#xavier niel

[stephanemortimore]

Tout augmente !

Nous sommes le 26 septembre 2023 et la météo m’annonce un petit 28° pour aujourd’hui. Soit une température normale pour un mois de juin mais absolument pas pour un automne. Et les médias pourront lui donner le joli nom d’été indien pour faire poli et ne pas effrayer les téléspectateurs, ça n’en reste pas moins une occurrence que seuls les imbéciles et les menteurs continueront de nier comme ils…

[cinemistery]

Nicolas | Les Amours Imaginaires (2010)

[transistoradio]

Oedipus and the Sphinx by 1) Francois-Xavier Fabre, 2) Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 3) Gustave Moreau, 4) Gustave Moreau, 5) Charles Ricketts, 6) John McKirdy Duncan, 7) Niels Skovgaard, and 4) Samuele Gaudio.

[itsmyfriendisaac]

♓ March 20th: Actor & Director, Xavier Dolan.

[gynoids-over-androids]

Imagine being the daughter of the richest man in Europe and still you are married to a pimp who looks like a goblin

[10andahalf]

[thomas-querqy]

Les amours imaginaires écrit et réalisé par Xavier Dolan, avec Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider, Xavier Dolan (2010), toujours aussi bien 😍😍

Disponible jusqu'au 19/07/2024

[eludin-realm]

Character Name Ideas (Male)

So I've been browsing through BehindTheName (great resource!) recently and have compiled several name lists. Here are some names, A-Z, that I like. NOTE: If you want to use any of these please verify sources, meanings etc, I just used BehindTheName to browse and find all of these. Under the cut:

