I’d seen some of the headlines Masnick is critiquing here, but I hadn’t read the articles. I appreciate this critique and overview.

I haven’t read this in over a decade, so I recently decided to listen to an audiobook version and see how I liked it this time through. The overall story is excellent! I found particularly compelling the question of scientific (and technological) responsibility, and the creature’s railing against his creator at Chamonix in the middle of the book struck me as almost Job-like. I wasn’t expecting the Chamonix scene to resonate with me as much as the tech allegory, but it will also stay with me, I think. Maybe it’s my modern reader’s eyes (or general familiarity with the book, but I found that this time, I didn’t have a lot of patience for some of the extended expressions of melancholy or the “travelogue” aspects of the book. I also found the nested epistolary structure to sometimes strain my suspension of disbelief. That said, those are ultimately minor complaints!

There’s a great John Finnemore sketch that involves a ridiculous number of nested stories, and I’m thinking of it as I approach the end of Frankenstein (a novel in the form of letters sent by a man recounting conversations with Frankenstein, who quotes other letters, etc.).

I’m sure this is overthinking things, but I have a LOT of linguistic questions about Frankenstein.

Swisstory wasn’t awful, but it’s pretty clear it’s written for kids: Lots of playing up the bloody and gross, and not as detailed as I would have liked. I own a French-language accessible history of Switzerland with illustrations by the late Swiss cartoonist Mix & Remix, and I wish I’d reread that instead.

I only learned about The Sandbaggers last weekend, on an episode of The Incomparable, but I watched the entire first series this week—and loved it. It isn’t perfect: There’s too much 1970s casual misogyny for it to be self-critical in the same way that a modern show set in the 70s would be, and the brown face in one episode is also embarassing. Not setting those aside, I was still impressed with the way the show combined the bumbling hypocrisy of Yes, Minister; the self-serving internal politics of Slow Horses; and the cynical despair of Le Carré into a single, compelling show.

The last time I read Frankenstein, I got a kick out of noticing all the Swiss connections. This time, I’m amusing myself by thinking of the title character as a hubristic tech bro.

Fascinating read. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years… I remember learning the news at a Boy Scout activity.

Petite preuve que la technologie n’existe pas hors culture : Quand un site web américain n’acceptera pas un numéro de téléphone comme « valide » si les chiffres sont séparés par des points, comme j’ai pris l’habitude de faire. Faut des tirets, comme un vrai Étatsunisien.

First Gloomhaven session of 2023 yesterday. Tough scenario, and we might have lost either way, but my Leeroy Jenkinsing with a squishy Spellweaver certainly didn’t help.

Il faut une version de la chanson « Sacré Charlemagne » qui se plaint des responsabilités de la vie adulte.

This is dumb and gross, and another reason I’ll never use Spotify.

Franchement, c’est parfait.

Reading an actual Apple terms of service document can only be so interesting, but at least creating a graphic novel version helps. The sheer audacity of the project is most of why I liked this comic, but it’s also quite fun to see Sikoryak’s homages to different comics, always with a Jobsian twist. It’s weird, and I don’t see myself rereading it, but I think it’s great.

Just checked the Wayback Machine to see if my old, long-deleted LiveJournal ever got archived. It wasn’t, but I’m honestly not sure whether that’s a disappointment or a relief.

Look, I’m not a cinema connoisseur, and I’m sure this doesn’t hold up in ways that I don’t know. Conversely, I appreciate Weird Al, but I’m not the kind of megafan that would pick up on every joke. All I know is that this movie is delightful for the way it just leans into the absurdity and doesn’t apologize for it. I loved it, and even the dumbest parts made it better.

Seems like good news, but while I’ll be happy to join others’ D&D games, I think my preferences are locked into Paizo games and indie titles.

Hier soir, j’ai été sage en me couchant à l’heure. J’ai même réussi à vite m’endormir ! Logique, donc, que j’ai été réveillé bien avant l’heure prévue.

Lots of respect for Paizo for doing this. I think my TTRPG future is more in rules-light, story-first indie titles, but if I want something more classic, I wouldn’t mind privileging Pathfinder.

Once again, the more I read about this, the more worried I get. I also appreciate the thesis of this particular article: D&D could lose its status as the ur-TTRPG over this.

Glad to see more coverage of this so I can be more upset by what’s going on.

Il y a quelques années, j’ai découvert Thimas Römer grâce à un entretien sur le podcast « Le rayon bd ». C’était peu après que j’ai découvert ses leçons sur les milieux bibliques données au Collège de France. J’aime bien écouter ces leçons comme podcast même si elles n’ont rien à voir avec la BD. Ça semble tout réunir d’entendre Römer présenter Benoît Peeters pour des leçons sur la BD au Collège de France, et j’en suis bien content.

So this is the OGL kerfuffle I’ve heard a bit about recently. This would be a bad move by WotC, but I’m also intrigued by what the EFF has to say here.

There’s a lot I love about using Hugo for my website, but one of the best bits is that since posts are stored as text files, it’s remarkably straightforward to write a script to do bulk edits.

I’ve read this a couple times before, so I knew it wouldn’t be great, but it was on sale for a dollar at a used book store, and I have a soft spot for it (including its sequels), so I picked it up and gave it another go. I think this retelling makes big mistakes about Superman (believing that destructive fights and interstellar intrigue are what makes the character interesting) and about origin story retellings (gesturing to the reader and including shocking plot twists), but it also asks the important questions about power and responsibility that make Superman stories good. Likewise, while a young and somewhat edgy Clark Kent gets on my nerves, it is an interesting way of exploring the character as he might be as a twenty-something beginner.