Les Jacintas Zingers à la Fête de la musique
Cliquer pour agrandir.
Cliquer ici pour réserver.
4 juin 2026
1 juin 2026
Les prédictions prévisions météo à long terme de Google
Cliquer pour agrandir.
Voici ce que notre AMIAspirateur Mondial de l’Information. à tous affiche lorsqu’on cherche à savoir le temps qu’il fera cette semaine à Tourcoing.
L’information daterait d’il y a 20 606 jours, donc de 1970. Il est sidérant d’apprendre que les météorologues d’alors pouvaient déterminer le temps qu’il fera plus de 50 ans plus tard.
29 mai 2026
Two opinions about the proposed US $250 bill
Click to enlarge. Source (image and text): ChatGPT
The proposal described in the article is a bold and unapologetically modern expression of political confidence, national branding, and cultural symbolism. At a time when many Americans feel that institutions have become detached, bureaucratic, and emotionally hollow, the idea of introducing a dramatic new currency design centered on a sitting president would represent a striking attempt to reconnect national imagery with contemporary political identity.
From this perspective, the proposed $250 bill is not merely about money, but about symbolism. President Trump’s political movement has always emphasized strength, disruption, and visibility — qualities that the reported design intentionally amplifies. The controversial portrait of the president holding a knife in his teeth may be unconventional, but it is a metaphor for toughness, resilience, and refusal to conform to polished political expectations. In an era dominated by carefully focus-grouped imagery, the design’s raw theatricality will stand out precisely because it rejects restraint.
The proposal can also be praised as a challenge to outdated traditions surrounding American currency. Critics often invoke precedent, noting that living presidents do not appear on modern U.S. bills, but traditions are not sacred merely because they are old. American political history is filled with moments when established norms were broken in order to reflect changing cultural realities. As Trump is a transformational historical figure, commemorating him in real time is justified rather than inappropriate.
Politically, the idea demonstrates an instinct for spectacle that has long distinguished Trump from conventional politicians. Whether admired or criticized, his movement has consistently understood the power of visual symbolism in shaping public imagination. A $250 bill bearing his likeness will instantly become one of the most recognizable pieces of political iconography in modern America. This is not vanity, but a deliberate assertion that this administration views itself as historically consequential and worthy of lasting national recognition.
The article also unintentionally highlights the willingness of the administration to push against institutional hesitation and elite discomfort. The fact that legal experts and former officials reportedly reacted with alarm will reinforce the perception that entrenched bureaucratic culture resists any dramatic departure from established norms. In that interpretation, the controversy itself becomes evidence that the idea succeeds in challenging stale conventions.
Even the creation of internal mockups is a positive sign of creative ambition within government agencies often criticized for inertia. Rather than endlessly reproducing cautious, interchangeable designs, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, under this interpretation, has explored imagery that reflected the emotional intensity and populist energy of a major political era.
Ultimately, the proposal embodies confidence rather than caution. The article does not describe an abuse of symbolism but an embrace of it: an administration willing to leave a visible mark on the nation’s cultural and political landscape instead of disappearing into the bland anonymity of procedural governance. Whether one agrees with the aesthetics or not, the proposal is memorable, unmistakable, and unapologetically American in its scale and audacity.
The proposal to create a $250 bill featuring President Trump’s portrait represents a profound abuse of political power and a disturbing attempt to personalize national institutions around a single individual. American currency has historically reflected continuity, institutional legitimacy, and national heritage — not the branding ambitions of a sitting president seeking to immortalize himself while still in office.
The most alarming aspect of the story is not merely the proposed denomination itself, but the apparent political pressure exerted on the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Civil institutions responsible for currency design are expected to operate according to established procedures, historical precedent, and public interest. If Treasury officials or White House aides attempt to coerce or steer the process toward glorifying a living president, this does blur the line between democratic governance and personality cult politics.
The reported design choices make the situation even more troubling. A portrait of the president holding a knife in his teeth is not a symbol of dignity, stability, or constitutional leadership. It evokes aggression, spectacle, and theatrical machismo more commonly associated with authoritarian propaganda than with American civic imagery. Currency is among the most visible symbols of a nation’s identity; transforming it into a vehicle for provocative personal branding degrades the seriousness of the institution itself.
The proposal also breaks sharply with longstanding American norms regarding who appears on currency. While no explicit constitutional prohibition exists against depicting living individuals, the tradition of honoring deceased statesmen reflects an important principle: national symbols should transcend temporary political passions. Introducing a sitting president onto a new denomination will inevitably be perceived as an attempt to politicize the nation’s money for personal legacy-building purposes.
