La Rouviere

This is one more post praising Marseille as an amazingly beautiful city. Obviously I'm talking about the architecture and the natural landscape, and keeping aside the "Human landscape": criminality, drug dealing, Islamism, vandalism, far-left Fascist scum (calling themselves antifascists...). If you get to Marseille by train when you get out of the pretty nice Saint Charles Station probably the first thing that you'll see (apart from some Maghrebian and Sahelian dealers) is a small mountain not so far away crowned by a gorgeous Neo-Bizantine church. That's Notre-Dame de la Garde, the magnificent church that dominates the whole city, looking after its inhabitants (well, I hope only for those that deserve it). Additionally the stairs that go down from the station to Boulevard d'Athens to take to you to the city center (the station is in a slightly elevated position) are just imposing, with those two mesmerizing female sculptures representing the African colonies and the Asian colonies of the good, old France (the day some indigenist-anticolonial-"so called antifascist" scumbags will try to damage them "je vais peter un cable").

When you climb up to La Bonne Mere (as the Notre-Dame de la Garde is commonly known), it's not just the building what will marvel you, it's the amazing views. I'm used to cities, Lisbon is the perfect example, where you climb up to some view point to see from there one part of the city. Then you climb up to another one with a different orientation to see another part of the city, and so on. But the 150 meters high mountain hosting Notre Dame de la Garde is just in the center of Marseille, and you can walk around the church to see the whole city, the sea and the islands to the West, the massive city to the North and the East (surrounded by an important mountain range), the imposing Calanques to the South... it's just outstanding.

Looking South-East you'll see some groups of high-rise residential buildings (grand-ensembles) that seem to climb up the mountains. For an urban freak it's a beatiful image. There are several groups of them (each group is a "cité") but one one of them is really massive. I had always assumed it would be some HLM (public housing) nightmare, totally controlled by Islamists and dealers, like a sort of Afghanistan only that dealing cocaine and weed to the locals (infidels from other neighbourhoods) rather than exporting opium to far away countries. Some days ago I decided to investigate and to my total surprise it's not like that at all!

That grand-ensemble is called La Rouviere and is not a public housing mess, but "normal housing", with most of the flats being owned by those living in them. The access to the residential area (or at least to the buildings themselves) is controlled by guardians, so it's a peaceful community of almost 9000 people. The area was built in the 60's and filled mainly by Pieds noir, the French population that had to flee Algeria when it gained independence, after having lived there for generations, after having built a modern and well functioning society and economy that would collapse in just a few years of "independence".

It's not surprising to find an "article" in that left-wing propaganda pamphlet called "Le Monde" where the people living in La Rouviere are called racists and fascists for doing their best to keep their cité peaceful and European by promoting that the new inhabitants that get there when some flat becomes vacant have the same "cultural codes" that those living there. Oh, yes, it's terrible. Moreover, bearing in mind that many of the current inhabitants descend from the Pieds Noirs that first got to the cité, one should for sure ask them to welcome Algerians into the community. It would be a very progressist way to respond to the "la valise ou le cercueil" (the suitcase or the coffin) choice given by Algerians to the Pied-Noirs in 1962... Hopefully some people still have common sense, have learnt lessons from recent history and do not accept the woke, progressist crap.

By the way, this wikipedia article about Marseille's urbanism is really interesting.

European Hypocrisy, European Suicide

Equality and Unequality are terms constantly and dangerously used by "progressist" people. Equality seems like a nice idea, but when it's constantly applied, not partially. You should treat equally, give equal opportunities, to those that deserve them equally based on their behaviour, effort, attitude...

Little after the start of the War between USA/NATO and Russia in Ukraine, some NGO's, immigrationists, well thinking people... took almost no time to complain about the different attitude of European authorities and European populations towards refugees depending on whether they come from Ukraine or from a non European country. I agree with this different treatment, cause I don't think all migratory waves are the same. So this behaviour shows that it seems like regardless of the multicultural propaganda some people still have some common sense. Europe should be more open to immigration coming from a country with a cultural background similiar to ours, like Ukraine (or Russia if it were the case) than to people coming from countries with a totally differente culture (mainly coming from a totally different religion). The first ones will easily integrate and that fraction of them that will cause problems will do it in the same proportion as local population does cause problems. As for the second ones, for sure some of them will integrate and contribute, but too many of them will not. So it's obvious that we should not welcome them with the same openness.

One should wonder why Europe has not reacted in the same way to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia that to the invasion of Northern Cyprus by Turkey. OK, that invasion took place in 1974, but it continues to this date, so it's not late to kick off the Ottoman scum from that European island.

