I like French, comics, books, podcasts, (board and roleplaying) games, biking, and trains. I try to stay organized and in good (physical and mental) shape.

Moi, j'aime le français, les BD, les livres, les podcasts, les jeux (de plateau et de rôle), le cyclisme, et les trains. Je fais de mon mieux de rester organisé et en forme (physiquement et mentalement).

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📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Star Trek: Lower Decks (Season 1)



This is such a fun show. I am not as well-versed in Star Trek as I’d like, so I’m sure I’m missing some of the jokes, but there are still so, so many of them. It’s bizarre, it’s a loving homage, and it’s really good.



(Now that I think about it, scanning for digits in a wall of tea tin text is like the brain’s natural regex, and I think that’s beautiful.)



Tea steeping times should always be printed in digits (“4 minutes” not “four minutes”) so that I can scan for digits on the tin instead of having to read through words.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'AI-Generated Slop Is Already In Your Public Library'



I get a lot of reading done through hoopla, but this kind of story is starting to sour me on the platform. https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-slop-is-already-in-your-public-library-3/

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Volume 1), by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe



John Siracusa recommended the anime adaptation of this on the year-end episode of The Incomparable, and the premise sounded interesting enough to try getting into manga again. I love stories that explore the mundanity of fantastic worlds—there are lots of things I don’t like about the Star Wars prequels, but Jedi Knights resolving trade disputes is great—and this story delivers on that. It picks up after a D&D-style adventure party has completed their quest and asks what happens next.



J’ai commandé un album de Guy Delisle juste pour ajouter à ma petite collection de bd francophone, et j’espère que cette case ne sera pas trop, TROP utile pendant les quatres années à venir aux USA.

image from



“Someday My [Chance To Sleep Deeply for An Indefinitely Long Time] Will Come”



Testing a new post-forwarding service for my POSSE setup. Wish me luck!



I know I shouldn’t back crowdfunding campaigns just because they touch on two of my favorite things (Franco-Belgian comics and the public domain), but this is going to be hard to resist.

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hoopla and other apps that make digital books worse than physical ones



I have mixed feelings about the digital library app hoopla—which offers access to ebooks, electronic comics, and other media that my library doesn’t necessarily carry in physical format—but it’s so dang useful that I keep using it despite some hesitations (see this post for some recent complaints). Tonight, though, as I tried to wrap up the introduction to the English translation of Jacques Ellul’s Théologie et technique (which I ought to just buy in French-language physical format, since its publishing house offers 5€ shipping to the U.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'AI Dungeon Master experiment exposes the vulnerability of Critical Role’s fandom'



Digital labor issues abound in the context of generative AI, but fan labor issues make me particularly angry. link to “AI Dungeon Master experiment exposes the vulnerability of Critical Role’s fandom”



I keep saying that I blog for myself before any other audience, but there’s a lot I haven’t been posting because I knew my POSSE setup was borked these past couple of weeks. I think it’s fixed now, so time to get those posts finished and published.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for XIII Tome 9 : Pour Maria, by Vance et Van Hamme



C’est méchant de dire que cet album m’a été utile pour combattre l’insomnie hier soir ? Bon, c’est exaggérer un peu (n’importe quel livre aurait suffi), mais mes sentiments complexes envers cette série continuent. C’est assez intéressant de revisiter l’Amérique latine, et il aurait servi comme occasion de critiquer le militarisme américain, mais pourquoi donc éléver un Irlando-Américain comme « sauveur blanc » pour ces rebelles ? Je continue à lire, mais je continue à me demander si j’aurais du me mettre à collectionner une autre série de bd.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 8 : Treize Contre Un, par Vance et Van Hamme



Je reprends donc cette série en lisant les albums que j’ai en format physique. C’est comme avant : J’aime l’art, et il y a des éléments de l’histoire qui m’intriguent, mais ce n’est rien de spécial.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Karla's Choice: A John Le Carré Novel, by Nick Harkaway



The book feels like fanservice, but not all fanservice is bad! Dan Moren recommended this at the tail end of a recent episode of The Incomparable, and I was surprised that I hadn’t heard that a new George Smiley story was coming out. In conversation with my partner later, she mentioned that she’d told me when she saw it in the news and that I’d brushed it off. That tracks: I had some trepidation about someone else writing in Le Carré’s world, but it’s quite well done.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 11), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan



I think I’m all caught up on TPBs now. It looks like a new one ought to be coming soon, but I might start reading issue to issue, because it’s just that good.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 10), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan



Strong return to the series after the major twists in Volume 9. It does a good job of continuing the themes of the series while still shaking things up—and continuing to deliver major changes.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 9), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan



Comics do a lot of dumb things to keep readers hooked, shake up the story, etc. When Saga does them, they work. I knew the twists in this episode were coming, but wow did they still land.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 8), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan



I say this about a lot of Saga, but this volume in particular shouldn’t be as good as it is. And yet…

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 7), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan



Sometimes depressing art is the best art, and I felt that way about this volume. Saga is violent sometimes, but it never glorifies that violence, and that’s one of its strengths.



