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Fabrice's Blog
The children of Gaza and functional extinction
Gaza is probably already gone. We are merely seeing it going.
1001 days into the 3rd World War
Today, the last red line drawn by Russia on the scorched Earth of battlefields has been crossed: long-range missiles have been launched to strike deep into its territory, closer to the head. The nuclear escalation now seems unavoidable.
The Children of Gaza and the Last Jew of Vinnitsa
What is going on in Gaza is atrocious beyond precedent. Never before, in the history of mankind, have such crimes been committed so openly, under the nose of the so-called International Community, over such infinite periods of time and with such steady progress in redefining the limits of barbarism.
Brooding from the Cyclades
I am in Syros for my 47th birthday. Two years ago, I was thinking what would become of us from the inspiration provided by a detail of a monument erected to celebrate a victory of Prussia over France. The inspiration was a naked child scratching his head as if to ponder how to reconcile innocence with horror, which both define the world.
828 days into the 3rd World War
NATO authorized direct attacks with its weapons on Russia and it becomes increasingly confirmed that Macron will deploy French troups in Ukraine. We are about to reset the World War Three counter to zero.
Two years of war in Ukraine
Today marks the 2nd "anniversary" of the Ukraine war. I did not find the strength to write anything on the 1st one, as this was such a depressing omen, signaling the impossibility of a solution anywhere soon and an immediable rottening of the wound. On the 2nd year, I would like to just equally ignore it—which is what most of us do anyway on a daily basis—and postpone the snapshot of my perception caught in the moment to the 3rd, 5th or 10th year marking the event of what appears to be the beginning of the end.
Nothing New under the New Year
2024 is celebrated around the World as two major wars ravage its surface. Children are dying, civilians are murdered and hate is spreading among those who are not yet fighting. We drink champagne—le vin du diable—awaiting our turn, though refusing to accept that it will come.
Ça va
Il y a toujours un peu partout
Des feux illuminant la Terre
Ça va
les Hommes s'amusent comme des fous
Au dangereux jeu de la guerre
Ça va
Napoleon, Hitler, Prigozhin
As I write this, a column of mercenaries is driving towards Moscow to topple down a government trapped in a never-ending conflict and under increasing pressure and hostilities from Western Countries.
Everything that I write now will be obsolete in a few hours.
Such, Such is the Contract
Orwell wrote an enthralling essay on his time in private education ("Such, Such Were The Joys") in "an expensive and snobbish school which was in process of becoming more snobbish, and, I imagine, more expensive". He got there because such a place was "sometimes willing to sacrifice financial profit to scholastic prestige" to "bring credit on the school".
My first dialogue with an AI
Today I played, for the first time, with OpenAI's playground (see also chat GPT), which is still in beta mode, and that people make write pieces of code or motivation letters. As someone who was already mildly interested in the Markov chains of Emacs Doctor several decades ago, I found myself pleasantly surprised that I could indeed almost have a non-boring, dynamic and close to a Turing type conversation with this engine. That is the record of my exchanges with Sarah:
Another 1001 tweets
My Scheherazadean tribute to twitter became timely again with another 1001 tweets written since those that I could, on the previous occasion, only trace back down to 2014. This time, a higher engagement with the platform allows me to overlap with the online record that is, at the time of writing, kept up to 15 March (2017) (a tweet commenting "It does not need to be imagined, it needs to be written down."). All tweets actually seem to remain accessible, if they are referenced. These are, for instance, my first & second tweet, and my third one, one year and a half later. Follows below a selection among the last thousand or so written since then.
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds
If Van Gogh would have seen the world we now live in, after cutting off one ear, he would have poked one eye out.
Brooding by the Siegesdenkmal
I am in Freiburg for my 45th year on this planet that is also 7 months and 7 days (218 days) of what never looked so much like the 3rd world war, with the recent explosion of the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany (this was four days ago) and the annexation of the four regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to Russia (this was today).
A Hundred days into the 3rd World War
Did we notice that we were already 100 days into World War III? The Second one also started like this, almost unnoticed. One was speaking of a "Drôle de Guerre" (funny war) to describe the period between the French and British declaration of war to Germany on 3 September (1939) until the actual fighting, dated 10 May (1940). There was missing the destruction and desolation of a "serious" war so this term was employed instead (British people spoke of "phoney war" instead, and possibly one mistranslated the other. The Germans spoke of Sitzkrieg (sitting war) while the Polish, also part of the events, found it "dziwna wojna" or surprising. It is the same now as, for most of us, there is no obvious or direct consequences of destruction, death and calamities. At most the inflation. In fact, most people would probably say that we are not at war. So a funny if not surprising situation indeed, definitely phoney and, as time passes—it is already 100 days—aren't most of us sitting down? The basics do not really change in the great world-changing events, only details and specifics.
A month into the 3rd World War
Ten days into the 3rd World War
Russia invades Ukraine
Last night, around 4:00pm CET, a quick look at twitter before going to bed kept me glued to the screen instead: Russia had started a large-scale military operation in Ukraine and deployed troops there. And this is what Putin had to say about it: [1]
- A few important, very important words for those who may be tempted to intervene in the ongoing events. Whoever tries to hinder us, or threaten our country or our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to consequences that you have never faced in your history. We are ready for any turn of events. All necessary decisions in this regard have been made. I hope that I will be heard.
Russia recognizes Donbass
An event that looks like one more in a long series of aggravating moves in our chaotic world has the same detonating flavour as the ones that can cause world wars. It might be that nothing more catastrophic than what we are getting used to will happen, but if it would take greater proportions, of the type that will be life-changing for everybody, I'd wish to record my feelings on the night that it happened.
Le Monde et Montagnier, la boue et l'or
Le Monde—the French newspaper of record—explains why it took it two days to confirm the death of Luc Montagnier.
Leçons d'outre tombe
It is now confirmed by mainstream media that Prof. Luc Montagnier, discoverer of the RNA replication mechanism and awardee of the Nobel prize for his work on the HIV, passed away two days ago. The information has been broken and circulated in a timely manner by France-Soir, which triggered either condemnation of the claim as fake or an embargo on its diffusion. This allowed a quite unique circumstance of a popular tribute by admirers of the character unpolluted by politicians and the authorized press, de facto silenced by their incompetence.