In my history in January 2025
What do you mean, February has begun? I'm still not over the fact we're in 2025 🥲
Let's start with my ‘top 10’, the gems you shouldn't miss if you don't have the time to read everything!
#1
Longread – Everything you know about obesity is wrong.#2
Humanity – I stumbled upon this video recently. I'd already seen it, but I found it as touching as the first time, so here it is:#3
Copycat – If you liked The Disciples last month, you'll love Exactitudes. It's a photography project that has been going on for 30 years, documenting ultra-precise ‘social types’. Photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek spot people who share a dress code, a way of being, an attitude, that identifies them as part of a very specific subculture or ‘urban tribe’. It's quite fascinating to watch.
#4
Interests – Every two week, I read the newsletter absolument tout by Martin with a lot of attention, but I don't think I've talked about it here yet. You should read it: there's 3 wildly different topics everytime, topics I would have read about on my own in most of the cases, and I find it very interesting almost every time. Martin writes well, and it's a real pleasure to read every edition.The last editio is no exception :
Moi je veux un web un peu moche et bizarre, bricolé, sincère.(litt.
I want a Web that's a bit ugly and weird, homemade and sincere.)
#5
Tourist – I finally did a guided tour with Cybèle, and it was really cool! I did the narrated visit of Vieux-Lyon, which tells the story of Dame Catherine, the head of a Renaissance printing house. The tour is well balanced between the fictional history of the characters and historical information, so you learn lots of things but it's never pedantic or ‘academic’ in the wrong sense of the word. I'm very keen to do other tours with Cybèle, particularly the Gratte-Ciel of Villeurbane.Why Cybèle tours and not others? Quite simply because I've been following their work from afar for several years now, and I appreciate their sustainable and responsible approach to tourism. How can you show visitors around a city that's already overloaded with tourists, in old districts that aren't necessarily designed to accommodate such crowds, and in particular how can you show visitors around the famous traboules without making life impossible for the locals? Cybèle thought about it: The problem of Vieux-Lyon and the traboules..
I was also very keen to try out their ‘Cymoche’ tours, at the Perrache interchange and in the Part-Dieu district, but unfortunately they no longer exist, due to improvement work in these two districts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#6
Pomper – The Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA, litt. National Audiovisual Institute) published the Shadoks integral series on YouTube 💚#7
Typography – If you love typography, take a look at Sanborn Fire Maps!
#8
About time – I just emptied my Instagram account. I don't know yet whether I'll keep it just in case, for people who can only be contacted that way, like tattoo artists, or whether I'll delete it. Either way, I don't check it any more. I've also deleted my Facebook account, and I've stopped using Whatsapp (but it was easy, I was only using it for 3 or 4 people, all of whom I can contact easily by other means).I don't yet have the courage to tackle the task of de-googling (I have 18 years of email archives on gmail, and I use maps, drive and the calendar massively…), but at least I've taken these first easy (for me) steps to detach myself from toxic tools.
#9
Mastodon – Of course I'm going to talk to you about Mastodon - you're getting used to it! I recommend reading renchap's interview with Basta: « Mastodon, c’est un bien commun, surtout vu l’environnement médiatique et politique » (litt. ‘Mastodon is a common good, especially given the media and political environment’), and especially the big announcement at the start of the year: The people should own the town square.« Ce n'est pas normal qu'un service public communique sur un réseau
dirigé par un milliardaire fasciste »
Translation:
« It's not normal for a public service to communicate on a network run by a fascist billionaire »
#10
Clicker – via Baptiste Fluzin, a great clicker game 😊 Stimulation clicker- Perspective – Luigi Mangione, error 404 for the press, a brillian article by Arrêt sur Images (free access) on the way the media talked about Brian Thompson's murder, and especially about the way they talked about his presumed murderer. Terribly accurate and well written.
- Anthropology –
« A friend told me once, ahead of what I knew would be a drama filled family holiday: be Jane Goodall. Watch the monkeys interact, but do not engage. Hands down the best life advice l’ve ever received. »
- Evolution – Death of Bertrand Blier: Watching « Les Valseuses » and seing the rape culture. I discovered Les Valseuses about ten years ago, and I remember feeling quite uncomfortable without knowing exactly why, even though I liked it a lot. I don't think I could really appreciate it today.
- Cinema – Yet again a great video by Bolchegeek for L’Humanité, thanks Enwin!
- Urbanism – 20 years ago, Seoul turned a urban highway into a tree-lined stream with spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. The result? Humans took back their place in the city, plants and animals reappeared, and this beautiful waterway helps fighting air pollution and heat pockets in the city.
- Nom nom nom – Tested and approved, the airfryer tofu with a korean inspired sauce (vegan recipe).
- Femininities – In India, Keerthana Kunnath photographs beauty standard-defying bodybuilders (via Hellgy)
- Accidental perfection – Seen on Mastodon :
« the makerspace printer has been jamming a lot lately, so we decided to print a reusable sign for when it’s not working. it jammed at the perfect point while printing the sign so we laminated it and now have the best out of order sign ever made »
- Bias – This critic on the book How fascism works — the politics of us and them must be the dumbest thing I've read this week:
« While I found the information informative and very interesting, I also was disappointed by the definitive left slant the author took in the presentation of his knowledge. I really wanted to read a unbiased, informational look at the history, effects and basics of fascism. I don't feel that's what this book presents. »
We're screwed.
