Interdit de filmer? Ou interdit de DIFFUSER sans flouter?

 Les débats concernant la loi dite sur la «sécurité globale» sont, une fois de plus, l’occasion de constater à quel point les facultés de raisonnement de la plupart de nos contemporains ont été atrophiées par la méthode globale, la télé–réalité et les réseaux sociaux.

Un des objectifs poursuivis par la loi est d'interdire de montrer le visage des policiers en intervention. Il y a plein de bonnes raisons à cela, et il a été clairement expliqué pourquoi cela n’équivaudrait à aucune espèce d’immunité. Bien.

Mais comment diable a-t-on bondi d’«interdiction de diffuser sans flouter» à «interdiction de filmer»? Ce n’est pourtant pas la même chose, loin s’en faut!

Il n’est pas interdit aux journalistes (ou à d’autres) de filmer des policiers en intervention, il est interdit de DIFFUSER CES IMAGES sans avoir, au montage, flouté les visages des policiers en question. Comment diable peut-on faire l’amalgame entre ces deux choses?

J’ai quand même du mal à m’empêcher de penser que cet amalgame n’est pas intentionnel, au moins de la part de certains. Reste à savoir quel est leur but caché...

Les confidiots sont de retour!

 Samedi 31 octobre 2020, la France est de nouveau confinée depuis hier, face à une deuxième vague de COVID-19 virulente et meurtrière.

Arrive sur mon téléphone une notification du Monde: «Un premier jour de confinement aux airs de long dimanche morose, où ressurgissent les angoisses de mars»...

Après les covidiots («Le masque, ça sert à rien! C’est un complot de Big Pharma et du gouvernement»), voici décidément revenu le temps des confidiots...!

Par moment, on se dit qu’il leur faudrait une bonne guerre, pour comprendre enfin ce qu’est l’angoisse, la vraie, et arrêter de se regarder le nombril sous prétexte qu’on ne va plus pouvoir aller tous les jours lever le coude au bistrot pendant quelques semaines... La belle affaire!

Vraiment très angoissante, en effet, la perspective de ne plus se colleter les embouteillages matin et soir pour aller au boulot à la même heure que tout le monde, en en revenir idem; la perspective de ne plus s’entasser dans le métro ou le bus où, même sans virus (chinois ou pas), vous avez toutes les chances d’attraper quelque chose (ne fut-ce que les mauvaises odeurs du voisin); la perspective de contempler à longueur de journée les têtes de neuneus des collègues, et de subir les petites mesquineries des chefaillons... Oui, quelle angoisse, vraiment, d’être débarrassé de tout cela pour un bon mois!

Le confinement, pour ceux qui ne travaillaient pas, ne va pas changer grand-chose (surtout la version «light» qu’on nous propose cette fois, et dont on va vite s’apercevoir qu’elle ne suffit pas); et pour ceux qui travaillent, c’est une bénédiction que de pouvoir rester tranquillement à la maison à pantoufler, travailler devant son ordinateur, descendre à la cuisine se faire un thé, bref travailler d’une manière infiniment plus confortable, productive et détendue... En tous cas, c’est ce que j’ai toujours remarqué, du temps où je télétravaillais un jour par semaine.

Et en fait de dimanche morose, d’abord on est samedi, et ensuite un doux soleil d’automne a chassé brumes et nuages, et il fait un temps radieux! Ne cédons pas au pessimisme professionnel du Monde et restons réalistes: ce confinement, c’est loin d’être la fin du monde (sans jeu de mots), et ce qui m’angoisserait plutôt, moi, c’est de voir à quel niveau de médiocrité un grand quotidien national n’hésite pas à s’abaisser pour attirer un lectorat toujours plus prompt à se lamenter sur ses (bien petits) malheurs supposés...

De plus en plus de Français écrivent mal

 Je lisais récemment un article du Point dans lequel Bertrand Delanoë, ancien maire de Paris et retraité de la politique, déplorait que «le monde dans lequel arrive la jeunesse [soit] celui des réseaux sociaux, des fake news et du manque de profondeur.» Il ajoutait: «Rien n’est pire que de baigner dans la médiocrité intellectuelle et morale.»

