Chaque fois qu'un média soi-disant sérieux remplit du temps avec un vox-pop pour éviter d'avoir à diffuser une analyse pertinente, un ange reçoit un coup de pelle dans le front.
Writer and adjunct professor of history. Lapsed game developer, TV personality and computer scientist. FR/EN Auteur et chargé de cours en histoire. Défroqué de l'informatique, du développement de jeux et de la télévision.
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Chaque fois qu'un média soi-disant sérieux remplit du temps avec un vox-pop pour éviter d'avoir à diffuser une analyse pertinente, un ange reçoit un coup de pelle dans le front.
And both of them feature really odd hands for some reason.
I started out as a software engineer. I switched to video game design, then TV, then academia, then novel writing, i.e., the definition of a steady downhill climb. Your kid is doing you a favor by skipping the middle men. (And if they write as compellingly as you do, they have a shot.)
Rodger Brulotte on the French broadcast, after Little inexplicably tried to field the first dribbler barehanded: "That's why they give you a glove."
If a Republican got hit with a pie in the face after every mass shooting, the United States would have strict pie control laws by Friday.
"Ce n’est pas pour rien que 75 % des chercheurs américains (sondage de Nature) disent vouloir trouver du boulot à l’étranger." Cette moronisation nous guette ici aussi. Soyons intransigeants envers les politiciens qui courtisent le vote de notre moron intérieur. www.lapresse.ca/internationa...
Okay, hear me out. A Lord of the Rings remake, but with these two taking the One Ring to Mordor;
Yep. Tied 1-1 in the ninth, Hoffman comes in and gives up three runs on a pair of homeruns, a double and (I think) a walk. His ERA is now above 5.00.
Me souviens pas de celui-là. Mais un des gars de ZZ Top avait un rôle récurrent en tant que père d'un des personnages principaux dans la série Bones et ça me rendait joyeux.
RFK Jr looks like he’s been sampling the diseases at the CDC
Rammstein in Vin Diesel's XXX. Epic and funny.
Life in 2025:
It's both. Rich, deep, intricate, sometimes infuriatingly slow. But since you know the outcome in the first five minutes, it doesn't need to be a page turner. Well worth it.
President Truth?
stop rattling the investors people!
Baptism by Gatorade was declared anathema at the Council of Electrolyte in 326 AD and again in a Papal Red Bull by Pope Liquid I.V. in 1534 AD, during the Powerade Reformation. Everyone knows this. So sad seeing these ancient heresies rearing their ugly heads
No, but 6-7 of the other guys in MN's starting lineup are, which is why you pitch around him, walk him every time if you have to, and dare the others to touch the ball.
Si la job était moins payante, elle attirerait moins d'arrivistes et il faudrait se contenter de gens dévoués au bien public. Ceci explique peut-être cela.
On the plus side, Lauer may have just solved that weird six man rotation conundrum by giving up 142 home runs to a AA team. But on the minus side... Yikes, has this game been ugly so far.
Ruin a book by adding Tom Clancy's to the title Tom Clancy's Malleus Maleficarum
He's about as reliable as a week-old Trump promise, but when he's on, he's on. Let's keep him in the bullpen tonight, though.
They say that like it's a bad thing.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Same reason we puny humans stop drinking coffee at 7pm?
did you know if you took a person's bones and laid them end to end in a straight line that'd fucking kill them don't do that bones are for INSIDE
Thou shalt not let a racist fascist rapist pedophile become a dictator and ruin all your lives.
Wow, theaters are so much more interesting in Toronto! (I went to see a musical this week. No hidden gays under the seats, unfortunately. However, there were several in our party and, statistically speaking, there must have been at least a couple on stage. Does that count?)
Whichever I get my grubby hands on next.
Et les files d'attente pour aller faire pipi sur sa tombe.
That's as good a reason as any, I suppose. (I extracted my very last conference paper from my job docs's research plan and never looked at it again. In retrospect, not the best use of my time on either front, but I was disgustingly hopeful at the time.)
Compromise solution: hold out on the docs until someone actually posts a job you can reasonably apply for. Would have saved me a ton of wasted effort since nobody ever did. 🤷♂️
If you make a mistake 83% of the time the mistake is what you wanted
Poutine passe *trois heures* aux Zétats et Trump se sent obligé d'assaisonner les fruits de mer au polonium pour qu'il se sente chez lui?
I’m gonna say armed troops from red states descending on a blue city is just a few inches — or maybe one exchange of gunfire — short of a civil war’s opening stages.
Montréal in 2027 Worldcon Bid Wins Site Selection Vote file770.com/montreal-in-...
The rates paid to freelance writers have not increased since the 1970s. Many PhD graduates will find zero tenure-track academic jobs to apply for in their area(s) of expertise. Even in STEM. If you sign a contract with a Big 5 publisher today, your book is unlikely to be released until late 2027.