A: Austin, Aiden, Adam, Alex, Angus, Anthony, Archie, Argo, Ari, Aric, Arno, Atlas, August, Aurelius, Alexei, Archer, Angelo, Adric, Acarius, Achilou, Alphard, Amelian, Archander B: Bodhi, Bastian, Baz, Beau, Beck, Buck, Basil, Benny, Bentley, Blake, Bowie, Brad, Brady, Brody, Brennan, Brent, Brett, Brycen C: Cab, Cal, Caden, Cáel, Caelan, Caleb, Cameron, Chase, Carlos, Cooper, Carter, Cas, Cash, Cassian, Castiel, Cedric, Cenric, Chance, Chandler, Chaz, Chad, Chester, Chet, Chip, Christian, Cillian, Claude, Cicero, Clint, Cody, Cory, Coy, Cole, Colt, Colton, Colin, Colorado, Colum, Conan, Conrad, Conway, Connor, Cornelius, Creed, Cyneric, Cynric, Cyrano, Cyril, Cyrus, Crestian, Ceric D: Dallas, Damien, Daniel, Darach, Dash, Dax, Dayton, Denver, Derek, Des, Desmond, Devin, Dewey, Dexter, Dietrich, Dion, Dmitri, Dominic, Dorian, Douglas, Draco, Drake, Drew, Dudley, Dustin, Dusty, Dylan, Danièu E: Eadric, Evan, Ethan, Easton, Eddie, Eddy, Einar, Eli, Eilas, Eiljah, Elliott, Elton, Emanuel, Emile, Emmett, Enzo, Erik, Evander, Everett, Ezio F: Faolán, Faron, Ferlin, Felix, Fenrir, Fergus, Finley, Finlay, Finn, Finnian, Finnegan, Flint, Flip, Flynn, Florian, Forrest, Fritz G: Gage, Gabe, Grady, Grant, Gray, Grayson, Gunnar, Gunther, Galahad H: Hale, Harley, Harper, Harvey, Harry, Huey, Hugh, Hunter, Huxley I: Ian, Ianto, Ike, Inigo, Isaac, Isaias, Ivan, Ísak J: Jack, Jacob, Jake, Jason, Jasper, Jax, Jay, Jensen, Jed, Jeremy, Jeremiah, Jesse, Jett, Jimmie, Jonas, Jonas, Jonathan, Jordan, Josh, Julien, Jovian, Jun, Justin, Joseph, Joni, K: Kaden, Kai, Kale, Kane, Kaz, Keane, Keaton, Keith, Kenji, Kenneth, Kent, Kevin, Kieran, Kip, Knox, Kris, Kristian, Kyle, Kay, Kristján, Kristófer L: Lamont, Lance, Landon, Lane, Lars, László, Laurent, Layton, Leander, Leif, Leo, Leonidas, Leopold, Levi, Lewis, Louie, Liam, Liberty, Lincoln, Linc, Linus, Lionel, Logan, Loki, Lucas, Lucian, Lucio, Lucky, Luke, Luther, Lyall, Lycus, Lykos, Lyle, Lyndon, Llewellyn, Landri, Laurian, Lionç M: Major, Manny, Manuel, Marcus, Mason, Matt, Matthew, Matthias, Maverick, Maxim, Memphis, Midas, Mikko, Miles, Mitch, Mordecai, Mordred, Morgan, Macari, Maïus, Maxenci, Micolau, Miro N: Nate, Nathan, Nathaniel, Niall, Nico, Niels, Nik, Noah, Nolan, Niilo, Nikander, Novak, O: Oakley, Octavian, Odin, Orlando, Orrick, Ǫrvar, Othello, Otis, Otto, Ovid, Owain, Owen, Øyvind, Ozzie, Ollie, Oliver, Onni P: Paisley, Palmer, Percival, Percy, Perry, Peyton, Phelan, Phineas, Phoenix, Piers, Pierce, Porter, Presley, Preston, Pacian Q: Quinn, Quincy, Quintin R: Ragnar, Raiden, Ren, Rain, Rainier, Ramos, Ramsey, Ransom, Raul, Ray, Roy, Reagan, Redd, Reese, Rhys, Rhett, Reginald, Remiel, Remy, Ridge, Ridley, Ripley, Rigby, Riggs, Riley, River, Robert, Rocky, Rokas, Roman, Ronan, Ronin, Romeo, Rory, Ross, Ruairí, Rufus, Rusty, Ryder, Ryker, Rylan, Riku, Roni S: Sammie, Sammy, Samuel, Samson, Sanford, Sawyer, Scout, Seán, Seth, Sebastian, Seymour, Shane, Shaun, Shawn, Sheldon, Shiloh, Shun, Sid, Sidney, Silas, Skip, Skipper, Skyler, Slade, Spencer, Spike, Stan, Stanford, Sterling, Stevie, Stijn, Suni, Sylvan, Sylvester T: Tab, Tad, Tanner, Tate, Tennessee, Tero, Terrance, Tevin, Thatcher, Tierno, Tino, Titus, Tobias, Tony, Torin, Trace, Trent, Trenton, Trev, Trevor, Trey, Troy, Tripp, Tristan, Tucker, Turner, Tyler, Ty, Teemu U: Ulric V: Valerius, Valor, Van, Vernon, Vespasian, Vic, Victor, Vico, Vince, Vinny, Vincent W: Wade, Walker, Wallis, Wally, Walt, Wardell, Warwick, Watson, Waylon, Wayne, Wes, Wesley, Weston, Whitley, Wilder, Wiley, William, Wolfe, Wolfgang, Woody, Wulfric, Wyatt, Wynn X: Xander, Xavier Z: Zachary, Zach, Zane, Zeb, Zebediah, Zed, Zeke, Zeph, Zaccai

[aurevoirmonty]

«Lesbienne, grosse et juive»: la gazette OTAN-LGBT «Le Monde» prend la défense de Barbara Butch, la «Jésus-e» de la Cène des J.0.

«Ceux qui s’en prennent à Barbara Butch le font car ils ne supportent pas qu’elle puisse représenter la France», reprend (https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/07/30/ceremonie-d-ouverture-des-jo-2024-la-dj-barbara-butch-porte-plainte-apres-des-menaces-de-mort_6261948_3224.html)Le Monde.

D’où parle le journal officiel du régime?

Subventionné par Bill Gates, le quotidien a, entre autres, pour actionnaire (https://www.lalettre.fr/fr/medias_presse-ecrite/2023/07/21/rachat-des-actions-du-monde--madison-cox-se-pourvoit-en-cassation-contre-xavier-niel-et-matthieu-pigasse,110005901-art) Madison Cox, héritier de Pierre Bergé, partisan (https://www.marieclaire.fr/,pierre-berge-pma-gpa-louer-son-ventre,20123,680919.asp) de la «location de ventres» pour la GPA.

