Left: Oak trees on Colle di Ranica, Bergamo.
Center: A horse and a pond.
Right: A farm above Ranica, Bergamo.
Center: A horse and a pond.
Right: A farm above Ranica, Bergamo.
Duration: 2.25 hours - one way walking
Elevation: 505 m
Length: 11.4 km - one way going
Location: Italy, Lombardy, Alzano Lombardo
Burro
We had a memorable dinner at Burro back in April and decided to try it again for lunch. And we weren’t disappointed. We did the 3-choice lunch menu paired with a nice French apple cider, Cidrerie du Leguer.Burro is located about 10 minutes slightly uphill from the Alzano Lombardo tram stop. The Linea T1 tram runs between Bergamo and Albino, with two stops for Alzano.
We highly recommend a visit. Okay, so that’s the Burro part of this post.
Examples of dishes at Burro (Sardinian restaurant) in Alzano Lombardo. Left: Soupe à l'oignon, stilton, pasta sfoglia al semi di sesamo. Center: Fregola, spada alla marinara e cozze. Right: Controfiletto di manzo e pure di patate.
Part of the motivation to do this hike was to get out of the house and away from the news. The doom and gloom headlines - at least in the media we are consuming – are tiring. If we see another headline that includes the word “shocking” in response to a certain orange-headed person’s action, we are going to lose it. It would truly be shocking if people were ready for the shit coming their way and had a response ready.
We calculated that we wasted hundreds of hours consuming news (much of it, election related) over the last year. What do we have to show for it? Did the constant daily check-in of the horse race help us? We don’t think so. Yes, we need to be informed but perhaps in a different way.
No-News
Part of the motivation to do this hike was to get out of the house and away from the news. The doom and gloom headlines - at least in the media we are consuming – are tiring. If we see another headline that includes the word “shocking” in response to a certain orange-headed person’s action, we are going to lose it. It would truly be shocking if people were ready for the shit coming their way and had a response ready.
We calculated that we wasted hundreds of hours consuming news (much of it, election related) over the last year. What do we have to show for it? Did the constant daily check-in of the horse race help us? We don’t think so. Yes, we need to be informed but perhaps in a different way.
Three book covers: Partisan Nation, Nexus, and Why Information Grows.
.jpg "Croce del Boscone (710m) - Ranica, BG")
In the post-election weeks, we funneled much of our previous news-consumption (attention) to books. Here are a few that have helped us understand what has happened and more importantly have kept us from mindlessly consuming news.
Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era (2024) by Paul Pierson, Eric Schickler.
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (2024) by Yuval Noah Harari.
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order from Atoms to Economies (2015) by César A. Hidalgo.
Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era (2024) by Paul Pierson, Eric Schickler.
- If you want a good understanding of polarization in the US and a historical context, this is the book for you.
- There are lots of little gems in this book like this “A common denominator across the recent changes in state parties, interest groups, and the press is that they have fostered a decline in credible, alternative cue givers that in the past created pathways for voters to embrace policies or issues that cut across existing partisan lines.
- Harari explores how information networks have shaped human societies from the Stone Age to the present. T he book discusses how different societies and political systems have used information to achieve their goals, for both good and ill.
- To this last point, Harari talks about information flow in democratic, autocratic, and totalitarian systems. Thinking about our current polarization these lines stood out for me: "Democratic [information] networks assume that everyone is fallible, and that includes even the winners of elections and the majority of voters." And "Simplicity is a characteristic of dictatorial information networks in which the center dictates everything and everybody silently obeys."
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order from Atoms to Economies (2015) by César A. Hidalgo.
- An exploration of how information and order emerge and grow in the universe, particularly in the context of economic development.
- Key quote: “To battle disorder and allow information to grow, our universe has a few tricks up its sleeve. These tricks involve out-of-equilibrium systems, the accumulation of information in solids, and the ability of matter to compute. Together these three mechanisms contribute to the growth of information in small islands or pockets where information can grow and hide, like our body or planet.”
- We have been on an entropy kick. When we studied entropy back in the day, there was not YouTube to explain things in ways that books couldn’t quite do. Case in point, videos like Arvin Ash: How Did Life Arise from Increasing Entropy?, Arvin Ash: The Stunning link between Entropy, time & information | Science behind Tenet, Big Think: The physics of entropy and the origin of life | Sean Carroll, and Veritasium: The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics.
.jpg "Croce del Boscone (710m) - Ranica, BG")
Left: The tracks for this hike.
Center: Sign at Croce di Boscone.
Right: Descending into Alzano Lombardo.