iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Mixed up my first batch of manuscript gesso, from the recipe in Patricia Lovett's book on medieval illumination. #calligraphy #humanArt

A collection of 9 limpet shells upturned on some wet paper towels. Six have a pink goo inside.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It's just the ubiquitous builder-grade lighting fixture. The boob light of the 24th century.

Image of the ubiquitous 'boob light' fixture: downward-facing half circle, with a knob in the middle.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Might be time to switch up my illustrative example when I talk about Type I error and multiple comparisons in my stats class.

XKCD's classic 'jellybean' cartoon, whose point is that if you measure a meaningless thing enough times (here, 1 in 20, because, classically, a 'significant' result is meaningless 5% of the time, or 1 time in 20), you'll get a 'significant' result.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Behold, she is done! This is, without a doubt, the most complex project I've ever undertaken, and I'm very proud of myself for seeing it through to the end. #humanArt #noAI

Panel composed of large tesselating stars, hexagons, and bow-tie shapes, each filled with symmetrically twining white biomorphic designs on a dark blue background. The outlines of the shapes are also in dark blue channels, and the border around the panel is dark blue with a little picket-fence type design running along it in white.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Is one of them the scenario in this book? I read it over and over again as a child. It definitely involved DINOSAURS IN SPACE.

cover of 'Star Trek: First Frontier', by Diane Carey and Dr James I Kirkland. Kirk and Spock in classic trek stance, holding phasers. Behind them, a dinosaur looms.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

To perhaps no one's surprise, these are a scam. It's so hilariously bad I can't even get mad at it. I had a good laugh when I unpacked it. Ebay has kindly agreed to refund my money.

Side-by-side comparison of two snail-shapped dotted-line ruling pens. On the left is an actual device, which is clearly engineered to work. On the right is the fake device, with a HILARIOUSLY not-a-ruling-pen tip connected to some various bars via bolts. There is absolutely no way this thing will draw any lines at all, let alone dotted ones. The pen tip is not a pen, and the gear at the back does not engage with the pen arm.

000

Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

No AI! Constructed by hand with compass + straightedge, sketched in pencil, transferred to watercolour surface with tracing paper, and painted in gouache and watercolour. (#4 still wip)

Star shape constructed of many smaller shapes, painted in turquoise, maroon, and ochre colours.

tesselating pattern of stars and wedges, painted in shades of blue and purple and magenta, outlined in gold

hexagon filled with swirly biomorphic patterns arranged in sixfold radial symmetry, painted in blues and purples

panel of tesselating stars, hexagons, and bowtie shapes, each filled with swirling biomorphic white patterns against a dark blue background, with highlighted regions of light blue. Two of the bowtie shapes remain unpainted, although the biomorphic patterns are outlined within them.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Work in progress of my Uzbek ceramics-inspired panel. Designs taken from Dr Esra Almahal's excellent book on Islamic biomorphic patterns.

Partially painted panel of blue and white Uzbek biomorphic decoration (white vinework on blue background), laid out in a geometric grid of stars and hexagons and bowtie shapes.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Dang, folks, are you following @iambic.bot ? Occasionally some real death metal bangers from this little piece of craft.

Paired posts from iambic.bot, from poppylyricsbot.bsky.social, followed by fromthegallows.bsky.social:

I'm happy that the world is gonna end
abandon thought and let the dream descend

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

If it helps, I found it at walmart using duckduckgo: www.walmart.com/ip/Pleated-F...

Screenshot of a walmart listing for a Pleated Filter w/Pin for Pet Hair Eraser Lif-Off|1612631

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

As I recall, the book opens with a bunch of gun enthusiasts feeling very bored after the end of the Civil War and looking for a new project to justify using their bang bang cannons. www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8...

One day, however—sad and melancholy day!—peace was signed between the survivors of the war; the thunder of the guns gradually ceased, the mortars were silent, the howitzers were muzzled for an indefinite period, the cannon, with muzzles depressed, were returned into the arsenal, the shot were repiled, all bloody reminiscences were effaced; the cotton-plants grew luxuriantly in the well-manured fields, all mourning garments were laid aside, together with grief; and the Gun Club was relegated to profound inactivity.

