Looks like the last update here was in March! That's five months ago! That's a long time but definitely not as long as Jonathan Franzen makes us wait. So what has happened since March 28th? Let's see...
As hinted (well, literally said) in the Digital by Nature post, Pemulis went to Brazil! Pemulis and Joelle had last been to Brazil (the only time actually) way back in March 2008 where we celebrated Joelle's birthday! This was us the night of her birthday:
And this was the morning after:
Good times indeed. When I went this time -- 18 years later somehow -- it didn't seem like a lot had changed in Rio de Janeiro. Still a great city, great beach, nice people, interesting food. Pemulis himself, however, had probably changed. For one, Joelle had become Mrs. Pemulis in the interim (see below), and for two, Pemulis did not drink any Vodka-RedBulls this time. He did have a lot of ice latte (also see below), mate, and of course caipirinhas.
Another thing that happened over the course of 18 years is that somehow Pemulis not only got older but now looks a lot older too. Strangely, his friend Gustavo did not age at all. Compare and contrast:
Not entirely fair, but there you have it. Brazil was great and here's one picture hinting at how nice it looks in Copa Cabana:
Another bunch of things that have happened since March 28th include...
1. We participated as a family in the "Giro di Monaco" to support housing for refugees in Munich
2. My work sent me to Paris
3. Sarah came to visit and we went to a Ben Harper concert in the Italian Alps. We also celebrated Sarah's birthday at a fancy Italian restaurant... IN ITALY!
4. Then my work sent me to Toronto!
5. Joelle and the kids then came to meet me and we visited Canada for a while (and we did a triathlon in Deep River, drank wine in Niagara, and even played mini-golf in London!)
It took me almost two months but here I am, on the eve of a stressful (to prepare for) Easter road trip that will bring us through Switzerland, Austria, stopping in Piemonte in Italy, then on to Provence, and finally a couple of nights on Lake Annecy, that I should be getting ready for (and that would also likely lead to some nice Blog Moments but will sadly in all likelihood never have its highlights featured on GWMD because who has time for anything these days), writing the long-awaited Miguel Chevalier blog on the exhibition Digital by Nature that took place at the Munich Kunsthalle from September 12th, 2025 to March 1st, 2026 and which we visited at the beginning of February this year.
But first: when Pemulis was a much younger man he spent some time in the early part of the millennium hanging out in the North of England with some shady Brazilians who were big fans of Jorge Ben Jor and his classical Brazilian anthem País Tropical. One of said Brazilians was such a fan that he went to the trouble of translating the lyrics (pre Google Translate, pre ChatGPT) into English. We sang that song so many times that to this day I remember the whole introduction (the English version that my friend translated):
I live in a tropical country blessed by God
And beautiful by nature, I'll tell you what
In February (in February)
There is Carnival (there is Carnival)
At Carnival I have a car and a guitar
I am Flamengo
And my girl is called Tereza
When Jorge Ben Jor talks about his car and guitar in the original Portuguese he literally says that he has a VW Beetle but I guess Gustavo (the modern translator of Leeds fame) decided that "car" and "guitar" rhyming worked nicer.
Now why this digression you ask? Well only because the line "And beautiful by nature" now keeps popping into my head thanks to this "Digital by nature" exhibition. And isn't it a strange coincidence that I will be (as long as I don't just completely shutdown out of exhaustion from this year and its relentless ways any day now) back in Brazil in just three weeks time? Strange days these are.
But back to the topic at hand: digital art. For those who aren't familiar, Miguel Chevalier is a digital artist who is fairly well established as one of the pioneers of digital art. He has been making art with computers since the 1970s! The show was cool and very kid-friendly. One personal highlight was an Amiga 1000 on display with an explanation that it was the first computer that Chevalier was able to use at his home as previously he would rent time on university computers in the late 70s and early 80s.
The show features many "static" pieces but also interactive displays where you could be part of the art and one highlight for the kids especially was a generative 3D flower art program that the artist developed that allowed anyone to choose from several building blocks on a computer including style of petal, style of leaf, style of stem, etc., and then modify the shape in different ways, the colours, etc., allowing for many thousands of different possible flowers. Once you were happy with how it looked, you submitted it and then later you would see it magically "grow" in the digital greenhouse that you visited afterwards. Good times.
