Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 9hFun fact: the ONLY ye-olden-dayes music in Robin Hood (1938) is Little John whistling a couple bars of “Sumer Is Icumen In” in his first scene. The rest of the entire soundtrack was composed for the movie in a relatively modern style. 110
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026We as a society don’t give enough credit to the telegraph. The transition from “messages travel at the speed of horse” to “messages travel at the speed of—oh, hold on, I’m receiving the response now” is astronomical. Everything beyond that is just improvements in what kind of messages can be sent. 040
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Clarke should have written a prequel called 2000: A SPACE ILIAD 250
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Nineteen years. It’s been a hell of a ride. Thanks for everything, Comics Irregulars. darthsanddroids.net/episodes/283...darthsanddroids.netDarths & Droids 020
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Mathematically Modeling the Post-Rebellion Behavior of the Imperial Remnants: A First-Order Approximation 161
Reposted by Abacus WizardMicah @rincewind.run · 22/09/2026stand up for trans people: it is the right thing to do and it just will not hurt you, not now, not in this environment and maybe folks can start to relearn that trans people are pretty fucking cool, actually 51133174
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 20/09/2026I’m starting a collection. A very specific collection. 120
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 19/09/2026I’m not exaggerating when I say “kill your chatbots before they kill you.” www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...cnn.comExclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN PoliticsThe episode shows the risks of using this new, relatively poorly understood technology in the middle of the Iran war 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 19/09/2026“Oh gosh, I just realized I forgot to mention the ‘pull’ button in the original game instructions,” announces Sokoban creator Hiroyuki Imabayashi. “Have you all seriously been playing with only ‘push’ for all these decades?? No wonder the game has a reputation for being super hard!” 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026These two panels alone sum up the first few chapters of SO many of the original Oz books. (from Daisy McGuire’s “Yellow Brick Ramble,” an excellent webcomic that you, yes you, ought to be reading: yellowbrickramble.com) 040
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026“The tramp… is a little less fortunate than I am. He is made the same as I am made. He is the child of the same Father. Had I been born in his environment, had I been subjected to the same things to which he was I would have been where he is.” —Eugene Debs, “The Issue” speech, 1908 140
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 16/09/2026PICARD: One must be cautious of long-term commitments, Wesley. WESLEY: No problem. Where women are concerned, I am in complete control. ME: My dude, you’re like 17 and you literally just had an entire episode about the trouble caused by your crush on an alien princess. 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Use more hand-drawn art in your advertising. Even if you’re inexperienced at drawing. Heck, *especially* if you’re inexperienced at drawing. People find it charming. I made this cover art for booklets of physics practice problems and my students think they’re absolutely adorable: 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Unsurprisingly, many of my early role models were introduced to me by PBS. 170
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Psychic: flips over card marked XIII: DEATH Customer: panic P: “Now don’t panic, the Death card is not literally about death; it’s a metaphor for change.” C: calm P: flips over card marked XIII-b: ACTUAL LITERAL DEATH, NOT A METAPHOR P: “uh, [nervous laughter] not sure where that came from” 042
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Sometimes iconography from Republican attack ads turn out to be great for posters, shirts, badges… (found at bsky.app/profile/shar...) 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Roko’s Basilisk is basically Pascal’s Wager but even stupider, so all the traditional refutations of Pascal’s Wager also work against Roko’s Basilisk but so do a bunch of new refutations as well. 052
Reposted by Abacus WizardKatie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/09/2026This is one of the objections I have when people talk about how useful LLMs can be for literature searches or for any kind of search, really. Even beyond the biases that inevitably (and, in some cases, intentionally) show up, part of a good literature search is seeing information *in context.* 501872337
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 07/09/2026The bosses already have collective bargaining in the form of corporations. For the sake of balance, the workers need collective bargaining as well, and unions are the established way to do that. 050
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 07/09/2026…and the people hear us singing, Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses. 020