Some few of the more advanced and inveterate theorists set themselves again to work upon calculations regarding the laws of projectiles. They reverted invariably to gigantic shells and howitzers of unparalleled caliber. Still in default of practical experience what was the value of mere theories? Consequently, the clubrooms became deserted, the servants dozed in the antechambers, the newspapers grew mouldy on the tables, sounds of snoring came from dark corners, and the members of the Gun Club, erstwhile so noisy in their seances, were reduced to silence by this disastrous peace and gave themselves up wholly to dreams of a Platonic kind of artillery.

“This is horrible!” said Tom Hunter one evening, while rapidly carbonizing his wooden legs in the fireplace of the smoking-room; “nothing to do! nothing to look forward to! what a loathsome existence! When again shall the guns arouse us in the morning with their delightful reports?”

“Those days are gone by,” said jolly Bilsby, trying to extend his missing arms. “It was delightful once upon a time! One invented a gun, and hardly was it cast, when one hastened to try it in the face of the enemy! Then one returned to camp with a word of encouragement from Sherman or a friendly shake of the hand from McClellan. But now the generals are gone back to their counters; and in place of projectiles, they despatch bales of cotton. By Jove, the future of gunnery in America is lost!”

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Bought some books in London. See if you can guess which books Mr Absolutive selected, and which I selected.

28 books laid out on the floor. From left to right, top to bottom, we have

Lady Eve's Last Con (Rebecca Fraimow)
City of Saints & Madmen (Jeff Vandermeerr)
Gogmagog (Jeff Nono & Steve Beard)
Spread Me (Sarah Gailey)
A book of decorative papers entitled Art Forms in Nature (art by Ernst Haeckl, an unfortunate 19th century white supremecist, but my god the man could draw a jellyfish like no other)
The Windhover (Lorna Alecock)
Just the Plague (Ludmila Ulitskaya)
Aetherial Worlds (Tatyana Tolstaya)
Regiment of Women (Clemence Dane)
May We Feed The King (Rebecca Perry)
The Architects (Stefan Heym)
Black Bag (Luke Kennard)
Quick Service (PG Wodehouse)
Company for Henry (ibid)
The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch (Melinda Taub)
The Odyssey (Homer, trans. Emily Wilson)
The Winged Histories (Sofia Samatar)
Slow Gods (Claire North -- although to be fair this was a book I already owned; it just came with us on the trip to London)
The Eye of the Leviathon (M. A. Carrick)
CD: Gamba Sonatas by Bach, Handel, and Scarlotti, played by Steven Isserlis & Richard Egarr)
The Pastor's Wife (Elizabeth von Arnim)
By the Pricking of her Thumb (Adam Roberts)
So in the Spruce Forest (Ali Smith)
Ordinary Saints (Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin)
When God was a Rabbit (Sarah Winman)
Soviet Milk (Nora Ikstena)
Illumination: Gold and Colour: Tools|Materials|Techniques|Projects for using gold and colour and creating mediaeval miniatures (Patricia Lovett)
Kieron Smith, boy (James Kelman)

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Tumblr still serving up the wisdoms.

Screencap of a tumblr post from user februarytrash, from June 3rd (I presume 2026). It is an edit of the meme that reads 'A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision'. Except now it reads 'A computer can never be horny or sad. Therefore a computer must never make an artistic decision.'

Underneath the image, the poster wrote 'being sad and horny is a privilege'.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Yo, guess who found a tutorial on two-point perspective on the internet?

A rough pencil sketch of a couch and bookcases against perpendicular walls, done in FLAWLESS two point perspective.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

We are not being told the whole truth about history . . . BY WHOM?? By schools? Politicians? textbooks? Historians? Which historians? An information ecosystem that makes it easy or hard for us to find reliable sources? THERE'S NUANCE HERE.

