zero commitment goes on!
(*) Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism, @ceforced on Twitter.
#Football
[story]
02/24/22
Champions of Sport (pt.II)
This champion has been rooted deeply in my childhood. First off I share the birthplace with him. He turned into an Italian football star in the mid of 1960s, for Inter FC won two Cups of the Champions in a row—he was very young when resulted in being the match winner of that first European trophy.
I was mindful of his importance through my mother's words, when she answered for me to that question raised by people at the dairy or bakery, "what team do you like?", and she brought me out of impasse saying: "he's for Mazzola". And so leaving mute the person before us: pronuncing that family name in Turin was a coup de foudre, a direct way to affirm I was fan-born to a well familiar champion, even though he played for an opponent side. Sandro Mazzola had gone away from Turin after the aircraft tragedy occurred in 1949, when all the Grande Torino perished, including his father Valentino who was the leader of that glorious football team. 15 years later the son would become as popular as the parent.
The story so far. In 1967 we had finally got the TV set at home and I started to see Mazzola in action on that first b/w screen. I remember clearly the imagines impressed by him on those old matches: a European clubs final, Inter vs Celtic, and a national team friendly match, Switzerland vs Italy. He scored each time, so confirming the special link with me. Henceforth the football game stood at the centre of my life and as a kid I used to wear the Inter jersey with a no.8 on the back.
PS. End of the second instalment.
#Greenhouse
[gas]
02/20/22
Greenwashing
Sunday morning. I am on the train and we cross the Po River at 11:51.
Territory experts say the level of water is downing, too low for being winter. It seems more like a summer measure but it's not raining for sixty days now and the mountains have got below-average snowfalls to feed the watercourses. These local symptoms signal the global heating, sic et simpliciter.
Meantime, after the 'Ukraine-Russia crisis', the movements for a better, sustainable future have been overtaken by the industry lobby asking for cheaper energy supply: the EU governments are going to get permissions to establish further drilling platforms everywhere and for a dubious #ROI .
Next months the younger generations will keep on protesting before this misuse of natural resources—for example, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. But the problem originated 25 years ago when the environmental issues were placing on the table of the developed countries and the politics did not plan to invest in long-range projects when it was still possible.
PS. Greenwashing means... disinformation spread by an organization so as to present an environmenatlly responsible public image.
#Myths
[sport]
02/19/22
Champions of Sport (pt.I)
My myths as a whole could be only personages from the XX century. The very first time I did recognize a sports myth, I was a 7-year-old. His name was Jacques Anquetil, a Normandy-born cyclist, whose epic came to me through... I can't say exactly, maybe a photograph or a story told by the mass media. Or the allure of a French name, a semiological attraction, just like Louvre meant 'museum' and Belfagor meant 'phantom'.
But ultimately some legendary cycling figures had stimulated a deep affection for the competitions on the road, since Italian champions had gone over the Alps to win the Tour de France. Those years Anquetil was coming to Italy trying to rule the Giro, his name becoming very popular near and far.
Late in the 1960s his legend was going to settle down and left many anecdotes around his way of life and his relationships with other cyclists and the public, never easy with the same French fans too.
What I didn't know as a kid is that behind a great champion there is always a great sporting director. In that case he was Raphaël Géminiani.
PS. Fin de premier épisode.
#Logic
[vax]
02/13/22
Bookmark (pt.I)
What did I read when I was a teenager? I would say the books borrowed from the public library or received as gift. My attitude of reading could be starting more precisely from that time I recall now. Once I was gifted with a book I haven't conserved, yet I would connect it to these clues: its Prussian blue hard cover and the contents of four novels featuring crime stories. Their successful resolution was due to the famous Sherlock Holmes! Text of schooling apart, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes represent a teaching of logic through a play of deduction. The author was obviously Arthur Conan Doyle, who formerly practiced medicine. Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination and wrote several articles endorsing the practice and denouncing the view of anti-vax believers.
Elementary!
PS. Let's celebrate DMLR 25 YEARS ONLINE!
#N.E.W.S.
[magazine]
02/02/22
Year Of The Tiger
This is the #YearOfTheTiger on the Chinese lunar calendar...
I have seldom written on China, say a dozen times on this 600-page website. For example, when I worked out the contents for a project well inspired by Marco Polo's The Million. Or when I tried to explain the meaning of BRIC (acronym), where C stood for China.
Now, I would like to celebrate the #YearOfTheTiger , so I'm going to revamp the magazine I had dedicated to China's history—find here its extended version. The brand new part is a natural appendix to that magazine and reports important figures about China making progress toward a futuristic country!
PS. The 4 main points of the compass make that China's N.E.W.S. appendix.
#Identity
[digital]
01/29/22
Warning!
January 28th is fixed as Data Privacy Day (yesterday its 16th edition). This means that roughly 20 years ago we started providing our personal data, often unconsciously, sent out into the cyberspace from many personal devices, i.e. cellular phones and portable computers.
Banks, enterprises and governments ran into troubles too. As a consequence within 2025 the greater number of businesses will migrate their data protection systems to a cloud model in order to manage centrally their operative data programs (source: @IDCItaly).
Meanwhile... if you receive an email message with a subject reading "Warning. Green Cetificate Covid-19 Suspended" sent by a certain Ministerodellasalute(pro)(it), it doesn't come from the real Ministry of Health, but it's a plain attempt of phishing, a typical activity of defrauding one's digital identity.