Il a bien sûr raison, mais je soulignerai que les fake news, qu’on doit tout simplement appeler en français les fausses nouvelles, ne datent pas d’hier: sans même parler des rumeurs, qui on toujours existé (les plus grandes d’entre elles ne sont-elles pas les religions?), faut-il rappeler que les fausses nouvelles étaient déjà tellement installées dans la société, et tellement dommageables, que la grande loi sur la presse du 29 juillet 1881 instituait spécifiquement un nouveau délit de «propagation de fausses nouvelles»?

Les fausses nouvelles ne sont probablement guère plus nombreuses aujourd’hui qu’elles ne l’étaient hier —rapportées au nombre d’êtres humains peuplant la Terre, bien entendu: il est logique que, sur une population de, disons, 60 millions de personnes, davantage de fausses nouvelles soient inventées et diffusées que par une population de seulement 40 millions.

Ce qu’il y a , c’est que les fausses nouvelles d’hier n’avaient guère de moyens de véritablement se diffuser. Or, une fausse nouvelle que vous êtes seul à connaître parce que vous l’avez inventée est sans intérêt. Si vous ne la partagez qu’à l’intérieur de votre petite sphère personnelle, sans moyen de la disperser au-dehors (disons, parmi les personnes présentes sur un bateau de croisière sans moyen de communication avec la terre ferme et encore au large pour plusieurs semaines), ça ne va pas loin non plus, sans jeu de mots. Dans le passé, le seul moyen de diffuser une fausse nouvelle était la presse écrite, seul média «de masse» (c’était très relatif à l’époque, mais tout de même), et c’est bien pour cela que c’est dans le cadre d’une loi sur la presse qu’on s’est préoccupé de réprimer la diffusion de fausses nouvelles: parce qu’elles ne pouvaient passer que par là pour atteindre une large audience, et commencer à faire véritablement du mal.

Aujourd’hui, avec les réseaux sociaux (il faudra du temps et du recul pour comprendre tout le mal qu’ils ont fait), mais aussi les blogs qui fleurissent sur Internet, les fausses nouvelles disposent des moyens techniques leur permettant de se répandre beaucoup plus vite, même si elles ont été inventées par un individu isolé. C’est pourquoi il nous semble que c’est un phénomène nouveau, ce qui n’est évidemment pas le cas: la bêtise et la malignité humaines sont, hélas! intemporelles.

Pas nouveau donc, mais simplement plus visible (en dépit du fait que les rationalistes et les scientifiques qui s’efforcent de combattre les fausses nouvelles se servent aussi des réseaux sociaux), ce phénomène est semblable à celui de l’illettrisme, qui se manifeste par les innombrables fautes d’orthographe que font un nombre considérable de personnes: plus le temps passe, plus il nous semble que «les gens» écrivent mal et parlent mal.

C’est, sans nul doute, en partie vrai. Ma génération, celle des gens qui étaient déjà au lycée quand est survenu le chaos de Mai–68 et ses suites désastreuses pour le système éducatif, a été sauvée: nous avons reçu une bonne éducation qui, même si elle était moins exigeante que celle reçue par nos propres parents (je me souviens que ma mère connaissait encore par cœur la liste de tous les rois de France, avec leurs dates de règne!), nous permettait au moins de savoir calculer de tête, faire les quatre opérations et les règles de trois sans calculette (évidemment inconnue à l’époque), et surtout écrire et parler le français correctement, y compris parmi ce qu’on appelle de nos jours «les classes défavorisées» ou «populaires».

Les enfants de cette génération ont, eux, subi de plein fouet le choc éducatif post–Mai–68 et les conséquences inévitables de la dégradation des normes éducatives; mais ce n’est que lorsque les personnes de cette génération–là, déjà endommagée, sont devenues à leur tour éducateurs, que les dégâts se sont démultipliés sur la génération  née en l’an 2000, qui écrit «sa» au lieu de «ça», qui prononce «je dji» (comme dans la téci) à la place de «je dis», et qui ne sait pas faire la liaison avec «euros» («dix heuros» au lieu de «dix z–euros»). L’on pourrait bien sûr multiplier les exemples, tant ils abondent autour de nous.

