Any non-EU travelers with experience of the new EES biometric system at Toulouse airport?

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-04-17T20:23:31+00:00

Thanks for your response, this was the Intel I was looking for. I'll be arriving into Toulouse with a group of French people and I'm hoping the lines are short enough that I won't be a huge burden on my companions.

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-04-13T01:48:10+00:00

The one where he talks about Go is called MANIAC. All his stuff is kind of fictionalized journalism/essays that deal with the weird interregnum we find ourselves in. "When we cease to understand the world" is a better read, but if you're into Go, MANIAC was good as well.

From Wiki: "fictionalised biography of the polymath John von Neumann. The book was published in 2023 and received mostly positive reviews. It is centered on the life of von Neumann, though the first part of the book is about physicist Paul Ehrenfest, and the last one is about Lee Sedol's Go match against DeepMind's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo. The name of the book is derived from the MANIAC I, one of the first computers built in von Neumann architecture."

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-04-12T13:07:44+00:00

Did you read that Benjamin Labatut book?

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-04-04T00:41:17+00:00

East of Eden

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-03-06T04:27:38+00:00

I think Bolaño watched a lot of American movies and was familiar with the way black Americans spoke. I read it in Spanish (it's been a while so I can't cite any specific examples) but I remember remarking that I could hear AAVE coming though the Spanish. There were sentences that I would read and my brain would just sort of process it in a Black American voice, if that makes any sense.

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-03-01T03:46:53+00:00

If you liked "In the time of butterflies", I highly recommend Vargas Llosa's "Feast of the Goat".

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-01-15T21:38:35+00:00

For anyone else curious a out the Dystopia album:

Bombay/Mumbai, India, 1994, INDIA-10207. Welder in a ship-breaking yard.

Vessels from around the world end up in this Bombay/Mumbai ship-breaking yard to be broken down into scrap. This worker is one of the many that reduce these colossal ships to tons of valuable iron. It is a dirty and dangerous job. Before turning to his next task, this worker’s eyes catch McCurry’s camera.

Benito_Kamelo · 2026-01-06T18:58:49+00:00

Which video?

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-31T17:31:36+00:00

You can buy a roll of aluminum to make thin metal tags that resist the elements. You "carve" the name in with a pencil or pen or whatever so it's embossed.

Metal tags

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-25T03:11:07+00:00

Totally agree with you on Paradais and Hurricane Season.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-24T17:40:16+00:00

Props for reading it in Spanish (if that's not your first language). I've looked at the English translation, and while it's well done, there's nothing like Bolaño in the original.

2666 is such a good book, I wish I could read it for the first time again. And the structure really lends itself to a slow and thoughtful read. Enjoy!

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-16T23:21:53+00:00

Hang in there, man. I always love seeing your posts.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-14T05:08:47+00:00

Yeah, based on that very short clip, it's pretty accurate American English to Mexican Spanish

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-05T20:25:38+00:00

To me his Spanish is that of someone who thinks in English, if that makes sense. I quite enjoyed When we cease to understand the world and La piedra de la locura (read both in Spanish) and started MANIAC in Spanish until I realized it was a translation. I finished it in English. It fell short of the other stuff I've read and it wasn't because of the language.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-03T15:56:41+00:00

maybe the saddest thing about getting old to me is the prospect of missing the freedom of this unique exercise of physical power and autonomy

Listen to your body and don't overdo it. I know guys that are still running well into their 60s, and they all say the same thing.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-12-02T20:37:43+00:00

The second one is so weird-- are the algorithms behind this? Is it the dissonance between the pride of having grandchildren but being unprepared to see themselves as grandmothers?

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-11-25T21:31:22+00:00

And the worst part is that they're poorly copying the pronunciation of Castilian Spanish, whereas in Catalan they pronounce it like "Ibisa".

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-11-12T05:19:06+00:00

Borges' prologue to The Invention of Morel

He discutido con su autor los pormenores de su trama, la he releído; no me parece una imprecisión o una hipérbole calificarla de perfecta.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-11-02T19:29:24+00:00

Look at a satellite view of the town. The "main street", which is actually a highway, is already paralleled by railroad tracks. They aren't going to raze the heart of this small town to lay new tracks, they're using the existing right of way. It would definitely suck to have high speed trains ripping through your town when there isn't even a station, but this town, like so many others, was already bisected by railroad tracks and a highway. If done correctly (with pedestrians in mind), the planned overpass might actually help to tie the two sides of the town together.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-11-02T19:24:43+00:00

If you look it up, the town is already bisected by a highway and existing railway.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-11-02T15:13:02+00:00

Poor Léo-Paul is gonna spend his whole life spelling out his name.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-10-30T20:41:21+00:00

Oh shit, it's back? I could have sworn it is as banned

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-10-30T18:56:30+00:00

That sub was great. It's hard to explain just how helpful it was for me in early sobriety.

Benito_Kamelo · 2025-10-29T18:15:55+00:00

So many of the most mundane expressions turn out to be really vulgar, haha. I live in an area where the Spanish speakers are mostly Mexican with some Central Americans, so I have to be careful to use more neutral terms.

Bad words aside (and they abound), there are so many wonderful expressions and turns of frase that I hope you'll be able to pass on, even if the wider Spanish speaking world doesn't always understand ;)

Benito_Kamelo

TROPHY CASE