Jacobo Elosua

Content recommendations and inspiration

Recommendations play a big role in the audiovisual and written content we tend to consume. Some might be glaringly obvious –think HBO’s Succession or John Williams’ Stoner–, whilst others are more obscure –Ota Pavel’s and Isabela Figueiredo’s books, for example–.

With algorithms more and more present in how we go about everything in our daily lives, I usually combine personal relationship-based advice with crowd-based criteria to land on my choices. A dual tick approach, trying to merge qualitative and quantitative input from others.

What I find particularly interesting, though, is how those choices of what we consume inspire us in one way or another. Take Succession. Per Kurt Andersen’s take, the blockbuster series did something none of its prestige-TV predecessors had done before: in blurring fiction and reality in its script, it created spot-on commentary about the same dance of fact and fantasy in the real world.

I agree with Andersen. And, beyond that, I find that this discovery provides fertile ground to experiment with and bask in new writing approaches. Ones that can overcome limitations of old, opening new doors for narrative creativity. I have provisionally called one such door Nerga.

 

The Wound and Number Two

Three years ago, when Covid locked us indoors sine die, I started to be more methodical about my writing than previously. I have always enjoyed writing –fiction, non-fiction, in English and Spanish–, but attempts at introducing structure into a single work have ebbed and flowed since my late teens.

By introducing structure, I simply mean developing a sensible work-plan 
, finding a routine that works, and setting a bit of time aside every day –after work in weekdays, in the mornings on weekends– to resume where I left off. Consistently, every single day, without exceptions.   

This month, I felt, for the first time, that after that long spell, I had something that could be considered as a finished first draft. A book that could at least be shared with a limited number of people –a very reduced number of friends with whom I share certain interests, education-related and beyond– to gather their feedback and consider making edits, big or small.    

My goal is not –has never been– to approach writing as a career. But rather an activity that adds a dimension to who I am and who I want to continue to evolve into. In line with being an entrepreneur, someone able to produce work meaningful bridging the –now almost infamous due to its association with Peter Thiel– ‘zero to one’ gap.

I hope to have a more thorough update on where this little project goes in the end over the coming few months!

 

    

Las alforjas, grandes

En un año electoral, este además por partida doble, parece más oportuno que nunca el pausar y dar un paso atrás para obtener así mejor perspectiva respecto a dónde estamos y hacia dónde va el país. España, en nuestro caso.

Como en cualquier otro lar, desde Estados Unidos a Italia, pasando por Brasil, la polarización sigue subiendo como una marea viva. A diferencia de las que observamos cuando dos mareas se oponen, las vivas son las que se producen cuando las causadas por el sol y las causadas por la luna se combinan en la misma dirección.

¿Pero cuáles son nuestros particulares sol y luna en 2023? Por una lado, una izquierda que ha renunciado a ocupar el centro político, cómoda en sus cálculos respecto a que abrazando el llamado ‘frente amplio’, sin ningún tipo de escrúpulo respecto a juntar fuerzas con formaciones otrora estigmatizadas, ninguna coalición alternativa podrá desplazarla del Gobierno.

Por el otro, una derecha con dos cabezas desiguales. Una tradicional, carcomida por años de corrupción aún no purgada en el ejercicio del poder. La otra, de corte ultra, tocándose con la extrema izquierda en su oposición al ‘sistema’, y difícilmente convalidable con los estándares democráticos más rigurosos que rigen en Europa.   

¿Y en el medio? Nada. Especialmente, a medida que Ciudadanos ha encadenado los suficientes errores, parece claro ya, como para que el electorado esté dispuesto a otorgarle a la formación liberal surgida en 2006 el acta de defunción por agotamiento.

Frente a la gran cantidad de presiones detectables en el ambiente para claudicar aceptando que no hay alternativa más allá de una nueva formulación de la vieja lógica del bipartidismo frentista, a quienes creemos que ninguna solución real llegará jamás por esa vía sólo nos queda resistir.

Asumir, una vez más, que el viaje será largo. Con muchas etapas. Y que sólo quienes hayan aceptado, de mejor o peor grado, que las alforjas necesarias para completarlo han de ser a la fuerza gigantes podrán llegar a alcanzar el ansiado destino. Eso que en el pasado muchos dimos en llamar regeneración.

A unique oasis

In times like these, when the political system shows worrying signs of potentially crumbling down, with polarisation at record highs, old and new corruption scandals making headlines, and once-promising, fresh political parties increasingly cornered into near-irrelevance, reading Civio’s 2022 report feels like a small, tranquil oasis.

And it is not because its coverage and data-based investigative journalism is an ode to civic retreat or disengagement. Far from it, the organisation’s efforts to communicate its activity during the past year to its backers and the wider public is in fact a deceivingly optimistic call to reengagement. Granted, done in a different way.

