This morning’s freezing bike commute has me dressing like a double-balaclavad bank robber with a love for fluorescent yellow.

Enilda is great, and I appreciate her thoughts here. link to ‘Public Transportation – Design Goodiness’

I love this theme tune, so this video was a delight to watch. link to ‘Watch how Peter Howell helped remix the 80s Doctor Who theme’

Apprendre à reconnaître la voix de Johnny Hallyday, c’était une étape importante dans mon apprentissage de tout ce qui est francophone. Jean-Baptiste Guégan (sa sosie vocale) pose donc problème quand il chante à la radio.

Quand j’étudiais le français au lycée, on s’amusait beaucoup à imaginer que tout prénom terminant en « -er » (comme le mien) puisse se conjuguer comme un verbe du 1er groupe—et que le nom Beyoncé était donc un participe passé. C’était tout bête, mais ça faisait marrer.

Over the past few days, I’ve been relistening to the One Shot podcast’s October 2018 Kids on Bikes episodes (which starts here). There’s so much to love about this six-episode series. I remembered enjoying the characters and the players, but it wasn’t until this morning that I remembered the perfect moment where one player describes the biblical Jacob as “history’s best angel fighter” and summons him to help a science teacher fight off a terrifying seraphim (which I promise makes sense in context).

Hier, j’ai regardé pour la première fois le clip de « Coup de vieux » de Bigflo et Oli. C’est une chanson que je connais depuis queques semaines et un groupe que je connais depuis quelques mois, et j’ai beaucoup apprécié le clip : Je n’ai jamais été un grand amateur du rap, et ça fait donc un peu bizarre de trouver que j’aime tant ce groupe. Pourtant, j’ai beaucoup écouté leur album « La vraie vie » car j’aime bien les paroles de plusieurs chansons sur cet album.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Lexi Lishinski, a good friend from grad school, to appear on an episode of her podcast The Unlistenable Podcast. To quote the About page for the podcast: It’s not called that because it has dreadful audio quality, although that may be true. It’s called that because you can’t listen to it, because I’m not going to release the episodes. This solves literally every issue that ever stopped me from recording a podcast.

Je n’ai jamais mangé chez Quick pendant mon séjour en France, mais hier, je me baladais virtuellement à Grenoble, et j’ai vu un resto Quick que j’avais souvent vu et qui avait été transformé en Burger King, et cela m’a donné une tristesse bizarre.

Love the paper tickets, and this makes me sad. link to ‘A tradition ends: Paris says goodbye to iconic paper Metro tickets’

Three years ago today, I visited a mental health therapist for the first time and immediately wished I’d done it a decade earlier. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself, and I can’t recommend the experience enough.

Yesterday, my spouse asked why my Apple Watch was named GTS Centaur, and I faced the difficult choice between saying it didn’t really matter and launching into an explanation of the 1999 space sim Descent: Freespace.

Guy de mot-de-passant.

This is a good response to Musk’s complaining about bots. link to ‘Not All Bots Are Bad, and Twitter Knows It | WIRED’

I think one of the cutest American customs is the little wave drivers give cyclists after almost driving them off the road. Looking at you, UPS truck.

My optimism about internet culture has been waning for several years, but I still appreciate a deep-dive into how rich and complex a given meme can be. link to ‘The Sad Clown Joke That Became a Beloved Meme | WIRED’

I knew my distrust of spellcheck would be validated one day! Seriously, though, this is bad news. link to ‘The Advanced Spellchecker in Chrome and Edge Saves Everything You Type—Even Passwords’

This isn’t the first article I’ve read comparing Q to an ARG, but I may still send it to my students next semester. I’m also interested in the book this comes from… link to ‘Games, Mysteries, and the Lure of QAnon | WIRED’

I am very much here for Matt Potts criticizing Hogwarts for not embracing the humanities and the importance of the humanities. link to ‘Belonging: The Potions Master (Book 1, Chapter 8) | Harry Potter and the Sacred Text on Acast’

Yesterday, two podcasts that I listened to while doing work around the house lined up in such a perfect way that I wanted to write down my memory of the moment. First, because I was recently reminded of the fantastic podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text (which applies sacred reading techniques to the Harry Potter series, treating it as serious and meaningful without letting it—or its author—off the hook for being problematic), I’ve been trying to catch up with its second runthrough of the book series, in the perhaps-vain hope that I can start listening to episodes as they come out.