Survey prompt: We are not being told the whole truth about history, with options ranging from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree'

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Hmmm, that political compass test has some tricky questions. Like, what *kind* of crime? Because if we're talking shoplifting and drug dealing my answer is going to be very different from if we're talking wage theft and corruption.

Survey prompt: 'The primary cause of crime is poverty and deprivation', options from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree'

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I hate AI as much as anyone, but this is a deeply misleading summary. I've read the article: The worst-performing models made errors in 22.6% of cases, not 40%. Also, physicians using AI significantly outperformed physicians not using AI, AND the AI models alone outperformed both physician types.

Bar chart showing percent of cases with severe harm across multiple AI models. THe lowest is 7.0, the highest is 22.6. The caption reads:

Fig. 3 | Rates of severe errors by LLMs. Per-model proportion of cases with at least one severe-tier harm (omission or commission). The dashed line marks the “Reassurance-only” control. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals from a stratified cluster bootstrap (B = 2,000 resamples; base case as the resampling unit, clinical specialty as the
stratum); the bracket denotes the top-performing models statistically indistinguishable from the best (P > 0.05, Holm-adjusted paired cluster bootstrap). Subset of recent and notable models shown from the full panel of evaluated models.

Figure showing F1 scores (severity-weighted) for Generalist Physicians with and without AI, compared to three AI models (Gemini 3.1 Pro, Claude Fable 5, and GPT-5.5). Physicians without AI score an average of about 35%, with AI about 45%, Gemini 3.1 Pro about 60%, Claude Fable 5 70%, GPT-5.5 about 75%.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

If you've been following me for a while, you know where this is going. Behold, from Thelwall, R, and Sa’Adeddin, MA. Arabic. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 1990;20(2):37-39. doi:10.1017/S0025100300004266

Snipped from an academic article, in which the key sentence "is /t,k/ are aspirated." The following sentence uses IPA symbols which I can't be bothered to type here to add that pharyngealized /t/ is unaspirated, while pharyngealized /t,d,s, eth/ are Retracted Tongue Root, involving simultaneous pharyngealization and greater or lesser degrees of velarization.'

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

No fear -- I do broad edge calligraphy too!

Testing page of some broad edged nibs, including Gilbert & Blanzy-Poure No. 4, Gilbert & BLanzy-Poure No 2, the same with a Tape reservoir, John William Mitchell No3, John Mitchell B0131 with a Brause reservoir, and Leonardt 70 with a Tape Reservoir.

I actually have rather a huge number of Gilbert & Blanzy-Poure nibs, which is a pity, because on testing it turns out I don't much care for them. The William Mitchell ones are ok, as are the John Mitchells. The Leonardt 70 are modern, and I don't like them. Too flexible. I have a heavy hand, and I need a stiff nib to stand up to it.

Quote from Stacie Michelle (is she here? I found this when she was on twitter under the handle @staciemichelle), reading 'Banana bread is actually the first step on one's journey to radicalization because it requires recognizing when something is rotting and needs to be turned into something else'. The script is a basic foundational, very nice and legible. (Written with John Mitchell B 0134 nib.)

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Behold, also, my systematic testing of the various nibs.

Notebook page with some copperplate text of the names of various fountain pen nibs, along with handwritten notes about the nibs' features. Nibs in question include Gillotte Principality, Gillotte 303, Gillotte 404, John Heath Shoulder 506, Hunt School Pen 56, Brause 76 Rose, Baignol & Farjon Tantale, Sergent Major Superieure, Hunt 101, Esterbrook 357, Esterbrook 358, Gillotte 292, Gillotte 170, Perry 23, Hunt 22.

