iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 10h

Just saw folk who join the uncritical rush towards AI referred to as "LLMings", and I am stealing that.

static.klipy.com

Vintage Pixel Game: Lemmings

Alt: Vintage Pixel Game: Lemmings

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 16h

I want a small device, a bit like a dehumidifier, that sits in the corner of the office and quietly filters unnecessary drama out of the atmosphere.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Great moments in Scottish engineering history: James Watt tries to work out how his phone attaches to his selfie stick.

Statue of James Watt. In his right hand he holds a telescopic stick with a frame at the top; in his left he holds a flat object about the size of a large smartphone. He is scowling at the possibly-not-a-smartphone as if he is tempted to yeet it into the sea. On that basis, it probably _is_ a phone.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Current status: trying to identify birds while not being very good at identifying birds. "OK, so from the RSPB website this is either a very weird sparrow or a Mayakovsky's Splarp, a native of Patagonia last seen in Scotland in 1842. *pause* I'm going with the splarp."

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Late entry for "Repost with an image of your favourite James Bond (wrong answers only)".

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

A full and frank exchange of views developing on the big pond this morning.

A coot and a black-headed gull squaring up to each other.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Pìos beag na Cuimrise ann an Glaschu.

Dealbh-balla "Gwlad Gwlad" air Sràid Hope.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

IF NO DRAGON TREATS THEN DRAGON WAILING WILL CONTINUE.

A dragon. With no dragon treats. Do you see the problem here?

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

*sigh* I have been on a certain committee for three years. They are aware of my disability and have been regularly reminded of it. Are they still red/green colour-coding information? Yes. Yes, they are. Dalton wept.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

*jumps shamelessly onto the thread to publicise my own telling of that earlier story* new-cleckit.dominie.scot/allans-pen/

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If this article is to be believed, young people now see AI as the definitive standard of cringe. Speaking as a maths teacher, this is not the part of my job that I expected the bots to take from me.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

For some reason, the assertion "I have Given IELTS Academic and gained 7.0 Bands" does not reassure me as much as it is intended to.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's the first morning when I could see my breath when I left the flat to go to work, which is my personal (and egocentric) definition of autumn.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Some say the gargoyles on the east face of the Cathedral are corpse wards, punishing those who offer disrespect to one specific grave. This is not true. The guardians of that grave are something else entirely. The gargoyles just like to watch.

An unusually sinister face on the underside of a gargoyle.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Status: taking portrait photos of Long-Suffering Life Partner for a literary thing. It is very typical of people who organise literary things that they require one of the portraits to be in landscape format.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Weirdly enough, William Golding's "Lord of the Flies", in which a crowd of primary-school-aged children tool up and go hunting a Beast which exists only in their imaginations, was first published six days earlier. Coincidence, or *sinister music begins*...

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If you identified this image as the NLS site on Causewayside as shown on the 1876 OS town plan of Edinburgh, you probably already knew about this website. If not...

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

We should maybe get round to enforcing the Lex Innocentium at some point.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Augsburg, 1469: first recorded instance of the excuse "I couldn't make it to class because my emotional support peacock was too big to fit through the door".

Someone in vaguely clerical dress looking pensive while a rather gormless peacock stands in front of him, blocking access to (possibly?) a church.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Prepping to lecture a statistics module for the first time, and I think the subject may be worse served by its textbooks even than calculus. So many big shiny books full of friendly explanations that conceal total conceptual muddle...

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It can be very hard when you're trying to talk to someone in English but they are listening in Strategy.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Dear my union, For the love of whatever chthonic gods are currently dictating comms strategy, do not tell us that if we want more information we need to listen to your pissing podcast. Many of your members are quite busy and most of us can, with technological assistance or otherwise, read.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

— What did I tell you? — Not to put my finger into the geometry tank because the protractors bite. — And where is your finger _right now_? — *mumble mumble* OUCH [BL Harley MS 275, f. 293r]

Illustration showing a woman teaching geometry to some anxious clerics, two of whom have put their fingers on a round table littered with geometrical figures.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I've just learned that some knobs chose to mark the Old Firm match on Sunday by threatening international students on Glasgow Green. (On this occasion it was fans of the club that gets pious about being friendly to migrants, but in my experience they are two cheeks of the same despicable arse.)

