I therefore suggest making links captive in RSS readers, that is, sending you to the default browser if and only if the target is outside of your range of subscriptions.

The benefits would be that RSS readers would come closer to representing small ecosystems of links and authors, within which you would spend more time shifting between feeds and less time going through stacks of ‘unreads.’ Staying within the ecosystem also makes sense if you are using reader-acquired functions such as sharing, starring or emailing.

The absolutely pointless formalization is that you read R = A(a) + B(b) = 2 by coding unread items (A(a), B(b), … N(n)) = 1, and you get R’ = B(b)* – A(a) = 0 if you remove the unread item A(a) = 1 and code the opened browser page B(b)* = 1. I want my RSS reader to output R’ = -R = -2, because I like the idea of having an R + R’ = 0 equilibrium in my reader’s ecosystem.

Push it to the limits, and you should get within-feed links A(a) + B(a) to work as full-fledged self-references, that is, your reader should send you not to a web page, but to the linked feed item. But I am not pushing it so far as to write it as a utility function.

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1. Tinkering.
2. Coffee.

As of today, the contract is incomplete, and I am not signing until the options change.

Soundtracks+Bach.

• Overnight — Gonzales, Solo Piano (2004).

  Touch of Satie. Love, L*.

• I Want to be a Good Guy — Chan Kwong Wing, Infernal Affairs (2002).

  The film itself is absolutely brilliant.

• (Prelude to) Bach Cello Suite No. 4 in E-flat major, BWV 1010 — Mstislav Rostropovich.

• The Wasteland Massacre and the Reminiscence of Geisha — Suzuki Keiichi, Zatoichi (2003).

  The film itself is a masterpiece of contained violence and ridiculous excess of dancing and forced smiling.

• Love Remembered — Wojciech Kilar, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).

• El Que Se Tenga Por Grande — Talegón de Córdoba & Jorge Rodriguez Padilla, The Limits of Control (2009).

  The film has received mixed reviews. I enjoyed the deadpan atmosphere and Jarmusch clinical touch—flesh and fire brought to mere script, and, perhaps, unintended.

• Ice Dance, Edward Scissorhands (1990).

  It came as the most pleasant surprise that two hearts sent me that track at the same time.

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The implications for social inquiry are, naturally, obscenely intimidating.

Add. Because of their interest in all social things analytical, I was expecting both of them to be members of the September group. I knew Elster to be a member already, but was disappointed not to find Gambetta in the Wikipedia list. However, this comes from a 2005 seminar by Gambetta:

And a force that brought me to become a social scientist was my dissatisfaction with Marxism, the dominant approach of the 60s and 70s. It was hopelessly naïve when it came to making its macro views match with a plausible notion of individual actions. When I discovered the existence of analytical Marxists, who became known as the No bullshit Marxis[m] group, which included scholars like Jon Elster, Adam Pzreworski, Jerry Cohen, I felt the world was a saner place. The analytical revisitation of Marxi[s]m was a major step forward for the social sciences.

So now, your job is to connect analytical marxism with a predisposition to enjoy the artwork of Georges de La Tour.

:)

Nate

Nate’s three texts in Budapest, all sent on the same night, in that order:

1. We’re on the roof.

2. YOU HAVE 2 MIN.

3. Fuck dude.

Absolute classic, dude.

Other favourites

“I think that was meant for you!” (girl-girl ambiguous text forward)

“Shit last nite was rough!”

“Where the fuck r u!” (sent at 2am)

“We got weed! And it is good weed!” (vaguely movie-allusive)

“Hi francois are u awake?” (sent in the afternoon)

“En route!” (sent at noon; and then, 5 minutes later) “Er, 1?”

“?”

“Got some beers and back at the house already.”

“Wanna go to a mental gig in shoreditch tonight?”

Immediate thoughts after the crash:

1. Work. All essential files are safe on internal drive. Last backup on internal parental drive is a few months old. Last backup on parental external drive is a few weeks old. Expected loss: 0GB/25GB.
2. Music. All files lost at the exception of 6GB current playlist. Last backup on parental drives is a few weeks old. Expected loss: 4-8GB/120GB.
3. Film. All files lost at the exception of 7.45GB current watchlist. Last backup on parental drives is a few months old. Expected loss: 20GB/100GB.
4. Pictures. All files lost at the exception of Flickr uploads. Last backup on parental drives is a few months old. Expected loss: minimal.
5. Other stuff (software, random stuff). All files lost. Last backup on parental drives is more than a few months old. Expect loss: quite serious, but nothing essential.

