Chiara C. Rizzarda's Blog, page 39

#ChthonicThursday: Mefitis

Mefitis was a Samnite and Oscian goddess from before Roman times, presiding over poisonous gases emitted from the ground, particularly in swamps and volcanic vapours. The area of her sanctuary is mentioned by Virgil as the entrance to the Underworld, boars were sacred to her, and she’s sometimes associated with healing. Marcus Terentius Varro, a famed Roman scholar, mentions a Grove of Mefitis on the Esquiline in Rome alongside an altar to Mala Fortuna (misfortune) and Febris, the goddess of fevers.

She’s today’s profile on my Patreon.

 

Japanese Robotland

After the charming exhibition on Women Samurai, Tenoha changes tune and theme and goes cybernetic on us: their new effort is called Robotland, and has:

a section on the history of robots, grouped by theme and following the book;a section on the exploration of what robots can do, where you can either interact with robots or request the aid of a lab assistant.

Don’t get me wrong: I love everything the guys at Tenoha do, and I wish they’ll keep doing exhibitions for a very long time, but I think this is their most underwhelming installation yet.

The introductory section is cheap and shallow: while the general setting of shipping containers is done very well, and there’s the occasional stroke of genius such as Tetsujin breaking away from one of those containers, the historical pieces are explained with meagre paragraphs inkjet-printed on a piece of paper and the cardboard standee don’t do much justice to the illustrations by Berta Paramo nor to her witty takes on the different automatons people have ideated throughout the centuries.

Tetsujin breaking away from one of those containers

The interactive section, though showcasing some very interesting pieces, isn’t grouped by theme, nor does it seem to be grouped by the kind of technology the different robots employ: they’re three lines of boxes and cases with robots and, though you can cuddle them, I can’t help but think it can’t be enough.

Last but not least, placing a robot with visual sensors inside a box made of mirrors, though very scenographic, is a bit sadistic towards the robot, and I won’t help you when they come to kill you. Though they probably won’t be able to see you.

Anyway, I’ll try to focus on the positive stuff.

The Exhibition

As I was saying, the exhibition starts with a general introduction of the main themes the book uses to group robots, and these themes are:

homo , for robots mimicking the human figure such as Haephestus’ golden maidens; animalium , with automatons with the shape and behaviour of animals such as swimming birds or loyal dogs; cosmos , for machines meant to observe or reproduce the sky and the movement of stars; securitas , for robots dedicated to surveillance and security; divinus , for a vast assortment of some weird-ass robots connected with prayer and worship (more on that later); laborare , the section dedicated to our mechanical slaves which will probably rebel and kill us all since we keep treating them like shit; tempus , with elaborate contraptions to measure time and its passing; exploratio , for machines meant to travel where no man has gone before; musica , with contraptions that either play by themselves or seem to do so; ludo , in the area of gaming and play; fontana , a spectacular take on the water theme; theatrum , for machines capable of elaborate performances.

Aesthetically, it’s divided in four sections: the general introduction with the eleven kinds of robots explained, a portion with containers and props, and the showcase of robots to interact with, closing with the mirrored box where ALTER-2 tries to do its thing.

The Robots

The exhibition features real robots that are either experimental or actually manufactured for the consumer market. Here’s some of them.

Walkman

Designed for emergencies by the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) around 2015, Walman is a humanoid construction 1,85 meters tall, and it’s controlled from a distance by a human wearing a motion-capture suit. It was used in Amatrice to inspect buildings wrecked by the earthquake, and if you don’t remember what that’s about, you might start by reading here and the pingbacked articles at the bottom.

LEGO Mindstorm

Accessible, groundbreaking, revolutionary: LEGO was the first mainstream toymaker to provide you with an easy way of assembling and programming your own robot. Through the years they also proposed different levels, with the WeDo line being an easier and more approachable product for younger inventors. The Mindstorms line has been withdrawn from the market, much to everyone’s dismay, but the PowerUP system still exists, for those who want to make their own smart toys.

Furby

I never understood the hype around this thing, but then again I don’t particularly understand animated toys.
Since I’m not a fan, I didn’t know they revamped the product and made it queer. Of course I approve of that.

Furbies were the first successful attempt to produce and sell a programmed robot.

Amagami Ham Ham

You know that pleasant feeling of being gently nibbled on your finger by a puppy or baby?

That’s the whole premise of this weird, sensor-based toy, and unfortunately my answer is… no? I mean, everyone has their kinks, but being bitten is not one of mine.
For these robots to do their trick, you have to stick your finger down their throat (I mean, it’s supposed to be in the mouth but I swear you really need to push deep for the sensor to work) and it’s really weird.

BlessU-2

If you thought the finger-nibbling toys were weird, wait until we step into the realm of religious robots.
This particular one was invented in 2017 in Germany and is equipped with a touchscreen where you can choose the language, the kind of voice, the kind of blessing you want to receive and the robot waves around its arms to… well… bless you. It recites verses from the Bible or can be more neutral in its blessing, and I swear I can’t figure out why would you want to invent a mechanical priest, of all the weird things.

BlessU-2 is weirder than it looks. And yes, I know it already looks weird. Trust me.SANTO

If you thought BlessU-2 was the only religious automaton, you’ll have to think again. SANTO requires you to light the fake candle in front of it with the other fake candle standing on the side, it lights up, explains to you what it does, and then you can ask it a question. For instance, it can list the saints of the day and their feats.
It’s like a talking Frate Indovino.
Again, why?

ALTER-2

Created in 2018 in Japan by professors Hiroshi Ishiguro and Takashi Ikegami, it combines two different approaches: while Ikegami tried to create a human-like entity through a bottom-up design which focused on the essence of life, Ishiguro adopted a top-down perspective and emphasised expressions and the skill to imitate people.
This skill is central to the robot’s functioning: ALTER-2 tries to imitate the behaviour of people in front of it and, when you confuse it by being really weird, it resorts to similar behaviours that are stored in its memory, entering a state its creators define “Dream Mode”.