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Today's image from Blumen der Tugen [Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Chart. A 594] poses the question: is it possible to be slightly too fond of Forton Services on the M6? (iykyk)

A man wearing a crown embraces the base of a goblet-shaped tower. His pal is busy either blowing a horn or eating an early Cornetto from the wrong end.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A person unknown to me writes to say they have enjoyed my work on ethics in mathematics and would like to work with me on AI-enhanced and that was where I stopped reading.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

First lecture of the new semester today. [Northern Looking Glass, 1825]

Coloured illustration of a lecturer confronting a less than genteel audience. He has plenty of desk space and a TA; frankly I think he should stop complaining and get on with it.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Another post from the vaults. This is the story of one of Glasgow's shortest and once most disreputable streets, featuring civic improvement schemes, a poet for hire, a railway tunnel, dirty waxworks, and the city's only ordained milliner. new-cleckit.dominie.scot/the-warst-pl...

An arch, protected by a metal grille, in a stone wall into which a wider metal arch is built.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The hands of a queen. [Citizens' Theatre]

Articuated wooden hands, detailed to the extent of having fingernails, emerging from the sleeves of a richy embroidered dress.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Not now, ominously close whale; not now.

Signboard with the message "You're closer to a whale than you think".

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Happy 20th birthday to the Squinty Bridge.

View upward at the supporting arc of the Squinty Bridge, against an _absolutely typical_ clear Glaswegian sky.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Last repost: I used to have family on Hoy. The story there was the Longhope disaster of 1969. Many coastal communities have stories like that, and every one deserves to be retold, and anyone who attacks the lifeboats has declared war on humanity. www.scottishmaritimemuseum.org/the-1969-lon...

scottishmaritimemuseum.org

The 1969 Longhope Lifeboat Disaster - Scottish Maritime Museum

By Amber-Louise Thornborrow Fifty-six years ago, on the evening of the 17th of March 1969, the volunteer crew of the TGB lifeboat assembled, venturing out into a south-easterly force…

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Reposted by New-Cleckit Dominie

Mags L Halliday @magslhalliday.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Every year on 19 December, the famous Christmas lights at Mousehole in Cornwall are dimmed between 8 and 9pm, leaving just the Cross and Angels shining down across the village and out to sea.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The burning question of the week for me: how do undergraduates on campus walk so slowly? (Not why: I partially understand that. How, physically, do they move in that dreamlike viscous manner that most folk could only achieve if you immersed them up to their necks in treacle?)

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

"I say, old chap, you might have asked before putting your nose just there." (Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Chart. A 594 [Blumen der Tugen], folio 88v)

Manuscript illustration: a grumpy dog is sniffing the backside of a lion who looks distinctly startled by the experience.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Useful thread on the cuts at Edinburgh. The tl;dr seems to be that they are (a) less apocalyptic than some commentary suggests; (b) still very bad; (c) even stupider than they look at first sight, since they napalm staff morale and public reputation without actually saving money.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I see this strange little creature, whose natural habitat is a dank cave under a mountain somewhere and who would believe anything if it got him closer to power, is having a go at Govanhill.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A friend who was a defence journalist in Washington used to tell a story about the time (late 1980s?) when the Americans were pitching their latest military flight simulators to the RAAF. They'd set up a demo with Australian landscapes, including the local wildlife.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I see we're running an event on Our Founder, Hero Of The Enlightenment and an event to launch Black History Month simultaneously at different ends of the campus, which feels just slightly on the nose.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Live footage of me (right) having a normal conversation with a normal person, and definitely not coming across as weird. (Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Chart. A 594 [Blumen der Tugen], folio 70v)

A very socially inept griffin wears an awkward grin while talking to a man who's wearing that expression that implies he wants you to make conversation. The griffin is probably about to start talking nervously about waggonways or something.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Status: have spent most of the day dealing with humans. Have no capacity left for dealing with humans. Nevertheless, am about to set off for a two-hour language class, with humans in it. Am wondering why.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm currently in charge of workload allocation for the first time, and naturally I'm trying to spread the load as fairly as possible. So far two colleagues have come to me fretting that they might not have been allocated enough work. I feel this says a lot about the guilt economy of universities.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Reminder: countries are invented by people and their borders can be changed for good or bad reasons. You don't _have_ to get all flaggy and vindictive as if saying "we want to leave the UK" was the offensive part here.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Trying not to boost the salience of the racist village, but I'm moderately convinced the story is catching on partly because the place has a vaguely silly name with overtones of children's telly. It's xenophobia hitching a lift on cuddly nostalgia memes yet again.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

So are we now going to be forced to endure weird far-right reenactments of all the other Ealing comedies too? Not especially looking forward to Closed Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers Are All Foreigners, or The White Man In The Suit.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A colleague has just sent round an email headed "DISSEMINATE". No prizes for guessing the voice in which my brain is reading it.

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