Category: <span>OPINION COLUMN</span>

📌 Friday opinion column, brought forward to Thursday due to current events 📌

Since 2022, France has managed to chew through five Prime Ministers. This suggests two things: first, that Matignon isn’t an office but a revolving door fitted with an ejector seat. Second, that running France is rather like reforming the railways during a strike: the timetable looks splendid on paper, but the train never leaves the station.

Some optimists still dream of a stable government. Statistically, however, it is far more likely to encounter a goldfish fluent in Moldovan than a French Prime Minister who survives long enough to unpack his boxes.

As a mathematician, I have taken the liberty of modelling this phenomenon with equations. The findings, of impeccable academic rigour, are detailed in the Universal Treatise on Ministerial Selection, the French Way.

Disclaimer: this is not a political analysis, but a piece of humor in the style of Pierre Dac and Francis Blanche.

OPINION COLUMN

We’ve painted the word kindness in so many pastel colors that it’s become unrecognizable.
Today, it’s more often a smokescreen than a value, a cover-up to justify inaction, weakness, even cowardice.

Saying NO is now suspicious, setting boundaries is seen as toxic, demanding effort is considered violent. The result? Empty papers get applause, nothingness is celebrated as brilliance, and we dare to call it kindness.

But if protecting, loving, educating, and working together still mean anything, then it’s time to remember that real kindness doesn’t always stroke in the right direction. It protects by being clear-eyed, it builds by being demanding.

OPINION COLUMN

📌 Friday mood post 📌

BREAKTHROUGH: I’ve Discovered the Holy Grail of Disruptive Eco-Responsibility

My friends, we’re living in MAGICAL times.

I just witnessed a company that received the “Climatically Transcended Enterprise” label because they replaced plastic cups with… recycled cardboard cups… imported from Japan. By plane. In plastic packaging.

But wait, it gets BRILLIANT:

Their “Chief Happiness & Carbon Offset Officer” (yes, that’s a real title) explains that their 3D printer running 24/7 is now “carbon neutral” thanks to a “Symbiotic Impact Partnership” with a Bolivian farmer who promised NOT to cut down a tree.

Which one? We don’t know. Where? Trade secret.

And the cherry on top: their upcoming 47-person meeting in Dubai to discuss “Digital Sobriety” will be offset by purchasing “3.7 square meters of Amazonian forest benevolence.”

Via a mobile app, naturally.

OPINION COLUMN

“Il avait tout : un site responsive, une charte graphique couleur lavande, et une bio écrite en Figma. Et pourtant… il s’est fait ghoster plus vite qu’un stagiaire en fin de période d’essai.”

À 23h12, pendant que vous dormez paisiblement, un inconnu Googlera votre nom. Et là, tout peut s’effondrer. Pas à cause de votre travail… À cause de votre profil Viadeo oublié de 2013 où vous vous disiez “expert en synergies transversales”.

Bienvenue dans le monde merveilleux de la crédibilité numérique passive-agressive, où un silence en ligne est plus suspect qu’un chat qui fait la vaisselle.

Parce que ce n’est pas votre site qui fait vendre. C’est votre trace. Même bancale. Surtout bancale.

OPINION COLUMN

Last week, I told you about the ants—those quiet beings who hold the world together while others parade on stage. This week again, I won’t be talking about artificial intelligence, robots, algorithms, or generative AI…

Once more, I’m staying in this very human, very intimate vein. Still about us. Always about us. Because before understanding what machines do to our thinking, we might first need to understand what we’ve done to our own capacity to think.

This time, I’m taking you into more subtle, more troubling territory: our relationship with our own ideas. A silent shift that concerns us all, connected or not, technophiles or technophobes.

I promise, starting next week, I’ll resume my “AI in All Its States” series. But for now, let me tell you about this strange thing that happens to us when we stop inhabiting our own questions…

You type a question into your search engine. In 0.3 seconds, you have your answer. Satisfying, right?

Yet… something strange is happening. This bewildering ease might be hiding a deeper transformation in our relationship with thinking.

There was a time when searching was already an act in itself. When not knowing immediately wasn’t a problem to solve, but a space to inhabit. Today, we slide from one answer to the next, from one pre-digested content to another. We validate more than we choose. We apply more than we understand.

But what happens when thinking becomes optional? Between the seductive efficiency of our tools and our old habit of thinking for ourselves, a silent shift is taking place. Not brutal, not visible. Just… comfortable.

The question isn’t whether technology is good or bad. It lies elsewhere, more intimate: do we still recognize our own voice when we think?

OPINION COLUMN