The Clouds Factory

When you become someone else's voice, you make choices based on how you want to be heard or read. Authors have their own unique style. A translation has to respect that and make it work in parallel with another language. I say parallel because it cannot be the same but it proceeds along a common direction. That might not be as easy as one would think. The original author's skill is not on trial, sentences can and have to be changed in order to fit the right syntax but the simplicity or the complexity of the writing has to be respected. Whether the narrative is skilled or poor, a translator has to remain true to the original text as much as possible. The best tool for a translator is how words and sentences are interpreted in a different language. The meaning and structure vary greatly because words are loaded with historical and social baggage. This gives room for a broader choice of grammar, vocabulary or conjugation.

Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, political activist, and all-round profess ional thinker  Slavoj Žižek is an avalanche of thoughts at best, a chaotic whirl of ideas at worst.  Like him or not, share his ideology or despise his attitude,  Žižek is intriguing in his delivery. His style is akin to the guy in an Italian bar who talks above everyone else, exposing his ideas he doesn't know he's just had at the top of his voice, gesticulating and repeating his favourite parts. He's no fool either. His philosophy is radical but grounded on a lifetime of research and observation.  Žižek's books go from the minimal to the bulging tomes. Having watched him live and through various interviews, I can see his writing mirrors his lecturing.

Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, was often laughed at as a boy when his desire to be liked made him act impulsively. The boy responsible for the Munich shooting had been ridiculed because of his foreign background. The attackers in Normandy acted upon belief in a twisted version of religion. Nice happened because society was blind to a disturbed man's increasing volatility. Kabul lost the same amount of people to the fractious society war has created. Theories.  These and countless of other events can be summarised and analysed in micro detail. Letters are found, diaries scrutinised, politics and social media sway the opinions of thousands, millions of people. Media and gossip create the narrative. And yet it is not enough. We still refuse to look at the root of evil. We spread the news as quickly as possible. We want and need to categorise events in safe bundles: Terror, Gender, Religion, Mental illness, Race, Trump, Putin, Syria, Politics, Erdogan, Arab Spring, Ukraine,...

A few months ago I started to be interested in Physics. It felt like a natural extension to the questions of the self and who we are in this life. I felt that Philosophy gave me some of the answers, but I needed a deeper understanding of what makes us how we are in an empirical way in order to reconcile the metaphysical counterpart. A handful of books gave me a grounding on the subject, then a dear friend recommended "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" by Carlo Rovelli. It was a revelation. Only once before a book this small has surprised me quite so much, "Novecento", a short play written by Alessandro Baricco. Baricco managed to squeeze an epic story in 62 pages, a literary feat (the book was later made into a film by Tornatore) transporting an idiosyncratic story into a journey through time and seas. In the same way, Rovelli takes on the incredibly complex world of Physics to unravel the most salient parts in a mere 79 pages. From General Relativity to Quantum M...

In collaboration with David Warriner (@DrDavidWarriner) Cycling is a global sport and as such it needs money, lots of it. For a team to succeed, it requires expensive equipment, a hefty budget to attract the best riders and to be able to run a smooth operation. Inevitably, where there are financial gains and marketing exposure, there are matters of ethical nature. Over the years, many morally questionable characters have come and gone, but doping has continued to mar this tough sport, creating doubts on the behaviour of riders, managers, race organisers and institutions, as fans still yearn to believe in their idols. However, once those problems appeared to be superficially under control, globalisation, or rather commercialisation, took precedence and with it the search for big bucks and ever more lucrative contracts. Professional cycling is financially unstable: careers, contracts, sponsors and teams are all too often short-lived. As a result, team managers have to pursue a...

Democracy, that Ancient Greek invention, the reason for millions of deaths all over the world, is taken for granted, ridiculed and ignored. We're reminded we fought for it; we protest against dictatorships; we laugh at the single-choice vote in Kazakhstan or North Korea, Belarus or Russia. But when it comes to voting, we simply don't want to know. We rely on others to support our own apathy, our laziness to engage with current political topics. The very word 'politics' turns us off. In 1950, 84% of eligible voters did the deed; last year it was 66%, rising slightly from the lowest point of 59% in 2001. In 2015, 15 million of the registered voters did not go to the polling stations, and 4 million did not even register in the first place. EU elections' average turnout is even lower, around 34%. The EU referendum is perhaps a bigger concern to most people so I expect the turnout to be somewhere around the 50% mark. Poor. We vote within social media, we moan, argue, ...

