A 50-something French dude that’s old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. I also like to write and to sketch.

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Joined 22 days ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • It looks quite clever. As a pencil user, I would gladly try a few of those if they were manufactured.

    But this is not correct:

    Pencils haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. They still come wrapped in wood with a graphite lead running along the center

    For the casing, a lot pencils, most noticeably cheap ones, do not use wood for casing. It’s recycled plastic or some stuff like that. Here in France, I think Bic is recycling plastic to create the casing of their low cost pencils and colored pencils, while making it look somewhat like wood. I would say Staedtler does it too for its real entry level pencils but I’m not sure.

    Like paper, pencil is one of those innovations that has reached maturity (to not say ‘perfection’) but it doesn’t mean there is not much research still going on. Exactly like with paper ;)



  • Imho, any kind of fiction is imagination, dream, escape, and is without limit. The setting and the ‘reality’ it’s based upon may change in one form of fiction compared to another but that doesn’t make them different (or less daring) anymore than, say, me changing clothe.

    So to answer your question, I think fantasy like most other literary labels is mostly a term coined to allow a few people to shine a little more than they would otherwise do, and maybe to help publishers create/manage more niche markets. And since it works quite well, it started being used by readers to feel assured that they would get the kind of ‘imagination’ they’re used too.

    I love reading fiction a lot more than I care about reading any genre… despite having my own favorite genres too, don’t get me wrong. My bookshelves are a mess of various type of books and genres and the only semblance of order one will find in it is how much I appreciate one author compared to the others ;)


  • I don’t think any country has ‘a view’ on the way to speak their language. I mean, would there be a law, some rules and sanctions against accents?

    People may have their own opinion on the matter but that opinion will vary widely from one person to the other.

    My opinion, which was already mentioned in another comment, is that anyone making fun on someone speaking a foreign language can (and should) go funk themselves.

    We should welcome those kind of efforts instead of mocking them, and we should also be happy to be encouraged to speak more foreign languages ourselves. I say that as I a French that’s poorly speaking a few languages and would love to speak a lot more.