One could also wonder why the European reponse to the the Ukraine-Donbass conflict and the Serbia-Kosovo conflict has been so different. On both cases we have one region that wants to break away from one country, for some time in the future joining another country (Russia or Albania). Indeed, there are some massive differences between Kosovo and Donbass. Kosovo is the birth place of Serbia, but during Ottoman rule Muslim Albanians started to migrate into the area and at some point these invaders (I call them invaders because they don't have the same religion and culture as the original Serbian population) became majoritary and started to ask for independence (and kill Serbs). Oddly enough, in this case Europe did not remain neutral, but sided with the breakaway region (and as part of that NATO bombed Serbian cities like Belgrad). Ukraine has a quite different history from Serbia and what is now called Ukraine (excluding Crimea, that was only part of Ukraine a few decades due to an odd decision by Krushev) was never a country until last century. I support people's right to decide to form a new country or to join another country, always that there is some sort of historical logic and fairness, but this goes in both senses, the right of Ukraine to exist, and the right of the Donbass to break away and join Russia.

One could also wonder why the European Union does not seem to give a shit about Azerbaijan and Turkey (both Muslims countries of Turkic ethnicity) slaughtering the Christian Armenians in October 2020 and now again. Notice that it was not only the Azeri army and Turkish militia, but also yihadist groups relocated from Syria by the Turkish government.

It's clear to me that in a conflict between countries of different civilizations (Christian, European Cyprus vs Muslim Turks, Christian, Slav Serbs vs Muslim Albanians, Christian Armenians vs Muslim Turks) we should actively support those belonging to our same civilization. In the case of the Donbass, Ukraine and Russia, where Orthodox Christian Slavs are fighting Orthodox Christian Slavs, I don't think we should support any side. What we must do is help innocent civilians and force all parts to sit on a table and negotiate peace. If that peace means and independent Donbass, a Russian Donbass or an Autonomous Donbass in Ukraine (where Russian language and culture would be respected), that should not be a main concern for us.

What for sure we should not do is turn the USA puppet, psychopath clown Zelensky into a hero. That nationalist "hero" prefers to see his whole country being destroyed than to negotiate with Russia the future of one part of that country where an important percentage of the population feel much closer to Moscow than to Kyiv... That psychopath has been pushing all of Europe into a war with Russia. An Ukranian "patriot" that defends the interests of the USA rather than the lives of his people. An American agent that has helped to finish off our relation with Russia and to achieve the complete vassalization of Europe to USA... Hope one day he will pay for all what he has done to his own people and to the rest of Europe.

Python AsyncExecutor

After writing my JavaScript AsyncExecutor it became clear that at some point I would have to do a Python AsyncExecutor :-)

I already did a very basic post some months ago about the differences between JavaScript and Python async/await. The way async/await, Native Coroutines, Tasks and Futures works in Python seems more complex to me than async/await and Promises in Javascript, though maybe it's just that I'm more familiar with async code in JavaScript.

Anyway, implementing an AsyncExecutor is not much different. In Python we have not just Promises as awaitable objects, but Native Coroutine objects, Futures and Tasks (that indeed derive from Future). So we submit to the AsyncExecutor "awaitable functions" (functions that return any of those awaitable objects), along with its parameters. The AsyncExecutor returns a Future, that will be resolved (will have its result set) when the corresponding asynchronous function completes. The _run_action() method takes care of running the "awaitable function" when a slot is available. _run_action is a Native Coroutine, so when we invoke it either from submit() (for the first submitted functions, before filling the available slots) or from _process_result() (as slots are released), 2 functions that are not coroutines themselves, we have to use asyncio.create_task(self._run_action(action)). This is the main difference with the JavaScript version, where functions marked as async are executed immediatelly, with no need of awaiting them (or creating a task). I copy the code here (and I have also uploaded it to a gist)

import asyncio
from dataclasses import dataclass
import random
from typing import Any
import json

@dataclass
class AsyncAction:
    future: asyncio.Future
    awaitable_fn: Any # function that returns an awaitable (coroutine, a task...)
    args: list[Any]
    kwargs: list[Any]


class AsyncExecutor:
    def __init__(self, event_loop: asyncio.AbstractEventLoop, max_running_actions: int):
        self.event_loop = event_loop
        self.max_running_actions = max_running_actions
        self.running_counter = 0
        self.not_launched_actions = []

    def submit(self, awaitable_fn, *args, **kwargs) -> asyncio.Future:
        """
        receives a function to be executed when there's one available slot. That function returns and awaitable
        """
        future = self.event_loop.create_future()
        action = AsyncAction(future, awaitable_fn, args, kwargs)
        if self.running_counter < self.max_running_actions:
            self.running_counter += 1
            # _run_action returns a coroutine, so if I'm not awaiting it need to run it as a task
            #self._run_action(action)
            asyncio.create_task(self._run_action(action))
        else:
            self.not_launched_actions.append(action)
        return future

