I turn 30 years old today, and I am happy.
This past month has been mostly about wrapping up everything before disappearing going on holidays for a month (and a half in the case of my day job). I finally feel ready for my trip − and my leg has healed enough that hopefully it won’t be too much of a problem! (That’s also why I’m doing this recap a bit early: I don’t want to have to think about it in the days leading up to the trip.)
Things I’ve done in terms of content included starting to migrate my 2001 2010 to 2022 blogging archive to this blog. It was part of a general thought process around blogging, which means I’m also closing down Un genre à soi. In the future, I think I’d like to stick more to « if you’re not going all-in, make it a subdomain − when it takes off, give it its own name ».
What I’ve read / Texte
📚 Books / Livres
In English
- Fiction
- VenCo by Cherie Dimaline was too forgettable to get its own book review on my blog, but was still a nice read.
- Sorry, Bro, by Taleen Voskuni, is a wonderful bisexual romance with Armenian-American characters.
- Non-fiction
- On Community was an excellent essay by Casey Plett.
- Software Technical Writing: a guidebook was a useful and interesting read by none other than James Gallagher.
En français
- Fiction
- Station eleven d’Emily St. John Mandel, découvert par un conseil d’Autostraddle, avant qu’un copain (salut John !) ne le mentionne dans un chat de groupe pile au moment où je le finissais.
- J’ai fait la transcription de Cyranette, roman de Norbert Sevestre, sur Wikisource. Je le recommande.
- Non-fiction
- Il n’y a que moi que ça choque ?: Huit ans dans la bulle des journalistes politiques, de Rachid Laïreche, était intéressant et instructif.
- Cache-cache bâton raconte la création d’un village d’habitat partagé catholique juste après mai 68. L’enfant qui y a grandi revient poser des questions aux familles des décennies après la dissolution du lieu dans cette BD (qui a vraiment beaucoup de texte).
🔍 Papers / Articles académiques
En français
- Gratuité des transports, comprendre un débat aux multiples enjeux, vulgarisé par The Conversation
📰 News and blog posts / Articles
In English
- LitHub ranted about Blinkist-like services. It’s Against Disruption − On the Bulletpointization of Books.
- Rest of World explains How Narendra Modi became India’s influencer-in-chief.
- Hamilton Nolan argues that Public funding of journalism is the only way.
- The Verge recalls the rise and fall of robots.txt and what it means today.
En français
Comme d’habitude : si un de ces articles vous intéresse mais est disponible seulement sur abonnement, envoyez-moi un message, je vous le file.
- 🔏 Ces influenceuses antiféministes qui réhabilitent le mythe de la « bonne épouse », Le Monde
- Toujours chez Le Monde, Intelligence artificielle, un accord de partenariat entre «Le Monde» et OpenAI fait un bon état des lieux des synergies (et points d’alerte) entre journalisme et AI
- Aux origines d’une « nouvelle laïcité », plus punitive, plus excluante, d’Orient XXI se repenche sur l’histoire de la loi de 2004 sur le voile à l’école (qui ne devait pas du tout être ça) et ce qui a suivi.
- Ces communes du littoral qui refusent de devenir des « villes fantômes », dédiées aux touristes sur Basta!
- Les mots sont importants se concentrent sur l’Arménie dans À propos de la question arménienne − pour un mouvement de solidarité international à gauche
- 🔏 Médiapart fait du debunking dans Taylor Swift ou la naissance d’un mythe économique
- Vert.eco se demande : La réouverture de la ligne de Bordeaux-Lyon par Railcoop est-elle encore possible ?
What I’ve watched / Vidéo
Not included in the subsections, but I watched the really great 2024 short-track speed skating world championships. Lots of unexpected stuff happened, with beautiful payoff for some skaters who had a rough seasons and lots of upsets too. It was one of the best competitions I’ve watched recently.
🎞 Movies / Films
Went to see Dune 2 with a friend. Part 2 paid off so well that it made my memories of Part 1 almost tolerable. Well done.
📺 TV Shows / Séries
I really, really enjoyed Season 1 of Our Flag Means Death, which had been in my to-watch list for ages. It lived up to all its promises and more − and I love how being queer is a non-topic in this absurd period comedy.
I also tried to watch A Murder at the End of the World. It was okay? I watched the first episode thinking « this is very slow and kind of bad, but I’m ready to give it a chance », but then I never found the motivation to keep going 10 minutes into episode 2. Not for me.
La meilleure version de moi-même could have been good, probably. I laughed exactly once during episode 1, thought « heh this is kinda cringe » about half a dozen times, and then just turned it off when Louis CK popped up on my screen.
📷 Online video / Vidéos en ligne
Took me ages to get to it but I’ve finally watched Sébastien’s 365 seconds of 2023, a project where he films his life for one second every day, whether it be visiting a new country, going to a concert, looking at a disoriented pigeon, or filling in administrative forms; at the end of every year he turns it into a single 365-second video.
In English
- Incels make the world go round is yet another deep dive on incels by F.D Signifier. This one is about why people become incels, how long they stay in the community, and why it means something to them, I guess? [1:39:03]
- Khadija Mbowe dissected Sephora 10 year olds and the disappearing tweens [29:24] with a lot of empathy. I really liked this video and how Khadija took the time to go further than the meme to explain why this is really sad.
- In the very uplifting We need to talk about « the ikea effect » [8:30], Leena Norms shares the joy of having a hand in building the things you use. Unrelated, but she also posted Unboxing the women’s prize for non-fiction books, and why we need it [18:45] that I also loved. Many of these books are now on my ereader.
- ModernGurlz published a wonderful and very thorough video on Rihanna’s style evolution: from Caribbean pop princess to billionaire businesswoman [40:06]
- Alexander Avila posted an amazing analysis of Hannah Montana’s guide to life under capitalism [1:26:12].
- Another great video essay is Zoe Bee’s Plagiarism and the end of the video essay [59:25], where she really puts words on why I was so uneasy about the whole plagiarism thing from a few months ago and where she analyzes why people cheat. As I’ve recently done research on why people start doping in competitive sports, this really resonated.
- Finlay Christie’s skits are often funny, and How American sports films sound to Brits [1:00] is no exception.
En français
- J’ai découvert Alice Rage avec sa vidéo pleine de seum (et de mdr) sur l’excellent Être fils de milliardaire : un fléau méconnu [22:17]. Bonus pour On a jamais vu Timothée Chalamet et Éric Zemmour dans la même pièce [1:18] tant que j’y suis.
- J’ai découvert Islamollywood : quand Hollywood adaptait le Coran [10:48] et ça donne envie d’y jeter un coup d’œil. Par KaleidosPop.
What I’ve listened to / Audio
🎤 Podcasts
In English
- The Fire These Times
- Erasures, borders and the afterlife of the Armenian genocide, with Sophia Armen [1:48:48]
- Obscuristan : Navalny from the periphery with Anna, Karena & Daniel [1:09:44]
- 🔏 Srsly Wrong: Simple Sabotage Field Manual [1:23:55] (message me for the file)
En français
- La cantine numérique de Brest : Données ouvertes, abeilles et démocratie, avec Samuel Goëta [49:45]
- Paroles d’histoire : Esclavages en terres d’Islam [50:41]
What I’ve played / Jeux
I didn’t really play any games this month. Sorry. (I am aware of the Stardew Valley update. I’m also painfully aware that I will play it for a hundred hours straight, so I decided to hold off until after the trip.)
Where I’ve been / Lieux
Went to Paris for a quick couple of days due to a Wikimedia training. It was nice. I stayed at Les Rebelles in Belleville − the hotel was really, really nice and very cheap for how good it was.