Sweet mother of gods, Alejandro Kirk just stole a base! #bluejays
5. I email with my mother. 6. I won two games on Jeopardy 7. I weigh twice as much as my father ever did, while eating half as much 8. I finished writing my first novel two days ago 9. That girl I just met, who's way, way out of my league? We're still together 35 years later 10. I'm happy
1. I would become a minor celebrity in the field of game development 2. Would give it all up to become a TV writer and actor 3. Would give all of THAT up to earn a PhD at 48. 4. Though I majored in computer science, said PhD (along with my second master's) is in history.
I only did pizza for nine years, but after that (relatively) short time I got so used to the feel of dough that I could judge temperatures within two degrees by hand, nail weights without a scale, and get a full pie from phone to oven in twenty seconds. All labor is skilled labor.
Excellente synthèse de la situation actuelle. 👇
Increase bands: Pet Shop Men Sonic Old Age Toad the Dripping Wet Sprocket V2 F Street Band
Il y a bien longtemps que je n'ai plus assez de plaisir avec l'informatique pour jouer avec des trucs comme Linux, malheureusement.
Ça va être chouette dans les bureaux à aire ouverte, en présentiel obligatoire tassés-tassés... "Taisez-vous tout le monde, j'essaie de dicter un courriel!"
Every convention should have a guest of dishonor who goes around behaving disgracefully and causing harmless amiable mayhem
I got an 84 ("Woeful") and the damned thing won't even acknowledge the existence of the fount of misery that was the Expos.
I got an 84 rating, which falls within the Woeful category, and the damned thing won't even let me add the Expos to my portfolio of misery.
Slightly diminish a band: Copper Maiden The Rolling Pebbles Taylor Fleet-of-Foot Somewhat Unusual Crüe U1 Princeling
Despite the lengthy birthing process, both baby and father are doing well. The PDF will be delivered to the beta readers within a matter of hours; I will make a final run of edits based on their comments by the end of October, after which... Who knows?
Its gestation required 1,253 hours of work over 32 months, with a monthly average that grew steadily over time as I wound down other aspects of my career. (Yes, we freelancers keep track of everything. That's just the way it is.)
So... This happened. I have committed a novel. UNCONQUERED MAGIC (working title) weighs in at 44 chapters, including an epilogue, as well as 23 interludes, for a slightly pudgy total of 95 000 words. #BookSky
Malgré la durée de l'accouchement, bébé et papa se portent bien. Le PDF fraîchement compilé partira chez les lecteurs bétas dans les prochaines heures. J'effectuerai une dernière passe de révisions en fonction de leurs commentaires, quelque part d'ici la fin octobre. Après quoi... On verra.
(Oui, nous comptabilisons tout, nous les pigistes; que voulez-vous, c'est comme ça.)
Ça y est: j'ai commis un roman. UNCONQUERED MAGIC pèse 44 chapitres, incluant l'épilogue, ainsi que 23 interstitiels, pour un total d'un peu plus de 95 000 mots. Sa gestation a requis 1 253 heures de travail réparties sur 32 mois.
Je portais le mien aussi, ce matin. Personne ne m'a interpelé. Peut-être avais-je l'air trop méchant.
The Godfather. I was about nine.
Ig Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine incoming!
“the second Trump administration has established a more enduring truth about the United States: It is no longer a country that keeps its agreements. Mr. Trump has violated the deal he himself struck in his first term.”
Comment la cour de John Roberts a miné la démocratie américaine richardhetu.com/2025/08/10/c...
usually if you ask experts why an empire fell they’ll say it’s nuanced and multifaceted, so i think it’s kind of cool that with America future historians will get to just say like “oh they took the idiot train to moronsville”
The world-building is astonishing. And delivered in doses of just the right size at the right time. Masterful.
John Wick. The world-building, the gun-fu, the secondary characters: solid all around. And he owns that film.
He's got a low bridge to sell you. Everybody down!
Ah, the price of glory... Good luck staying focused, then!
Just spend a day or two staring at the numbers. You've earned it!
A lot of people don’t realize that the New Deal was successful because Franklin D. Roseeneah was in office for four centuries
My goto is to ask LLMs how many states have R in their name. They always fail. GPT 5 included Indiana, Illinois, and Texas in its list. It then asked me if I wanted an alphabetical highlighted map. Sure, why not.
What are the readings today?
If teaching (again, defined expansively) wasn't so vital, our temu-brand fascists wouldn't be so obsessed with destroying the places where its happening. Don't let them take our agency. And don't let our disciplinary orgs and prominent voices within them overlook and erase our voices and work.
"The friends you make here will be your brothers for life. You'll kill for each other. And provide alibis." --Gomez Addams, "Wednesday," season 2, episode 1.