Si donc il est vrai qu’on écrit de plus en plus mal le français, il est surtout vrai que cette dégradation est plus visible, du fait que l’expression écrite est, hélas! pour les amateurs de beau français, de plus en plus présente dans nos vies (toujours ces maudits réseaux sociaux et autres blogs), et que les fautes d’orthographe nous sautent ainsi de plus en plus aux yeux. Jadis, les personnes qui écrivaient mal (souvent issues des fameuses «classes populaires» déjà évoquées) n’écrivaient pas, ou très peu, et leurs écrits n’avaient pas vocation à être largement diffusés. Tout cela a changé aujourd’hui et, tout comme les fausses nouvelles nous semblent infiniment plus nombreuses, il nous semble aussi qu’énormément plus de gens écrivent mal: c’est marginalement vrai, mais l’accroissement que nous ressentons provient surtout du fait que ces deux phénomènes sont beaucoup plus visibles. Nous y sommes inévitablement confrontés, alors qu’auparavant, ils seraient largement passés «sous le radar».

Sarenza vous ment! Boycottez-le!

 Sarenza, vous connaissez, bien sûr? L’un des deux plus importants sites de vente de chaussures en ligne... Un site certainement digne de confiance, n’est-ce pas? Sauf que... non!

Je m’explique: courant août 2020, je commande une paire de mocassins à prix cassés, s’agissant probablement d’une fin de série, puisque peu de pointures demeurent disponibles. Je choisis un 43, car il n’y a plus que ça qui approche ma taille, qui oscille entre 42 et 43. Je paie 53,59 euros, frais d’envoi inclus.

Les chaussures arrivent, et hélas! elles sont en effet trop grandes, impossible de les conserver. Je demande le jour–même une autorisation de retour que Sarenza m’envoie très rapidement, le 20 août, avec l’étiquette habituelle à imprimer. Je dépose mon colis en point–relais, car c’est le mode le plus économique et je ne veux pas créer de surcoût au retour par rapport au mode d’envoi.

Je n’ai évidemment pas l’option de demander un échange pour du 42, puisque cette pointure n’est pas en stock.

Je vous cite un passage de l’autorisation de retour que m’a envoyé Sarenza: “Vous serez intégralement remboursé(e) des sommes versées dès réception et vérification du retour de vos articles”. C’est bien ce que j’attendais: j’avais pris soin de vérifier, avant de commander, qu’il était possible de retourner sans aucun frais pour une erreur de pointure, car c’est quelque chose qui arrive couramment quand on achète des chaussures en ligne.

Le 27 août 2020, je reçois mon remboursement... mais là, il y a quelque chose qui cloche: on me rembourse seulement 47,60 euros, il “manque” donc près de 6 euros, 5,99 euros exactement.

J’écris immédiatement au Service Clients, qui me répondra paisiblement, le 31 août: “les frais de port restent à la charge du client en cas de retour complet ou partiel de la commande, comme indiqué dans nos CGV.”.

Étant moi-même juriste, je relis avec soin les fameuses conditions générales de vente (“CGV”). Non seulement ce que Sarenza vient de m’écrire n’est mentionné nulle part, mais encore ces CGV précisent–elles explicitement le contraire, au paragraphe “Combien me coûte le retour d’un article?”: “LE RETOUR EST TOTALEMENT GRATUIT. VOUS N'AVEZ RIEN À PAYER.”

Je demanderai vainement au Service Clients de Sarenza à quel endroit précis de leurs CGV il est dit que le client doit payer les frais de retour: on ne daignera pas me répondre.

