Because this is one of my favourite topic to discuss, I found this remark by Tony (who is currently having fun / working hard at SXSW) to be quite interesting:

“This thing that im in, this sxsw thing, is not just about the future its about the present. there were two big huge keynotes over the last two days. the first was on sunday with the twentysomething yr old founder of facebook who was offered a half billion for his site and said no and was offered over a billion for his shit and said ha and today his site is allegedly worth 15 billion dollars and he still isnt selling out.

gen y taking a chapter outta the book of gen x which is fuck you and your fucking money.”

Funny since I am still a sucker for half-understanding a generation via clichés relayed by the media, and Gen X to me still is about slackers. But it also is about a whole generation which didn’t quite get and feared the transition between the late 90s official way of doing business and the so-called revolution that ensued.

Now let it be said that I don’t doubt Mark Zuckerberg will wait and capitalise on Facebook before finally letting it go (who wouldn’t care about the money?) but to be honest, why would he sell it right now?

When the Youtube founders decided to finally sell their product to Google, part of me thought that it was too early for them to do so. But hey, with 1.65 billion in their pockets, I’m not sure that the Gen Y is not about the money, as Tony suggested. As people pointed out at the time, “if I had sold my company for a billion, I would probably be would have uploaded a video showing myself and work sporting a shit-eating grin on my site, too”.

Finally, someone understood how to successfully release music online - and under a Creative Commons license, no less. For some reason if feels way more natural than Radiohead’s first try. It might be because Reznor produced Saul Williams’ latest album, which was released in the exact same way (albeit with less options). Mark - always the devil’s advocate, but most often than not right [argh] - pointed that the decision is easy for a multi-platinum artist, but i can see how this would also work for smaller bands too. Thoughts?

me: Saw the NIN? If you buy the deluxe package you get an LP signed by Trent - awesome. It’s way more clever than radiohead to give people options like that - also it’s released on a CC license. Love Trent.

mark: Yeah, but it’s all stupid… It’s all well and good if you’re a multi platinum selling rockstar who is already a millionaire, but it hardly helps new bands.

me: Well, duh - but his job is not to help new bands. Also, saul williams is not massive, and he did the same.

mark: It was with trent reznor though!

me: Yeah but even so - it’s not the entire cd - The new NIN is 9 free tracks only. Small bands can use this model: release an LP of 5 free songs, have people download the rest for 5 quid, they’d still earn more than with a contract.

Photo via.

In an ideal world, this is where I’d be on April 18-20. Absolutely fascinating. I would love to go, anyone willing to come along?

Look, I don’t mean to turn this blog into a girly frenzy, nor do I like to advertise anything, but Etsy truly is the best place to shop in the entire world. I don’t know if it’s because I really like the idea of having an alternative place to buy from independent sellers, or because I know that most of the items are handmade and one of a kind but in the past year or so I had to watch myself and not buy every single item tagged as “steampunk”.

This is my latest purchase from AlliesAdornments - at 6 pounds, I consider it a bargain.
Notice that Etsy is also about three hundred times better than ebay at using their members for promotional content, not to mention they even have a journal showcasing DYIers’ work and many articles about lots of interesting topics. After their incomphrensible new rules and the mess/boycott that insued, maybe ebay could sit and learn.

Well, if you ask me she may sound like a nutter novelist, but her remarks are fair enough:

I don’t mind paying my tax, I want hospitals and schools, and police and firemen, and street lighting and rubbish collection, but I minded funding the Iraq war, and I mind funding fiscal incompetence. We are getting to the point where we can’t afford the things we need – like schools and hospitals and social care, because all our money is being spent on buying bombs and bailing out banks,
That’s masculinity gone mad – get the girls in as fast as possible.

Lord help me – I have reverted to capital letters and BOLD. A sure sign of the nutter at the typewriter.

A while ago Jeanette Winterson wrote a good editorial for the Guardian food - defending organic products, local farming, etc. More interestingly, she not only talked about quality, but proximity: little shops are a pleasure to shop at, a trip to while Tesco is not really stepping in smiles-and-friendship land. Winterson owns a deli in Spitalfields -near my own neighbourhood- and I still have yet to go there. Maybe that will be my week-end plan.

I love Douglas Coupland. While I haven’t been crazy about his latest novels, Girlfriend in a Coma still remains one of my favourite book. Mark, on the other hand, fiercely hates him. I recently discovered that Coupland wrote a blog for the New York Times* - always late to the party, aren’t I- and I think it’s brilliant. More surprinsingly, Mark agrees. We came to the conlusion that Coupland may be a better blogger than a novelist, because the medium suits his pop-life affirmations better than paper pages can.

Which is bizzarre… Douglas Coupland, blogger extraordinaire before blogs were even born.

* As always, it’s qualified as “opinion” or “column” on google searches. Because real writers don’t blog, you see, they merely have ideas they put in writing instead.

I have always thought of high-school reunions as terribly depressing.

A few days ago Mark and I spent a couple of hours discussing the politics of high-school. I tried to explain how my experience of high-school did not include clans, groups, bullying and stereotypical ideas including cheerleaders (France doesn’t have them) or nerds hiding away in the computers’ room.

I had a similar discussion with B. a couple of years ago. Having grown up in Canada, I guess that B’s schooling experience was closer to American movies than mine was: being very good at sports and therefore quite popular he enjoyed a lot of attention from the opposite sex and had a blast training hard, studying a little, and partying lots.

