N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 3hKind of like after the Titanic sank and the survivors were rescued, one of the ships that was available to take them the rest of the way to New York was the Olympic, a ship of the same class that looked exactly like Titanic. They chose a different option. 000
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 5hThis is popping off in my feed with Takes, so here's mine. If it were true as Nick implies that bespoke generated music would replace what we have, that would have happened long ago because there is a sea of music, & no effective difference between a generator & an algorithm trained on our choices. 110
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 6h<Waking up thinking> Gandalf's first act in the Lord of the Rings is to put on a big fireworks show, a technology which is never mentioned again in the entire book. 130
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 28/09/2026I have been thinking the same for a while. Someone showed me an app that lets one scan the bar code on any food package & it describes the sketchy ingredients. It struck me as another thing that offloads a role - food safety - once collective onto individuals. Is AI the ultimate expression of this? 031
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 26/09/2026We had a contractor who, if a car had stopped in the crosswalk, he would just walk a straight line, climb on the car and stomp across its hood. He was from Connecticut. Desperately I said, “You need to understand something about drivers in Houston…” 040
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 25/09/2026Well I just muted the word “BREAKING:” if anyone wants to know how my social media life is going 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 25/09/2026It was certainly a matter of terrible marketing and PR, perhaps the worst ever. But the chatbots actually were designed to replace customer-facing staff. The vicious lying jerks who run the companies really couldn’t think of any other big-market product. 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 24/09/2026I have not yet seen anyone wearing Meta Glasses in the wild. I have seen some YouTube videos where people are using them instead of a head-mounted camera to show what they are working on. I wonder if the public has quietly decided the specs are good for some tasks, but not for wearing in public? 120
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 24/09/2026I have a sense that Asia, Latin America and Africa aren't experiencing anything like the levels of angst, negativity, and outrage over generative AI that we see in Western Europe and the USA. Is that true? Is there counter-evidence? 000
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 21/09/2026I think it was Aldous Huxley who said that Man’s so-called dominance over nature is actually the dominance of some men over others, using nature as their instrument. 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 19/09/2026In the first scene of Greg Bear's earth-gets-destroyed SF novel "Forge of God", a geologist walks up to a puzzling desert rock formation and discovers a crashed alien spaceship, with an alien lying beside it. The alien sits up and says in a weary voice, "I'm afraid it's bad news." 000
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 19/09/2026An image of how I feel at work sometimes, except the little ones are emails 020
Reposted by N.N. ScottCharles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 18/09/2026For men of the first class, nature is a picture; for men of the second class, it is an opportunity; for men of the third class, it is a cosmos, so admirable, that to penetrate to its ways seems to them the only thing that makes life worth living. 052
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 18/09/2026This is 100% an American high school "volcano" science project in the making 000
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 17/09/2026Kind of amazing how much of the art of "poasting" is just reading the room, and how obvious it is when someone can't. 030
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 16/09/2026"The secret of Silicon Valley is that every company wants to become a defense contractor and they’re expecting neverending, eternal opportunities." -- John Leavitt, on Twitter, April 14, 2019 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 15/09/2026It occurs to me there are threads on here that I really ought to think twice before posting replies in them, and the Kash Patel Congressional Testimony threads are in that category. 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 14/09/2026People on here are still screencapping and quote posting statements by daft nobodies on X dot Com 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 14/09/2026The thing that currently relieves more than it frightens me is, this is what he's had to settle for. If he could have had himself put on Mount Rushmore, or replaced the Statue of Liberty with a statue of himself, he would do so... 110
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 13/09/2026The whole website is full of sports and politics and A.I. this evening. This is outrageous, I demand a refund 030
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 12/09/2026Any account on here that has more than about 10K followers and posts frequently, you can unfollow them and if you have your feed set to see replies, you'll still see any post of theirs that's worth seeing. A lot of accounts that post ~ 20% important and 80% annoying content can be handled this way. 030
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 12/09/2026Any news media that ruminates quizzically about "how the GOP would finance the $5K dividend?" needs to be taken out and shot. It openly requires the GOP to take both House & Senate, they won't take the House so the dividend won't happen. This is about four close Senate races and nothing else. 072
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11/09/2026I had some sarcastic memes ready for today but now don't feel like posting them. A friend in northern New Jersey called in the afternoon, just to connect. During the previous year, because of the century change, there had been a lot of silly discourse... 100