- Reading – I take this opportunity to tell you about my readings in January, with some good discoveries:
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- The lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes
- Funny Story by Emily Henry. It's a cutesy romance, based on the « oh no they were fake dating » trope, which I like a lot. I laughed stupidly from cover to cover. It's cute, light, very funny, perfect between two heavier readings 😊
- Green Dot by Madeleine Gray
- How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason F. Stanley
but also big disappointments:
- Macron et l'extrême droite - Du rempart au boulevard (litt.: Macron and the extreme right - From rampart to boulevard) by Sébastien Fontenelle: The topic is interesting, but it’s a list of facts and sources. It’s footnotes - the book
- Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano : A boring book about boring people who do and say boring things. I havent' finished.
- Happy Endings by Lucie Bryon : I loved Voleuse (litt. thief), but I really didn't like this one :/
- Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and other arguments for economic independence by Kristen R. Ghodsee: I found the tone insufferable, and the content rather uninteresting. I was expecting a lot more.
- Je suis leur silence (litt. I'm their silence) by Jordi Lafebre: Malgré tout (litt. Despite everything) is one of the comics that has made the biggest impression on me in recent years, so I went for it with my eyes shut… and I really didn't like it :/
- Other comics I read and didn't like : Operation Copperhead by Jean Harambat, En falsh by Patrick Wong, La tempête by Marino Neri et Mon gras et moi by Gally
- Why? –
« House owner: I'd like to break both of my legs.
Architect: Say no more. »
If you want some more, of course there's a sub reddit dedicated to this topic
- Knitting – This vest pattern is really cute, I might knit it as a gift for my mom 👀
- Conference – Great article by Jeremy Keith on the reasons that made him refure to intervene in some conferences. Shameless plug: Let's build better conferences together.
- Polyglot – Tofugu offers a method of learning Hiragana that has been tried and tested by several of my friends. If you're trying to learn Japanese, check it out!
- Rime –
« Why do people call it fuck, marry, kill when they could call it bed, wed, behead? »
- Music – ❤️
- Improv – How Dropout went from CollegeHumor to media powerhouse, a real good video on Dropout's strategy. If you don't know their shows, here's one of my favorite extracts:
- Banchan – I may well have two articles in the pipeline on cooking, one with a selection of typical Korean banchan dishes, and some less classic variants that go well with them in my opinion; and one with a huge selection of quick dishes and recipes for lazy days. As is often the case, I started these articles several months ago and haven't yet taken the time to finish them... In the meantime, I'll at least share with you my culinary obsession of the moment, les œufs marinésmarinated eggs, to be eaten everywhere, all the time, and as an accompaniment to everything!
- Economic domination – Housewives: the rude awakening. Fucking hell.
- To infinity and beyond – Atlas of space is exactly what its name implies, and it's just as cool as you'd expect!
- Video essay – Everyone but me is wrong about the Cornetto trilogy.
- Pavlov – TabBoo, a browser extension that adds jumpscares to sites you want to get out of the habit of visiting too often.
- Urbanism – Seen at the ever-excellent Not just bikes
- Baldness – The salary man eraser is balding as you use it. Unnecessary, therefore essential!
- Accessibility – A proof that paying attention to its content has a real impact on real people:
« I have encountered more image descriptions on Mastodon in 24 hours than I have in Twitter in a couple of years. Seriously. I’m not exaggerating. As a blind person, this means a lot to me. If you read this and you describe your images, thank you so, so, so much on behalf of all of us. If you don’t, now you know you’ll be helping random Internet strangers make sense of your posts by typing in a few more words than usual. »
- Portrait – How the climate crisis forced this young Bangladeshi to go into exile in France
- Typo – Via Pierre's Monday links: Redaction, a great font, with some great suggestion of use 👀
« the redaction font that has gradient variables. I love the idea. I think there is something to do with a news site or a personal blog where, instead of putting "attention this content for more than XX years and may be obsolete", there could be a degradation of the typo over the years. »
- Candlemas – Do you really have to let the crepe dough rest for 1 hour?
- Valve – cs16.css, a CSS library that should bring back memories.
- privatization – Qui veut tuer les services publics ? (litt. Who wants to kill public services?), a great video by Heu7reka and Stupid Economics for Blast.
- Menace –
« A hacker called me and said he had all my passwords. I got a pen and paper and said 'Thank God for that, what are they? »
- Death – Following last month's article about funerals, Annso recommended Féministe jusqu’à la mort : réenchanter les funérailles (litt. Feminist to death: reenchant funerals), beautiful episode of Un podcast à soi. Thanks.
- DIY – A cool project for a LED pendant that simulates a fluid
- Railfan ter – Four years after my first two links on the topic, I found a 3rd cool ressource on trains: A real-time map of passenger trains in the US and Canada.
- Design – On trying (and Really Failing) to Design My Own Book Cover.
- Nopity nope – In the series of useless-but-goofy generators, I asked for Let’s not do that, which offers half-spoken refusals worthy of the best product owners.
- Colors – Happy hues offers beautiful palettes.
- Cinema – Breaking the fourth wall movie supercut:
Funny pics