J’en suis maintenant au stade de la mise en demeure par lettre recommandée avec A.R. J’ai également écrit au magazine “60” et je m’apprête à saisir les autorités compétentes. Vous aurez compris que ce n’est pas une question de montant, mais de principe: aucun consommateur n’aime être pris pour un imbécile, ni pour une vache à lait.

En conclusion: Sarenza vous ment quand ils affirment que retourner une paire de chaussures est entièrement gratuit. En violation flagrante de leurs propres CGV, ils retiennent les frais de retour. Sachez–le et allez faire votre shopping ailleurs!

At last: the end of the Ebay–Paypal two–step!

 Ebay and Paypal walk hand in hand, we all know this. They have the same ultimate parent company. That is the reason why they send business to each other as often as possible.

One of the nastiest ways they used to do that was by making it mandatory, when selling something on Ebay, to list Paypal among the possible ways to settle the price of the object.

Why was it nasty? Because, on top of the seller’s commission you had to pay to Ebay (which, in the principle, is normal), the seller ALSO had to pay a commission to Paypal, even though Paypal rendered absolutely no service whatsoever to the seller.

On the contrary: Paypal rendered a service to THE BUYER, by making it possible to get reimbursed if anything went wrong  with the purchase. That was (and still is) indeed a great service, and certainly worthy of a commission... IF PAID BY THE BUYER, who benefited, and not by the seller!

Something serious must have happened (most likely a lawsuit endly badly for Ebay/Paypal), because I have learned today that it is no longer mandatory to include Paypal among the means to settle the price for an Ebay auction or sale.

That is great news for all sellers! At last, that utterly unfair one–two punching sequence no one could do anything about has ended.

Of course, I paid the price for this bit of news, and I paid twice and dearly: first, I may have to purchase a lens by paying by ordinary bank transfer, even though I am not at all protected as a buyer, because I can no longer argue that the seller’s terms contradict Ebay’s rules. And second because I have just received a first bid on a big and costly lens I am selling, and I have just found that the existence of a bid prevents me from modifying the terms of payment for that object. In other words, I will still have to pay Paypal’s commission on that one...!

At least, I have modified all my other Ebay sales, and I encourage you to do the same right away.

Consider boycotting globalcentral.com!

The eglobalcentral.com websites are online vendors of electronics, photo equipment, etc. They have very low prices, which attract a lot of customers, even if their delivery times are very long: several weeks during which you will receive no information whatsoever on the status of your order, until it shows up on your doorstep.

Moreover, they try to "play local" by having country-specific versions of their website: they have one for Belgium, for example, so that Belgians will think they have a subsidiary established in their country, and they have one in France to induce the same kind of trust in French customers. They also have many other "national" sites, and they probably have one painted to the colors of your own country...

Finally, in order to convince the European customers that they are firmly established in Europe, they ostensibly ship their merchandise from a UK warehouse.

However, that is all window-dressing.

The truth is eglobalcentral lie to their customers.

They are established in China, more specifically in Hong Kong, and when you order something from them, the long delivery delay is because they first have to ship the product from Hong Kong to the UK, then ship it again from that UK warehouse to you.

And that long wait is not the worse aspect of things, far from it.

Imagine that upon receiving it, you realize that the product you have ordered is not suitable, and you want to return it. Of course, you can, can you not? Yes, but... you will be forced to return it TO HONG KONG, not to the UK warehouse that shipped it to you, which means you will have to pay around 50 euros in shipping costs —and more if the package is a bit heavy!

This is sheer extortion. Eglobalcentral know very well that offsetting  50 euros or more for shipping costs will, in many cases, defeat the whole purpose of returning the product, and they are counting on that to minimize the number of returns.

This is an unfair commercial practice, and unacceptable in this day and age. This is customer entrapment, and this is why I will from now on boycott eglobalcentral and never, ever purchase anything from any of their sites again.

I urge you to do the same, because only this sort of customer pressure will make them change the way they do business. LET'S ALL BOYCOTT EGLOBALCENTRAL!

I will of course file a complaint with the competent French authorities, as I am located in France, and with the European Consumer Center (www.europe-consommateurs.eu).

