proposé par Marc

Shared by Riduidel
Un jour sans fin comme explication des tests d'interface web, c'est un peu le paroxysme du geek.

On a recent airplane flight, I happened to catch the movie Groundhog Day. Again.

If you aren't familiar with this classic film, the premise is simple: Bill Murray, somehow, gets stuck reliving the same day over and over.

It's been at least 5 years since I've seen Groundhog Day. I don't know if it's my advanced age, or what, but it really struck me on this particular viewing: this is no comedy. There's a veneer of broad comedy, yes, but lurking just under that veneer is a deep, dark existential conundrum.

It might be amusing to relive the same day a few times, maybe even a few dozen times. But an entire year of the same day -- an entire decade of the same day -- everything happening in precisely, exactly the same way? My back of the envelope calculation easily ran to a decade. But I was wrong. The director, Harold Ramis thinks it was actually 30 or 40 years.

I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and alloting for the down time and misguided years [Phil] spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years [spent reliving the same day].

We only see bits and pieces of the full experience in the movie, but this time my mind began filling in the gaps. Repeating the same day for decades plays to our secret collective fear that our lives are irrelevant and ultimately pointless. None of our actions -- even suicide, in endless grisly permutations -- ever change anything. What's the point? Why bother? How many of us are trapped in here, and how can we escape?

This is some dark, scary stuff when you really think about it.

You want a prediction about the weather, you're asking the wrong Phil.

I'll give you a winter prediction.
It's gonna be cold,
it's gonna be gray,
and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.

Comedy, my ass. I wanted to cry.

But there is a way out: redemption through repetition. If you have to watch Groundhog Day a few times to appreciate it, you're not alone. Indeed, that seems to be the whole point. Just ask Roger Ebert:

"Groundhog Day" is a film that finds its note and purpose so precisely that its genius may not be immediately noticeable. It unfolds so inevitably, is so entertaining, so apparently effortless, that you have to stand back and slap yourself before you see how good it really is.

Certainly I underrated it in my original review; I enjoyed it so easily that I was seduced into cheerful moderation. But there are a few films, and this is one of them, that burrow into our memories and become reference points. When you find yourself needing the phrase This is like "Groundhog Day" to explain how you feel, a movie has accomplished something.

There's something delightfully Ouroboros about the epiphanies and layered revelations in repeated viewings of a movie that is itself about (nearly) endless repetition.

Which, naturally, brings me to A/B testing. That's what Phil spends most of those thirty years doing. He spends it pursuing a woman, technically, but it's how he does it that is interesting:

Rita: This whole day has just been one long setup.

Phil: It hasn't.

Rita: And I hate fudge!

Phil: [making a mental list] No white chocolate. No fudge.

Rita: What are you doing? Are you making some kind of list? Did you call my friends and ask what I like and what I don't like? Is this what love is for you?

Phil: This is real. This is love.

Rita: Stop saying that! You must be crazy.

Phil doesn't just go on one date with Rita, he goes on thousands of dates. During each date, he makes note of what she likes and responds to, and drops everything she doesn't. At the end he arrives at -- quite literally -- the perfect date. Everything that happens is the most ideal, most desirable version of all possible outcomes on that date on that particular day. Such are the luxuries afforded to a man repeating the same day forever.

This is the purest form of A/B testing imaginable. Given two choices, pick the one that "wins", and keep repeating this ad infinitum until you arrive at the ultimate, most scientifically desirable choice. Your marketing weasels would probably collapse in an ecstatic, religious fervor if they could achieve anything even remotely close to the level of perfect A/B testing depicted in Groundhog Day.

But at the end of this perfect date, something impossible happens: Rita rejects Phil.

Phil wasn't making these choices because he honestly believed in them. He was making these choices because he wanted a specific outcome -- winning over Rita -- and the experimental data told him which path he should take. Although the date was technically perfect, it didn't ring true to Rita, and that made all the difference.

That's the problem with A/B testing. It's empty. It has no feeling, no empathy, and at worst, it's dishonest. As my friend Nathan Bowers said:

A/B testing is like sandpaper. You can use it to smooth out details, but you can't actually create anything with it.

The next time you reach for A/B testing tools, remember what happened to Phil. You can achieve a shallow local maximum with A/B testing -- but you'll never win hearts and minds. If you, or anyone on your team, is still having trouble figuring that out, well, the solution is simple.

Just watch Groundhog Day again.

In response to the the 9/11 attacks, the United States government created a highly secretive set of organizations with zero transparency and very little oversight. How much money do these secret programs cost? How many people do they employ? The Washington Post reports on Top Secret America:

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The series of articles, video, and graphics, allow readers to explore the information themselves.

Of main interest: a network diagram shows organizations and their top secret activities and a map shows the geographic distribution of government organizations and companies within Top Secret America.

Click on a specific organization for within group breakdowns. At this point it gets a little confusing with drill-down pie charts, especially if you're just browsing, and a spiral view is also offerred which feels extraneous. The overall story and heavy research, however, makes it worth clicking through the clunky at times set of interactives.

[Thanks, Erika]

Internet expert and author Clay Shirky's new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, discusses how the internet enables us to use slivers of time our culture has historically spent watching television making truly incredible things—like Wikipedia.