This month marks 14 years since both the birth of this blog and Pemulis and Joelle's one-and-a-half year sojourn in Europe (slightly extended) began. Interesting side note: DFW's magnum opus Infinite Jest (from whence come the characters of the blog!) turns 30 this month. You can read one of many takes on its place in the zeitgeist at its 30th birthday in the New Yorker here, and apparently you can also buy the Infinite Jest (30th Anniversary Edition)here which was just released today, February 3rd, 2026!
Fourteen years, it turns out, is a really long time. Long enough to have changed jobs three times (in the tech world it's also long enough to have changed jobs closer to 15 times), have doubled in size as a family with very grown up children (not mature, grown up), lost all your hair, witnessed a far-right fascist takeover of much of the western world, the coming bankruptcy of the UN, and probably a bunch of other things happening since fourteen years is as I just said a super long time. Still no Stanley Cups in Montreal though.
Since it's been 14 years then I guess that means we are starting our 15th year living "abroad". Seems like a good reason to come up with resolutions for the year. Here are a few of them:
1. Move somewhere (who knows where) so that Helga and Heinrich can each have their own room;
2. Not quit my job out of extreme frustration;
3. Become a cyclist again;
4. Run a marathon (boring millenial goal but why not);
5. Write more blogposts on GrenobleWMD than last year (very easy one);
6. Use my Vinothek gift certificate that my work gave me almost a year ago but haven't been able to use yet because as was mentioned in paragraph 2 we have children and can't go out for dinner unless we get a babysitter which we tried once and she tried to blame Heinrich for cracking the screen of her already-broken iPad.
7. More millienial angst-driven technological disenchantment digital fatigue borne analog nostalgia: take some non-over-processed photos. I actually quite like the look of the photos that I took on my "old" digital camera last year for the Feast of Corpus Christi (see here).
Already getting going on (7), here are some photos I took in the "raw" style using an App called Halide that allows you to turn off (yes you need an app for that) all the crazy photo effects and AI processing that happens automatically nowadays when you take a photo on your iPhone. I think they look kind of cool.
Our favourite bus: the 145
More analog nostalgia: my record player but with a bunch of junk on it
Early Instagram throw-back: terrible Latte art but no-filter, yo
Here is a list of some of the things that have happened of note in the first four weeks of 2026:
- A fascist Kakistocracy led by an 80-year-old sociopathic narcissist dementia patient's private thug army composed of sadistic failed mall cops all behind on their child support payments murdered at least two US citizens in broad daylight and the depraved cowards leading said Kakistocracy then proceeded to blatantly lie to their citizens about it despite copious video evidence proving them wrong.
- The same fascist government threatened to invade Greenland upending the up until now most successful modern military alliance that had existed in its present form for the last 75 years. Then the morally depraved pedophile rapist-in-chief Herr Trump joked about doing the same to Canada.
- I got super sick probably with that new deadly Flu strain that while not as deadly as the low life incel army known as ICE is, is still pretty nasty. I then passed said deadly Flu strain on to Joelle and Heinrich. Strangely Helga was spared but it could be due to the chemically novel combination of poison and ice that flows through her veins where most people just have blood.
- The airline lost all of our suitcases for two weeks and when they finally returned mine it was delivered in pieces. Someone seemingly had been rehearsing for their ICE job interview and in the course of trying to destroy an inanimate object that they saw as a threat to their personal livelihood took a sledge hammer to the hard plastic shell and left it in tattered ruins.
- Elon Musk gave a talk at Davos. Why? Why does anyone listen to that wind bag shit head? Stupidest man on Earth.
215 years ago, in the year 1810, not-yet (but soon to be) King Ludwig was wedded to the (probably?) beautiful Therese Charlotte Luise of Saxony-Hildburghausen (or maybe not so beautiful? They didn't yet know about DNA and all that...). The official wedding took place on the evening of October 12th (a Friday -- you can look these things up! [or quickly calculate it in your head if you are some kind of polymath]) and the celebration of the new marriage continued for five whole days where all the people (well I doubt ALL the people; I'm sure also back then if you weren't rich and well-connected nobody cared about you) of the city of Munich were invited to partake in the festivities.