    async def _run_action(self, action: AsyncAction):
        result = await action.awaitable_fn(*(action.args), **(action.kwargs))
        self._process_result(action, result)

    def _process_result(self, action: AsyncAction, result: Any):
        self.running_counter -= 1
        action.future.set_result(result)
        if len(self.not_launched_actions):
            self.running_counter += 1
            asyncio.create_task(self._run_action(self.not_launched_actions.pop(0)))           


async def mock_download(url: str, delay: int):
    print("starting mock download")
    await asyncio.sleep(delay)
    return url.upper()

def create_download_task(url: str, delay: int):
    print(create_download_task.__name__)
    return asyncio.get_running_loop().create_task(mock_download(url, delay))
 

async def main():
    async_executor = AsyncExecutor(asyncio.get_running_loop(), 4)
    futures = []
    for i in range(0,10):
        delay = random.randint(1, 4)
        if i % 2 == 0:
            future = async_executor.submit(mock_download, f"www.jesoutienslapolice.fr/post_{i}", delay)
        else:
            future = async_executor.submit(create_download_task, f"www.jesoutienslapolice.fr/post_{i}", delay)

        future.add_done_callback(lambda fut: print(f"{fut.result()} done"))
        futures.append(future)
    future = async_executor.submit(mock_download, f"www.jesoutienslapolice.fr/post_{i}", delay)
    future.add_done_callback(lambda fut: print(f"{fut.result()} done"))
    futures.append(future)
    print(f"{len(futures)} submitted")

    results = await asyncio.gather(*futures)
    print(f"all finished: {json.dumps(results, indent=4)}")


asyncio.run(main())

As we've seen, asyncio.create_task is really important in python's asynchronous code. This discussion helps to understand what it does.

It submits the coroutine to run "in the background", i.e. concurrently with the current task and all other tasks, switching between them at await points. It returns an awaitable handle called a "task" which you can also use to cancel the execution of the coroutine.

It's one of the central primitives of asyncio, the asyncio equivalent of starting a thread. (In the same analogy, awaiting the task with await is the equivalent of joining a thread.)

Le Brasilia

At the start of this post from 1 year ago I mention what a beautiful city Marseille is and how much I love its urban landscape. Of course you have tons of classic stuff, of course you have quite a few recent pieces of interest. It's not just the tour CMA/CGM or Jean Nouvel's Marseillese tour (that indeed I don't find particularly appealing) but the whole Euromediterranee neighbourhood with its offices and hotels, the long avenue with the tram running along it, the 15-20 stories residential buildings, etc that makes a really pleasant example of how a modern neighbourhood in a European city should look.

Tours CMA/CGM et La Marseillese

Moving a few decades back, we find that also at that time Marseille did some good efforts to look like a modern city and reclaim its place as a Mediterranean capital. There are 2 high-rise buildings (for European standards they are skyscrappers) from the 70's that (slightly surpassing or almost reaching the 100 meters mark) will catch your eye when looking eastwards from Notre Dame de la Garde (la Belle Mere), the residential tower Le Grand Pavois and the offices tower Tour Mediterranee. They are the common example of architecture of the 70's that pop up in many European cities of similar size, trying to create a strong architectural signal.

Though I consider that kind of towers pretty interesting, I understand that for most people (that are not urban architecture freaks like me) those buildings have hardly any interest, and the only reference to architecture of the 50's-60's-70's in Marseille that you'll read about is La Cité Radieuse, designed by Le Corbusier. I'm not a fan at all of this guy, but I think his concept of Unité d'Habitation has some interest. For sure paying a visit to La Cité Radieuse is a good idea, but I would not give it much precedence in a list of things to see and do in Marseille. Indeed, it was not until my eighth visit to the city that I decided to go to see it.

That time in 2018, when walking along Boulevard Michelet from Rond-Point du Prado on my way to Cité Radieuse, one imposing building on the right deeply caught my eye, mainly because of its sculptural outer stairs (fire escape). I did not think about it anymore since then, but last week when I was again in Marseille and I happened to be around the Rond-Point du Prado area, I decided to take another look to that surprising building. I found it even more impressive than the first time, and I found out that is called "Le Brasilia". The Ministére de la Culture site has an interesting entry about the building, giving some pretty good information. I think the building is like 22 stories high, but it seems it had been initially planned to reach 30 stories, which would have made it even more impressive. The architect, Fernand Boukobza was pretty much influenced at that time by Le Corbusier and La Cité Radieuse, and probably this is his most important work. It's interesting that he designed several HLM ensembles, the terrifying French social housing complexes (I say terrifying because of part of the population living there, not because of the architecture, that in many cases seems pretty decent to me). Indeed, it seems like he designed the infamous La Castellane, that has become one of the worst neighbourhoods in Europe.

Le Brasilia