La bêtise de la FNAC dépasse les bornes…

Cela fait déjà bien longtemps qu’à mes yeux, comme à ceux de nombre de ses anciens clients, la FNAC a perdu son attrait, que ce soit en termes de produits disponibles ou de prix… pour ne rien dire du service après-vente et de la relation-client en général, domaines dans lesquels elle est depuis belle lurette supplantée et dépassée de nombreuses longueurs par Amazon.

Quant au fameux “vendeur FNAC”, dont on vantait jadis la compétence et la courtoisie, il y a longtemps qu'il a été lui aussi brocardé par de multiples clients; les enquêtes qui ont révélé qu'il orientait davantage le choix du client en fonction des marges réalisées sur tel ou tel produit, qu'en fonction de l'adéquation dudit produit aux besoins du client, n’ont pas non plus fait de bien à l’enseigne.

Tout cela, la FNAC le sait tellement bien que, pour espérer rester encore un peu dans le jeu concurrentiel et demeurer un tant soit peu attractive, elle s’est trouvée contrainte de faire appel à des vendeurs tiers afin de créer une “marketplace”, ici encore pour tenter d’émuler Amazon, à la traîne de laquelle peinent la plupart des détaillants de nos jours.

 

En dépit de cette position peu flatteuse, il s’avère que j’effectue parfois un achat sur le site de la FNAC. Pas auprès de la FNAC elle-même, non, pour les raisons déjà évoquées, mais auprès de l’un des susdits vendeurs tiers, dont il peut se trouver occasionnellement qu’ils ont en stock ce que je cherche à un prix concurrentiel. Rare can be found, comme le disait, je crois, une ancienne pub pour le whisky J & B.

C’est ainsi que j’ai récemment passé commande sur cette “marketplace” d’une batterie supplémentaire pour mon Nikon Z7.

Dans la foulée, je reçois un mail qui me dit que ma commande a été enregistrée. Jusque là, rien que de très normal.

Mais voilà-t-y pas que, quelques minutes plus tard, j’en reçois un deuxième pour me dire que ma commande A ÉTÉ ACCEPTÉE…! Si, si! Victoire!

On croit rêver ! Non, sérieusement, ma commande a été acceptée ? Quel coup de bol! C’est vrai, quoi, elle avait toutes les chances (ou plutôt: tous les risques) d’être refusée, au départ… On en voit tous les jours, des marchands qui refusent de prendre l’argent des clients et disent : “Ah, ben non, désolé ! Je ne veux pas de votre commande !” J’ai vraiment eu de la chance de passer au travers.

Franchement, on s’interroge sur le niveau de bêtise crasse de l’imbécile qui a pondu un mail-type comme ça… pour ne rien dire de la neuneuserie affligeante de ses supérieurs qui ont approuvé (en novlangue: “validé”) cette idée.

 

Tiens, au fait, j’ai une bonne nouvelle pour vous : si vous avez pu lire cet article sur mon blog, c’est parce que vous avez été accepté en tant que lecteur. Sympa de ma part, non? Ben oui, j’aurais pu facilement ne pas vouloir de vous, après tout, non ?

Comme je le dis souvent (et, hélas ! de plus en plus souvent…), par moments, je me demande comment on a réussi un jour à sortir des cavernes…

How to get more views on Flickr

Hello everyone,

I haven’t posted here in quite a while, I know and I apologize about this. Going into “retirement from active duty” is a big change, and many adjustments had to be made; others still need to be. Additionally, we have had the painters at the house for weeks to undertake major redecoration works which will only (and finally!) be finished by the end of this week.

Also, those who give me the pleasure of following what I post on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/d_robert/) know that I have been away on photo trips, first to Sardinia for three weeks in March and April, then to Scotland for ten days around the end of April. The selection and processing of photos also take up quite a bit of time, as I like to do things with care whenever I can. And now, I can afford this supreme luxury: have and take TIME, and yet sometimes there hardly seems to be enough of that…!