More nib testing pages from the same notebook. Nibs include Hunt 56 School pen, Gilbert & Blanzy Poure 902 Mitrailleuse, Perry 120 EF, Baignol & Farjon 803, Somerville 750 EF Plume Gauloise, Baignol & Farjon 2730 Henry Superieure, Hiro Leonardt 41, Brause 361, Leonardt 40, Nikko G, Departementale Cémentée 2552, Gillotte 404 (modern), Gillotte 404 (vintage)

Text written with 'B&F 803' (which means Baignol & Farjon 803). It's a full page of copperplate in walnut ink. It reads

The important point is that infectious disease is merely a disagreeable instance of a widely prevalent tendency of all living creatures to save themselves the bother of building, by their own efforts, the things they require. Whenever they find it possible to take advantage of the constructive labors of others, this is the direction of the least resistance. The plant does the work with its roots and its green leaves. The cow eats the plant. Man eats both of them; and bacteria (or investment bankers) eat the man. Complete elucidation would require elaborate technical discussions, but the principle is clear. Life on earth is an endless chain of parasitism which would soon lead to the complete annihilation of all living beings unless the incurruptible workers of the vegetable kingdom constantly renewed the supply of suitable nitrogen and carbon compounds which other living things can filch. It is a topic that might lend itself to endless trite moralizing. In the last analysis, man may be defined as a parasite on a vegetable.

(This is a quote from 'Rats, Lice, & History', by Hans Zinsser, pg 8-9, a fantastic, odd, quirky book from the 1930s by a doctor, ostensibly about typhus, but with surprisingly little actually relating to typhus in it. He spends a lot of time getting side-tracked on topics such as the theory of what makes a biography, or how much he thinks Roosevelt's WPA initiative is a terrible idea, or -- as here -- the evils of investment bankers. Great book!)

More from Hans Zinsser's 'Rats, Lice, and History'. This time the text reads:

If warriors and politicians and patriots and all the other people responsible for wars had only left the world alone for another hundred years this discovery might, without further scientific advances, have sounded theknell of epidemic typhus in the west.

But then a Grand Duke was murdered at Serajevo and everybody lost their heads, ourselves and T. Roosevelt included--except Mr Wilson, who lost his two years later; and the bandfs played the "Wacht am Rhein" and the "Marseilleise" and "God Save the King" and "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" and "Boje tsaria Khrani" and "Ustaj, ustaj, Srbine" and, several years later, the "Star-Spangled Banner." and the arbed-wire kings and the T.T.T., corned beef, and ordnance people, and the ship jobberes and the shoe manufacturers and the khaki pants trade, and so forth, and so forth, laid the foundation for a new and Hollywoodian aristocracy that lasted until 1929. And God was on evefyone's side. And when we had all gone to war and the stage was set, typhus woke up again.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

So, a propos of my recent nib haul, I decided to properly orgnanize them, label them, and test them. We're talking buying special bead organizers from hobbycrafts, level of organizing LOOKIT MY NIBS!!! (not shown: two full-gross boxes of vintage nibs, which are perfectly fine as they are.)

Four boxes with little compartments, each one holding dip pen nibs, each one labeled neatly. In total there are 61 compartments.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Good morning, class, can we say 'Streisand effect'? arstechnica.com/science/2026...

Online backlash to the ADA’s actions spread rapidly on both Twitter/X and BlueSky, and sharply increased the number of page views for Kahn et al.’s April editorial. According to Kahn, the editorial was published with a disclaimer, added by ADA leadership, insisting that the ADA had nothing to do with developing or writing the article. He has written to the ADA seeking re-admittance to the conference, since he is slated to speak and chair a session.

Some questioned how handing out reprints of an editorial published in the ADA’s own journal, at the ADA’s own annual conference, could be construed as a violation of that code. The scientists were not disruptive or disorderly in their conduct, based on the videos

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Holy forking shirtballs, my friends, I just won an ebay auction of vintage pen nibs, and when they arrived in the mail they proved to contain not one, not two, not three, but FOUR (4!!) unused (UNUSED!!) Gillott Principalities. FOUR UNUSED GILLOTT PRINCIPALITIES! LOOK! PICS BECAUSE IT HAPPENED!

FOUR! UNUSED! GILLOTT PRINCIPALITIES!! (four vintage dip pen nibs)

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Has anyone checked to see if the Nokia still turns on?