Dreaming is considered essential not only to consolidate memories but also to generate new movements.

Only, the poor thing is in a box made of mirrors and I think it’s super confused.

The Book

The exhibition springs from a book as it often happens with Tenoha. In this case, it’s an original Italian title by Berta Paramo, structured as a touristic guide through the world of robots, androids and other humanoid constructions, and I think it’s brilliant.

Machines have been part of our lives for much longer than we can imagine. They were born out of the dream of creating artificial life capable of working, measuring time, observing the universe or creating music, among many other things, and their evolution is continuous and ever more rapid. In the course of this extraordinary journey, we meet robots of all kinds, from the most modern to their most ancient ancestors, not forgetting those that belong to the world of fantasy. A truly original book, conceived as a tour guide through the true history of automata. To get your bearings, there is a map showing the various routes, represented as underground lines, each one dedicated to a precise purpose that, throughout history, prompted someone to invent these intelligent machines, sometimes a little funny, sometimes a little disturbing.

It’s kind of a shame the exhibition wasn’t able to maintain the concept of a journey nor to keep the focus on the identified groups.

Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron”: I’m glad if you didn’t get it

For the first time in my life, last week I did something weird: I went to see a movie in Japanese. And no, before you get ideas, I do not understand Japanese: it had subtitles.

Anyway, the movie was Miyazaki’s last effort, The Boy and the Heron, and I had been hearing a lot of people saying they were confused, they thought the movie was weird (even for Miyazaki’s standards) and, overall, they didn’t get it.

Now, let’s make two assumptions:
1) I think The Boy and the Heron is one of those movies that are so rich and layered you can see many things in it, and it doesn’t mean they’re really there nor that Miyazaki intended for them to be there;
2) What follows is what I saw in the movie, and you can say I’m hallucinating.
I also think we should get rid of this obsession with having everything explained down to the detail, and number one is a damn fine way of making art, but that’s an entirely different conversation.

So, what’s the movie about and why am I glad for people who didn’t get it?

The Boy and the Heron is a grand, complex, multifaced allegory of grief.

The Story in its Basics

In its basics, the story is simple: during the backdrop of a modern war, a boy called Mahito transfers from Tokyo to the countryside where his father has recently married his aunt (his mother’s sister) after the mother’s tragic death in a fire.
As soon as he arrives, Mahito is greeted by his kind and pregnant aunt, who does her best for him to settle comfortably, and immediately starts being haunted by a heron, a normal heron at first, who starts tempting him with a simple idea: his mother isn’t dead, and he can take him to see her. Refreshingly enough, Mahito immediately pushes back at the idea: grief is complicated as it is, without a swamp bird trying to mess with your head.
The bird gets increasingly grotesque as the story progresses: the more it tries to push Mahito towards denial, the more it takes on ridiculous features. And if you’ve ever been in denial about the death of someone, this will be the first thing to resonate heavily with you.

Meanwhile, Mahito has troubles at school and wounds himself to pretend he’s been bullied more than he actually is, eventually achieving that his father will keep him home. The school sucks anyways, he says, and teachers are all voluntary because of the war.

At home, heron aside, things are weird enough. The kind and pregnant aunt, Natsuko, is attended to by a retinue of weird elderly ladies who tell Mahito the story of the ancient, worn-down tower that stands in the garden: it’s an old artefact, which fell from the sky and was discovered by one of Mahito’s ancestors, and the ancestor himself disappeared into the tower after living much of his life obsessed with it.

It’s only shortly afterwards that Natsuko, Mahito’s aunt, disappears. The heron claims she’s been taken to the tower, and Mahito goes to the rescue with one of the elderly ladies called Kiriko.

As the three enter the tower, Mahito dispels an illusion of his mother and shoots at the heron, revealing the weird man living inside the shell: a mysterious figure appears and orders the heron to be Mahito’s guide in the fantastic world they’re about to enter.

The fantastic world inside the tower

Mahito and the heron, having lost sight of old Kiriko, start exploring the world inside the tower and the boy quickly understands it’s a world outside of time: they meet a younger version of Kiriko, who’s been living and fighting the strange spirits who live in this land and catches fishes for them. The spirits cannot kill, in fact, and they can only be reborn in the world of above after they’ve been eating the fish Kiriko catches for them. Pelicans are fighting this rebirth process, trying to eat the spirits, and this is how we meet another strange figure who haunts this land: it’s Himi, a pyrokinetic woman who protects the spirits as they try to ascend and be born again. She’s Mahito’s mother.

The strange land also hosts another kind of living creature: parakeets who became enormous, flesh-eating, and are ruled by a cruel king. They’re trying to break free from the wizard who rules over the land and, as it becomes increasingly clear that the wizard is Mahito’s ancestor, they capture Lady Himi to offer her to the wizard in exchange for autonomy and agency over the world.

After refusing a chance to go back to their world, Mahito and Kiriko eventually find Natsuko, who’s about to give birth and can’t be allowed to do so into this strange land, free Lady Himi, and Mahito refuses the offer to become ruler of this land, destroying everything and returning everyone to their original time including Lady Himi, who will become Mahito’s mother and eventually die in a fire.

I’m sure I skipped many parts that will be significant to somebody, but this is the story in a nutshell.

A coming-of-age tale?

Maybe. The BBC defined it “a coming-of-age tale in which a child must overcome his selfishness and learn to live for others” in their article How Do You Live: Hayao Miyazaki releases mystery final film, and who am I to contradict the BBC? I beg to differ, however, as Mahito’s struggles don’t exclusively pertain to his age, but I found them to be more relatable and universal.

