USPQR

Dal Post di oggi, via Massimo Gramellini un anno fa. Questo quando c’azzecca c’azzecca.

“Questo è un Paese che da sempre non ha senso dello Stato perché lo Stato gli fa senso. Dai più viene percepito come un padrino insolente cui siamo costretti a versare il pizzo sotto forma di tasse e chiunque riesca a sottrarsi alla corvée è percepito quasi come un eroe. L’idea di appartenere a una comunità più vasta di una casta ci è sconosciuta. L’omertà di massa nasce da qui. Non tanto dalla mancanza di coraggio, ma da una compiaciuta ignoranza del proprio status di cittadini che dovrebbero avere una sola famiglia, lo Stato, e un solo confine, la legge”.

A street protester in Bahrain recorded this video as people took the streets to demand that human rights are respected in the Gulf state.

The Sun sets over our heads. Overlooking a rail track, pointing towards the water. London

Being an editorial assistant, the kind of tasks I am required to do every day are not always the most exciting. But, unexpectedly, getting all the props for a magazine’s cover photo shoot turned out to be the highlight of a week of fact-checking and research.

I was on the hunt for Iranian cigarettes, two packets, possibly of different brands. Now, London is a world famous melting pot, a mix of cultures, flavours, colours, languages and I could go on. But if you haven’t been living here long enough to possess an in-depth knowledge of its neighborhoods and districts, who lives where and who sells what and, most importantly - again - where, Google may be your only resource in finding a not-so-common product. Hence my research for Iranian smokes started off from there, the almighty king of web searches.

By typing in “Bahaman” - a brand of cigarettes produced in Iran - I was redirected to a curious website I had never heard of. To cut it short - it is called CigarettesPedia and, as the name may suggest, it is a sort of encyclopedia/Wikipedia (because it’s free and its content is put together by contributors from all around the globe, among them the Italian Orazio Rocchi) of cigarettes. An online database listing more than 30,000 unique articles and images. Basically, a cigarettes’ archive. It is valued around $12,444 by www.valuethewebsite.com and was launched in 2006 in California. Currently, it has “the fullest free collection of cigarette boxes, invaluable information about cigarette brands, history of their appearance and the manufacturers,” according to its creators.

It has a section dedicated to cigarettes collectors and/or experts around the world and links to their websites. Another sub-category you can browse through is “Manufacturers”, where cigarettes are listed alphabetically by maker. A curious section is the one called “Cigarettes Humor”, presenting a series of quite random and honestly weird pictures like this one. It is a pretty rudimentary website but just something else I didn’t know.

Can’t remember where I found this, but it is a proper Harry Potter’s London map. It locates the spots used as shooting locations during the filming of the boy wizard’s saga. Places such as “Platform 9 3/4 and Diagon Alley, almost legendary among Harry’s fans, can be found on the map. If interested, you just have to google the website that came up with the idea since my screenshot is clearly not exhaustive…just a bunch of tags with no explanations.

View from the artist’s alcove - Hoxton, London

…omonimo del premier”.

La Provincia di Como punta sul titolo ad effetto e, il 22 gennaio scorso, pubblica questo pezzo.

Ovviamente, il compianto non e’ il nostro beneamato premier, ma un operatore tessile di Veniano (paesotto in provincia di Como) che ha perso la vita durante un’escursione in montagna.

Segue un’intervista che la stessa Provincia gli aveva fatto nel 2006, a proposito di questa omonimia “importante”.

New York Times’ Rome correspondent Rachel Donadio paints a picture of contemporary Italy (and, not surprisingly, not a thrilling one)

There was no better *headline to review Sarah Palin’s reality show. Can’t you almost hear her squeaking it out loud??

Oh, guess what. It’s about Alaska, life in Alaska, grizzlies and other wild animals that she enjoys hunting and, possibly, serving for dinner. As you probably know, the Alaskan winter is pretty damn cold and how is a girl supposed to survive if not by shooting down big fluffy animals?