Anyway, I was on the subject of Flickr, which is the only “social” thing I do online, as I do not appreciate the so-called “social media” and do not wish to be present there —the sole exception being, possibly, Instagram because it is predominantly photo-related (or so they tell me), but then it seems so complicated uploading things to their platform from a desktop computer that I have given up. Would you believe a “social medium” centered on photography, that would only accept uploads from the worst cameras that exist nowadays (i.e., cell phones), and not from the best cameras, unless you find a way to make Instagram believe that the desktop computer on which you have carefully processed your photos, with its high quality, calibrated monitor and its suite of sophisticated and powerful retouching software… is actually a cell phone?

Me, I cannot believe nor understand it. But such is life. When Instagram come to their senses one day (maybe) and accept uploads from computers, I will reconsider, but I don’t wish to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to cheat my way into uploading nice photographs instead of the crappy smartphone snapshots they willingly accept.

What was I saying? Ah! yes, Flickr. My main concern there is to post good quality photos —well, the kind I regard as being good quality, based on my “National Geographic-like” standards. Do I get many views? A fair amount, yes. Would I undertake efforts to increase those views using “popularity schemes”? Certainly not. I belong to the groups I like (and know) on Flickr, I’m sure I’m missing quite a few that would be of interest, but I don’t intend to do anything else or more than post to those groups I belong to, and which I update from time to time, in particular when I discover that a group had a sole admin who has suddenly lost interest and left their group to turn into an uncurated photo dump, which is frankly stupid and disrespectful for the loyal contributors to that group.

So, basically I follow my own chosen path, welcoming those who are happy to tread along with me for a while, but not making any efforts to gather followers.

Now, recently, several of my photos have been selected to go into this thing that is called “Explore”. I have no clue how a photo gets there, but so many people talk about it like the Holy Grail of Flickr that I went and had a look. It appears to be a special gallery made up of recently uploaded photos selected by some mysterious algorithm, and quite a few of those are really excellent indeed (some are also pretty bad, but popular). Photos that are selected for the Explore gallery immediately get thousands of views, and that’s how I spot that one of mine has been so chosen. Plus, people tell you in comments and invite the photo to “In Explore” groups.

Anyway, this morning one of mine was selected, and among the people who “faved” it, I noticed a strange user name (people are not mandated to use their actual names on Flickr) that included a phrase about thanking people for x million views. This is a new ploy on Flickr, and I have seen several cheesy types use it: if their user name is, say, “Charlie”, they will change it into something like “Charlie thanks for 10 million views”. Of course, it’s not really about thanking people, as you have guessed: it is solely about bragging about their 10 million views.

This is cheap and mediocre, but so is most of the human race, unfortunately. Panem et circenses. Along the same lines, the verb “share”, which expresses a wonderful concept, is one of the most corrupted nowadays: most people do not want to actually “share” their photos with you, they want to use them to show off and hope that you will admire them. That’s what “sharing” truly means to most people nowadays.

And so, there was this guy “faving” my Explored photo this morning, with a phrase thanking people for x million views in his user name, and since the number of views he boasted about was quite high, I went to have a look at all the wonders he certainly had in his Flickr gallery… Well, he only had about 200 pictures, most of them ugly snapshots, quite a few of them politically oriented against terror and condemning terror attacks —nothing wrong with that, of course, but the photographic quality simply wasn’t there.

I was puzzled. How could someone with such a meager and mediocre portfolio have attracted so many views? I quickly understood: the guy is following 18,700 other people on Flickr, and as most people return the favor when someone follows them (I don’t necessarily), he also has 18,400 followers…!

That’s the trick! When you have thousands and thousands of followers (which you have induced into following you simply because you have followed them first, doesn’t matter if you never go again to look at their photos!), statistically it will snowball into millions of views, just because SOME of them will occasionally click on one of your photos…

So, now you know: you want millions of views on Flickr, doesn’t matter if your portfolio is shitty, just stoop to following everyone in sight, watch most of them follow you in return, and behold the counter of views going up…

Life is great, decidedly!

