Juan Manuel (@limonta)
Passionate about music, sports, and politics.
Melodies Beyond Dispute [EN/ES]
About nine years ago, I started consuming smooth jazz like it was an addiction —way too much smooth jazz. I traveled through Billboard's jazz charts, searching for and filtering new artists who con...
Reluctantly, Cuba Is Moving Toward a System That Could Let Innovation Flourish
Although it may be explained in other ways, the abrupt and highly representative change in the way politics is being conducted in Cuba, especially in economic matters, is a response to the severity...
¡Samara Joy es real! [ES/EN]
Hace un tanto que no tengo mucho tiempo para estar al tanto de los charts de jazz ni para buscar todos los álbumes nominados a los Grammy en las categorías relacionadas con el género. Lo último que...
The Challenge of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Cuban Higher Education
This is not a uniquely Cuban problem, but a universal one. Today, however, I want to briefly comment on the characteristics that are very particular to the context where I work as a faculty adminis...
Three Tunes Tuesday: Extraordinarios covers de inolvidables canciones [ES/EN]
Hola, melómanos. Hoy les traigo tres versiones de canciones legendarias, inmortalizadas por músicos que figuran en el firmamento como grandes estrellas de todos los tiempos. La primera es "Unforget...
What Do Claude and Kimi Have to Say About a Recent Report on "Extreme Poverty" in Cuba?
Claiming that virtually everyone living in Cuba falls below the extreme poverty threshold strikes me as an assertion so outlandish that it doesn't deserve the slightest attention in a rational envi...
Three Tunes Tuesday: Shoshana Bean, Pink, y Jon Batiste [ES/EN]
Si mal no recuerdo, durante mis inicios aquí en Hive les presenté a Shoshana Bean. Me parece una cantante descomunal que, sin embargo, tiende a pasar bastante inadvertida. De Sho destaco su expresi...
From API Crawl to a 3.5 GB CSV Pipeline
Yesterday I worked on redesigning my ForeignAssistance.gov tracker. The version I showed you last month, which worked against this official platform's API, was absurdly slow—there was no other way....
Ascenso y caída de Orishas [ES/EN]
Recuerdo muy bien, por allá por el año 2001, cuando unos compañeros de la Secundaria Básica bailaron una coreografía sobre una pista cocinada con ingredientes cubanos muy específicos, raramente int...
Upgrading my Cuba-related USASpending tracker
I'm conducting a thorough audit of all the applications I've been developing to feed my research, trying to integrate, link, and add functionality to them. Again, I rely heavily on solutions like D...
Promoted to Vice Dean for Academic Affairs!
This week, I was surprised by the proposal—or rather, the decided but carefully articulated assignment—to appoint me as Vice Dean for Academic Affairs of the Faculty of Educational Technologies at ...
A Look at the Recent Mathematics of Daily Life in Cuba
Yesterday, my wife and I pulled off quite a feat given the current context in Cuba. We left the house with only 600 pesos in cash—well under a dollar—and returned home with nearly half of that stil...
Cuba's Growing Problems with Cash and Administrative Price Ceilings
Last Saturday, I left home to replenish my food supplies. The result was rather modest, because there is simply no way for the Cuban government to guarantee that private vendors accept digital paym...
Is It Rational to Demand Economic Independence from Cuba?
I tend to be perplexed when some dilettantes in political science demand that Cuba become an economically independent country. That is, a nation capable of solving its own food needs and—generally ...
From Windows MiniOS to MX Linux: First Impressions After a Long-Delayed Migration
I had been working with a customized version of Windows, created by a Cuban developer who has been remarkably consistent in producing these kinds of builds. The stated goal is admirable—improving p...