They keep asserting they're going to put AI in everything, including critical, dangerous systems. Meanwhile, AI is like, "sure, eat those yard mushrooms, the word strawberry has 88 Rs, I'm Mecha Hitler, here's Taylor Swift naked when you didn't even ask for it and she has eleven fingers lol"
Canadians overwhelmingly support a strong stance even if there are economic costs. Carney's weakness not only betrays his election promises but it sends all the wrong signals.
And the use of generative "A.i." to create images for historical work is ENTIRELY UNETHICAL. Generative "A.i." INVENTS DETAILS. Put that garbage in your books and lectures and you literally FALSIFY THE HISTORICAL RECORD. You destroy knowledge and destroy your own field. Shame, shame, shame.
I see we've reached the "The president is walking around on the roof while ranting about crazy bullshit and everyone will pretend this is totally normal" phase of the fall of America. Never forget and never forgive the people who voted for this demented, tyrannical, confused, cruel, evil, idiot.
This will forever be the most amazing email.
☝🏻I'll see your Hearst and raise you the press of the 18th and 19th centuries, most of which was explicitly partisan, sometimes murderously so. Heck, Frederick the Great was known to inject fake news in the German press--and Louis XIII even wrote in the French Gazette himself from time to time.
Star Trek: First Contact, opening night, when the alien visitors land at Zephram Cochran's camp and reveal themselves to be Vulcans. You would have thought we had just won the Super Bowl in overtime.
Anyway, the point of all this, other than laughing at ChatGPT, is as follows: If you're arguing with someone who is over-impressed by the capacity of these bots, I think an effective counter is to have them ask questions about a topic *they know a lot about*.
If Enter Sandman is too much of a cliché, I'd settle for Bark at the Moon or Iron Maiden's Hallowed be thy Name. (But in all likelihood, I'd hit my ceiling as a fifth inning mop-op spacialist.)
I'm so tired of hearing that we need to "teach our students how to use AI" when the thing they most need to use it is a critical-thinking skill set that can only be acquired by NOT using it. I'm tired of hearing that it's inevitable. I'm tired.
I dunno. I can think of at least one current government official who, through his own personal actions, has been shooting the crime rate up into the stratosphere.
"Majeures" c'est un bien grand mot, compte tenu de ce qui reste dans le club après la grande liquidation d'hier... Pauvre gars, j'espère qu'il a le moral solide.
As a long-suffering Montreal Expos fan, who experienced this kind of thing pretty much every year until they finally bailed out of town: no, that it is not good. But some minor leaguers who'll never sniff the majors again will earn nice paychecks for two months, which isn't terrible?
The 1950s-era passenger ship ss Rotterdam, in Rotterdam (obviously). The machine room was amazing. So was the indoor swimming pool in the lower decks. Here's a taste:
This is true. If anyone tries to take my emdashes, I'll stab them. With the emdashes.
"Unnoticed" is such a NYT way of saying "covered up".
I wrote elsewhere that I spent 3 years on the tenure track job market (the third doesn't really count because it was the pandemic, but whatever) and never saw one job in my areas of expertise *to apply for*. If this guy applied to 'countless' jobs, his problem wasn't DEI: it's that he's a spammer.
The jokes just write themselves, don't they?
I spent 3 years on the tenure track job market (the third doesn't really count because it was the pandemic and nobody hired, but whatever) and never saw a single job in my areas of expertise *to apply for*. If this guy applied to 'countless' jobs, his problem wasn't DEI: it's that he's a spammer.
This isn't a list of jobs that A.I. can easily replace. It's a list of jobs that techno fascists don't think are worthwhile or meaningful and that they want to eliminate. They don't want humans to try to make sense of the world, they want us to believe whatever we're told.
I feel I have a robust set of alternatives for making people want to punch me in the face
Same. Worth it.
isn't that his default setting?
FWIW, I've read a few papers that referred to "le flâneur" as a uniquely parisian phenomenon in the 18th century. No references handy but I think one of them may have been by Laurent Turcot. Might solve your problem by the wayside?
Can a food item induce multiple simultaneous heart attacks? Tune in and find out!
Can a food item induce multiple simultaneous heart attacks? Tune in and find out!
AFAIK, the word was often used as a synonym for "flâneur" (stroller if the people are walking around aimlessly, loafer if they're mostly idle.)
As a computer science major, I took classes in astronomy, biochemistry, art history and history. Three decades later, I earned my PhD... in history.
Excited to be returning to the Star Trek universe as Captain Sulu in the new original podcast series, Star Trek: Khan! Star Trek: Khan premieres on Star Trek Day, September 8. Follow the series wherever you get your podcasts today! link.podtrac.com/star-trek-khan