Madison Cox a été jardinier et intendant de la villa Majorelle d’Yves Saint-Laurent et de son compagnon Pierre Bergé, «une villégiature sexuelle» au Maroc pour des relations «avec leurs jeunes amants».

Fabrice Thomas, garçon de joie de Bergé et du couturier, relate dans un livre (https://www.valeursactuelles.com/societe/pedophilie-au-maroc-les-revelations-choc-dun-ex-amant-de-berge-et-saint-laurent):

Cox «était agenouillé devant un adolescent prépubère debout devant lui, nu comme un ver. Tenant ses fesses à pleines paumes, il suçait avidement l’enfant qui se laissait faire en regardant en l’air, tenant à la main un billet».

Madison Cox figure aussi, sans surprise, sur le «petit carnet noir» de Jeffrey Epstein.

A la page 67 (https://epsteinsblackbook.com/pages/67).

[mariacallous]

French president Emmanuel Macron has spent years dreaming aloud of a homegrown artificial intelligence giant. The AI disruption is coming, he told WIRED in 2018, and “I want to be part of it.” After that interview, he campaigned hard to turn France into a startup nation, home to the kind of companies that could rival American and Chinese behemoths. Then in April 2023 an answer to Macron’s ambition appeared in the form of bushy-eyebrowed entrepreneur Arthur Mensch and the launch of his company Mistral AI.

Mistral’s ChatGPT equivalent, Le Chat, was met with feverishly high expectations when it launched in February 2024, and it did not take long for comparisons to be made between Mensch and his San Francisco rival Sam Altman. Both CEOs are in their thirties. Both companies received backing from Microsoft. Like Altman, Mensch was able to command vast amounts of capital: Mistral’s $6 billion valuation fell far short of OpenAI’s $80 billion price tag, but still—this was validation. To Macron, Mistral was a sign of French genius, and the president started talking about the country as an AI champion in waiting.

This optimism was contagious. French generative AI companies have raked in $2.3 billion in funding over the past decade—more than all their European competitors, according to a June report by VC firm Accel. Amid the Paris startup scene, there was a sense that the country’s AI industry was unstoppable.

Yet when Macron called a shock snap election earlier this month, the AI industry quickly began to fear that the progress of the past seven years could be lost thanks to campaign pledges that could have a knock-on effect on their talent pipeline, and turbocharge taxes.

On Sunday, French voters will cast their ballots in the first-round voting, which polls suggest pits an anti-immigration far right against a coalition including an anti-capitalist hard left, as Macron’s centrist alliance struggles to regain ground in third place.

“With the two options that are leading in the polls, we could take a real step back, which is quite scary and quite disheartening,” says Roxanne Varza, director of the Parisian startup campus Station F, launched by the billionaire and Macron ally Xavier Niel. “We are trying to pretend it's not happening, but we're all talking about it, and the discussion is always, unfortunately, which is the lesser of two evils?”

Now French AI and its prominent homegrown companies and nonprofits such as Mistral, Kyutai, Hugging Face, and H are facing an uncertain future. The status quo that was such a boost to the industry is being rejected by wide swathes of voters who, according to the polls, are instead drawn to parties promising to reintroduce wealth taxes (both far right and left), tax “super-profits” (the left), and restrict immigration (the right). In response, a gloominess has fallen across the industry, and the country which once spoke of ambitions to become AI’s European capital is now busy discussing how to survive a real setback.

Varza considers Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally a real threat to the immigration that the industry needs to compete internationally. Among the 1,000 startups based at the vast Station F tech campus, there are 65 nationalities, many of whom came to Paris on Macron’s French Tech Visa program, which allows non-European startup founders, investors, and employees to move to France with their families. The government even has its own office within the Station F campus to smooth the application process for founders.

“Then on the other extreme, [the left-wing New Popular Front] have been so vocal about all the taxation measures they want to bring back that it looks like we're just going back to pre-Macron period,” Varza says. She points to France’s 2012 “les pigeons” (or “suckers”) movement, a campaign by angry internet entrepreneurs that opposed Socialist president François Hollande’s plan to dramatically raise taxes for founders.