The story borrows his title from Genzaburō Yoshino’s 1937 novel known in English as How Do You Live?, and I think his grandson Taichiro came much closer to the mark when he highlighted a shared theme of coming to terms with strife and loss.
Let’s see how and why.

Denial and Isolation

As I’ve already suggested in my summary, ten minutes into the movie, you’re immediately faced with a powerful picture of denial and how grotesque it can be.
Mahito’s decisively pushes back against the heron’s initial temptation, though having never seen the mother’s body, and it’s immediately clear that the heron needs to find another way if it wants to draw Mahito into the world of the tower.

If we accept that the world of the tower is a world of grief, the abduction of the aunt couldn’t shout a clearer message: while the father is endlessly working to produce (aeroplanes for the war) and strives to push on, perhaps in his own way of not coping with grief, the brave and kind aunt risks being swallowed in the world of grief herself, overlooked by everyone as it’s fit for a fairytale stepmother, and this is no way to start a new family. Though Mahito never seems hostile to the idea of his father marrying his aunt, he distances himself from her multiple times, stating he’s trying to save her not because he loves her but because his father likes her. It’s significant (spoiler alert) that they’re all freed from the world of the tower only when Mahito calls Natsuko “mother“.

Though denial doesn’t appear tempting to Mahito, isolation is: his shunning away from school isn’t just a narrative device for him to be home and roam around.
The consequences of isolating yourself in grief couldn’t be clearer when we meet the ancestor in his tower: he’s struggling beyond reason to keep his world together, regardless of the nonsensical horrors the world created.

What in the fresh hell is wrong with these guys?Mourning as a Construct

If grief is a very real sentiment, grief is presented as a construct and, more specifically, the construct of the tower.
Originally built to preserve something that fell from the sky, whatever that is, it became an obsession, and the uncle is now striving to keep it together by clumsily balancing geometrical shapes that are unfit for the purpose. If we accept that the grief process is a social construct, Miyazaki tells us that this construct is often obsolete and wobbly, created by some old man who doesn’t want to carry on with his life and would like everyone to stay trapped in a similar stasis.

Mahito refuses to be told how to deal with things, in what I think is the most powerful message of the movie. If his journey towards healing means fighting evil parakeets, no one can be allowed to take that away from him.

The uncle lost his marbles. Literally.A circular track of time and other recurring themes

It is true that some of the themes in the movie also appeared in previous works. Some said the usage of time is similar to Howl’s Moving Castle, though I urge you to remember that’s from a British novel, and surely one of the recurring themes is the optimistic approach to how children can create a better world by refusing to accept what more powerful figures would like to impose over them.

 

Burning the Grief Away

Nothing can be born in the land of grief: the spirits, who cannot kill, need nourishment to be reborn, and yet they fall prey to alien creatures, the pelicans. You can trust Miyazaki to know that the pelican is an old Catholic symbol for rebirth, connected with self-sacrifice as the first Christians thought the mother of these birds was feeding her chicks pieces of her own flesh (in fact, the animal regurgitates as many birds do). Well, in this movie, the pelicans are assholes. And they’re desperate. They prey on rebirthing spirits because they were brought into this land from another, and they have no food here.

If you want to see something in this, I will not stop you.

Miyazaki’s choice of the boy’s guides and allies is significant. It would have been easy to create characters out of nowhere, but what do we have here: the heron, a.k.a. denial unmasked; the younger, androgynous version of an elderly lady; the dead mother.
Refusing to be stuck in a world of static grief doesn’t come out of disrespect for those who came before you: on the contrary, they are your most powerful allies.

So how do you live? By coming to terms with the past; by forgetting it, or transforming it into something manageable and malleable, something that will not crush you.
— The Guardian

#OTD: William Kidd was born

On this day around 1654, William Kidd was said to be born either in Dundee, Scotland, Greenock or Belfast. He said he came from Dundee in a testimony given to the High Court of Admiralty in 1695 but we know better than to trust him.Kidd started his maritime career as a respectable privateer, capturing French vessels for the British crown. That was a perfectly honourable trade, in case you’re wondering. It’s true he had already sailed in the Caribbean as a member of a French–English pirate crew of Captain Jean Fantin, and it’s also true he had mutinied, renamed the ship Blessed William and sailed happily towards a British colony to be confirmed captain by the governor, but we don’t talk about that.By 1695, his new ship, the Adventure Galley, was sailing the Thames and being equipped to hunt pirates. Kidd took pride in personally selecting the crew, and they proved their worth even before leaving for the expedition: as Kidd failed to salute a Navy ship at Greenwich, the ship fired a warning shot, and his men turned around, lowered their pants and slapped their butts.In September 1696, Kidd departed for the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and this is why he might be of interest to us. A third of his crew died of cholera, the ship was leaking, and his hunt for pirates in Madagascar wasn’t particularly successful. Though Kidd doesn’t feature in the novel I’m currently pitching, I have half a mind to include a mention of him in a novel taking place on the second segment of the voyage. By 1702, when my novel is set, Kidd had already captured his wealthiest prize: the 400-ton Armenian Quedagh Merchant, captained by an Englishman and protected by a pass from the French East India Company. News reached England, and eventually, Kidd was tried for piracy, found guilty and hanged.Only one problem, though.Where’s the treasure?

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

Talking animals, liminal magic, a Court of fairies where dancing is the most important part of life, and a small almost-human with a crisis of identity who’s trying to navigate it all. Compared to the much more famous Peter Pan and Wendy, I think this truly is Barrie’s masterpiece, and no one will ever be able to convince me otherwise.