Said festivities presumably included drinking beer (monks had been brewing beer in Munich since the 14th century after all) but the big hit at the OG Oktoberfest was the inclusion of horse races (I know right?). The horse races were such a big hit in fact that the city organizers couldn't have not run the whole thing again the next year (there was gold to be bought you know). While horse races were the advertised main draw, the beer of course was also an important element of the festival. It wasn't until towards the dusk of the century, however, (why does it sound normal to say "the dawn of time" or "the dawn of the century" but dusk doesn't seem to be typically allowed to be used in such a metaphor? unfair for a good word that has kept its head down just doing its job for so long) that the beer stands were replaced (in 1896) with the huge brewery-sponsored beer tents that we know and love to this day.
There are people (cough, cough, Americans) who like to point out (since they once visited the Oktoberfest) that isn't it crazy that it's called the Oktoberfest but it takes place in September!? Like look how clever and traveled I am that I know this. But honestly the weather in October is just too cold and unpredictable and while you do spend the bulk of your time sitting inside a very warm tent nobody wants to be cold on the way to and from the Wiesn! (fun fact: the Oktoberfest takes place on the Theresienwiese which translates to "Therese's Meadow" named after the erstwhile bride which is as the name so cleverly suggests a giant meadow in the middle of the city and for some reason the locals just call the Oktoberfest the "Wiesn").
But in my eye, though the festival has existed for more than 200 years and very much in its current form for more than 100, the Wiesn really peaked in the year 2013. I think that I've gone every single year at least once since then, but it's never been as good. Why not? It definitely has nothing to do with my age.. that's for sure.
It's hard to imagine now, but 2013 was probably the last time that not every single person there had a smartphone that they were completely absorbed in. Yes, the iPhone was introduced 6 years before that and most people had a phone of some kind. Instagram had existed for almost 3 years but it was still primarily a way to share photos directly with our friends and family. There was no TikTok, the camera quality was meh, there wasn't enough disk space or mobile data to share videos, the UX model was less addictive, and cultural norms were different; it would be weird to just sit there scrolling through your phone. As smartphone saturation arrived, it changed crowd behaviour, people became more "show-y", and social media like Instagram began to attract people to major events like the Oktoberfest not because they wanted to go and have fun, but because they want to film it and make it look like they have a full life. Which leads to the next reason that 2013 was peak Oktoberfest...
More people meant more commercialization, overcrowding, rising prices (you could get a Maß [1L] of Oktoberfest beer along with a tip for under 10 Euros in 2013; now it's more like 18 Euros), and worst of all: more Americans. Oktoberfest always attracted a lot of Americans, but now there are even more. No thank you.
Another unfortunate thing that has led to a less enjoyable experience (the terrorists truly won) is that major high-profile terror attacks in Europe like Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015 and the Berlin Christmas Market attack in 2016 have resulted in the requirement of all kinds of additional security procedures to be put in place. These are obviously important but make getting into the venue like going to a concert or something where you're not literally stuck but you're not going to go to the trouble to leave and come back.. but even in the first place if you decide to go for let's say one beer or a meal at lunch one day it doesn't really make sense because you need to stand in the ONE single entry point queue where the security guards / police can check everyone coming in and this can take up to half an hour! In 2013 you could walk up out of the U-Bahn and just be in the Wiesn. Booooo to terrorists.
Funnily enough, while I'm bah humbug! about Oktoberfest now, I have come to enjoy the Christmas markets which wasn't always the case! (see "Christmas is coming" on GWMD, Nov. 20, 2014)
Nicholas Carr hammers it home: we're doomed. You can probably tell what the book is about, what Carr's thesis is, and probably already have a cemented opinion about it just by reading the subtitle: "How technologies of connection tear us apart". But according to Carr, your initial gut feeling is probably wrong (or at least not fully correct) and his conclusion is very pessimistic.
The book starts by going over the history of communication technologies and how each major breakthrough was greeted with near identical optimism. I was bemused, at least, to read examples that could have -- with a few words changed here and there -- come from one of many Wired magazine articles from the early 2000s talking about the peace and utopia that the Internet would bring. Some examples:
In 1865, the International Telegraph Conference (to draw up the "International Telegraph Convention" that would define "an intergovernmental treaty that established the basic principles for international telegraphy") declared itself “a veritable Peace Congress,” suggesting that all misunderstandings that previously led to war would be eradicated by the ability to communicate swiftly through telegraph lines.