Maya Noël, CEO of France Digitale, an industry group for startups, is worried not only about France’s ability to attract overseas talent, but also about how appealing the next government will be to foreign investors. In February, Google said it would open a new AI hub in Paris, where 300 researchers and engineers would be based. Three months later, Microsoft also announced a record $4 billion investment in its French AI infrastructure. Meta has had an AI research lab in Paris since 2015. Today France is attractive to foreign investors, she says. “And we need them.” Neither Google nor Meta replied to WIRED’s request for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.

The vote will not unseat Macron himself—the presidential election is not scheduled until 2027—but the election outcome could dramatically reshape the lower house of the French Parliament, the National Assembly, and install a prime minister from either the far-right or left-wing coalition. This would plunge the government into uncertainty, raising the risk of gridlock. In the past 60 years, there have been only three occasions when a president has been forced to govern with a prime minister from the opposition party, an arrangement known in France as “cohabitation.”

No AI startup has benefited more from the Macron era than Mistral, which counts Cédric O, former digital minister within Macron’s government, among its cofounders. Mistral has not commented publicly on the choice France faces at the polls. The closest the company has come to sharing its views is Cédric O’s decision to repost an X post by entrepreneur Gilles Babinet last week that said: “I hate the far-right but the left’s economic program is surreal.” When WIRED asked Mistral about the retweet, the company said O was not a spokesperson, and declined to comment.

Babinet, a member of the government’s artificial intelligence committee, says he has already heard colleagues considering leaving France. “A few of the coders I know from Senegal, from Morocco, are already planning their next move,” he says, claiming people have also approached him for help renewing their visas early in case this becomes more difficult under a far-right government.

While other industries have been quietly rushing to support the far-right as a preferable alternative to the left-wing alliance, according to reports, Babinet plays down the threat from the New Popular Front. “It's clear they come with very old-fashioned economical rules, and therefore they don't understand at all the new economy,” he says. But after speaking to New Popular Front members, he says the hard-left are a minority in the alliance. “Most of these people are Social Democrats, and therefore they know from experience that when François Hollande came into power, he tried to increase the taxes on the technology, and it failed miserably.”

Already there is a sense of damage control, as the industry tries to reassure outsiders everything will be fine. Babinet points to other moments of political chaos that industries survived. “At the end of the day, Brexit was not so much of a nightmare for the tech scene in the UK,” he says. The UK is still the preferred place to launch a generative AI startup, according to the Accel report.

Stanislas Polu, an OpenAI alumnus who launched French AI startup Dust last year, agrees the industry has enough momentum to survive any headwinds coming its way. “Some of the outcomes might be a bit gloomy,” he says, adding he expects personal finances to be hit. “It’s always a little bit more complicated to navigate a higher volatility environment. I guess we’re hoping that the more moderate people will govern that country. I think that’s all we can hope for.”

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Quand on a renoncé à tous les plaisirs de la vie, il reste encore celui de se lever de table après un dîner ennuyeux.

- Paul Claudel

The Hôtel Lambert, on Paris’s Île Saint-Louis, has long been the city’s most glamorous townhouse, welcoming guests from Balzac to Brigitte Bardot. Its inhabitants, such as the notorious Baron de Redé, used its 17th Century Baroque interiors as the backdrop for mythical parties.

The country home, originally built in the 1640s by the French financier Jean-Baptiste Lambert and his family, had been taken over in the intervening centuries by other aristocrats, including the Marquise du Châtelet who lived there with her lover, the author Voltaire, and the exiled Polish Prince Czartoryski. In its heyday, it had hosted cultural luminaries like Coco Chanel, Delacroix, Chopin and Balzac in its gilded salons, although it had fallen into disuse by the early 20th century.

Guy and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, members of the French banking dynasty, bought the hotel in 1975 and restored it to its former glory. In 2007, Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani picked up the keys to the house, for a reported $90 million, and further restored it, filling it with period furniture and decorations, to the tune of around $147 million.

More recently, the property was sold to French telecom billionaire and art collector, Xavier Niel, in February 2020, for a reported $226 million. He plans to turn the building into the headquarters for his private cultural foundation.

