Read John Scalzi’s Head On, which is set in the same future America as Lock In, involving again the Halden syndrome patients forced to live by remotely operating robots (threeps) and introducing an extreme form of American football adapted to these patients, since they cannot be injured when their threep is. (Not as in the terrible 1975 dystopic Rollerball, which was supposedly taking place in… 2018!). The two main FBI detectives are the same as in Lock In, with great and funny dialogues but with mostly dialogues!, and a surprising disregard for team work and reporting to their hierarchy. My conclusion of the review of Lock In thus stands:
“the Halden detective conveniently happens to be the son of a very influential ex-basketball-player and hence to meet all the characters involved in the plot. This is pleasant but somewhat thin with a limited number of players considering the issues at stake and a rather artificial ending.”
Starting to cook a matcha rice pudding as an experiment, which proved successful in keeping both the matcha taste ad the rice pudding texture, and in lowering considerably the input of sugar [from which I must shy] in the recipe. (In all honesty, I actually used an organic substitute to matcha, grown and made in China!)
Found out while going to a repair shop for a brake replacement that my second bike (the one that I can leave locked in the street for a few hours!) was in such a bad state that I should not drive it. The wheels had indeed lost most of their material at the level of the brakes, due to alien, abrasive, material getting stuck inside the brake pads. My nearby repair shop was clearly uninterested in repairing a cheap, ten year old, bike and gave me a quote that was larger than my original purchase amount. I thus found a Décathlon store nearby PariSanté campus and brought back a new wheel attached to my backpack, which proved more manageable than dreaded!
Watched in the nearby cinema A Man (ある男) by Kei Ishikawa, based on a book with the same title by Keiichiro Hirano, that won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. (The main actress Sakura Ando also played a central role in the fantastic Cannes Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters.) I went thinking it would be a psychological thriller, but it proved me wrong, as the movie is much more about self identity, intimacy, and societal prejudices, than a detective story about usurped identity. The pace is deliberately slow and the director light, impressionist, touch gives depth and freedom to the characters, while keeping some of the mysteries behind the story open. I really enjoyed the film, which was the first time I had returned to a cinema since watching a Jim Harrison documentary in 2022. I also discovered thanks to the beginning and final scenes an infinitely deep René Magritte’s painting, La Reproduction Interdite, which I had never seen, and which was a perfect still for the film message.
Had a 
I had missed the séminaire parisien de statistique for most of the Fall semester, hence was determined to attend the first session of the year 2023, the more because the talks were close to my interest. To wit, 
Last but not least!, my friend Randal talked about his 
While the 
For once (!) I stayed in an hotel, reserved by the Flatiron, and for the three nights I was there it was most tolerable, except for the usual background noise found in hotels, both from heating fans and patrons discussing in the corridors after hours. But the staff was helpful to the point of purchasing a kettle for my early morning tea. As the workshop provided an enormous amount of food at all times (and there was a true matcha tea provider around the corner!), it did not matter in the least.
