Mick F

Finished watching Stick S1. It takes a little while to get going, but it really picks up.

The sound design of the golf swings is a great motivator to play the sport again. The show explores themes of grief, parenting and mentoring, as well as the communication and frustration between Gen X/Y and Gen Z.

Fun fact: the show was created by Jason Keller, who is married to Andrea Anders, the sister of Sean Anders. Sean Anders is one of my heroes for his work on the Daddy’s Home 1 and 2 films, as well as Spirited.

There will be a Season 2.

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Lectures estivales.

Un peu de retard sur mes lectures.

Fini de lire : Feu, de Maria Pourchet. Lu sur recommandation de Nicolas Matthieu. Des qualités indéniables, mais un énième adultère bourgeois, genre un rien gonflant.

Fini de lire : Les Vivants, de Ambre Chalumeau. De gros défauts et de belles qualités. Des passages vraiment tordants sur la vie en prépa. Très prometteur pour l’avenir.

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Malcolm in the Middle’s Bowling episode is a masterpiece.

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Le week-end dernier, j’ai eu la chance de voir Oasis en concert à Manchester. Je ferai une version longue vite, mais voici le résumé rapide :

• Quel pied
• Richard Ashcroft fut une énorme claque
• Pas le meilleur concert d’Oasis que j’ai vu musicalement parlant (on se souvient tous de l’Olympia, puis du Zénith de 2005 non ?)
• Mais l’environnement (contexte, fans, etc.) était parfait
• Le feu d’artifice à la fin de Champagne Supernova m’a fait tirer une petite larme

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AI is becoming such a bland word.

It reminds me of the Skinner’s Sense of Snow Simpsons' episode, when kids are stuck at school during a blizzard:

— Marge: This is terrible! How will the kids get home?
— Homer: I don’t know. Internet?

You could reuse that joke with AI, and it would be even better. AI is turning into a vague term, a one-size-fits-all infaillible oracle and authoritative figure, used to address any issue we encounter. What a joke!

Don’t get me wrong, I do not underestimate tools such as ChatGPT and Claude. I use them daily, but I apply judgment to ensure they make sense for the task at hand.

But look at this segment from The Daily Show. “AI says” is becoming the new “studies show”—a phrase that sounds authoritative but often masks lazy thinking. If AI could not find a single instance of Donald Trump using “enigma”, then it must be true: Donald Trump never used the word “enigma”. Then the Daily Show shows Trump saying “enigma” multiple times. This is both hilarious and deeply sad.

Let’s buckle up and get ready to call bullshit on a lot of AI-authority claims in the months and years to come.

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I watch The Daily Show pretty much every day. It’s a good way to cope with what is going on with Trump. The latest edition with Jon Stewart was particularly good. The Epstein files piece, the bit about the cancellation of Colbert’s late show, and the gospel song finale were all awesome.

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Ours. Really nice lunch at a fair price.

Le record de la maison vient d’être battu pour le monde Cataclysm de Tower Fall (aka le feu d’artifice) en mode co-op : 7:29.699. Pas peu fier.

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Encore une compile. Voici Un Printemps 2024.

Françoise Hardy a les honneurs de la pochette. Sly & The Family Stone, The Magnetic Fields, Nada Surf ou encore France Gall sont au programme.

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Mike Davidson, writing about the fires that destroyed Pacific Palisades last January.

What I will say though is that if we want to avoid more catastrophes like this, collective action is the only solution.

I haven’t even mentioned the idea of human-induced climate change at all in this post, because it frankly doesn’t even matter at this point. Extreme weather is here, whether we caused it or not. Even if you believe, as some people do, that the earth just does this stuff on its own, it’s beginning to kill us at an accelerating clip, and that should be something we can all band together against. Right? (…)

Earth is raining calamities down upon us that should unite us as a species. Will we do what we did during the pandemic and turn against each other again? Or can we use this even bigger, spiraling threat to put our disagreements aside and perform the collective action necessary to maintain human life on earth?

The planet will be just fine without us. It is we who are endangered.

In Mike’s words, the fires were an “ever-present, existential threat”, yet they were not in people’s face enough to take proactive measures. The example of how Los Angeles fought smog between 1980 and 2000 is both encouraging and perplexing. We could mitigate and adapt to climate change much more quickly than we currently do.

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Fred Armisen joue le break de batterie de In The Air Tonight.

Ce type est un génie.

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Again, Letterboxd is amazing. Their commitment of web standards allows me to choose my next movie simply by visiting this URL: https://letterboxd.com/dirtyhenry/watchlist/on/favorite-services/type/stream/by/shuffle/.

This link filters my watchlist to show only the movies available to streaming services I subscribe to, and randomizes the order. My strategy? I just pick the first movie that appears. It’s that simple.

I like losing the context of when or why I added a movie to my watchlist. I trust that my past self picked these films for a reason. This approach saves me time and helps me avoid indecision.

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RIP Bernard Lacombe. Encore une belle une de L’Equipe. ⚽️

Notre retard se rattrape à grands pas. Après Un Été 2023, et Un Automne 2023, voici donc Un Hiver 2024.

Franz Beckenbauer a les honneurs de la pochette, et comme d’habitude, vous y trouverez quelques pépites.

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