BHS, Woolworths, Austin Reed, Blockbuster, Comet, JJB Sports, to name a few. But not only retail: steel, coal, banking. Big companies come and go, file for bankruptcy, fold. Jobs, thousands of them are lost in the name of capitalism, an old-fashioned capitalism. The type where managers/owners/entrepreneurs simply use companies to inflate their portfolios, to seek short term gains, unashamedly steal the cash and drop the consequences to others. There is undoubtedly a pattern in terms of the type of companies that fold. Most are simply not meeting the demands of a fast changing market or the implementation of technological advances. But they are also kept that way by investors whose sole aim is to make big money fast and run. No need to upgrade stores, train staff, research markets. Companies are bought, money is appropriated, then those same companies are sold, dismissed and good luck to the next owner. It's happening in the name of freedom, free market, individual pursuit for...

Nibali won his second Giro d'Italia in what has been hailed as one of the best last minute surges since... well, probably Flandis at the Tour. Or was it? The element of suspicion for any winner is high. Social media are quick to analyse a victory in every detail and from any stance. Years of cheaters draw inevitable conclusions from many sides. Nibali, up until stage 17, was apparently under the weather, thus under-performing. This brought on speculation on the negative effects of changing crank length so close to a GT and so late in a career. But Merckx did the same, although I believe he went for shorter cranks rather than longer ones like Nibali's. Then the Italian was taken to see team doctors and after that he started performing at his best. Astana does come with a heavy baggage of doping offences, including its own manager Vinokourov, so it was easy enough to finger point to a darker side of that sudden burst of energy.

Cycling is passion, history, grit, determination, but also innovation and... conjecture. Although rivalries have always been part of the sport, social media have now given dualism of opinions a loud platform. In the past, we saw discord between the two major groupset companies (Campagnolo vs Shimano), or between riders, (Coppi vs Bartali). Books have been written about it, and plenty of banter has been dished out over the years. The immediacy and exponential reach of social media has escalated the debates surrounding certain topics, as more people are inclined to share their own views based on personal experiences. It can be about the effectiveness of helmets, the use of cycle lanes, the introduction of disc brakes in the peloton or the veracity of doping suspicions and yes, Team Sky!

The similarities between “Tommeke” Tom Boonen and “Spartacus” Fabian Cancellara are uncanny. To choose who is the best rider of the two would be like choosing between two of your own siblings. Different characteristics have produced comparable results. Boonen is the sprinter of the two (or at least he was at the height of his career), while Cancellara has the better tactical sense, mostly.

Demarcation is a dividing line. While it is also a pun on the rider's name, it highlights the thin line between glory and infamy. As soon as the Frenchman crossed the line ahead of a marauding gang of sprinters, I punched a fist into the air to celebrate. A new rider was winning a classic, let alone a Monument, which is always a good thing for the sport. It's exciting to see young talent finally coming through the ranks, and Demare is an inspiring young man. I first noticed him at London 2012 when, soon after finishing, he stood right next to me at the 300-metre mark to watch the rest of the riders come through and soak up the atmosphere with his girlfriend. I didn't know at first who he was, but I noticed the world champion stripes in his shoes (he was reigning under-23 World champion).

Mr Osborne's Budget is taking aim at a very specific target audience, the Tory voters. It is nor surprising neither dissimilar to behaviour from past Chancellors from any party and budgets all over the world. However, this one is particularly cynical in its address. Clinical even.

It all started with seeing my mum every night going to bed with a book or a magazine (my father never read books, just lost in classical music). My mum only finished primary school, back then, in rural Italy, they needed people to work rather than study. But I was always proud that she had this passion for books and was better for it. Then I would look at those books, turn them over and read the blurb. Taking up reading became a linear consequence of that curiosity.

Climbs tend to become legendary, both in pro and amateur cycling. Waxing lyrical about a particular col, cima, pico, pass, is at the heart of most conversations between two-wheeled colleagues. And unless you live at the top of a mountain, descents are variables of the same equation. Both climbs and descents create an experience that is unique to cycling, a free rollercoaster of pain and elation.

Is there such a thing as Western culture, Western society, philosophy? While listening to a podcast on African Philosophy, I couldn't help but think that it seemed ludicrous to talk about "African" in the context of one big bundle of ideas and values from over 50 countries, each with its own identity and history. Is there a case for being sceptical about a Western ideal as well? There are clear connections amongst countries belonging to certain geographical and colonial areas. Historical and cultural ties are undeniable, however, those ties were borne out of proximity or conquest rather than natural equivalence.