The ugly fashion of thick female eyebrows

Fashion is a concept I’ve always found difficult to understand. As a human being, you’d think you would and should want to be yourself, and not too much like the others; particularly where being attractive to the other sex is concerned, you’d think one should and would want to be unique, to differentiate themselves from the next person, instead of doing whatever possible to look as much alike as possible...

Apparently, though, good common sense is not relevant where fashion is concerned. Have some garment industry moguls decided, via the “inspired” voices of some fashion gurus, that skinny jeans were the thing to be seen in now? Let’s all of us buy and wear them, so we can all look alike. Tomorrow, it’ll be mini-skirts, or platform shoes, or the Devil only knows whatever else.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the masses see fit to follow those fashions, as the said masses are not particularly remarkable for their intelligence. Most of the genus homo erectus are indeed quite dumb, not to mention quite lacking in self-assurance and good taste, and those character traits combine to make them very likely to simply imitate what they see the next person doing —which, as already pointed out, is baffling to me: not only do they wear the same things as their neighbors, without regard for whether their silhouette benefits from it, but they readily endorse, without even thinking (but do they ever?), practices that are even much more radical, such as piercings (ah, those rings in the nose that makes women look so much like the cows of my childhood —how utterly ridiculous!), and more recently tattoos. How ugly and decaying will those tattoos look when the concerned ladies reach their mid-thirties and their skin becomes less taut and starts to wrinkle? And by then, they will still have the major part of their lives to live together with those Dorian Gray avatars “adorning” their bodies...

Being into photography, I obviously have dozens of photos staring me in the face every single day, unless I myself am out shooting. Among them, and particularly in my Flickr groups, are female portraits. And since maybe a year or so, I have begun to notice the emergence of a sad and ugly new fashion, which is that of THICK EYEBROWS.

Now, eyebrows on a woman can be a very attractive feature; they contribute to giving a face its singularity, its character. If one main role had to be attributed to them, it would be to showcase the most important component of the face: the eyes. For a very long time, it was well understood that eyebrows were not supposed to steal the show, and had to be kept under control. For once, good common sense was at work there, and women diligently plucked their eyebrows to shape them the way they liked.

However, recently, some dumber-than-usual concept came out that female eyebrows needed to be thick and heavy, in order to look fashionable. Now, I have heard it many times when I was young and honesty had not yet given precedence to political correctness (and therefore I will repeat it for historical reasons), that the world of fashion was ruled by homosexual males who had no vested interest in making females look genuinely beautiful and attractive. I have no idea regarding the accuracy of the latter phrase, but it is true that whoever came up with this idea that female eyebrows had to be thick and bushy has not done them a favor, as I have rarely seen anything uglier.

The women who diligently follow that diktät (and there are very many of them!), not only let them eyebrows grow as thick and bushy as they can, but also actually augment them in thickness and bushiness if they think they don’t look big and thick enough by themselves...! Yuck.

The thing is, while they grow and exhibit overgrown bushes on their brows, they still pluck, shave and/or was away any sign of hair almost everywhere else... So, is body hair attractive, or is it not?

Let us all pray that a modicum of good taste will soon prevail over sheer stupidity, and that otherwise charming ladies will cease to emulate Martin Scorsese Andy Rooney, because it does nothing to make them more attractive to most men.

Me and my five (so far!) Nikon Z7

The Nikon Z7 is a great camera, with the upcoming firmware update(s) it’s going to be even greater, and I won’t sing its praises here, others on the Internet are and have been doing it much better than I could hope to.

There is one thing, though, that bothers me: supported languages. And this is what this article is about, so that you can avoid making the same mistakes as I.

So, I bought my first Z7 mid-November 2018, just in time for my December photo trip to Brittany. Now, what is the first thing you do when you receive a new digital camera these days, after charging the battery, that is? You open the menus and start configuring it to make it more your own, and make it work the way you want.

And as soon as I started doing that, I discovered that the menus on my Z7 were in English and Chinese. Only.

