About me
My name is Adrien Chauvet. I am French and I live in Bourges, France. I created my personal website to keep all my creations in one place.
Ongoing projects
I started machine translating the content of the Taking Children Seriously website from English to French in November 2023 using ChatGPT, Python with its BeautifulSoup library, Notepad++, the professional DeepL API and XAMPP. The translation wasn't perfect and errors remain in the 412 articles, totalling 600,000 words. After consulting two AI engineers on X, I've learned that I can wait for the LLMs to improve so that I can finish this project in a few minutes instead of spending a month and a half proofreading all the articles.
I'm waiting for the right weather to go surfing in Vendée for a few days. I haven't surfed in eight years. Thank you, bipolarity!
I've posted on these sites
X - Reddit - Wikipédia - Quora - Facebook - Instagram - My CV - My family tree
Political involvement
I am a member of the centrist party "Le Mouvement Démocrate". I was briefly appointed spokesperson for this political party in the Cher department in 2022. I have been involved in several elections:
The municipal campaign of Michel Veunac in Biarritz in 2014. He was elected.
The regional campaign in Burgundy in 2015 with my cousin, Vincent Chauvet, to support the candidacy of Christophe Grudler. He was not elected.
The municipal campaign of Pascal Blanc in Bourges in 2020. He was not re-elected.
The Bourges support committee for the presidential re-election of Emmanuel Macron in 2022. He was the least bad candidate and was re-elected. I do not agree with many of his terrible decisions and statements.
I also take action by avoiding meat and dairy, and being a minimalist.
I'm curious about libertarian ideas: the night-watchman state (aka minarchy) and anarcho-capitalism: What is the right dose of state power?
Music I listen to
Spotify - Mixcloud - Soundcloud - YouTube - Bandcamp - Petites Planètes: Vincent Moon recorded religious rituals, sacred music and local folklore in many places around the world.
Readings
These books are listed more or less in the chronological order in which I read them. The titles of the books are written in the language in which I read them.
La Trilogie Des Fourmis, Bernard Werber
Les Thanatonautes, Bernard Werber
L'encyclopédie Du Savoir Relatif Et Absolu, Bernard Werber
L'invasion De La Sicile Par Les Ours, Dino Buzzati (forced reading in middle school)
W, Georges Perec (forced reading in middle school)
Le Mariage De Figaro, Beaumarchais (forced reading in middle school)
La Vénus d'Ille, Prosper Mérimée
Stupeur Et Tremblements, Amélie Nothomb (forced reading in middle school)
Le Seigneur Des Anneaux, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (during high school, a gift from my parents)
Devenez Sorciers, Devenez Savants, Georges Charpak (a gift from my parents)
Soyez Savants, Devenez Prophètes, Georges Charpak (a gift from my parents)
Matin brun, Franck Pavloff
L'Émeraude des Garamantes - souvenirs d'un Saharien, Théodore Monod (recommended by my father)
Phares, Jacques Attali
Voyages avec un âne dans les Cévennes, Robert Louis Stevenson
L'éducation Sentimentale, Gustave Flaubert
Germinal, Emile Zola
La Condition Humaine, André Malraux
How Google Works, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg (borrowed from my Irish roommate Paul Robinson in Biarritz)
C'est beau une ville la nuit, Richard Bohringer (read at my brother-in-law's and sister's house)
Anthologie De La Poésie Française, Georges Pompidou (partly read)
L’Alchémiste, Paulo Coelho
Introduction À La Pensée Complexe, Edgard Morin
Méditations, Marcus Aurelius (free book available on my iPhone 4 on Apple Books)
L'Évolution créatrice, Henri Bergson (lu en 2019 à Ribiers, ou peut-être un de ses autres ouvrages ?)
Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
Lettre À Ménécée, Epicure
Antigone, Sophocle
Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Des Souris Et Des Hommes, John Steinbeck
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
Le Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children Of Húrin, J.R.R. Tolkien
How I Made $2 Million In The Stock Market, Nicolas Darvas
Comment Je Vois Le Monde, Albert Einstein
Le Guide Du Voyageur Galactique, Douglas Adams
Le Joueur D'échecs, Stefan Zweig
The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide To Wealth And Happiness, Naval Ravikant (read in 2021-2022)
Guerre, Louis-Ferdinand Céline (read in 2022)
Incerto (the french edition), Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I'm taking notes from these books to read until I remember them. (2022-2024)
The Fabric Of Reality, David Deutsch (2023-2024)
Not to mention countless magazines, comics, manga, news (I wasted my time!), scientific papers, blogs, quotes, poems, forum posts and videos.