#Journalism
[news]
01/26/22
On Paper (pt.IV)
The issue was (is) if the journalism would have been absorbed or cannibalized by the new media.
The placement of 'fiction' beside the news has not been an idea matured only on modern television age. Since 1800 the newspapers used to publish tales written by writers—some notorious novels were issued in instalments on papers.
But the digital age has defintely changed the press and how it comes to fruition. Circulation of papers has continued to decline in a way both dramatic and irreversible. From the 21st century the leading journals publish all their news onlne and recently launched mobile applications.
While now I subscribe to #TheGuardian newsletters, for years I had bought that 200-year-old daily to best learn English from the press!
But, faithful to the investigative journalism still in print, I am regular subscriber of a weekly, #L'Espresso .
Today the journalism don't lack in great examples. I will allude briefly to the public utility: such #RAI programs as Report are always doing that dirty job of investigating at 360° within the Italian society; or Presa Diretta when it reports on the attack to the journalism embodied by Julian #Assange , the uneasy founder of Wikileaks.org. For the World Wide Web has created the platform for its own deranging journalism and, at the same time, for the fake news industry. Just yesterday one could read how it works this digital media trick: "it's a lucrative gig for content creators who can make $10 to $15 a day by smearing journalists and activists on social media" (source: @WIRED).
The major powers have always produced many systems to annihilate the traditional journalistic capacity of writing and speech that had resumed and given voice to the public opinion. Thanks to the Internet and the mobile devices now the information system get on in a state of flux. Some influencing sources of information can easily create discomfort and inconstancy. Fake news editors are usually been driven by the advertising money—and have to harvest that away from the traditional media—or by illegal financing.
The information resilience could be a next challenge for the youngsters as early users of the communication technology.
PS. Previous instalments on B-side pt.VIII.
#Oxford
[style]
01/10/22
The Dark in Theatre!
This weekend I have gone to the cinema. Among a host of remakes, I have seen a 'prequel' to two previous movies. This is my review.
† ‡ † ‡ †
Why are boys so messy? Do guys want to dress well again? What does DB mean in vogue? While these first and last questions about STYLE are solicited by the #Kingsman label and location, the movie instantly turns into a real... plot! And the cast characters happen to be mixed with historical personages along the tragic pattern of World War I. The latter consist of three old Europe's sovereigns, a Russian pope, a U.S. president, and a revolutionary leader (just for a cameo). Their personality traits, we gradually learn, include pride, exploitation of the poor, and impulsive violence until some viewers would think so:
ALL TRAGEDY IS COMEDY IF YOU LOOK DEEP ENOUGH INTO IT.
#TheKing'sMan is performed by well-known actors, here I remember the most Shakespearean ones. Ralph Fiennes as Orlando—how nice to meet him again—plays the perfect gentleman, his noble bloodline in jeopardy. He is highly skilled in swords & daggers: yes, a forced patriot, but he eventually deserts his former 'English Patient' profile. And Gemma Arterton as Polly—striking rather than pretty—acting as decisive sniper rather than meticulous maid. Emancipated by virtue of her networking.
They settle down to found the first private intelligence agency, for they openly disapprove the governmental agencies MI5 - MI6, and (without knowing) their major agent, who will be known as 007!
Movie's appendix. That mess of Briton spies let the fictional 007 meet Polly—I should say Gemma—over the shooting of 'Quantum of Solace'.
Judgement: we are Oxfords not rogues.
PS. Only in cinemas!
#DMLR
[25yrs on-line]
01/08/22
Creative Commons
The DMLR Guide has been last updated on January 2nd, 2022. This means the 25th running year of DMLR as on-line project.
Now the list is hosting a renewed group of websites according to the importance of the most viral trends.
First the science, precisely represented by Thelancet.com on the Agenda section. Obviously the new entries' core is classified onto Global Brands and Marketing, Promotion and Shopping. In order to balance these marketing-oriented milestones, the environmental theme recovers on important web-sites for People/Gurus/Stars: Nnimmobassey.net, ecologist/activist, and Giorgia Fazzini's Sognavento.com, thus she is a territorial manager!
Finally you ought to visit, inside the Social category, Creativecommons.org, for DMLR keeps coming to you on the following conditions of use...
Direct Marketing Linked Resources is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
(P.S. Based on this work at www.dmlr.org)
#Memo
[ECB]
01/04/22
€urope First!
I went out in the morning and walked on streets left solitary after all-night feasts and celebrations of New Year's Eve.
I approached an automated teller machine where I inserted my bank account card in to withdraw some cash. It was the first time I had Euro-banknotes on hand. Indeed it was New Year's Day of 2002.
Back home I had a festive lunch with my mother and two family friends. I caught them unawares and they were hardly believing that I showed brand new banknotes in anticipation of our European future.
Henceforward it survives the €-currency (and the spoiler). Twenty-two years later, Mario Draghi is leading Italian government to the next challenge, a.k.a. PRNN, once more thanks to Europe—find out more at ecb.europa.eu.
P.S. Happy DMLR Year!
#Blog
[B-side]
01/02/22
To be continued...
I like to express some thoughts from this long-run blog. On the previous B-side vol.VIII you might retrieve articles, stories and posts, all available in Italian too. Otherwise just type in the search-box down here any keyword terms or phrases to optimize your own time on www.dmlr.org!
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#B-SIDE A BLOG BY DMLR.ORG
©2022 Roberto Dondi -- dmlr.org(sm)