I’ve been out of playing PC games for a long time and it’s been even longer since I last kept up with what 3D engines are able to do. I’ve played with an Oculus Rift coupled to a Leap Motion device and it’s easy to see how it opens the door to a whole new set of mixed-mode real and virtual experiences. But I was never quite as blown away by a 3D rendering as I was by Benoit Dereau’s latest demo that he created using Unreal Engine 4. The film takes the viewer for a walk through a 19th century parisian Haussman-style apartment.

We’re not yet reaching photo-realistic levels yet but this is so very close. The lighting is spot on, the textures are vivid but there’s something that is missing (or maybe that needs to be taken away) - it’s hard to put the finger on it. But in any case, this is the kind of demo that makes Hololens incredibly exciting to me.

Microsoft’s new tech is impressive and promising in and of itself but the prospect of including extremely high quality 3D rendering makes it even more appealing. I imagine visiting an open house and being able to place furniture around the rooms then being able to share that with people you’re going to be moving in with. We’re in 2015 and finally reaching 1999-levels of technology.

I’ve just published a new recipe to my online cookbook: mi-cuit tuna, cucumber spaghetti and grilled Cayenne pineapple. The main piece of the dish is a tuna steak served seared on a single side while the other one is left raw. It makes for a really great contrast on the tongue – freshness and warmth at once.

It’s a recipe I’ve been trying to perfect for a few months and it’s reached a point where I feel like it’s good enough to be shared. It’s as much of an original as I’ve ever done – most of my culinary works are heavily inspired by things I see or taste and then try to reinterpret or recreate. But I personally hadn’t ever tasted a tuna cooked on a single side before the idea came to me.

I originally had asparagus on the side but decided not only that it wasn’t enough but that I also wanted to add a little bit of fantasy to match the novel way of cooking the fish. I have tasted vegetable spaghetti in the past but it’s nice to work with a plant that is usually served cold. As for the pineapple, the charring and pungency brought by the Cayenne pepper only serve to reveal the sweet layer of the fruit.

Olivier Tonneau, a French blogger writing on the Mediapart platform, published an outstanding blog post touching to the very same topics I was writing about in the past week. Starting with an explanation of what Charlie Hedbo is, he then dwelves into how France is unique in that the State strives to disentangle race and religion – and how it has spectacularly failed to accomplish not only that goal, but also that of dissociating religion and extremism. Our opinions are largely aligned but his eloquence outranks mine by an order of magnitude.

On the complete absurdity of the attack:

This being clear, the attack becomes all the more tragic and absurd: two young French Muslims of Arab descent have not assaulted the numerous extreme-right wing newspapers that exist in France (Minute, Valeurs Actuelles) who ceaselessly amalgamate Arabs, Muslims and fundamentalists, but the very newspaper that did the most to fight racism. And to me, the one question that this specific event raises is: how could these youth ever come to this level of confusion and madness? What feeds into fundamentalist fury? How can we fight it?

On racism in France and the law against the veil:

That the emergence of fundamentalism is posing serious problems to Arabs also sheds an interesting light on the law banning the hijab – a law that is routinely mentioned as a proof of France’s anti-Muslim bias. I do not have a definite opinion on this law. I was, however, stunned when I read a very angry article by a writer I admire, Mohamed Kacimi. The son of an Algerian Imam, deeply attached to his Muslim culture yet also fiercely attached to secularism, Mohamed Kacimi lashed out angrily at white, middle-class opponents of the law, who focused on the freedom of Muslim women to dress as they please. They were not the ones, he said, who had their daughters in the suburbs called prostitutes, bullied and sometimes raped for the sole reason that they chose not to wear the veil – let us remember that many Muslim women do not consider wearing the veil as compulsory: again, we have here Muslims being persecuted by fundamentalists.

On how despite the apparent consensus displayed during the phenomenal demonstration of Sunday, France is undeniably divided and how Charlie seeked less to divide than it seeked to unite:

This is the difficult argument I am having with my French friends: we are all aware of the fact that the attack on Charlie Hebdo will be exploited by the Far right, and that our government will use it as an opportunity to create a false unanimity within a deeply divided society. We have already heard the prime minister Manuel Valls announce that France was “at war with Terror” – and it horrifies me to recognize the words used by George W. Bush. We are all trying to find the narrow path – defending the Republic against the twin threats of fundamentalism and fascism (and fundamentalism is a form of fascism). But I still believe that the best way to do this is to fight for our Republican ideals. Equality is meaningless in times of austerity. Liberty is but hypocrisy when elements of the French population are being routinely discriminated. But fraternity is lost when religion trumps politics as the structuring principle of a society. Charlie Hebdo promoted equality, liberty and fraternity – they were part of the solution, not the problem.