Next on my list
The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch
Lettres à Lucilius, Seneca
Le Joueur (Dostoïevski), Le Cheval / Albert (Tolstoï), Le Menteur (H. James), The Road (Cormac McCarthy), La Femme D'un Autre, Le Mari Sous Le Lit (Dostoïevski), La Route Des Flandres (C. Simon).
My coding horrors
GitHub: When I tried to become a developer one last time.
I also developed several small personal websites using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, JQuery and Bootstrap. They're no longer online. I created:
A website about surfing
My personal website, several times.
TUMT (The Ultimate Movies Timeline): an attempt to classify chronologically the events depicted in movies, coded in collaboration with Vincent Jacquenet Li.
My brother's website for one of his musical projects: Chevalien.
I also helped a psychologist in Anglet, France to create her professional website with Wordpress: Estelle Malvy.
Now that Large Language Models are a thing, I can ask them to code things for me by iterating a lot.
Family, friends, and cool websites
Veuves: My brother's main musical project.
Chevalien: My brother's former musical project.
Daodao: One of my childhood friends, a photographer who lives in Ploubazlanec, France.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A collection of writings by Naval Ravikant, a bookworm, entrepreneur and investor based in Silicon Valley.
Our World In Data: If you want to know the real state of the world today, this website is much closer to the reality of it than the mainstream media.
Awesome Nassim Taleb: A curated list of many things that Nassim Taleb has shared.
Lulie Tanett: Epistemology (Karl Popper, David Deutsch and others).
Bret Hall: Epistemology (Karl Popper, David Deutsch and others).
Taking Children Seriously: A philosophy of family life in the tradition of the Enlightenment, fallibilism, and freedom, that takes everyone seriously as equals, including children.
Excursions
A lot of people can't travel. I am grateful to have visited so many places.
International trips
Norway, 1996: A month-long trip with my family and friends in a camper van from France via Germany and Denmark.
Latvia, 2007: A five-day school trip across the country to discover wildlife and the people who care for it.
London, England, 2008: A two weeks trip with Geoffrey Lalanne.
Pamplona and Bardenas Reales, Spain, 2012: A few days in the north of the country with Baptiste Gourdin and Vincent Jacquenet Li.
Chongqing, China, 2013: A three weeks trip to attend the wedding of Vincent Jacquenet Li and Sisi Jacquenet Li and to discover the city.
Skiing in France
Somewhere in Jura Mountains, 1990: With my family.
Habère-Poche: With my family.
Morillon: Two secondary school trips.
Modane: Swimming training and ski with the CNMG.
Mont-Dore: With my family except my sister.
Fondettes, 2010: With a few of my classmates from the university.
La Pierre-Saint-Martin, 2012: With Sisi Jacquenet Li, Baptiste Gourdin and Vincent Jacquenet Li.
Artouste, 2013: With Vincent Jacquenet Li.
Surf trip
San Vincente De La Barquera, Spain, 2012: with the Anglet Surf Club.
Health
1989: When I was three years old, I fell off a bunk bed and broke my skull.
2005: I experienced my first depressive episode.
2007: I got lost in the mountains of the Mercantour National Park. While climbing down a steep slope, a rock came loose and cut an artery in my right little finger. I was helicoptered to Monaco.
A few months later, I broke my right fifth metacarpal neck after drinking a concentrated mixture of coffee and black tea with Vincent Jacquenet in Béziers.
2010: We hit a deer while riding an acquaintance's motorcycle. I had 13 skin grafts and a post-traumatic shock for years.
My long term condition: Bipolarity and autism. I receive a disability allowance from the French government.
Nevertheless, since August 2022, I've never been happier in my adult life. Although some weeks are still terrible. Maybe the medication is finally working. Or maybe it's the LSD and the psilocybine I've been eating. I don't know.