A display of ragged looking objects, mounted on a museum-style display. Objects include some old film cameras, a couple of cellular telephones (alongside some older style telephone parts, including the ones that had speaking tubes), some bottles, a door clasp, a mickey mouse thingamagig, and some bottles. One of the cell phones is that unbreakable Nokia type from the early 2000s.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Over on tumblr, some beautiful words moved me to break out the copperplate.

no animal was harmed during the making of this video. not one. for the few minutes that we were shooting film, the guns of each hunter fell silent. the industrial bolt throwers observed a moment's peace and the jaws of every predator hung softly open. no fish bit any hook and the bait worms held off on drowning only until the cameras stopped. the tails of ruminants ceased to flick just as their attendant flies, in unison, landed on their flanks to catch their tiny breaths. a spider instantly stopped winding silk around a wasp, patiently waiting for the caesura to end. a young veterinarian paused with the syringe in their hand. somewhere, a colicky baby stopped biting its mother's nipple and nursed happily for the very first time. we're sorry. we're sorry it couldn't have been longer. we didn't know this would happen.

estrogenesis-eeveeangelion

their tiny breaths. a spider instantly stopped winding silk around a wasp, patiently waiting for the caesura to end. a young veterinarian paused with the syringe in their hand. somewhere, a colicky baby stopped biting its mother's nipple and nursed happily for the very first time. we're sorry. we're sorry it couldn't have been longer. we didn't know this would happen.

estrogenesis-eeveeangelion

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

A propos of sharing genuine, human art, here are some sketches and eventual painted copies I made of the beautiful stencils in the drawing room of Holmwood House.

Some beautiful wall stencil on a pinkish background, with shades of maroon and brown and cream with pops of blue. The dominant feature is an elaborate lower border with alternating designs featuring palmeate leaves.

A deeply ugly, messy, disproportionate sketch of the wall stencils in the previous picture. Penciled note in the bottom corner reads 'sketched at Holmwood house, in drawing room, sun 24 May 2026'

A second iteration of the sketch from the previous picture, this time with lengths noted to indicate the appropriate proportions. Below the sketch is a taped tracing of the design.

Two side by side renditions of the sketch from the previous picture, this time painted to match, approximately, the colours from the original stencils (in pic 1). Little brush patches next to the edges of the background on the right-hand design show the artist attempting to colour-match, pehaps because they didn't mix up enough gouache to do more than one design. The left-hand design's background is a bit cooler in tone, so evidently the colour-matching FAILED, DIDN'T IT hmph.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I know because I thought 10-15 meters sounded awfully deep (too deep to be doing anything to help seeds germinate) so I checked the linked research for clarification.

The species makes extensive use of deep and long burrows (up to
15 m long), occasionally used by more than one individual, and above-ground activity is mainly concentrated in the early morning hours and during the wet season (August).

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

A propos of this bit, though, it's a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea error. The tortoises aren't burrowing 10-15 meters deep. They're digging burrows, underground, and the burrows are 10-15 meters long.

To escape lethal ground temperatures, spurred tortoises carve burrows 10 to 15 meters below the surface, according to research compiled by the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group. Each tunnel lets the tortoise survive the midday heat and the cold nights. It also punches through the sealed soil crust.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

'such god very eternal' dates these annotations to a very specific internet era.

Doge meme, with words 'such god', 'very eternal', and 'wow'

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

4. 'Dousterswivel definitely used AI to write his latest.'

"I speak for information, Mr. Preses," said the Rev. Mr. Lawrence Templeton; "but I am inclined to suppose the late publication of Walladmor to have been the work of Dousterswivel, by the help of the steam-engine." [Footnote: A Romance, by the Author of Waverley, having been expected about this time at the great commercial mart of literature, the Fair of Leipsic, an ingenious gentleman of Germany, finding that none such appeared, was so kind as to supply its place with a work, in three volumes, called Walladmor, to which he prefixed the Christian and surname at full length. The character of this work is given with tolerable fairness in the text. ]

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

3. 'No, no, you don't understand, it's only the boring repetitive parts of writing that we'll use AI for!'