It’s basically like starting it all again from a relatively distant point in time, which actually has its appeal, if the transaction costs of reinstalling stuff and replacing the backup drive remain low enough. It will be a pain to reinstall and download identical files again, but not that much:

• All work files are safe right now. The only folder that is externally stored while not saved on the internal hard drive is also safe on a backup-of-backup hard drive (and remains downloadable).
• Essentials are recoverable online. It must be the first time I have to rely on the (vast and effective) potential of Gmail and Flickr as large-scale external backup solutions.
• Trivia has been irremediably lost. My recent collection of random pictures, quotes and other forms of Internet memorabilia has left this world and all others. How much do I rely on their possession?

Very little seems to be the answer, due to little reliance on personal possession, reasonable use of online storage, and a continuous stream of interests with little time to delve into past things anyway.

Lessons:

• Shit happens.
• Two external hard drives, or a partition, could help.
• Episode is quite liveable.

The most annoying thing is to lose organised collections of pictures of summer trips, which were already like a life bracket. There’s no trace of them now, it just makes them even more surreal. Next work backup on Monday.

• Life is short.
• Men are cruel.
• Curiosity killed the cat.

Then you should discard your theory.

If your theory is as implausible as the following statements:

• There is a God.
• The Earth will be destroyed by a planet-eating rabbit.
• Curiosity killed the cat.

Then you should discard your theory.

Applications hold in all sciences, but physics has its own means of analysis.

Keyboard

Get me a keyboard with a key that prints “No.”

Maps

I almost stopped by the tourist couple who was looking at a map, to ask them if they were lost, but then realised I was much more lost than they were.

Identical statements

I FUCKING LOVE GRAPES

Foucaldian archeology: Craving for grapes started the Renaissance by identifying the subject within the realm of fruit.

Indifference curve: Do I actually love grapes more than I #hate #trivial #twitter #hashtags?

Impossibility theorem: Never try to establish if your friends fucking love grapes too if you have more than one friend.

Global history: The role of grapes in starting the First World War has never been more clear.

Constructionism: You seem to believe that you fucking love grapes.

Post-modernism: Grapes are better understood as the Yiddish expenditures of atomic collusions, bathed in the nothingness of the everyday citizenry. Not the sleep; cat.

Habitus: The practice of fucking loving grapes is structurally predetermined by the social position occupied by homo grapicus in the field of fruit nobility.

Public sociology: Some people fucking love grapes.

Polling institutes: 90% OF MALE RAPISTS TARGET GRAPES FIRST

Publishable result for APSR manuscript: The strong correlation (p< .001) is reported in Table 14634.

Ethical reciprocity: In absence of solid proof that the grapes fucking love him in return, this man is abusing his belonging to a dominant species.

Counterfactual: There is a possible world in which you would fucking hate grapes.

Student feedback: Can we go home, now?

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Voici le spam d’Électricité “de France” (mais, de fait, très présente à l’étranger et contrôlée en partie par des partenaires européens). Il est envoyé à une adresse générée automatiquement par leurs soins :

De toute bonne foi, je pense reconnaître la technique : EDF s’est procuré une liste de noms de domaine enregistrés en France (je ne sais pas comment), puis a écrit à toutes les adresses de type edf@domaine.fr.

Inutile de préciser que je n’ai jamais accepté un tel usage de mon nom de domaine, qui quittera donc la France à la prochaine échéance de paiement. Ça méritait un bref email de réponse :

Madame, Monsieur,

Vous m’avez adressé par courrier électronique, et sans que je l’aie sollicité, le message joint. Aussi, conformément à l’article 26 alinéa 1 de loi “Informatique et Libertés” du 6 janvier 1978, je vous demande de bien vouloir procéder à la radiation de toutes les informations me concernant qui figureraient dans vos fichiers.

Je vous rappelle qu’à défaut de prendre en compte ma demande, le fait de m’envoyer d’autres messages ou de transmettre mon adresse e-mail à des tiers malgré mon opposition est passible des peines prévues aux articles 226-18 (jusqu’à 300 000 euros d’amende et 5 années d’emprisonnement) et 226-24 (peine d’amende multipliée par 5 pour les personnes morales) du Code pénal.

Souhaitant ne pas avoir à utiliser les voies de droit qui me seraient ouvertes si vous ne preniez pas en compte ma demande,

Bien à vous,

Il faudrait que d’autres personnes aient reçu le même email avec le même procédé pour vérifier la manipulation technique ; en attendant, en toute bonne foi, je peux rajouter EDF dans ma liste de spammeurs et signaler le cas à la CNIL.