September has been intense: I started a new job (yay!) as head of content for a pretty technical company, added my first roller derby practice and Italian and German courses, and spent an entire week in Paris to onboard with the team. I haven’t yet settled, but then again, I’m only beginning my second week on the job.
Oh, also, I’m in Portugal next week for 3 days for a trade show and then back in Paris for another 3 days.
Then I’ll get to actually settle.
Probably.
What I’ve read / Texte
📚 Books / Livres
I passed the 200 books read in 2024 mark this month.
In English
- Fiction
- Olivia Atwater is fast becoming one of my favourite romance novelists with Half a Soul.
- Speaking of romance, this one is 1/ lesbian and 2/ involves copious amounts of food 3/ in Vietnam: A Bánh Mì for Two by Trinity Nguyen is a happy young adult must-read.
- Leila Abouela talks about women and Islam and losing everything you thought you’d always have in her beautiful Minaret, following a 19 year old Sudanese socialite turned deeply religious housemaid in London two decades years later.
- Was The Future, by Naomi Alderman, good? Well… not really. But it was extremely satisfying to see very transparent stand-ins for tech moguls get absolutely rekt, so I’ll take it.
- Non-fiction
- Shadows at noon: the south asian twentieth century by Joya Chatterji is a chonky masterpiece. In it, she retraces a century of South Asia through partitions, wars, decolonization and becoming a world power. What I liked most is that each chapter is a theme and runs through the entire century, rather than a chronological book. For instance, the food chapter touches on health, the partition, supply chains, the caste system, religious conflicts, beauty standards… it’s incredibly smart.
En français
- Fiction
- Riambel de Priya Hein suit le colonialisme tel qu’il s’exprime aujourd’hui à Maurice avec l’histoire d’une jeune métisse.
- Non-fiction
- Du sexisme dans le sport de Béatrice Barbusse était très intéressant et m’a beaucoup servi pour des ajouts à Wikipédia.
- Ma grande fierté, c’est d’avoir fini le montre Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme de Luc Boltanski et Ève Chiapello. On dirait pas comme ça parce qu’il m’a fallu 18 mois pour le finir, mais c’était extrêmement intéressant et je le recommande vraiment.
- Vivre pour les caméras : ce que la téléréalité a fait de nous de Constance Vilanova était passionnant. Plein d’amour et sans condescendance, bien conscient d’à quel point la télé-réalité a affecté nos quotidiens, ce livre est une excellente enquête.
🔍 Papers / Articles académiques
In English
- Florian Meier. 2024. Using Wikipedia Pageview Data to Investigate Public Interest in Climate Change at a Global Scale. In Proceedings of the 16th ACM Web Science Conference (WEBSCI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 365–375. https://doi.org/10.1145/3614419.3644007
📰 News and blog posts / Articles
In English
- A cute and loved-filled comic by Nate Stevenson.
- Blog Monetization, a true piece of art. Warning: scrolling gets more and more anxiety-inducing.
- NSFW on the Indieweb by Paul Watson
- How a tiny Montclair radio station came to play a continuous loop of one Boyz II Men song, on NorthJersey.com
- Why EU leaders should get off Musk’s X, including urinals, by Andrew Rettman for EUobserver
- Communal luxury: the Bathhouse, on Low Tech Magazine. I agree.
- Your company needs to hire junior devs, by Software Doug
- Stop letting right wing influencers cosplay as ‘independent’ media, by Taylor Lorenz
En français
- Les dessins Sisyphe et la tech de Grise Bouille
- L’acceptation des personnes trans progresse, malgré une offensive conservatrice sur The Conversation
- En futsal, comment la France est devenue une nation «qui compte» dans Libération
- 🔏 Spin doctors : ainsi font, font, font les marionnettistes des politiques dans Les Jours
- 🔏 Jeux paralympiques 2024 : les pépites histoires des envoyés spéciaux de «Libé», dans Libération
- 🔏 Dans le sillage des Jeux paralympiques, l’engouement pour la boccia se heurte au principe de réalité dans Le Monde nous rappelle que la visibilité c’est cool, encore faut-il avoir les moyens derrière, et c’est frustrant.
- Je vibe sur La Dernière sur Radio Nova, et je ne suis pas le seul. 🔏 On a écouté la première de «la Dernière», la nouvelle émission de Guillaume Meurice sur Radio Nova sur Libération (évidemment).
- La roue à livres de la BNF.
- La série Naturisme et Néanderthal de Grise Bouille.
What I’ve watched / Vidéo
📺 TV Shows / Séries
Started a The Good Place re-watch with my partner, who has never watched it. They turned towards me after about 15 minutes of the first episode and asked « is this the purgatory? are they all being punished? » so clearly this is going great.
Made a little bit of progress on Season 1 of The Sopranos. There’s one early episode when the story really seems to start, and I’m finally watching because I want to and not because I should.
Also kinda bingeing His Dark Materials because I forgot there was a BBC series. It’s real good if you’ve read the books. I’m not sure you’d understand anything otherwise.
Finally, we’re almost done with the latest season of Jet Lag on Nebula. It’s so fun!
📷 Online video / Vidéos en ligne
In English
Haven’t been watching much outside of this shitpost (thanks, Ben).
Also, this short video on Sinn Féin’s decline in Ireland and this one on why USSR bus stops were weird.
What I’ve listened to / Audio
🎤 Podcasts
In English
- Theo Germaine: the non-binary actor changing Hollywood, on LGBTQ&A
- The Tailors, by Solarpunk Prompts
En français
- Chaque épisode de La Dernière, par Radio Nova
- En fait, c’est quoi un média autonome ? sur Penser les luttes de Radio Parleur
- Sous l’emprise maoïste avec Julie Pagis sur Paroles d’histoire
- Pride de Calais dans Une vie à soi d’ARTE Radio
In italiano
- Specchio, servo delle mie brame, su Miti da sfatare
🎹 Music
For vibes : Alok, Mondello’G, CERES, Tribbs – LET’S GET FKD UP (seizure warning on the video).
From my friend John when I was feeling bad: Kalandra − I Am.
What I’ve played / Jeux
I finished my Breath of the Wild playthrough by accidentally falling into where Ganondorf is while exploring the castle as I was low on good weapons, going « ah screw this let’s do the fight » without a single heal, and vibing to a podcast while destroying the evil overlord. It was nice enough. Haven’t played anything (virtual) since then.
Where I’ve been / Lieux
Paris. It was nice.
👍
ndundu