"Gentlemen, it is to be premised, that this mechanical operation can only apply to those parts of the narrative which are at present composed out of commonplaces, such as the love-speeches of the hero, the description of the heroine's person, the moral observations of all sorts, and the distribution of happiness at the conclusion of the piece. Mr. Dousterswivel has sent me some drawings, which go far to show, that by placing the words and phrases technically employed on these subjects, in a sort of framework, like that of the Sage of Laputa, and changing them by such a mechanical process as that by which weavers of damask alter their patterns, many new and happy combinations cannot fail to occur, while the author, tired of pumping his own brains, may have an agreeable relaxation in the use of his fingers."

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

THIS IS FUCKING TRUE OMIGOD AND IT'S PERFECTLY RELEVANT TODAY. 1. VIOLENT disapprobation to the idea: 'Blown up!' 3. 'Bread out of our mouths!' 2. 'Might as well construct a steam parson' -- THEY DID! THEY FUCKING DID! www.reuters.com/technology/a...

"Why, he is of opinion, that at the expense of a little mechanism, some part of the labour of composing these novels might be saved by the use of steam." There was a murmur of disapprobation at this proposal, and the words, "Blown up," and "Bread taken out of our mouths," and "They might as well construct a steam parson," were whispered. And it was not without repeated calls to order, that the Preses obtained an opportunity of resuming his address.

"Order!—Order! Pray, support the chair. Hear, hear, hear the chair!"

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

It's not just me, right? Gul Dukat could absolutely get it. From me. Specifically.

Star Trek DS9 title card, showing underside view of station. Title reads 'Gul Dukat inspires 1000 fanfics'

010

Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

The completed pattern, now painted in blue, red, and yellow bister inks. This is Pattern 99 from volume 3 of from Serap Ekizler Sönmez's 3-volume masterpiece, 'The Geometric Language of Anatolian Seljuk Art' (Anadolu Selçuklu Sanatının Geometrik Dili) #IslamicGeometricArt #IslamicArt #humanArt

A 5-pointed star formed from tiled shapes built around 5-fold symmetry, coloured in concentric pentagonal bands of turquoise, ochre, and maroon. To one side is a handsomely bound, large hardback book with a ribbon bookmark, entitled Anadolu Selçuklu Sanatının Geometrik Dili, by Serap Ekizler Sönmez.

A 5-pointed star formed from tiled shapes built around 5-fold symmetry, coloured in concentric pentagonal bands of turquoise, ochre, and maroon.

A close-up shot of the shapes tiling the large star from previous photographs. Pointy 10-pointed stars are coloured in turquoise, fat 10-pointed stars are coloured in ochre, and bow-tie shapes in maroon separate the bands of ochre and turquoise shapes.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

The mechanical cause of the problems relates to the way the system affected workers' incentives, yes, agreed. But the bit where the corporate headquarters refused to recognize that the new system sucked and made business bad, and instead insisted that franchisees keep using it, is peak AI-brain.

The lawsuit argues Pizza Hut breached its franchise agreement by mandating continued use of the software while failing to exercise "reasonable business judgment" or modify the system to accommodate Chaac's reliance on DoorDash drivers.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

h/t to @clairewillett.bsky.social for teaching me this fact. I am not at all surprised to learn that Wodehouse played on a bad cricket team. All of his early, execrable Mike at Wryken books are suffused with a certain wistful self-insert flavoured vibe of 'what if I were *good* at cricket?'