Nikola Tesla, because of his early work in telecommunication and wireless technologies, predicted that he would go down in history as “the inventor who succeeded in abolishing war.” There's another quote from the early 20th century that I unfortunately can't find right now which says something along the lines of "when a man can communicate quickly and cheaply across borders it is inconceivable that he would ever go to war again".
Obviously -- obviously -- the early optimism is always grossly not just over-optimistic but entirely off-target and, well, wrong. Including, again obviously, the Internet, social media, etc. Carr makes a lot of interesting points in this book but the thing I want to focus on is the cause(s) of increased support for fascism, far right insanity, dangerous radicalization online, etc. One partial explanation that pops up often and that I'm sure at least crossed your mind in the intro is that of the "online echo chamber". Basically, the algorithm learns what we like and just keeps giving it to us. So not only do we think everyone thinks like us, but we get more and more "deep" into that viewpoint and start taking more and more extreme views that fit into our political leanings and as others get more and more exposure they also get more extreme and the cycle continues. Add in mis-information and you've got a full recipe for radicalizing people and making a fully polarized society.
That on its own is bad enough. But what's even scarier is the conclusion that (1) the algorithm / echo chamber explanation is not the root cause; and (2) it's just human nature:
"The phenomenon of online polarization and extremism is not, as some have suggested, a manufactured product of algorithms. Instead, they are manifestations of deeply ingrained tendencies in human nature that have invariably influenced and strained social relations and political debates."
Carr points to a both unsettling and very interesting study where participants were categorized into "left" and "right" groups after filling out several survey questions. Half of each group was put into a version of the experiment where they saw only social media posts that matched their prior beliefs (the echo chamber). At the end (it was a long-running study), they were asked further questions to see what effect this might have had on them. On average the left group members became a little more left and the right group members became a little more right.
The other half of the participants got a version of the experiment where the social media posts they saw were designed to give a good balance of views they agreed with and views they were opposed to. You would think this might help to counter the echo chamber phenomenon. But at the end of the study, both groups were even more entrenched in their beliefs than the echo chamber participants were. This could be because your brain starts actively working to fight against what the other side's points are and you therefore have to double-down on your views to be able to fight their points more successfully. But it shows that just the echo chamber (while clearly not ideal for many reasons, especially before you've formed an opinion on an issue) is not the only problem. From Superbloom:
The researchers conducted a second round of experiments to examine why a more balanced information diet stimulates greater partisanship. Recruiting new sets of Democrats and Republicans, they again deployed their bots to tweak Twitter feeds, but this time they also held extensive interviews with the subjects. They found that exposure to an opposing view triggers a sort of immune response within a group. Members band together even more tightly to defend their position against what they perceive as an invasive idea. People "experience stepping outside their echo chamber as an attack upon their identity," Bail reports. That makes "differences between 'us' and 'them' seem even bigger." Groups are just as prone to dissimilarity cascades as individuals are.
Finally, this got me thinking about how this manifests in practice. And I had an example already. As the vast majority of Canadians were just starting to get to know Mark Carney a little over a month ago, he gave what I saw as a fantastic answer to a ridiculous question from a so-called reporter. Watch the video below:
The important bits:
"Reporter": Umm you have not been elected in a federal election yet and you recently flew to uhh duhhhh Europe on a government wide-bodied jet (???) at the expense of at least half a million dollars so the question I have for you today ummmm and maybe I'll say this before I ask the question, these people <duhhhhh> around you all paid for that flight??? and you've not been elected yet, so will you commit, to, refunding these tax payers for that flight?
Let me just interject here to point out that this was the most embarrassing waste of time question that I think I've ever heard a so-called "reporter" ask. Embarrassing. Back to the good stuff though...
Prime Minister Mark Carney: Well it's an interesting question.. uhh.. way of framing it. [Gives us an extremely well thought out answer to the stupidest "question" ever]
"Reporter": I'll take that as a "no" then.
Prime Minister Mark Carney: No you'll take that as a very comprehensive answer to your question.
Ok. So there's so many things wrong with that ridiculous question. That style of "gotcha journalism" that doesn't actually seek any information but rather aims to get a "aha" moment for a very-specific, very-partisan viewership. The fact that he completely failed is hilarious and the answer from the PM is so good but then is overshadowed completely by the amazing off-the-cuff answer to the "reporter"'s pathetic attempt to close out his "gotcha" question with "No you'll take that as a very comprehensive answer to your question".