After a few years of demanding more sleep, it looks like my body is following up with becoming a lighter sleeper, too.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 6), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan



Like with my first readthrough, I’m noticing that every volume is good, but some volumes are just a cut above. This is one of them. What a series.

📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Interior Chinatown



This was a fun show: trippy, clever, and metafictional. It departs from its source material in plot but not in spirit, which I think is a sign of a strong adaptation. It could have been tighter, and some episodes felt like they were stringing the show along, but overall, I think it was well done.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 5), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan



Still weird, still grosser than it needs to be sometimes, but still surprisingly good.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 4), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples



I suggested this in an earlier review, but there’s a lot in this series I don’t normally tolerate (gore, “will this marriage break up?” plots) but that still somehow works here. I also appreciate how the series pulls off cliffhangers that I actually care about rather than just feeling like they’re obvious.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 3), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples



This series moves quick and never lets up on the weird. I don’t know how it so successfully keeps me interested in bizarre characters in bonkers situations, but it does.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 2), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples



This series combines dumb and crazy with genuinely moving, and I’m really glad I’ve decided to reread it all.



When I went through an Esperanto phase years and years ago, my dad once asked why I was so interested in studying a language with no practical applications, but joke’s on him because I can follow dialogue in Saga way easier now.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 1), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples



I had been thinking about rereading this for a while, and there’s nothing like a transatlantic flight to get you to finally do it (even though there are two other books I “ought to” be reading. I continue to be amazed that I like this series—and how much I like it. There are so many things about it that shouldn’t work (at least for my tastes), but it somehow goes all the way around and back to captivating.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 pour Shenzhen, par Guy Delisle



J’aime beaucoup les albums de Guy Delisle, et j’avais comme objectif de m’en offrir un lors de ma visite en France. J’aurais préféré acheter « Chroniques birmanes » car je ne l’ai pas encore lu, mais en trouvant celui-ci, je me suis dit que je ne l’avais jamais qu’en anglais, une fois, trop vite dans une bibliothèque. J’aime bien sa façon de parler de son travail, sa vie, et ses expériences dans un seul album.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ pour Le français va très bien, merci, par Les linguistes atterré(e)s



Ce n’est pas tous les jours qu’on trouve un bouquin en librairie dont on a entendu parler sur Mastodon—surtout quand il s’agit d’un bouquin francophone et qu’on habite aux États-Unis. C’est pour ça que j’ai su que je devais absolument m’offrir ce petit « tract » quand je l’ai vu en visite à Colmar. Et je suis bien content de me l’être offert ! Bien que je ne travaille plus avec les langues, la sociolinguistique a beaucoup influencé ma perspective sur le monde, et ça fait du bien d’en apprendre un peu plus.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 7 : La nuit du 3 août, par Vance et Van Hamme



Avec l’album précédent, j’avais retrouvé pas mal de mon amour pour cette série, malgré tous ses problèmes. Pourtant, celui-ci (qui sert comme suite directe) m’a encore embêté. Le pire scène de toute l’histoire, c’est ici, quand on montre une tentative de lynchage pour Jones, une personnage qui est toujours capable sauf quand on veut qu’elle soit sauvé par XIII. Répéter des insultes racistes ne me plaît pas beaucoup comme divertissement (même si on veut condamner les racistes), et d’une perspective féministe, le fait qu’elle est en sous-vêtements pendant la tentative est insupportable.

most-visited posts in 2024



I started using the static site-friendly, largely non-creepy Tinylytics service in 2023, and a few weeks ago, I finally forked over the money for the paid version of the service. [EDIT: I’ve since cancelled my subscription to the service because I’m no longer sure it aligns with my values.] This year, I’ve become skeptical enough of quantification as a concept that I feel vaguely guilty about tracking which of my posts get how many views, but I’m also a researcher who understands the value of quantification, and it’s also, well, validating to see which of my posts get traction.

media I consumed in 2024



Setting up media reviews for my blog is one of the best side projects that I’ve done in the past couple of years, and I’m happy to be doing a yearly recap for 2024 like I did for 2023. In fact, I started a new review workflow for listening to radio shows, which feels like a bonus (and helps take away from my lower read count this time around). Before my 2025 edition of this, I hope to revamp my review posting some.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Tintin and the fascists'



As someone who once owned Tintin au pays des Soviets (but also sold it more out of distaste of the art than the politics) and who is currently rereading a less-but-still-problematic classic Belgian bande dessinée, I really appreciated these reflections. I hadn’t realized that Tintin was about to enter the public domain, and that’s exciting! I’m more optimistic that Tintin can be reclaimed from its fascist, racist roots than Werd is.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 6 : Le dossier Jason Fly, par Vance et Van Hamme



Ce tome est encore plus difficile à classer. Comme « thriller », il est assez efficace, les nouveaux personnages sont intéressants, et les petits retours en arrière réussissent à donner du contexte et à accrocher le lecteur. Je continue à aimer l’art aussi. Par contre, le traitement des femmes dans la série devient encore moins supportable. Connaissant quelques femmes qui ont éprouvé beaucoup de douleur à cause de la stérilité, je ne suis pas forcément contre l’idée d’une femme fictive qui éprouve cette même douleur pour des raisons dramatiques.