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. I’ve mostly appreciated them for their weirdness, but it’s been amazing to see how aware they are of other music and how they bring it into their own discography. This is also a beautiful example of everything being a remix—we ought to spend more time supporting that rather than constraining it.

Sad news. I had the livestream up and was hoping to watch the launch before going into the office today.

Looks like a fun local gaming pub.

I read Feed in high school and found it interesting, but when I read it again in 2019, it was amazing. This review gets at why the book is so good—and important. Maybe it’s time for me to visit it again.

Like the previous books in this series, I enjoyed this read even if it wasn’t the best book in the world. Moren continues to build an interesting world populated by tropey-but-fun characters.

J’ai mis un autocollant SNCF sur mon cahier pour le nouveau semestre. Je voulais signifier que je suis francophile et ferroviphile, mais comme je suis bien en retard quant aux préparations pour mes cours, j’avoue que l’autocollant peut avoir un sens double.

I saw this book at a bookstore on a recent family vacation and immediately made note of it. I’d read Robb’s The Discovery of France in college and really enjoyed it, so I was sure I’d like this one, too.

I checked it out from the library and then had to read it in a rush when I was alerted about someone else’s hold on the book. I ended up turning it in about a week late, but oh well.

I really should have been reading other books that I started earlier, but this one was too much fun not to start. Several weeks ago, I watched the Aardman-animated The Pirates! movie and I came away a bit disappointed. I had liked the books in high school, so I looked them up at the library, only to find this book by the same author.

The subject matter was really interesting to me—I’ve been fascinated by the social construction of countries since before I knew the language to put it in those terms. I had heard of some of these “extinct countries” but not of others, but I enjoyed reading about all of them.

Listening to the NPR audio adaptation of Star Wars emphasizes just how important John Williams and Ben Burtt are to making that universe work.

The more time I have spent writing web content, the more I have come to loathe WYSIWYG interfaces.

J’aime beaucoup la radio numérique, surtout parce que j’ai la possibilité d’écouter des chaînes radio francophones. Parmi mes chaînes préférées se trouve DKL Dreyeckland, une chaîne alsatienne. J’aime bien la musique, mais ce que j’aime surtout, ce sont les pubs. Normalement, je supporte pas la publicité dans mes médias, mais je fais une exception pour les pubs en français, parce que ça me permet d’apprendre un langage que je n’ai jamais appris dans un cours lycéen ou universitaire.

Twelve years ago, I spent a summer in Geneva completing an internship at the NGO Geneva Call ( « Appel de Genève » ). Being the bookworm that I am, I naturally grabbed a few books to bring with me. I know that I read through Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar that summer—I had just started using Ubuntu and was wildly (over)optimistic about the ideals of open source.

Thanks to Reddit and Wikipedia, I learned this morning that Cincinnati has an abandoned, partially completed subway system. Grew up just south of Cincy but never heard this until now.

Impossible de regarder une vidéo sur les trains des CFF sans fort ressentir l’envie de retourner en Suisse.

Kiddo starts at a new school on Wednesday, and I’ve been putting off signing the Acceptable Use Policy and Chromebook Policy because I want to read them carefully. I don’t know how much I can do about anything that I’m really concerned with, but I’m a tech researcher when I’m not being kiddo’s dad, so I feel an obligation to be informed and raise a fuss when something is fussworthy.

When I was a teenager, I would sometimes spend a weekend setting up Axis and Allies and then playing the better part of a whole game against myself. I got pretty good at opening moves this way, and I kind of wish I had the time to do this again once.

This summer has been a good one for getting back into tabletop roleplaying. I played a lot of the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG in middle and high school and have been spending most of my life since then wishing that I were still that involved with RPGs. I’ve compensated some by listening to actual play podcast: Total Party Kill rotates through several great D&D campaigns, the original Fantasy Flight Star Wars run of Campaign is so good that I’m listening to it a second time, and Penny Arcade’s Tales from the Loop campaign blew my mind when I listened to it a few months ago.

Malgré avoir grandi au Kentucky, je n’ai jamais éprouvé un grand amour pour la musique country. Ça m’étonne donc toujours quand je constate son influence dans la musique francophone.

Happily rediscovering Jonathan Coulton’s discography this morning.

I was worried this was going to be a gritty take on Astro City, but now I’m just mad they took the name of my favorite superhero for a different story.

Grâce à une épisode de Culture BD sur France Culture, j’ai décidé de lire (enfin) Corto Maltese. Content de trouver des traductions chez ma bibliothèque locale, mais il faut que je trouve plus de moyens pour lire la BD en français, quoi.

Wild article. We once knew how to do trains, so why can’t we figure it out better now?

Like the previous entry in this series, I wouldn’t say that this is a classic of science fiction, but it was a fun read. The worldbuilding continues to be interesting, the characters have potential, the plot was fun, and I enjoyed reading it.

It did make me want to play some space opera/space military RPGs, but I also felt conflicted about that. As I think about Community of Christ’ focus on becoming a peace church, I wonder how much I should enjoy reading books that make violence and warfare interesting (or consuming other media that does the same).