screencap of a tumblr post:

glowcloudatlas-deactivated20170
Literally one of my favourite facts ever is that J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, H. G.
Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G.
Wodehouse, A. A. Milne, as well as the son of Alfred Tennyson and many others played on the same amateur cricket team AND THEY WERE TERRIBLE how great is that

and then below is another post with a Wikipedia screencap -

adulthoodisokay
Allahakbarries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Allahakbarries was an amateur cricket team founded by author J. M. Barrie, and was active from 1890 to 1913. The team was named in the mistaken belief that Allah akbar meant ‘Heaven help us’ in Arabic (rather than ‘God is great’). Notable figures to have featured for the side included Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, G. K. Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome, A.
A. Milne, E. W. Hornung, Henry Justice Ford, A. E. W. Mason, Walter Raleigh, E. V. Lucas, Maurice Hewlett, Owen Seaman, Bernard Partridge, Augustine Birrell, Paul Du Chaillu, Henry Herbert La Thangue, George Cecil Ives, and George Llewelyn Davies, as well as the son of Alfred Tennyson.

020

Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Your pet is the younger sibling of my pet!

A green and white glazed pot sitting on a base of tentacles, holding paintbrushes. On one of the tentacles a teeny tiny glass jellyfish ornament is is suspended.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

HEY! We're time-war copying twinsies! I have also been copying out pages from it (although just using whatever inks I've got on the go, rather than colour coding).

Two pages of A4 paper containing some handwritten text of 'This Is How You Lose the Time War'. THe top half of each page is light blue; the bottom half is darker blue-purple.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

I've had this in my 'quotes' folder for a while, but felt inspired tonight. Thank you, @ultragotha.bsky.social.

White copperplate calligraphy on red paper. Text reads

Hail, Pterry, full of rage, the muse is with thee. Blessed art thou among authors, and blessed is the fruit of thy brain, Discworld.

Hail Pterry, Father of Great A'Tuin, who channeled rage into compassion blessed are thy words.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Of course it's the LAWYER who says this. A proper linguist would know about Grice's cooperative principle and conversational maxims, which explicitly state that communication is impossible if anyone could be bullshitting anyone else and it's on the listener to sort truth from lies.

“People are saying that 10 years ago, everyone fell for a monstrous hoax but everyone has the right to be imaginative; it’s up to the person you’re talking to whether they believe it or not,” Euvrard told Le Monde.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

regarding that Animal Farm adaptation: I know I said I wanted adaptations that did something novel with the source material, rather than slavish faithful adherence to beat by beat plot points. I did not mean this appalling betrayal of a core point of the book. eu.usatoday.com/story/entert...

Deciding who the audience was, Serkis says, was part of why it took a decade and a half to get the project off the ground. He points out “Animal Farm” was once subtitled “A Fairy Story”: “It was meant for a younger audience. He was writing with children in mind … I think we’ve remained loyal to that,” Serkis says. He added a new protagonist, Lucky (Matarazzo), a “young innocent piglet” with a moral arc and a slightly off-beat side-plot romance.

“Animal Farm,” classically, is a story without a happy ending. But Serkis’ interpretation gives viewers closure. The film adds an entirely new third act: Lucky has a change of heart and apologizes, the animals take down Napoleon and the evil capitalistic Pilkington. Lucky tells the cautionary tale for a new generation.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli.

Arnold Schwarzenegger rides into a ruined hall on a horse.

Caption text: To be . . .'

Schwarzenegger lights a cigar.

Caption text. 'or not to be . . .'

There is an explosion

Caption text: 'Not to be.'

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative-abs.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli. (I could not find a gif of this film, so here's an image.)

Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau leaning out of car windows looking at each other on a street of charming rural town somewhere in central Europe. Jackson looks like a magnificently elegant woman in her forties, curiously sporting exactly my current hair style. Matthau looks like an aging man in his . . . sixties? . . . with obviously died black hair that does not match the age on his face. Naturally, they are going to be lovers, because a 20-year age gap meant nothing in 1980s film-making.

The film is Hopscotch, by the way -- aging CIA agent Miles Kendig is being taken out of the field by his jackass boss who thinks he's too old to do his job. Kendig instead decides to write a tell-all memoir, which his boss takes exception to, and so Kendig has to use all his field-agent spy skills to evade his boss's attempt to kill him while also taking a typewriter along so he can type up new pages. It is fantastic. It is a brilliant movie. It is one of the best movies ever.

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