I’m currently querying to find an agent for my Gothic Novel and, for each rejection I receive, I gift a free eBook to my supporters: I actually wanted this book to be the first one my Patrons were going to receive, but I wasn’t ready when we got our first faster-than-light rejection, so I had to opt for an Italian fairytale. What’s there to prepare, you ask? Well, at the end of the book I also included a commentary in 4 parts I wrote on the blog a while ago, and that needed editing. I hope you like it.

As usual, people in the first tier get the first chapter, while people in the middle and upper tiers get the whole book in PDF and ePub format.

#ChthonicThursday: Rhadamanthus

Rhadamanthus (Ancient Greek: Ῥαδάμανθυς), also transliterated Rhadamanthys because the Greek letter is pronounced in between “u” and “y”, was a mythological wise king of Crete according to the Greeks. He was considered the son of Zeus and Europa, and today we take a look at how he became one of the judges of the dead. He’s today’s profile on my Patreon.

No time for a test! We got our first rejection

Yesterday on my Patreon (and today on the blog) I wrote what I was going to do each time I got a rejection to my query for an agent to represent my novel, which is gifting an eBook to all my middle and upper-tier Patrons every time that happens. I promised I was going to make a test to see if the encoding I’m using works for everybody.

Well, there’s no time for the test!

One of the (two) submissions I sent yesterday already got a faster-than-light rejection that had to do with my personal profile.

This means we can test the system with a free book!

The book is a short one, the one I was preparing for the test, and it’s an original translation of a fairy tale written at the beginning of last century by an Italian symbolist poet, Guido Gozzano, and it features:

– a beautiful girl who’s cursed to be lighter than air;
– the Prince of the Fortunate Islands who’s cursed to be heavier than lead;
– a group of grateful helpers;
– a good fairy;
– three evil fairies in their castle.

The first section will shortly be up for 1st level tiers.

The eBook in two formats will be up for 2nd and 3rd levels.

Not a patron yet? Consider becoming one!

First Query sent out, and what I’m going to do with rejections

Dear Patrons of every level and tier, Blog followers and innocent bystanders,

I promised I was going to start querying in January, and here I am: yesterday I’ve officially sent my first query to a prospect agent, which included:

– the first twenty pages of the novel;
– a query letter;
– a one-sentence pitch.

Sending queries means I’ll soon start receiving rejections. Some will be polite. Some will be less polite. The market is tough, and I know of people who have been querying for years, so I’ve been trying to devise something that will turn the negative feedback into something positive.

I think I found it.

Each time I get a rejection, Patrons in the middle and upper tier will get a free eBook in epub format to download and add to their reader of choice. It will either be original stuff, stuff in the public domain, stuff in the public domain with original annotations or original translations of stuff in the public domain.
People in the lower tier will get the first chapter to read over there on Patreon.

So this you get to cheer for me and participate to my failures through something positive.

How does that sound?

I’ll upload a test in the next few days, to see if the way I’m encoding the eBooks is working.

Not a Patron yet? Consider becoming one!

#MermaidMonday: Hatmehit

Hatmehit, also transliterated Hatmehyt because we have zero idea of how Ancient Egyptians pronounced anything, was a goddess associated with the city of Djedet in the Nile Delta. Her name means something along the lines of “the Foremost of a shoal”, and uses the term mḥyt for “fish”, which in Egyptian is always and only a collective noun.

She is traditionally depicted either as a fish or a woman with a fish on her head, worn as a crown. Her fish-crown was also the symbol of the area of Djedet, one of the “nomes” in Lower Egypt, and other protective deities of the area often wear her crown. Scholars have been debating what kind of fish she’s wearing on her head, because that’s what scholars do.

Drop by on my Patreon and read a little more about her.

Back from Nashville, back to business

Well, I’m back from Nashville (I briefly mentioned it here), which means going back to work and back to business. I have a few things I need to do before a workshop on Monday, but it’s a chilly Saturday morning here in Milan, coffee is back to what it used to, I have a decent glass of mineral water in front of me, and I thought I’d catch this chance to share a few updates with you.

1. What about Nashville?

I was there with the American football team for the annual convention of the American Football Coaches Association. My interest in the activities is mostly derivative: my significant otter is a player, coach and manager in the team, and I’ve always tagged along for matches. Since I can’t manage to do anything unless I go all-in, this resulted in me being the (semi)official Gameday, the account in charge of updates from the field (mandatory for the federation during home games, just for fun in away games).
My involvement and commitment with a football team is a weird one to those who know me superficially, as I’m one of the least sportspersons you’ll ever meet, but I do enjoy watching sports, and I’m always interested in community making and the growth of people, especially young people. Hence, I can often find something to interest me during these events, even if I can hardly appreciate the more technical contributions. Hence, let’s start with some highlights from the convention and then dive into the city of Nashville, an incredible place I tremendously enjoy.

1.1. The 2024 AFCA annual convention

Held through the span of two half days and a full one, this is my second convention, following the one in Charlotte last year where my boys were invited to speak, and I had the impression it was making an effort to expand its scope beyond athletics, diving more into topics pertaining to management. The convention took place inside the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, a ridiculously insane place where you have artificial channels and a fake village under a huge glass dome, tropical plants grown in the local conservatory and a local boat tour. For an European, this is the weirdest thing ever.

My favourite speech had to be Jeremiah Brown‘s “Empowering Student Athletes Leveraging NIL for Career Readiness & Professionalism”, and it dealt with transferable skills (I jolted down a couple of notes in Italian over here). If you’re not familiar with the concept, NIL stands for Name, Image and Likeness, and it’s a great conquest for athletes in College, who can now leverage their efforts to build a brand and earn autonomous revenues from it. The story of its conquest is well narrated in the movie National Champions (2021), which is also a good representation of what happens in the US when you dare to take a stand and fight for your rights.