The image above, from web site Information is Beautiful, provides a nice visualization of this idea, putting into perspective how powerful redirecting even a small portion of our collective cognitive surplus can be. Friend of Lifehacker Matt Haughey discusses the new book:

The gist of the story Clay weaves is how we've spent the previous 50 years staring at televisions but the internet enables us to finally talk back, and even tiny slices of the time wasted watching TV when applied towards some collective output can result in massive repositories of information like Wikipedia. He shows many contemporary examples of online collaboration beyond Wikipedia.org and breaks down the motivations for contributors that cites plenty of sociology, psychology, and economics research to back his points up.

This one's officially on my to-read list, but whether you're interested in the book or not, it's a nice, hopeful idea, and something you may want to consider if you're looking for something to do with your free time beyond flipping on the TV set—even every now and then.

Bo King Wang (CREATION K.O Creation) thinks outside the 8-bit box and creates a 3D RPG battle depicting a band of heroes taking down an evil sorceress and her monster. The back panels feature two additional scenes that are also worth checking out. See them all in the gallery on Flickr.

By request, a new poster is available in the store.
(Based on this one.)

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La seule chose qui pouvait me pousser à acheter un téléphone Android (moi et tous les anciens possesseurs de Palm).

Shared by Riduidel
Effectivement, Akira, ça déchire, je m'étonne même rétrospectivement de ne pas avoir le manga ...

More extraordinarily complex draughtsmanship from Katushiro Otomo’s 2182-page manga  masterpiece “Akira”.

**Possible Spoilers**

The above images are taken from the end of Akira book 3  published by Dark Horse comics, I used to have the colourised version published by Epic Comics but alas, it’s long since vanished! For those of you perhaps familiar with the 1988 animated movie but not the Manga, I’d thoroughly recommend checking it out, the story is massively more complex,  intertwining a multitude of characters and many recurring, explicitly described locations…

The reason I chose to feature this set was I remember vividly how much of an effect first seeing these illustration had on me as an aspiring artist/designer, the detail is beyond phenomenal. Of particular interest is not just the superb architectural designs but the way the building are crowned with differing mix of communication arrays, air conditioning systems, water towers etc….

Akira volume 01 is available over on Amazon http://is.gd/dxk1Q and all good bookshops!

More on Katsuhiro Otomo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsuhiro_Otomo

“Ce qui s’est passé avec la sexualisation du Black, du Latino, de l’Arabe, du Pakistanais et de l’Asiatique, c’est toujours 60% de racisme et 40% d’attraction sincère.” Dixit Didier Lestrade.

Réflexion à poursuivre sur Post-O-Porno :

En France, ce type de pornographie met en scène ses propres références raciales, reflétant la réalité sociologique de la société française. La jeunesse « visible » des quartiers populaires des grandes villes françaises et de leur agglomération, celle dite « issue de l’immigration » (originaire des anciennes colonies françaises d’Afrique), est ainsi placée sur la sellette pornographique. « Le fantasme de l’Arabe est une réalité du monde homosexuel français, et c’est tout à fait notable dans un univers du gay porn à prédominance blanche ». On trouve ainsi des identités porno « ethniques », comme les « beurettes » et les « beurs », les « filles arabes voilées », les « racailles de cité », les « blackos ». Ces représentations enferment dans une identité sexuelle caricaturale toute une partie de la société, et elles enferment ces mêmes personnes et leur sexualité dans la « cité », dans les caves des immeubles, dans le terrain vague.

La vidéo porno gay « Matos de blackos », sous-production de la société Citébeur, est exemplaire quant au procédé d’assignation d’une identité sexuelle basée sur le genre et la race. Le film présente une succession de scènes dans des décors de « cité » dont les principaux protagonistes sont donc des « blackos », soit des jeunes hommes noirs, et où le spectateur va avoir confirmation de ses « idées reçues sur leur réputation ». Et cette réputation, clairement annoncée comme un « cliché » réel, repose principalement sur « la légende du sexe surdimensionné des noirs ». Car c’est connu, et la vidéo entend bien le démontrer : les noirs en ont une grosse. Ils n’ont pas un pénis aux dimensions « normales », mais un « baobab géant », un « gros bâton », une « bite XXL ». L’homme noir est résumé par son sexe prétendument hypertrophié, réduit à un pénis inhumain, animal. Le porno hétéro ou gay choisi TOUJOURS des hardeurs noirs avec pour seul critère de sélection, la taille de leur sexe ; jamais un homme noir au pénis de taille plus modeste n’est choisi. De même, l’homme noir pornographique est « exotique », il « a le rythme dans la peau », il est chaud « comme le soleil d’Afrique », il est présenté comme possédé par sa libido exubérante. Il est une brute animale, il est hyperactif, son corps est totalement sexualisé, fétichisé, contrairement à l’homme blanc. Bref, il est l’héritier de ses aïeuls des colonies. Dans le porno, on trouve une démonstration par le sexe de la différence raciale. L’homme noir est enfermé dans une identité raciale essentialisée : par « nature », il est différent de l’homme blanc. Tout comme les femmes, il est réduit à un corps/sexe. Disqualifiés de la sorte, les hommes noirs sont placés en bas de la hiérarchie de genre, ils ne sont pas des « hommes », mais avant tout des noirs, des « blackos ». Vu sous cet angle, le porno est, non seulement une construction hétérosexiste, mais plus encore ce qu’on pourrait qualifier d’ « hétéroracisme ».

Merci à Baptiste Coulmont pour ces liens, particulièrement bienvenus en ces temps de loi anti-burqa dont les débats ont largement écarté les aspects postcoloniaux.