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Thanks

Angelo Pio Rossi — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After a certain age, a blog that starts including obituaries risks becoming only obituaries. Yet, retaining some memory of those we meet along the way is one of the few things that makes us who we are.

Roger (1937-2026) Link to heading

When a “big shot” like Bonnet passes away, you get plenty of institutional statements on his greatness. Sadly, just a few weeks after the fact, everyone moves on.

Ric (in memoriam)

Angelo Pio Rossi — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is an excerpt set of a post published elsewhere, with the unique aim of raising awareness on the fund to help the family of Riccardo after their loss. Not many are likely to read this blog, so this cannot multiply much. It does record and, for some time, retain, though.

I would describe Riccardo here with very similar words, thus, I re-use:

Geosketching

Angelo Pio Rossi — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Or “On an unintended product”.

Pain: Link to heading

The pain and its possible relief are exemplified below. Yes, it does start as a technical solution for some non-consumer, professional problem: Quick sharing, iterating, brainstorming over geospatial snippets, i.e. little maps, and notes. Like iterating over prose with text/mail messages.

Ghosts

Angelo Pio Rossi — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are often ghosts to each other.

Alive, i.e., able to communicate for an arbitrarily long period, until wavelenghts change, interests diverge, sensibilities evolve independently. Or (and) simply, occasions becoem less. Yes, still we (might) talk to each other, still we (might) meet, stillk we (might) share with each other birthday wishes, and so on.

Once the communication climate optimum is over, you can’t easly reach each other anymore at the same depth level (which for the most cases is not that deep, anyway). It is in fact a very effort-ntensive and uncertain job to be able to keep in touch. And I mean at a level in which you can understand each other. Not just like sharing cat photos. Talking of which…

Earth ⬌ Graph

Angelo Pio Rossi — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One’s path is unique, and mine goes this way. Earthgraph is my entrepeneurial incarnation.

It is about connecting data, information, knowledge, and their cartographic dimension. It is naturally linked to geoscience, and data in broad sense. It also resonates, and allitterates with the motto of this blog. It is after all about humbly observing nature, and humankind. This blog more the latter. Earthgraph more the former. I quote it:

Earthgraph is an applied research and technology company focused on bridging the gap between geospatial data and contextual knowledge.

One Lustro later

Angelo Pio Rossi — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One Lustro ( /ˈlus.tro/ ), i.e. some 5 years. Half a decade.

A light beer Link to heading

The best marketing a pandemic, or virus, ever had (for free): SARS/SARS-Cov-2 changes names to Covid and, at least in Germany, to Corona, i.e. a light Mexican beer one sips with lime.

It turns out we all are somewhat impervious to communication, to connect basic facts with perception, versus reality.

Planetary Science

Angelo Pio Rossi — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Cold war, and boomers Link to heading

Modern Planetary (Geo)Science was born as a by-produt of Cold War, more or less. But was mostly flourishing in (western) peacetime - say - between the 1970s and mid 2020s. Like a lot of (pure) science, it is a peacetime luxury.

One can find around books (Bleeker et al., 2001), articles (e.g., Bonnet, 2001, Stevenson, 2000) or just for a start wikipedia pages. Yes, one can — and should — trace it back to Galileo et al. (see e.g., Burns, 2010, if not even yours truly & van Gasselt, 2018). But at the end of the day NASA Apollo made it start to be what it became.

Shoggoth

Angelo Pio Rossi — Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recursion: I once asked a local Shoggoth - an LLM fine-tuned with Lovecraft’s short story corpus, that somehow started communicating in his style - this:

" » can you please describe in the most concise way what a Shoggoth is?
In the dimly lit recesses of madness-inducing lore, the Shoggoth is a creature that defies mortal comprehension… A shapeless, formless mass of amorphous flesh and bulging, pulsing organs, as if the very essence of chaos had taken on a grotesque, sentient form. Its surface appears to shift and writhe like a living thing, as if reality itself was being warped and distorted by its presence…"

(un)glamorous

Angelo Pio Rossi — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What once, or for a certain time has been glamorous, fun, original, exceptional, is in many ways nowadays miserable, or ridiculous (for those not having to go thtrough the relevant misery. To be noted, that all of the items below are first-world, peacetime problems).

There is a tweet that captures the concept well:

https://twitter.com/PaulSkallas/status/1850438655468245079

(text pasted below in case the link disappears):

“Highways were probably amazing when they first built them. Imagine driving down the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Felt like pure freedom. Not that many cars on the road. Just smooth driving Now they’re full of traffic and its miserable”

Cha(lle)nge

Angelo Pio Rossi — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In “easy” times it does not matter much. When things are not going according to plan (along a visible time series, not just with a spike) there is a range of behaviours in people around you, in decreasing degree of apparent unhelpfulness.

Those who:

Try to actively damage you (it’s very few, if any, most of the times)

Do not help while being asked for help (variably sized group)

Do not care, despite some knowledge

Are unaware (majority, always)

Try to help (not many, and not for too long, see corollaries further below)

The fourth category is transient (but such status can last arbitrarily long), as it would, in all likelihood, switch to the second, or third one, once information flow is in place. Those seem to apply to multi-scale contexts. For example wrt solidarity (pandemics, disasters, illness, whatever):

Like on a plane, just with a lower carbon footprint

Angelo Pio Rossi — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A good colleague - and most probably any geologist would concur - always used to design figures first, when writing about geology. The visual appeal of the discipline, and the geometric nature of mapping, fits with the approach, and helps the description, and narrative.

In this case what is depicted below is not such a visual thing in itself, nor there is much narrative: It is just a set of four exemplary time series I have been provided, containing data on Carbon Dioxide (proxy of room occupation/ventilation) concentration in parts per million (ppm), in different settings. In the graphs green, blue areas are supposed to be OK. Hatched orange and violet ones, not. The reference value for outside can be found here).

Unix

Angelo Pio Rossi — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 1996 or so, Internet was via modem (tens of kbits per second…) And the initial use of computers was mostly to write assignments for early university courses.

In fact back then we barely had personal computers at home. When in the mid 90s we put our hands on some, we basically just sent emails each other (perhaps it was also cost effective, since flat call plans did not exist, and the information density of an email could have been larger than that of a call), as we did not know many other email users.

On bullshit and the search for wisdom

Angelo Pio Rossi — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Busting bullshit is a moral imperative. One cannot always bust every instance. For lack of time, or courage. Still, bullshit should be called out, because it pollutes discussion and opinion-forming, regardless of the tone adopted in its delivery.

This is an attempt, or, rather, an exercise, in that direction. A drop in the sea. And yes, I am also not immune from bullshit. It’s some time that on my bedside table there is this small (literally small!) book (Frankfurt, 2005). I don’t recall how I heard of it. But throughout the years I have been following Taleb, the theme has come up, multiple times. In fact, I realise there is a not so unextensive literature busting bullshit.

Path & blob

APR — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

And so it comes. Not quite expressive urgency. Not strict necessity.

Decades ago a collaborative (private) blog was a way to keep in touch with long-time friends far away (before that, it was email). Those friends are still there and we use other lightweight messaging options nowadays.

This is not linked with my main web page (2025: Well, ok, now it is), as it does not share its purpose. There is no commenting option, but you can drop me an email if needed. It is easy to find some of my contacts. An earlier, not strong enough, driver for this was actually to collect and share text that is not really easy to split in twitter threads. Another recent one is to somehow try and address some issues that I find relevant.

APR — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Not much here.

§ You can safely leave.

OR read