Jeremiah reversed the narrative of NIL being “evil” and shocked the audience of coaches by proposing a model of personal empowerment for students, of creating strong connections, of coaching beyond the field, of being positive and supportive instead of bullying your guys into submission.

If your players are playing to prove you wrong, you do not have a place they feel safe, seen or valued.

If your players don’t feel safe, seen or valued, they will not execute on the field because they will be playing out of fear.

Words to live by.

Another very interesting session to us, of course, is the International Session. It’s a chance for foreign coaches to present the situation of American Football in their Countries and it’s a good comparison point for us, since you can’t possibly compare the stance of football in the USA with what happens in other countries: the place of the sport in the whole society is completely different.
This year, the hosted coaches were coming from Britain (Dan Mahler, University of West England), Mexico (Micky Romero, Barcelona Dragons), and Israel (BJ Weiss, Jerusalem Lions).

From the University of West England, Dan Mahler explained his recruiting model, showing how they manage to attract players from the US and how they integrate them with their local players, and this poses very interesting questions for us: how do you take a player with a level that’s not comparable to your local guys (these people have been playing football semi-professionally since they were eight years old) and really integrate it with your team so that they don’t create a fracture but they actually contribute to your local growth? This question isn’t new in team management, nor it’s easy to answer: it deals with integrating a star member inside a team (see here, for instance), and it’s always interesting to see it developed.

The most emotional and impactful speech in the international session, however, was held by coach BJ Weiss from the Jerusalem Lions, an American-born coach who has been living in Israel for 20 years. Unexpectedly to those who only know Israel from the narrative our newspapers like to push, Weiss took a strong stance for integration, actively proposing football (and sports in general) as a means for peace. We are all brothers on the field, he said, and integrating players from the most diverse backgrounds has always been a non-issue on the team, up until politicians started messing with people’s lives. Through the cracks of his visible effort to not appear shaken, he showed us a slide of three fallen players.

Back to the general session, I appreciated the visible effort to showcase a more diverse portfolio of coaches, though you must remember we’re in the South, and the AFCA has a thing called AFCWA that stands for American Football Coaches Wives Association: they do silent auctions and, I suspect, organizes local quilt clubs for all those girls of God out there. Still, we had one woman keynote speaker (though her speech was brief and 100% underwhelming) and one roundtable session on Working with Women Coaches moderated by Javé Brown from the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches. I was otherwise engaged, so there’s nothing I can tell you if not to follow both Javé and the association online.

More interesting content, at least for my limited and side-angled point of view, came from the closing keynote speakers, three stars in College Football: Barry Odom (UNLV), Jerry Kill (New Mexico State University), and Eliah Drinkwits (University of Missouri). The session was opened by Jeff Brohm from the University of Louisville and, though I can’t judge the technical content of his presentation, I thought the presentation and exposition in itself were lacking and unsuited for a keynote.

Jerry Kill from New Mexico, dropping a “shit” every five words, gave coaches a brief outline of what to ask and what to establish when you arrive at a school for a new coaching job: make sure the administration puts everything in writing, be able to establish a team of people who know how to do what you don’t, connect with other coaches and teachers on campus were just some of the points in his energetic speech.

Eliah Drinkwits from Missouri gave us a highly dynamic comparison between practice and what happens on game day.

Barry Odom presented his “Rebel Way” in team management, and I’ll present it to you as it is, as we’ll need it to make a deeper reflection later on. Please mind that these are Barry’s views: not mine. This is how you achieve success as a team in Odom’s world:

Commitment to common goals as a team and to being successful;Unselfishness:The team comes first;You have to commit to three promises: go to class/academics; have a great attitude; have the willingness to be coached (he stressed this doesn’t mean you are willing to be abused and bullied by your coach, though I’d like to see how this uncrossable line is defined and implemented on the field);Trust:Family: “being a great teammate can be the strongest bond in your life: be there for each other”;Treat everyone how you want to be treated;Build relationships;Build trust in each other to always to the right thing for our team;Growth:Everyday, academically/socially/athletically;There is a plan: utilize the services and resources we have in place and write your script;The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on growth;Be intentional about personal growth: it won’t just happen because we want it to;Growth must never stop.Toughness:Mentally and physically;Never give up… it’s going to be hard; we will have to strain and be uncomfortable;Self-Discipline:Personal accountability and making decisions that put the team first; every decision yu make affects our football program and many before and after you;Sacrifice: having the character and the toughness fo make the right choice;Are we committed to doing more? Recovery habits, social habits, extra prep;Unmatched Effort/Urgency/Enthusiasm:Attitude: you control it every day, no matter the situation;4th and 1 every day, in all walks of life;Be Early/On Time/Do More: it’s a reflection of what’s important to you.Eliminate Mistakes:don’t beat yourself; have these areas in our favour: turnover margin, penalties, mental errors, special teams;Be a Great Competitor:Don’t ever accept losing: as soon as it’s allowed once, it will be easy to do the rest of your life. Our culture will not allow it. [Again, this is not my view, and I have things to say on this, but more on that later];Hard/Smart/Tough: for longer than our opponent;There is a winner and a loser in everything we do [see point 1].Expect to Win:Expect more and give more;No self-limitations, true self-condifence;Prepare/believe/train to win.Consistency:Details and Habits: your very best every time.Leadership:Everyone sets an example; be willing to change what isn’t right;Establish the culture that will only allow success [Again, I feel the need to distance myself from this];Responsibility:Everyone is responsible for their own performance: do your job;Over-communicate.

There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits food people, raises them up as leaders, and continually develops them.

Now, there are some great points to take away from this: the willingness to change what isn’t right of course resonates with me, alongside the points on growth and the construction of your “found family”, as we wold say in fiction tropes, since I strongly believe family is an institute that too often fails kids.