Truth is, I was bored at school. I remember it as a never-ending string of 8-hours days beginning with me getting up at 6.30, taking the bus at 7.35 to the outskirts of town and walking from classrooms to classrooms until 6 in the evening. My establishment was in a relatively poor neighbourhood (compared to those downtown), not too strict (compared to those downtown), comprised of 70 percent white kids, 30 percent kids from visible minorities (unlike those downtown) and I enjoyed the teachings of really good teachers and excellent programs (which unfortunately didn’t prevent me from wishing I was travelling the world instead).

I believe that a good half of my learning experience was carried on by myself, either on the internet - a wonderful, life changing discovery as far as I was concerned- on in books. Iwas not part of any clubs, was not hanging with the pretty girls and didn’t play sports (nobody really did within a school setting) but had a couple of very close and very different friends.

Francesca* was the sassy one and a great sense of humour who would sometimes whisper fierce and unwelcomed remarks to fellow pupils (and for that she was sometimes despised by others), Catherine* was the stunning, quietly beautiful one secretly dating the prefect, Tess* was the upbeat, politically aware and stupidly well-read rebel who did not obey any rules and Piers* was the very bright, intelligent but insecure and sexually unsure guy. None of them truly liked each other so I spent a lot of them with them one-on-one. And as to how they would describe me themselves, I have no idea. The point is, I wasn’t cool or uncool, casted away or bullied.

But I must say, doubt started creeping in after Mark and I finished our little talk on the subject. Maybe I had been hated all these years, and was oblivious to it at the time? Perhaps everyone saw me as a loser with high grades? With that in mind and Mark falling soundly asleep in bed next to me, I grabbed my laptop and did what I swore would never do: I joined the french version of classmates.com and started looking for clues. My approach was slightly pathetic and reminded me of Little.Yellow.Different hilarious takes on his high-school years, and thought that if students in France had high-school reunions, I would surely have felt like David Kleeman.

Truth is, I of course didn’t find clues - and I guess I’ll never know how people truly felt about me back then -and boy, does it feel self-centered to admit of my curiosity. I found a couple of people I once knew, and their faces didn’t change that much. They all looked very happy in their recent pictures, some having the jobs everyone knew they would have (dance teacher), some having made surprising choices (being quite highly graded in the army). After much searching, I discovered that one of my oldest childhood friend is now trainning a school-teacher in Southern France. Safely hidden behind my screen, the thought made me happy.

* names have been understandably changed to, uh, protect the innocent.

Picture via, sadly mourning the announced death of polaroids.

I really enjoy Creative Commons’ father Lawrence Lessig’s videos. I blogged about one of those on openDemocracy in the past, and I tremendously enjoyed his new addition posted this week, a video explainning his support for Obama vs. Clinton. His argument is based on three criteria. Moral courage and character, integrity and “do”.

As much as I like Hillary and Bill Clinton, I have to admit his argument on moral courage (e.g Bill Clinton doing a U-turn on gay people in the military, Hillary supporting the Iraq War as the NY senator) is spot on, and perhaps the thing that most left to the left democrats fear when casting their vote for Clinton: she sometimes lacks the character to take a strong stance, eyeing instead political interests.

But then again, no one can argue that the Iraq decision was easier to make for Obama back in 2002, when his name was still relatively obscure at the time. Clinton probably eyed the presidential seat back then, and had to naviguate troubled waters while thinking ahead.

Note that I am not defending Bill and Hillary’s dubious choices. I am merely stating the fact that sometimes, very unfortunately, politics means playing a dirty game. Whatever will get you ahead in the pools. Would I want a president thinking in those terms? Not really. Do I think that Obama will cave in and act in a very similar fashion if elected?

You bet.

PS. I guess those Lessig videos (Youtube) show how amazing it would be to have Lessig as a professor. I always wonder, does he actually write those “lecture” and then sit in front of his computer, power-pointing the speech’s strong elements only to then re-read it slowly and synchronising everything? There must be an easier way.

PS 2. That being said, I am still on the fence. Obama? Clinton? Obama? Headache. I am only glad I don’t have to vote.

On Radiohead’s new cd:

mark: all the bloggers are going mad because it’s 160kbps and are calling it a marketing scam

me: yeah i read about that
wankers

mark: bloggers go mad about everything

me: thats a good thing

mark: if thom york was going to cycle round to your house and deliver the album for free on release day, they’d complain he was adding to traffic congestion

me: that’s funny, im gonna blog that

———

With a co-worker, about Second life;

Me: I was reading the other day about how Second life’s public is either made of hardcore gamers, or people who visit for a bit, get confused and then leave.

Coworker: … Like I did. It’s really frustrating when you’re not a geek. Do you remember that time we met with Cory Ondrejka, and I asked about what will happen when there’s a shortage of geeks?

me: Yeah

Coworker: It’s like, it’s not good enough that people just show up and give you wings and stuff, and then go.

• Newsflash: all American male law school students aren’t enlightenned characters. And while I’m sure the majority of them are great, capable and bright individuals, some are the exact opposite with too much time on their hands (maybe they should read a bit about sexual harrasment law instead of posting on message boards). And to think they will be lawyers soon. I’m still amazed by what people think they are entitled to do just because it’s on “a series of tubes” and they’re hiding behind their screens.

• Today is International Women’s Day. Does it mean that the 364 other days are International Men’s day? Maybe.

• Accurate sexual education for teens in the US. At last, a step in the right direction! Well that’s good news.

“After five years of making it through the House, but getting nowhere in the Senate, the sex ed bill —mandating that sex ed be medically accurate and that abstinence cannot be taught at the exclusion of contraception— passed the state Senate today, 30-19.” (via Josh Feit @ Slog)

I hope it also means that young adults won’t have to hear propaganda such as “abortion is the leading cause of breast cancer” any longer.