Civio’s work conveys an independent sense of perspective. In my –quite possibly biased– view, it represents a systematic search for signals amidst an increasingly deafening level of noise. One avoiding partisan trenches, committed to finding out objective truths to raise the bar of our shared understanding of the common space we all live in: our society.

If you haven’t read it yet, here is a link to the just-published management report where you can reach your own conclusions.

Cobertura local en medios

Desde aquí quería darle las gracias a la periodista Sandra Penelas, del Faro de Vigo, por su cobertura en prensa de los progresos en Iris.ai. 

Sandra ha seguido nuestra historia desde 2015, y siempre ha mostrado un gran interés por todas las cuestiones interconectadas con nuestro proyecto, tanto las más directas como las más intricadas.

Como todas las veces antes, fue todo un lujo poder conversar con ella. ¡Espero que haya muchas más en el futuro!

Aquí, el enlace. 

 

 

 

 

Iris.ai's great progress

With the year drawing to an end, we were very proud and happy to announce that Iris.ai has been selected for the prestigious EIC –European Innovation Council– Accelerator, receiving both a large grant and an equity investment.

The company was selected among 78 successful companies from over 1,000 qualified applicants. The EIC Accelerator if the flagship program of innovation and startup funding in the EU, designed for scale-up companies developing the next generation technologies in strategic areas for Europe.

This is a great acknowledgement of the important and hard work we continue to do at Iris.ai, making scientific research more actionable since 2015. The world needs science –and the tools to use it– now more than ever, and we are tremendously grateful to have the EU’s support!

More news will follow in the new year, but this is as good a time as any to thank my co-founders, –Victor, Anita, your are both unique and incredibly awesome!–, all our current and previous team members, investors, funders, clients, users, and everyone who has made this magical journey possible. The best is still to come! 

European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA)

In praise of First Love

I cannot recall who or what pointed me in the direction of Ivan Turgenev. If I did, I could only express my sincerest thank you in return. From time to time, discussing literature, a friend will tell me that older books do not work for them. That they struggle to connect with their language, themes, or structure, preferring contemporary noveIs instead. I do hear the words, but my jaw drops, and amazement overtakes me, not letting them sink in.

Classical authors are like underwritten offerings. They stand on the shoulders of the passage of time. A judge not predisposed toward clemency. In those authors –starting with Cervantes–, I have found more pleasure than in fistfuls of more modern ones. Writers with whom I should supposedly have so much more in common, but who fail to impress in how they apply themselves to producing literature.

Turgenev is the latest such discovery. Isaiah Berlin was one of his many fans –Henry James or Joseph Conrad counted themselves in that select group too– and translated some of his work to English. One of the things that he appreciated most about the nineteenth century Russian novelist was that, of the problems he raised, he left the bigger part unanswered.

First Love is a delicious read. A stylistic triumph, with unquestionable –albeit ambiguous– moral relevance and memorable characters. A truly recommendable read, full of learned vitality. From an author who mocked the importance on the strenuous crafting of complex plots other national schools –like the English one– revered so unapologetically. Simply put, it is Russian literature at its best!  

 

Madame Bovary’s greatness

The lists of most reputed novels in world history almost invariably include Madame Bovary. Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece, which took five years to write, has been lauded for its literary realism-based critique of naïve romanticism.

Its publishing, in 1857, brought about a great scandal. The novel was banned on sexual grounds, for its crude depiction of how doctor Bovary’s wife, Emma, dealt with her romantic malady — her ennui.   

One of the work’s biggest admirers, Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, wrote an essay praising Madame Bovary for being rigorously and clearly constructed, achieving its ends through action rather than reflection. And indeed, Emma’s deep inner dissatisfaction, her inability to address her dreams and idealised aspirations, the lack of means to achieve them, are portrayed by the narrator through life itself, not visits to a virtual divan. Its duality is also characteristic, with so many elements repeated in the novel –two villages, two weddings, two lovers, etc.–, making room for both reality and deformed illusions in its pages.

The read is most pleasurable, offering a unique combination of elaborate narrative structure and restraint-based stylistic excellence. Plus, to evaluate it fully, one must remember its groundbreaking originality at the time.

Flaubert followed a precept: an author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. Today’s readers may resent the Frenchman’s superior-to-inferior handling of his leading female character. His treatment of Emma as a puppet so easily and thoroughly deciphered by him, the male author puppet master. I know I did. Other critics, however, have highlighted her rebelling against the traditional behaviour of women, finding an early feminist angle therein.

All in all, Madame Bovary is every bit as good as I hoped it would be. A highly recommended read to everyone with a taste for novels and their historical heights.