Poetically, the speech was followed by the award of a price to the Jason Foundation for the prevention of youth suicides, and the numbers they gave are absolutely horrifying:

suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for middle and high school students (ages 12-18) in the US;suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for college-age youth (ages 18-22) in the US;each week, the US loses an average of 137 young people to suicide;22.2%, or over 1 out of every 5 students, reported “seriously considering suicide in the past 12 months”;10.2%, or over 1 out of 10 students, reported having “attempted suicide one or more times in the past 12 months”.

Let us run some comparisons, shall we? And this is not to prove that one nation is better than the other, it’s not a fucking competition: we need it to establish whether our situation can be compared to what we’re seeing here. I’m preparing this as I write it: I don’t even know the answer myself.

The number of children by age in the US is provided by Statista, which tells us we have about 25.8 million children between 12 and 17, and 26.2 million young people between 18 and 23. According to the CDC, suicide rates for US kids aged 10 to 24 rose by 62% from 2007 through 2021. Youth and young adults ages 10–24 years account for 15% of all suicides.

We don’t have updated numbers for Italy: the last survey is from 2016, though foundations like the Veronesi Foundation or the Italian Association of Psychiatrists have been vocally raising concerns. One of the key updated studies is this one from 2020, which still draws from the 2016 survey. According to those numbers — grouped by sex because, of course, we want to add to the problem instead of solving it — suicide constitutes the cause of death for young men in 14,7% of cases, and for young women, the percentage is 8,3%. They mostly throw themselves from heights or in front of moving vehicles, which is psychologically significant to investigating the causes. I’m told they’re mostly connected with feeling guilty, a failure or powerless. To these numbers, you’d have to add young people who attempted suicide and were hospitalized: according to this source, in 2023 they were 70% of the total of young people being hospitalized.

In 2022, suicide was the second-ranking cause of young deaths in Europe, with 3 kids taking their own lives each day. They were around 20 each day in the US. This means they have a suicide figure of around 7.000 kids each year, while Europe has a little more than 1.000 deaths. As we have seen, the US has a population of 52 million people between 12 and 23 years old. Europe has 73.6 million people between 12 and 25, out of a total EU population of 447.3 million. This roughly means that, while Europe’s population is one and half times that of the United States and young people in Europe are about one and a half more than young people in the US, the US has more than ten times the rate of suicides. In percentage, 1 for every 100.000 kids in Europe will die by suicide, while it’s more than ten times worse in the US: 13 for every 100.000 kids.
Similar numbers are run here and here.

What about football?

Soon after I saw these numbers running on screen alongside an oval football, I had a fleeting thought: with this kind of numbers, there’s no way everyone and everything (and I mean it: fucking everything) isn’t an integral part of the problem. When I posted this thought on my Instagram stories, I got some… well, let’s say, heated reactions, as some seemed to think I considered football to be responsible for these suicides. Football saves lives. There’s no way even one of these kids took their own life for something that’s connected with our noble sport.

People, this is 100% delusional.

Particularly coming after coach Odom’s speech, I feel we should all read up on something connected with the failure stigma and how it might lead to suicide, especially for young people. Failure is part of life. Everybody fails. And sometimes we fail spectacularly (like, I don’t know, hooking up with assholes, allowing them to abuse you for years and then blowing up your entire career for the resulting depression). We are taught that teachers and leaders should provide kids with heroic examples and hide our weaknesses and our failures because they need models of strength.

Do they, though?

Kids know failure is possible: we make them experience that every day with grades, assignments and, yes, competitive sports. What they don’t know, however, is that failure is allowed. The world is not going to end today because you failed an assignment, you got a bad grade, your team lost a match. It’s not going to end for other people, and certainly it shouldn’t feel like the end of the world for you. You’re allowed to be sad, disappointed, angry. Of course you’re allowed. But this should never reach the point of being unhealthy.
You might have tried your best, and your best wasn’t up to standard. Shit happens. Seek help in trying to understand what went wrong, and how to do better. Teachers and coaches should provide this kind of support by definition.
On the other hand, you might not have tried your best because you were fucking tired, for instance, and that happens too. It’s normal. It has to be allowed. It can’t be your standard attitude — if you feel like that all the time, there’s a bigger issue at work — but schools, communities and sports teams need to be safe spaces in which people are allowed to fail, to be sub-standard, to stumble and fall, because failures help you grow more than successes.
If you’re never allowed to fail, you won’t know how it feels and how to deal with it when it happens.
And it might be disastrous.
Trust me.
I know.

Also, providing a safe space for people to fail is the foundation for continuous growth and experimentation. Innovation means taking risks. And taking risks means allowing yourself the possibility that everything will blow up in your face, and you’ll have to think again.

A few highlights to do better in football might include:

Cut the macho crap and stop talking about losers and winners: instead, start talking about people working at the best of their possibilities;Cut the bullshit penances: if someone made a mistake, there’s no sense in imposing physical penalties such as extra drills or extra push-ups (the push-up thing drives me completely nuts), and extra physical exercise should be a reward since theoretically that’s what we love and the reason why we’re here;Cut the fuelling of bullying and peer pressure: I’m sure you feel a very manly muppet, each time you impose a penalty on the whole team because someone made a mistake, but it’s just demonstrating your inability to foster a positive influence amongst your player as a coach. Source: Prevention of Suicide by Danuta Wasserman on the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Global Public Health

A brief bibliography on the subject:

Failure: A Stigma leading to death , by Fatima Asif on Voices of Youth (February 14th, 2021); Facts About Suicide Among LGBTQ+ Young People , on the Trevor Project; Suicide Prevention Tips for Youth & Young Adults by Christa D. Labouliere on the Columbia University website; Educators Can Play a Role in Preventing Student Suicide by Brenda Álvarez on the National Education Association weblog (September 7th, 2023).