Grâce à une conversation avec une amie (celle qui m’a donné une pièce de 5 CHF), je me suis souvenu ce matin de l’émission RTS « Gare à vous ». J’en profite pour découvrir Romanshorn en rangeant la maison cet après-midi.

Good article on an important subject. I may have to assign this to my students next semester! link to ‘Why Race Is Still A Problem In Dungeons & Dragons’

J’ai commencé à écouter la musique francophone il y a onze ans. Avant ça, j’avais quelques albums (Caféine de Christophe Willem et la bande originale de Le Roi Soleil), et je connaissais Serge Gainsbourg, mais selon mes souvenirs, j’ai du attendre janvier 2011 pour me foncer vraiment dans la musique en français. En ce temps, je commençais un poste comme « instructeur étudiant » du français à l’université où je faisais mes propres études.

Ma fille se plaint quand on écoute « La marine marchande » des Cowboys fringants parce qu’elle ne comprend pas le français, mais si elle comprenait le français, je n’oserai jamais écouter cette chanson devant elle !

Je viens de recevoir une pièce de 5 CHF (la meilleure pièce de toutes les monnaies du monde) d’une amie qui a visité la Suisse cet été. Quel beau cadeau et souvenir !

I loved the original book and hope to pick up the second. This was a good interview on how surprisingly many important things this kind of weird project overlaps with. link to ‘With ‘What If? 2’, Randall Munroe Is Back to Answer Your Impossible Questions | WIRED’

I’ve long written in my journal kind things people say about me. I used to think of that as vanity, but since recognizing my imposter syndrome and other mental health struggles, I think of it as storing up confidence for hard days.

I am very near the end of Wil Wheaton’s updated/annotated memoir Still Just a Geek, which I bought over the summer on a short family trip. I have lots of thoughts—most of them positive—about the memoir and may write a bit more about it once I finally finish. For now, though, since I wrote last week complaining about companies like Apple and ClassDojo restricting hardware and software to support their bottom line at the expense of users, I was struck by a short passage Wheaton included making a case for general purpose computing:

It’s been an existentially and emotionally tiring weekend, so the “person man” verse of TMBG’s Particle Man is hitting in a way it hasn’t before.

Je viens de payer une facture assez chère pour faire entretenir et réparer mon vélo, mais la facture annuelle juste pour le droit de garer une voiture chez mon travail coûterait deux fois ça. Je sors donc toujours gagnant.

This is a cute story—hat tip to Boing Boing for recommending it. [link to ‘The adorable love story behind Wikipedia’s ‘high five’ photos’](https://www.inputmag.com/culture/wikipedia-high-five-too-slow-photos-mystery-couple-solved?mc_cid=9a3b4e96f5

Hier soir, juste avant de me coucher, quelqu’un a posé une question sur r/French: Pourquoi les non-Francophones choisissent-ils d’apprendre le français ? J’ai vu la question peu après qu’elle a été posée, et j’ai dit la vérité : On m’avait offert le choix entre les cours de français et les cours d’espagnol. Il y avait plus de monde qui voulaient étudier l’espagnol, et j’avais envie de contrarier. J’ai donc choisi le français comme acte de rébellion.

A week ago today, my MacBook Pro suddenly stopped being able to communicate with its SSD. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I spent most of my Tuesday afternoon wiping everything from the drive and reinstalling macOS so that I could get back to work. While I haven’t kept a physical backup for a couple of years (I accidentally fried mine when moving back into my campus office in Fall 2020), I have all of my most important documents scattered between three cloud services, so this wasn’t too painful of a process.

Thanks to a recommendation from Boing Boing, I’ve spent part of this afternoon watching this amazing video cataloging “Every Music Reference & Sample in They Might Be Giants Songs”: Flood was one of the first albums I ever owned (I think it was beat by the deluxe soundtrack for Star Wars: A New Hope, but not by much), and while I don’t listen to TMBG as often as I ought to, videos like these remind me how much I love the band.

Sad news. I had the livestream up and was hoping to watch the launch before going into the office today. link to ‘NASA delays launch of its massive SLS rocket amid engine issue - The Verge’

Looks like a fun local gaming pub. link to ‘Jefferson St: Villain themed bar, restaurant, game club open | Lexington Herald Leader’