 

An author’s trajectory

Domingo Villar was a Spanish writer who prematurely passed away in May this year, aged 51. He had specialized on noir fiction. And very successfully so. His Galician trilogy –Ojos de agua, La playa de los ahogados, El último barco– has received a lot of praise from literary critics and the public alike.

I had met Domingo –Mincho to his friends– briefly, when I was a kid, during those long summers when many families from Vigo would spend long stints in Playa América and other surrounding beaches to be found in the generous bay where the city is located, on the northwestern coast of Spain.

In people’s teen years relatively small age differences tend to have a big impact. In our case, three years meant that I felt he lived in a different planet, befriending instead his younger brothers and sister. Then, years later, I was one of the eager readers who jumped at Ojos de agua, his first novel, and devoured it.

When I finished the reading, I came away slightly disappointed. Possibly a factor of the high expectations placed in reading a book with a plot located in places you know well, and by an author for whom –his entire family, really– you profess undisguised sympathy. I could not escape the feeling that, whilst a perfectly reasonable effort, with a beautiful use of language, Domingo’s first published book was more a minor than a major feat.

Then, the news coverage of his abrupt death whilst accompanying and taking care of his sick mother, back in Vigo, saddened me greatly. Besides the evident nostalgia in seeing a bit of your own past erode into an ugly sense of nothingness, I felt i should have followed closer his course as a published novelist. So, I read La playa de los ahogados and then, immediately after, El último barco.

The two feelings earlier described –longing, unease– quickly dissolved into a different, overarching one: unjust underappreciation. The sequence of three books follows a marked upward trajectory in literary merit, I found. Almost a factor of their escalating length –192, 448, and 712 pages, respectively–. La playa de los ahogados is a great novel. And, whilst noir is not my go-to genre, I will say that El último barco was as gripping, purposeful, and well written as you would expect any masterpiece to be.   

I find odd comfort, the type you want to celebrate, in concluding that during his unreasonably short lifetime Mincho grew to become a masterful writer of fiction. As, in some abstract way, I figure it should be the case when you add such honest dedication to the talented intelligence he always possessed. A befitting achievement for a person who was so thoroughly loved and will be so sorely missed.  

 

 

A chance to do right

I admire Carlos Alsina, undoubtedly one of Spain’s leading journalists. He conducts and produces the third most popular news radio show in the country, which also happens to be the one I have been following for years with quasi-religious zeal.  

I consider him a brilliant interviewer, and hardly ever miss his daily editorial takes on current affairs. Gifted in his analyses, I find Alsina sounder and more balanced than his peers. In my view, he bypasses the national plague of partisanship better than most — if not all leading figures in his profession.

But beyond all that, I consider him a just man. Someone accepting his moral duty to state the truth ­–particularly crucial in journalism, as in academia– without letting himself be conditioned by any negative consequences that could predictably ensue.

I admire Arcadi Espada, undoubtedly one of Spain’s sharpest thinkers. Unlike Alsina, I do know Arcadi well, from years back. We worked side-by-side for a long stint in shared attempts, each in our capacity, to do our bit to improve Spain’s politics –Ciudadanos– and journalism –Factual–.   

Alsina and Espada worked together for years in Onda Cero, the radio station, with Espada as a regular collaborator in Alsina’s program. However, during the summer Espada was summarily dismissed by Onda Cero’s executives. His sin? He had penned an article criticizing, somewhat pointedly, one of the country’s leading journalists –Antonio Ferreras– for his professional malpractice is the dissemination of fake news. The key to interpret the sequence of events, it seems, is that Antonio Ferreras is a leading figure of the larger multimedia group owner of Onda Cero.

To spice things up, I –and surely other radio listeners too– have the distinct feeling that Alsina and Espada did not have good personal chemistry cementing their more than probable mutual professional respect. All in all, it is not inconceivable that Alsina will not miss Espada and his tempestuous temperament much.

Tomorrow Alsina is scheduled to be back on air, resuming his morning radio show for a new season post the August quasi-national vacation period. In anticipation of that come back, yesterday I had a discussion with a friend who knows Alsina personally. Applying Chatham House rules, I will just say that we mapped several options on how the radio show host might address the Espada-related developments in the editorial segment of his program. They were more than one.

And yet, I can only conceive of one right way for Alsina to treat the dismissal of his former collaborator: tackling it head on, critically, drawing an iron curtain with whatever his company’s executives might prefer him to do, which would probably be to ignore the whole affair and say nothing.

Tomorrow morning will be one of those momentous occasions in which a single person can do the right­ thing, not the easy one, thus making himself –and all of us!– a little bit better in the process. We will be listening attentively!