On a side note, you might have noticed I never used the C-word connected with suicide. Here’s why, courtesy of the Australian Psychology Society.

1.2. Moving on: the city of Nashville

After a lukewarm experience in Charlotte last year (but I’m willing to give it another go next year since the conference is moving back there), I was absolutely stunned by how vibrant and interesting Nashville is. My primary source of guidance was the Moon guide by Margaret Littman.

So, what’s to see over there, and why is it worth the visit? Here’s my top 7, a random number, given in random order.

1.2.1. Live music, live music everywhere

When they say Nashville is the city of music, they don’t fully prepare for what you’ll find there. Virtually everywhere, from 9 am till late at night, you’ll be able to enjoy live music spanning from country to rock and every weird variation in between, as we soon discovered by randomly stumbling upon a live exhibition of the Old Hickory on our first night near the hotel.

And here’s a word of warning: everything you’ll find in Nashville will make you go “okay, that’s weird”.
Old Hickory is the nickname of Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), the seventh president of the United States, the inventor and main promoter of Native American removal, and ideator of the Trail of Tears, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of over 60,000 Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminoles people, in just the span of 20 years, between 1830 and 1850.

Anyway, this is what the Old Hickory trio sounds like.

One of the funniest things that might happen to you is when a band is trying to perform, and there’s a guy in the audience who goes around with a puppet of himself, and interacts with the band on the stage. He’s not part of the show. He’s just a guy going around with a puppet of himself. And now I know what I want to do when I grow old(er).

1.2.2. The National Museum of African American Music

The much more famous Country Music Hall of Fame was underwhelming (loads and loads of apparel and costumes with very little context and virtually no explanation of what it is that you’re looking at), and this is why I approached the National Museum of African American Music with fairly low expectations. And we were blown away.

Your experience begins in the Roots Theater with a brief film about the history of Black music in America. From there, enter the Rivers of Rhythm corridor and dive into music genres on our large touch screens. Keep an eye out for one of the Take Over Moments! Move into the galleries: Wade in the Water, Crossroads, A Love Supreme, One Nation Under a Groove, and The Message.

I highly recommend you pay the extra 5 $ for at least one RFID bracelet: you’ll have lots of interactive activities to record, such as creating your own blues song, mixing some R&B or transforming a demo into a success wearing a producer’s hat.

The journey starts with African Indigenous Customs, explaining how music and dance were always considered essential parts of nearly every communal activity throughout West and Central Africa. In the homeland of most Africans captured and sold into slavery, celebrations and commemorations, consecrations, and daily work included specific, time-honoured sounds which gave each aspect of family and community tradition its recognisable place in daily life.
Music and dance, important elements of daily life in Africa, remained central to those captured and enslaved in colonial times. When they were forced or pressured into converting to Christianity, African Americans transformed European-based hymns into more spontaneous and arguably genuine forms of expression, weaving in key African characteristics such as call-and-response singing. These songs and music-led prayers sprang from the desire for more meaningful worship; they soon turned into resistance against the white religious establishment: as such, they were repressed in the South, often violently, and flourished in the North.

“There’s something about the gospel blues that’s so deep the world can’t stand it”.
— Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Jazz was my second favourite section, with stuff like Louis Armstrong’s trumpet and Nat King Cole’s sweater. The social roots and impact of jazz are extensively explored and narrated, going through the prohibition era and demonstrating how impactful the original concepts of African music still were, even two hundred years after the original diaspora.

“Jazz is a purely democratic music. It’s collective creativity where somebody introduces something and we all get a chance to say something about it.”
— Max Roach

1.2.3. Street Art

I’m always partial to street art, as you might remember from my visit to Los Angeles, and your definitive destination if you’re interested in murals might be 12th Street (though I didn’t have the time to go there myself, my travel companions said it was nice enough). Randomly throughout the city, you’ll find fantastic gems such as the Tennessee Tough mural.

Here are my personal favourites:

the “Rivive” Mural on 5th Ave N;the “Forget the Past” at 530 Church Street by an Australian artist who goes by RONE;the “caged party” around the middle of Printer’s Alley.

1.2.4. Fort Nashborough

It’s a reconstruction, but it’s pretty close to downtown and has a splendid view of the Nissan stadium where the Nashville Titans play, and they’re both by the river. It originally was a log stockade, a forerunner to the settlement that would become Nashville, and was constructed as a protection against wild animals and native people who just wouldn’t agree to see their land stolen from them. This reconstruction incorporates a plaza dedicated to Native American history.

1.2.5. Nudie’s Honky Tonk

No nudes in this honky tonk, just Nudie’s as in Nudie Cohn, the Jewish-Ukrainian-born tailor who crafted rhinestone suits for the likes of Roy Rogers, John Lennon, John Wayne, Elton John, Tony Curtis, and, most notably, Elvis Presley. Between 1950 and 1975 he started customizing automobiles too, in an equally sober fashion, with dashboards studded in silver dollars, pistols for door handles and gearshifts, and longhorn hood ornaments. Two of these are on display at the already mentioned Country Music Hall of Fame, but you can save time and come at Nudie’s instead: a gigantic Cadillac is hanging from the wall, right above the heads of where the live band usually performs.

1.2.6. The Corsair Distillery and its district

If you’re into industrial heritage and brick buildings with big windows, you’ll love the Marathon Village, with its shops and distilleries. Formerly the headquarters of Marathon Motor Works, the building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and it’s a veritable museum of old machinery and crafting tools.