Now, that doesn’t really bother me personally, as I’m used to configuring all my cameras in English, which is like a second native tongue to me, and which makes it a lot easier as most of the camera-related content found on the Web is in English anyway, so having the camera set up in English already makes it easier to try out the various tips I may stumble upon, but... but... when the day to resell it comes, what do I do, in France, surrounded by French-speaking, Italian-speaking, German-speaking, Spanish-speaking potential customers?

Obviously, it is going to be a problem.

So, I think “OK, my bad, I should have checked/asked, I’m not going to return it now as with scarce inventories, there won’t be time to obtain another one before I go to Brittany, I will procure another one later and resell this one with English only, hoping to take advantage of the fact that it will still be a very new camera to find a buyer that will be OK with English only...”

With a couple of weeks to spare before my trip, I chanced and ordered a second Z7 from the FNAC marketplace vendor Infinity Pro, which claimed to have the camera in stock... but finally decided to reimburse my3,431 euros as they could not procure the Z7...! The claim was false, obviously.

Not daunted (how stupid can one be?), I ordered a third Z7 from the E-global Central Belgium online vendor. I waited days and days, no one answering my emails, no one giving me any news (in spite of having promptly debited my VISA card!), and suddenly I was informed that my 3,018 euros were going to be reimbursed!

Considering the obvious difficulties to obtain this camera, I decided to wait until after Christmas, and so on January 7, I ordered my fourth Z7 from UK online vendor Progadgets KCS. UK vendors have very good prices because they source their products from Hong Kong, and there must be some special customs arrangement between the UK and their former colony, so that goods may enter the European Union without paying VAT, or something like that... Better hurry if one wants to take advantage of this, because after the Brexit, it will be too late...

Anyway, this time I had done my homework and asked about supported languages. That vendor had been very reactive and had listed five or six languages in their email, so I thought I was safe, but when I received the camera and began to configure it, I discovered that, in fact, what I had mistaken for the beginning of a long list of languages, was in fact the full list. And so, there was, in addition to English and Chinese, Dutch and Portuguese, which was already an improvement, but no German, no Italian, no Spanish, etc.

In other words, I was not really better off. I had to send it back, and I am expecting reimbursement (this time, of 3,031 euros) as I write this.

I have now sworn that the Progadgets KCS thing was going to be my last mistake, and therefore I have sent emails all over the place, asking vendors for an EXHAUSTIVE list of the supported language, and this allowed me to find out that Nikon have implemented really strange policies regarding the languages supported in the menus of the Z cameras: the reduced cost copies that come into Europe via Hong Kong are usually only in English and Chinese, and some also have Dutch, Portuguese and some strange languages that look like Hindu or Burmese...

Of course, I can always go to a “legitimate” Nikon dealership in France. Only today, I received an answer from Objectif Bastille, a well-known retailer in Paris (where I bought, in fact, my Z-mount 35mm f/1.8 S lens), detailing the supported languages, and they’re all there: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, English, French, Spanish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serb, Finnish, etc. In other words, all the languages I have, for example, on my D850. But then, the price of the Z7 plus an FTX adapter is 3,850 euros, which is quite a different deal...

At this point, my last hope is some obscure retailer in the Canary Islands, but they seem to keep strange business hours and I am still waiting for them to answer my query about the supported languages. If that fails, I will have no choice but to pay full price.

So, in conclusion, if you see some great buying opportunities on the Internet, make sure you ask the right questions and obtain the right answers in writing before you let them take your money...!

EDIT: After Progadgets KCS, I was once more taken in by inaccurate representations from an online vendor, this time Duke Fotografia in Las Palmas, Canary Island (Spain) as, in spite of my having asked (repeatedly!) the very specific question about languages supported in the menus), I was still sent a Z7 which only had English, French, Spanish and Portuguese...! I had to send it back once again, and then I decided to go to a very official Nikon authorized reseller in the city of Lyons, and actually look at the “Languages” item in the Setup menu: sure enough, dozens of European languages were listed, just as on my D850. I bought that Z7, which is going to be THE ONE for me —at last!