Over time, it became the home of a stunning assemblage of historic objects, from Louis XIV’s carpets to Marie-Antoinette’s carpets, which were auctioned off in a once-in-a-century sale in Paris in October 2022. Like its visitors, each piece of gilt or porcelain has its own special history.

Following a week of auctions in Oct 2022, the final hammer came down on the extraordinary collection offered from Paris’ most beautiful private residence. Over the course of six volumes and over 1,000 lots, the sales together brought around €76.6 million - marking a world record for a sale of French Decorative Arts, and for a ‘House Sale’ staged at Sotheby’s.

International collectors and French institutions came forth in large numbers to compete for pieces from a unique collection that combined the most precious examples of the decorative arts paired with an innate sense of harmony and beauty.

[excelsiorfics]

They Were Roommates... Eventually

Date: 24 Mar 2024 Author: Niels Rating: General Word Count/Status: 6,844, 6/6 chapters Dynamic: Illyana Rasputin/Kitty Pryde Characters: Kitty Pryde, Illyana Rasputin Tags: Roomates, Friends to Lovers, Late Night Talks, Trauma

Summary: The youngest X-Man, Kitty Pryde, often stays up late and ends up wandering through the Xavier mansion. Lately, she keeps running into Illyana Rasputin, who recently returned from Limbo seven years older and stranger than she was supposed to be. As unsettling as she finds this stranger with a familiar name, Kitty can also see that the girl is lonely and might need someone to talk to about what she's been through. And you don't get to be an X-Man if you don't step up to help people in need.

[male-spirit]

Interrogé sur ses prix « trop bas », Xavier Niel a légèrement perdu son ...

[itsmyfriendisaac]

Heartbeats: two lifelong friends develop an interest in Nicolas after meeting him at their mutual associate’s dinner party. The trio is inseparable, but the dynamic becomes awkward when both Marie & Francis form an attraction to their new buddy!

[vroooom2]

🇨🇵 Hack<3 for the Win

🤷🏻‍♀️🇺🇲

Do you know why supercomputer will always be slower in France? Ask Halvar, who discovers the French multilayered bureaucratic public administration system... regulated by the European supra legal system...

Because of RGPD, and data legal protection, European countries can't compete with the USA in the current race of AI performance focused on GAI and AGI.

However, France could counter-attack data mining by foreign companies, with a specific and sophisticated AI, as laws to regulate AI issues aren't useful at all. Then, we would enter World War AI.

This predictive suggestion is based on knowing my r00t$ [red team/army].

[chosetherose]

1/25/23

Mukesh Ambani eyeing Thrive Capital stake

A group of global billionaires worth at least $123 billion are buying a stake in Thrive Capital, the venture-capital firm founded by Josh Kushner.

India’s Mukesh Ambani, Brazil’s Jorge Paulo Lemann and France’s Xavier Niel will join KKR & Co. co-founder Henry Kravis and Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger in investing $175 million to purchase a 3.3% stake in Thrive.

“These extraordinary operators have built storied institutions, achieved geographic preeminence, ushered beloved brands to even greater heights, and pioneered entirely new industries,” Thrive said in a statement on Tuesday posted on Medium.

The deal values Thrive at $5.3 billion, up from $3.6 billion in 2021, when it sold a stake to a unit of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to a spokeswoman for New York-based Thrive. Its total assets under management reached $15 billion last year.

Thrive has repurchased the stake sold to Goldman Sachs and the stake held by the new syndicate is the same, Thrive said on Medium. The Wall Street Journal first reported details of the stake sale.

The investment represents a collection of some of the richest people from across the globe.

Ambani is the world’s 12th richest person, with a $84.7 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Lemann, with a net worth of $21.1 billion, is Brazil’s wealthiest individual. Kravis is worth $9.5 billion and Niel has an $8.1 billion personal fortune, according to the index.

“A lot of these folks have been involved in my life for quite a bit of time,” Kushner, 37, said in an interview with the Journal. “Now they actually have a vested stake in the firm’s success.”

Thrive was founded in 2009 by Kushner, the younger brother of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump who served as a senior White House adviser under his administration.

It has invested in firms including Oscar Health Inc., Compass Inc., Affirm Holdings Inc., Opendoor Technologies Inc., Unity Software Inc., Hims & Hers Health Inc. and SKIMS, an underwear company created by Kim Kardashian.