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Seconda di quattro puntate. Nella prima ho raccontato di chi parlano questi numeri, cioè di un settimo dei tesserati, quelli arrivati almeno una volta nei primi cinque. Qui rispondo alla domanda da cui è nato tutto lo studio: da che età il risultato in gara dice qualcosa sul futuro? Quando ho cominciato ero convinto che a tredici anni non ci fosse niente da vedere. Lo lasciava pensare la letteratura, perché alle età più basse è difficile separare la prestazione dalla maturazione. Lo diceva il buon senso: un ragazzino di terza media che vince una gara Esordienti (così si chiamano in Italia i tredici e quattordici anni, gli Under 15 della letteratura) sta battendo dei coetanei con magari un anno di pubertà in meno. E lo diceva l’esperienza. Avevo in testa una lunga fila di campioncini di quell’età che poi non si sono più visti. ...

Questa serie parla dei ranking giovanili italiani e del passaggio al professionismo. Prima dei miei numeri racconto cosa la ricerca sa già e, soprattutto, di chi parlano i numeri delle prossime puntate. È lì che si annidano quasi tutti gli errori. Vent’anni di ricerca, in poche righe Al Mondiale juniores su strada ogni nazione porta al massimo sei corridori, e a portarne sei sono solo le nazioni in cima al ranking. Gli Juniores (o Under 19) sono la categoria dei diciassette e diciotto anni. Chi ci ha corso ricorda benissimo quanto sia difficile strappare una convocazione. Chi arriva su quella linea di partenza ha superato ogni selezione che il ciclismo giovanile riesca a mettere in piedi. Più predestinato di così non si può. ...

This project started with a question that has nothing to do with app stores. When I wrote the thesis, using generative AI was discouraged, and in practice that meant don’t. ChatGPT had been public for about two months, and nobody argued with the rule. Three years on, the same rule looks almost impossible to enforce, and harder still to justify. I’d struggle to find a student who isn’t using some AI help on a thesis, and I’d struggle more to argue they shouldn’t. That reversal, not the app store literature, is why I reopened my own work this year. I didn’t want to rewrite it. I wanted to see what a second, more sceptical pass would find in something I’d trusted untouched for three years. ...

Note: While I’m publishing this blog post in August 2023, I started writing it in September 2022, when I still was living in Tübingen. This means that many things may have changed since then, mainly prices, affected by last year’s inflation rates. However, I still decided to complete this post to conclude the triad of articles that I set out to do at the beginning. After one year as a student in Tübingen, I’ll try to share with you all the knowledge of the city and the surrounding area I gained. ...

Premise This blog post contains the full text of my Master Thesis, written at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and at the University of Pavia and submitted for the first time during February 2023. In September 2026 I reopened this work and reanalyzed the original data. That second pass found three mistakes in the analysis (none of them in the data itself), and is documented in I Asked an AI to Review My Thesis. The text below is the thesis as it was submitted, left unchanged. ...

During my stay in Tübingen (Germany), hiking was one of my favourite activities and I have to admit the surrounding area is very suitable to hike. Therefore, I created a collection of all the hikes I did and I also selected some of the best ones, which will be immediately presented as Top Hikes. Each hike will be presented through the Strava activity, which often also include some pictures, and I’ll also include a link to the Komoot activity, since it allows you to download the GPX file, which can be used to replicate the hike. ...

I created a collection of 36 photos that, in my opinion, best represent my experience in Tübingen (Germany). These pictures cover a period from October 2021 to September 2022 and were mainly taken in Tübingen and in the surrounding area, with just few exceptions coming from some other attractive German cities. The collection is entitled “One year in Tü. A Chapter.” and it is fully available on my Flickr profile. All the photos are published under the CC BY-NC-SA license. ...