I was so happy to hear that. It was the moment I knew that Mark Carney had the right stuff to win the election and not only that, and much more importantly, he actually made me proactively want him to win. Previously I was hoping simply that PP wouldn't win because he's just so awful. But Carney's educated responses, answering in full sentences -- paragraphs even -- and not going directly to slogans, and his wit! I was actually quite proud.
So finally now I'm going to get back to the point. I originally saw the clip in my own personal echo chamber of Threads (in case you don't know it it's another Twitter basically) and it was obviously being passed around by the good guys (obviously whatever side you're on is the good guys side -- Tom Darling taught me that). And it felt so clear to me that this video is objective evidence that Carney is the real deal.
BUT, because I can recognize my biases and I don't want to get too caught in the echo chamber (even though it's not the actual cause of our poarized times apparently), sometimes I like to reset my cookies/cache/preferences/etc. and see what the other side (the bad guys) are seeing. And (I'm imagining that you probably see where this is going?) I saw... THE SAME VIDEO! But, why are they sharing this video? Have they finally seen the error of their ways? NO! It's the SAME VIDEO but the conclusions are entirely different. Instead of comments like
"The reporter is a clown. He was trying for a gotcha and got owned. Quite pathetic."
or
"This reporter is like a 15 year old boy trying to troll the principal. Grow up and ask a real question."
or
"That was such a wonderful response and handling of that question."
there are comments like
"Finally! A real question. The fact carney couldn't answer is tragic. He's trumps twin"
or
"Protect that reporter at all costs!"
or even
"Carney has very poor communication skills- dodged the question, gaslight the reporter, then be condescending."
So you don't even need the echo chamber because people see the EXACT SAME VIDEO but take away a completely different message. Man those bad guys...
Sure am glad the Liberals won though. And that PP lost his seat. Good times.
As a die-hard Jonathan Franzen fan, it's been a long 3 years, 5 months, and 9 days since the publication of Crossroads way back in October of 2021. This wasn't the thick of Covid but we definitely weren't yet out of the woods. It was a lull. Travel wasn't yet ubiquitous and the Omicron variant was silently building up steam to ensure that any Christmas 2021 adjacent plans would surely be destroyed. But Crossroads arrived right when us in the Franzen-verse most needed it.
A new JF novel is a big deal, of course. His previous, before Crossroads, was 2015's Purity. A LITERARY EVENT. And this came a full five years after his previous novel, Freedom, which came out all the way back in August of 2010. But the arrival of Crossroads was all the more monumental because of how it was billed: the FIRST ENTRY in a TRILOGY. A TRILOGY you say!? And not just any trilogy, but "A Key to All Mythologies". This was turning out to be the greatest October 5th since 1962 when the first ever film in the Bond Series, Dr. No, was released in UK theatres.
The novel itself is vintage JF. An American family at the centre of it, all with their own very specific problems. Hyper realism. Completely unlikable characters. Some kind of downfall. And, often, a redemption arc ending in vindication and/or redemption. Not knowing anything about literature, missing most of the subtleties of social commentary and other literary devices that probably lead to interesting ideas about the human condition especially as it relates to nihilism and the lack of religion on Western life, and the fact that these books aren't thrillers or mystery novels forcing you to turn the pages as fast as possible to find out why that happened or who the killer is, leads me to believe that the thing that I, as a Die Hard Jonathan Franzen Fan (TM), enjoy is simply the circularly defined fact that reading his books is a pleasurable experience. I just really like doing it.
And so the implied promise of at least two more novels still coming from JF, in the midst of the Covid depression that nothing would ever be as it was, provided some hope for simple enjoyments to come. But as I pointed out above, it's now been 3 years, 5 months, and 9 days and we haven't even heard a peep about what might be coming next and when. And what's really scary about this is that his novels tend to be announced WAY before they're published. For example, while I (obviously) pre-ordered Crossroads weeks before it was available, and therefore had it in my cold non-dead hands right on the 5th of October, his publisher actually announced the novel (and there were rumours and peeps and all that even before this) in November 2020!
So while we wait for Crossroads 2 or whatever it might be called, he's probably written 9 or 10 essays on birdwatching in the last few weeks if you're interested.