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 07/09/2026I spent so much of my childhood reading through these two books over and over again. Of course I did not realize until decades later was that what I was *really* doing was preparing myself to read and understand Allan Moore’s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 07/09/2026me, looking at Wikipedia’s list of English sci-fi authors: “Oliver Onions? That’s gotta be a pen name.” me, looking at Wikipedia’s page on Oliver Onions: “Oh, it *is* a pen name. His real name was George Oliver Onions.” 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 06/09/2026If I had a zorkmid for every fantasy epic I’ve read that, 2/3 of the way through, suddenly turned out to actually be a fanfic of the 1855 painting “The Fairy-Feller’s Master-Stroke,” I’d have two zorkmids, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 06/09/2026I was once involved in an incident that resulted in the whole band being hauled away by the Queen’s Guards and Kit Marlowe being forbidden on pain of death from ever singing any songs about babies in Her Majesty’s presence again. 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 06/09/2026New BoardGame: SCOTT PILGRIM MINIATURES THE WORLD, a small-squad miniature combat game re-enacting the “evil ex-boyfriend” boss battles from the Scott Pilgrim comics. Kinda silly but very fun. Lots of special abilities to play with, and really captures the feel of the characters and setting. 010
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 05/09/2026Thanks to the modern miracles of industrialized agriculture, rapid transportation, inexpensive shipping, advanced logistics, and refrigeration, ours is perhaps the first era in human history in which it *is* easy being cheesy. 010
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 04/09/2026Go read Dan Schkade’s comics. He’s the best thing that’s happened to Flash Gordon since 1934. 031
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 04/09/2026obviouslystatic.klipy.comRaccoon Playing with an AbacusALT: Raccoon Playing with an Abacus 010
Reposted by Abacus Wizardqntm @qntm.org · 18/08/2026Starting to wonder if one of the main reasons to dislike AI is just on a "personal" level Like to the extent that AI has a personality, I find that personality to be that of an extremely annoying person 618111
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 31/08/2026Playing THAT TIME YOU KILLED ME again, this time with seeds (which grow into bushes and trees in later eras) and statues (which can be built and pushed in a way that propagates into later eras) and finished the game with an epic triple-kill: 000
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I’m not against law enforcement. I’m actually very much in favor of law enforcement. I think the USA should try it sometime. 020
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 27/08/2026BoardGame: THAT TIME YOU KILLED ME, an abstract-strategy game about time travel and elephants with hats 060
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 27/08/2026What I find especially impressive is that *midwinter* solar power this year is as big as *midsummer* solar power a few years ago! 050
Reposted by Abacus WizardAsher Elbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 25/08/2026As with American culture, Dolly sought to represent the best of what southern culture can be, in defiance of the no-good peckerwood assholes who try to define it at its worst 32745447
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 24/08/2026I’m a traditionalist. The planets are Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. You can see all of them with your own eyes, there’s one for each day of the week, easy to remember, no fuss, no problem. Anything else is lies told by Big Telescope to sell more telescopes. 020
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Hey @danschkade.bsky.social, I was re-reading Jane Yolen & Bruce Degen’s “Commander Toad” books (childhood favorites from my elementary school library) for the first time in decades, and look what I found in “Commander Toad and the Intergalactic Spy”! 150
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 24/08/2026This is, by far, the best Scottish poem about Batman I’ve ever encountered. 0121
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 22/08/2026This also is one of the best visual puns I’ve ever made. 010
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 22/08/2026Text adventure game idea: Infocom’s ARTHUR, but instead of a young Arthur Pendragon, the player character is a very confused Arthur Dent, appearing in early Britain with only his pajamas, bathrobe, towel, and thing from his aunt that he doesn’t know what it is. Everything else is the same. 120
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 21/08/2026so I was reminiscing about some of my favorite scenes from Mark of Zorro (1920) and thinking “man, imagine if Basil Rathbone had played Capitan Ramon, he would have been perfect for that role,” and then another part of my brain reminded me that twenty years later he did 030
Abacus Wizard @abacuswizard.bsky.social · 21/08/2026waaaaaaaaaaaaait wait wait wait wait wait Arthur : Ford Prefect : Zaphod Beeblebrox = Mole : Water Rat : Mr Toad ???? 330