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11/09/2026At two o'clock in the morning If you open your window and listen, You will hear the feet of the wind That is going to call the sun. And the trees in the starlight rustle And the trees in the moonlight glisten, And though it is deep, dark night You know the night is done. -- Rudyard Kipling, 1911 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 09/09/2026I can remember back in the crazy days when Bluesky let its staff and even senior admins interact completely unfiltered with users, and it was always good times, always 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 09/09/2026There are conversations on here this morning that I truly do not understand and know enough not to become involved with. It's getting weird fast, people 000
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 09/09/2026Considering the timeline we're in, the more likely and stupider scenario would be that in an efficiency move, they hook it up to automate the base's daily "lunch menu" and then 141
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 09/09/2026Things will settle down, when you stop paying attention to them. 000
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 08/09/2026"'Tis a common practice of some men [when they are in mental anguish] to go first to a witch and then to a physician, if one cannot the other shall, as they say: Flectere si nequeant superos Acheronta movebunt (If they cannot bend heaven, they will try hell)." -- Robert Burton, 1621 110
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 07/09/2026Patrick Boyle's restrained, dry, careful summary of the recent Meta settlement with state attorneys general will make you hate Meta more than any amount of social media ranting could www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUMU...youtube.comThe Social Reckoning That Wasn'tYouTube video by Patrick Boyle 000
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 07/09/2026"And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan." -- The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezidi, translated by Richard F. Burton, 1880 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 06/09/2026If I ever see another YouTube video with a goddam thumbnail image containing the words "It's Over" I don't know what I'll do. (I was right: I didn't know what to do) 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 05/09/2026When my mom was a student at the University of Colorado she had a poltergeist in her room that would wake her up by raising and dropping the foot of the bed. She used it as an alarm clock. When summer came it did it and she shouted, "Cut it out, I don't need to get up now!" It never happened again. 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 05/09/2026Dick Tracy: Where have you been? Pat Patton: If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. Tracy: Well, don't tell me. Patton: I'll tell you anyway. -- from "Dick Tracy Versus Cueball", 1946 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 05/09/2026"The number of predicaments in which human beings can become involved fall into not too many categories." -- Michael Grant, 1962 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 05/09/2026Took L to the south side, biked to Powell's Books south of Hyde Park, then the LST 25 miles to the northside suburb where I live. Feeling fine, only a few swimming colors in my eyes, and my trousers fell down because I sweated so much my waist shrank. All's well <hee hee I'm in trouble meme> 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 05/09/2026Someone in the Lakeshore historic District already has a full life-size werewolf set up on their front porch, on the 4th of September! Come on! It was 95°F today, people! 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 03/09/2026As the guys at my former workplace used to say, “The toilets have backed up into the warp drive” 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 03/09/2026Not to minimize the genuine bad trends and crises of our time, but that quoted sentence could have been issued, with equal sincerity and rationale, at the midpoint of any decade during the past 150 years at least. 210
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 03/09/2026"While the world was full of people, all too full, finding a genuine human being was not easy." -- Eiji Yoshikawa, in "Musashi" (1935) 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 03/09/2026They're soothing the angry bridge with the healing waters of Lake Michigan 020
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 02/09/2026I have now seen two YouTube videos in the form of a human person speaking to the camera, which I believe were entirely generated by software. The "uncanny valley" effect was minor or absent; I could only detect it by an occasional odd word usage, as when one of them said "15 days" as "one five days" 051
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 02/09/2026So the Windows 11 laptop, upon being started, showed a text message "trying to re-load BIOS" then bricked completely, no response upon attempting to restart. Data backed up so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . And hence the older Win10 laptop, previously relegated to playing music in the kitchen, is now back in service. 110
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 01/09/2026"Each false thing ends. The bouquet of summer Turns blue and on its empty table It is stale and the water is discolored. True autumn stands then in the doorway." -- Wallace Stevens, in "Parts of a World", 1942 010
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 01/09/2026Me sowing: I think I'll put in 3 cups of beans to soak instead of the usual two. How much could they swell, really? Me reaping: By Saint Betty Crocker, what the actual 130
N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 31/08/2026I have actually watched a video with Kai Cenat, because some of his fans got into an online hate orgy over nothing with fans of the vtuber Ironmouse, and Kai very honorably went on her show to demonstrate how much he likes her & shut the whole mess down. Please note, this makes me Officially Young. 000