Amongst the different distilleries, we picked the Corsair Distillery for a tour, as most of the activities in the building are shamefully closed by 5 pm and you’ll be driven downtown anyways.
What I loved about the brand, alongside the illegitimate child of whiskey and gin, is the story behind the logo. One night, the founder was working in Scotland, and he saw three random dudes who were being kicked out of the bar for being too drunk. There they were, confidently striding through the fog while people at their back kept insulting them and calling them assholes, and the guy decided they were going to be his future brand. Yes. Three random dudes. Drunk. In Scotland. What’s there not to like?

1.2.7. The Hazzard Museum

Yes, you heard me right. The Music Valley district has a place called Cooter’s, which is a reproduction of Cooter’s garage as seen in The Dukes of Hazzard’s TV show. You’ll find four authentic cars from the show, including the sheriff’s car, the 1980 Jeep CJ-7 Golden Eagle called “Dixie” and, of course, the infamously named orange 1969 Dodge Charger with no entrance doors. Parked outside, Cooter’s Tow Truck.

The museum — owned by Ben Jones, who played the mechanic in the show — has no entrance fee, so you can go and see it even if you stand with the boycott, and it has tons of memorabilia. Personally, I stand with this article in saying that the show is “as gloriously shiny and empty as a collectors’ metal lunchbox”, there’s no politics in it, just as much as there isn’t anything else except for a post-Watergate era suspicion for the law, the establishment, tycoons and politicians. It’s a rebel show, yes, but they’re not Confederates rebelling against equal rights: they’re “good ol’ boys” fighting the system and, yes, standing up for the old ways. Until these values don’t collide, they won’t have to pick sides between standing for good and standing for tradition. And the show never puts them in this situation.

So Northerners get a funny story of backwoods tricks played on backwoods hicks, loaded up with getaway music and casual stereotypes. (“If you weren’t my cousin, I’d marry you,” Bo tells Daisy in the pilot. “When did that ever stop anyone in this family before?” she asks him.) Southerners get a populist version of pride and rebellion without baggage. The kids get car chases with CB radios. The grown-ups get Daisy on a roadside in a bikini and/or Bo and Luke with their shirts unbuttoned to the waist.

Still, it’s an unfortunate business, and you can’t deny that the narrative of “good ol’ boys” flying the Confederate Flag is harmful enough these days, given that loads of those people aren’t good and certainly aren’t boys anymore. Egoistically (and no, I’m not suggesting we do that), I’d love it if we could CGI that shit out of the car and still enjoy the awesome stunt car and the casual Southern stereotypes about in-breeding and moonshining.

2. Back to business, then?

Yeah. And I need to take urgent action on that front, as I’m enjoying my activities less and less, so here’s what I’m thinking of doing.

2.1. More LEGO Serious Play

2021 was a good year, with the International LEGO Serious Play Conference in Billund and everything, but live activities were still challenging to perform because of COVID-19. That shit isn’t over yet, and people don’t feel confident in tinkering with stuff that’s been held by other people, at least around here, but this shouldn’t stop me from keeping up the work. I proposed some activities to a pro-bono association around here, but I got no response. Still, I should continue developing the theories around LSP and innovation.

This is not LEGO Serious Play, this is just two otters balancing on a log.2.2. More team management

As I look into the functions and dysfunctions of my own team, it might be worthwhile to go back and explore instruments and tools to manage your team in a highly volatile environment. I’m reading Nassim Taleb‘s Antifragile (and boy, do I have bones to pick with it), and I think we miss this kind of high-level reasoning around what makes people tick.

2.3. More Sustainable Innovation Theories

Throughout the last few years, my focus has been on how to make innovation sustainable, especially from a social and ethical point of view. As the increasing affordability of Artificial Intelligence challenges some of these aspects, it might be worthwhile to take a look at things from a different perspective.

Back in 2011, the Cabinet Office of the British Government established the BIM Task Group, with the aim of driving the adoption of Information Modelling and the digitalization effort in the Construction Industry, starting from public procurement. Twelve years have passed, and the AEC industry is still responsible for 23% of air pollution, 50% of climatic change, 40% of drinking water pollution and 50% of landfill waste. Nearly 60% of construction workers suffer from a mental health issue during their career, and it’s one of the least diverse sectors in terms of both gender and culture. If change is being brought across, it’s not the change we need.

Also, the horizon is getting shorter. While innovation used to be thought looking at a 10-years prospect, technology and society are evolving way too fast for that: we’re stepping away from planning and entering a domain of disciplined improvisation.

Improvisation in business doesn’t mean making rash decisions; that much is obvious. It rather means building a solid framework for people to make quick decisions within boundaries that are still aligned with the company’s general strategy. The framework needs to be built, and improvisation skills need to be trained. Creative thinking is an old friend and can come to the rescue while reimagining innovation and digital transformation in the construction industry. It might be worthwhile to look at different frameworks and activities to effectively change the innovation mindset and implement innovation at all scales, from the industry level to the individuals within their local communities.

3. What about the book?

I’m querying, which is gergo to say I’m looking for an agent. This means I’m constantly working on synopsis in different lengths, abstracts, pitches, author bios, excerpts from the book, step-by-step summaries, mood boards and so on. It’s challenging, especially considering how bad I am at synthesis in general.
Also, it’s a process riddled with disappointments, as you’re bound to be rejected by many of the people you submit your work to. A lot of people write, many of them want to publish, and agents are overloaded with requests.

I think I found a way to turn this process into something positive for my Patrons, but I’ll write about that separately.
Also, if you’re not on Patreon you might consider throwing a few dimes my way by clicking on the banner below and picking one of the tiers. People in tier 1 get articles on mythology and folklore, and will start getting chapters from books in the public domain. People in tier 2 get articles on the craft of writing and querying, and will start getting ebooks. People in tier 3 get access to my inner feelings.