Equally concerning is the broader cultural message such a move sends. Democracies depend on strong institutions that remain larger than any one leader. Efforts to place a current president’s image onto newly created currency risk encouraging a style of politics centered on loyalty to personalities rather than commitment to constitutional principles. The symbolism matters. Nations where rulers aggressively imprint their own likenesses onto public spaces, state media, and currency are rarely held up as models of democratic restraint.
Even supporters of the administration should recognize the dangers of normalizing this kind of political self-memorialization. Today it may benefit one leader; tomorrow it establishes a precedent future administrations could exploit even further. Public institutions should not be transformed into instruments of vanity, spectacle, or partisan mythology.
This episode deserves intense scrutiny not because it is merely unusual, but because it reflects a deeper erosion of institutional boundaries. A government confident in democratic legitimacy does not need to market its leader through national currency. The fact that such a proposal reportedly advanced as far as internal design mockups should concern anyone who values the distinction between public service and personal glorification.
_______________________
This article is an echo to that one.
28 mai 2026
Singularity?
Click to enlarge. Source: Flow
I read today Ross Douhat’s NYT newsletter “Pope Leo Isn’t Standing Athwart the Singularity” posted yesterday (5/28). I must confess I don’t see what the author means by “Singularity”, in this specific (A.I.) context. More generally, I have really no idea what his overall opinion of the encyclical is. As to me, I tend to agree with a report I had read earlier about the Pope’s position.
For me, to put it (much) simpler – I am not a Pope (yet) -, A.I. is, first, a “new tool”, and while any tool has usually been invented for reasonable uses, it has (almost always) be abused by greedy humans (in search of power and/or money). Take the knife, for instance: it allow to slice meat, to peal veggies, but also to kill any existing form of life, including humans. Even just the stone: there are proofs that some monkeys use stones in order to break the shell of nuts, but it can be used in order to harm. So has been any invention.
Looking more specifically at technology, look what the internet has caused: the ever-increasing propagation of fake rumors, disinformation and with it a decrease in critical thinking (there was a French saying many years ago that “If it’s in the newspaper, then it must be true” – this is now the case on the internet), used, again, for the above purposes (power, greed), and with observable results: the rise of far-right (and far-left) extremism and political power.
This tool – A.I. – being so universally available on so-called “smart” phones – is already shaping children and adolescents: they refer to it as not only a useful, but necessary crutch, and, being so young, can’t exercise any critical thinking about it. I have been using – should I rather say, testing – a variety of A.I.s (after all, I am a trained computer scientist) and while they indeed could be useful in some cases, they do make insidious, factual mistakes (usually referred to as “hallucinations”), in addition to create dependence.
Into which kind of adults will they develop? Twenty-three years ago (in 2003), I had written in my blog:
We are thus transforming into a new being, atrophied in our muscles (except for those of our fingers for the keyboard, and especially of the thumb for the mobile phone), hybrid (wired and permanently connected, not only to a mobile phone, but to the network), and soon atrophied in our brain – no need to think when we are immobile and cut off from the real world and when we “navigate” in a world of signs: we have nothing but reflexes and needs, increasingly instinctive and immediate – to finally dissolve, the ultimate fusion fantasy – in this hyperspace and its hyperculture that the philosopher Pierre Lévy describes to us in rhapsodic tones. This process of man’s devitalization is manifested by his evolution from citizen to consumer, from actor to spectator, from active to passive, towards the “upper” society of which H. G. Wells speaks in The Time Machine: “The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility,” living only in idleness and fear of others, those below, the Morlocks, servants turned predators
Coincidentally – and (obviously) ironically – three days ago, I posted this (English follows French).
While A.I.’s “powers” are already immense, it is a giant with feet of clay: it – and the world at large – increasingly depend on… electricity. Everything that we use (or almost) needs it. But did you hear of the total power blackout in the Iberian Peninsula a year ago? If this happens – and as it had, it will –, how will we humans continue to live in cities – no electricity, so no water (powered by electrical pumps), no elevators, no fridges, no stores (the “cash” registers being off, the lights being off, their fridges being off), no transportation, no phones… and no A.I.
This ever-increasing interconnectivity of technical systems makes it increasingly likely that bugs, breakdowns and outages will propagate rather than be “just” local and produce unexpected havoc.
While there had been a way to “terminate” the Golem after it turned into a violent monster, will there be a way to neutralize unrestrained A.I.s?
