User Profile

Gersande La Flèche

gersande@millefeuilles.cloud

Joined 2 years, 10 months ago

Why can't I read all these books!? 🍋‍🟩

🍵 Lots of nonfiction, literary fiction, poetry, classical literature, speculative fiction, magical realism, etc.

📖 Beaucoup de non-fiction et de fiction, de poésie, des classiques, du spéculatif, du réalisme magique, etc.

💬 they/them ; iel/lo 💌 Find me on Mastodon: silvan.cloud/@gersande

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2025 Reading Goal

91% complete! Gersande La Flèche has read 11 of 12 books.

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (Hardcover, 2013, Modern Library) No rating

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the …

Back to Capote. The book was written in 66 and most of the time it's so fluid and clear that its age is difficult to remember. But then there will be something like a mention to someone with chronic pain having an "aspirin addiction" (in a serious manner) and that's when the half-century between me and its writer lurches back into being.

Robert Elliott Smith: Rage Inside the Machine (2019, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc) No rating

We live in a world increasingly ruled by technology; we seem as governed by technology …

The difference today is that the human craft being taken over by machines is not just product based, it is about our fundamental human interactions with our GPs, lawyers, bank-account managers, and so on. Inevitably, the economic pressures will begin to yield the same effects in these social contexts that they had in manufacturing, resulting in the rising expense of human-to-human interactions, making them less a part of common life and more of a luxury for the better off.

Rage Inside the Machine by  (37%)

This has already begun.

Anne-Marie Beaudoin-Bégin: La langue rapaillée (French language, 2015, Éditions Somme toute) 5 stars

Le français québécois est souvent présenté comme du joual, comme du mauvais français, comme un …

Combattre l'insécurité linguistique des Québécois

No rating

(Revue écrite en 2020.)

L'insécurité linguistique étant au premier rang de mon esprit depuis quelques années, j'avais très hâte de lire le livre d’Anne-Marie Beaudoin-Béguin, La langue rapaillée, paru en 2015. Je connaissais déjà le travail de Beaudoin-Bégin via sa page Facebook très informatrice de linguiste désacralisante, L'insolente linguiste. (Elle a aussi une chaîne YouTube, mais on dirait qu'elle est en pause des réseaux sociaux dernièrement…) Le livre me tentait, et j'avais l'impression que j'allais l'aimer. J'ai eu raison!

Qu'est-ce que c'est que l'insécurité linguistique? Selon Wim Remysen de l'Université de Sherbrooke: «L’insécurité linguistique [c’est] le sentiment de dépréciation et d’incertitude qu’éprouvent certains locuteurs envers leurs usages linguistiques.» (Source) Cette insécurité est considérée comme étant particulièrement néfaste pour les jeunes dans leur acheminement scolaire.

Composé d’essais de différentes longueurs (tendant vers le court) dont les arguments se suivent logiquement, le livre de Beaudoin-Béguin se prête bien …

Club Sexu x Les3Sex, Magali Guibault Fitzbay: Apprendre à nous écrire: guide & politique d'écriture inclusive (Paperback, Français language, Indépendante) 5 stars

Ce guide fait la promotion de la démasculinisation de la langue et de la non-essentialisation …

Bouquin formidable

5 stars

→ 📖 Revue complète avec jolies photos disponible sur mon blog.

Collaboration entre Les 3 sex et Le Club sexu sous la direction de Magali Guilbault Fitzbay, ce guide très complet sur l’écriture inclusive est un petit bijou pour toustes et tous et toutes qui cherchent à mieux comprendre comment adopter ces importantes pratiques d'écriture et d'inclusivité radicale (et souvent encore très mal comprises, incluant l’écriture épicène, la féminisation, et la rédaction nonbinaire). Que la rédaction non sexiste, inclusive, féministe, ou nonbinaire intrigue ou intimide, Apprendre à nous écrire: guide & politique d’écriture inclusive* est une pierre de gué solide pour aborder et réellement adopter un français plus inclusif, plus rassembleur. En plus d’une mise en page vraiment soignée, ce petit livre porte une attention particulière aux nuances historiques et géographiques de l'histoire du français. Bien qu'il soit ancré dans une perspective francophone nord-américaine, le guide porte souvent le regard …

Robert Elliott Smith: Rage Inside the Machine (2019, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc) No rating

We live in a world increasingly ruled by technology; we seem as governed by technology …

First chapter was alright, the second two were meh, the 4th even felt a little trite. Smith is not an incompetent writer, but there were times where I was frustrated with the scattered subject matter interspersed with extremely technical descriptions of statistical models. In theory I don't hate this format when it comes to the juxtaposition of history and mathematics/computer science, I just felt like the whole needed a bit more polishing especially for keeping a strong throughline.

Where the book truly picked up my interest again is when Smith dove back into history in chapter 5 to demonstrate how statistics and eugenics are intertwined, and how they are both present in the earliest iterations of big data modelling, with principles that are still in play today. While I am still not loving this book, I am glad I read this chapter.

Robert Elliott Smith: Rage Inside the Machine (2019, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc) No rating

We live in a world increasingly ruled by technology; we seem as governed by technology …

Back in 1987, The Pew Research Centre reported that trust in the US government was around 50 percent. Today it stands at under 20 percent. Gallup also reports drops in confidence versus historical averages for institutions as varied as banking, criminal justice, medicine, organized labour, big business, police, print media, broadcast media, public schools and organized religion. Meanwhile faith in the opinion of the masses is soaring. What was once derided as "lowest common denominator" is now hailed "the wisdom of crowds." This "wisdom" is not only being exploited by populist politicians; it is the life blood of today's AI.

Rage Inside the Machine by  (11%)

This author sure is allergic to the word "capitalism" and "exploitation." Also is that a whiff of classism in the air?

Robert Elliott Smith: Rage Inside the Machine (2019, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc) No rating

We live in a world increasingly ruled by technology; we seem as governed by technology …

Online communities are a unique development in human history, because of the ease with which they can be connected to algorithms devised to optimize for material gain. Moreover, intolerant points of view and simplified communication (likes, tweets, flames, etc.) fit precisely with an algorithm's simplified models of people. This creates powerful feedback loops, the net effect of which are informational segregation that can be easily exploited to divide people in much the same way real-world segregation and prejudice has divided people in the past. This isn't just conjecture. We can see informational segregation technically within online communities, precisely because of their technical nature, and we can see the effects on the power and profit of the entities involved. (...) The hidden detail in all this is how algorithms not only exploit but drive this segregation.

Rage Inside the Machine by  (5%)

Commentaire particulièrement à-propos pour le moment actuel.

This book had a shaky preface but the first chapter starts pretty strong.