iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 24/09/2026

I want everyone to think of the preceding posts as we look at its cute avatar

Close up of the Muse Tamagochi showing a kind of fuzzy bloopy character with an emoji style face of two dots and a line, indistinguishable from Microsoft's Mico, what is it with these people and that symbol

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 19/09/2026

I did a little hard drive digging. The Pinker essay is in 2007: "What is Your Dangerous Idea?" Pinker also wrote the introduction which is kind of a "he was always like this" thing. Then a Wayback capture from 2012 of the article on Edge but his name removed. Later captures lack the whole article.

Title page of "What is your Dangerous Idea: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable" Edited by John Borckman with an introduction by Steven Pinker and an Afterward by Richard Dawkins

Introduction by Pinker, going on about a number of early 2000s edgelord just-asking-questions that only real scientists can ask

Pinker's "Dangerous Question" essay, titled "Groups of People May Differ Genetically in their Average Talents and Temperaments". It begins with a defense of Lawrence Summers and proceeds from there

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 18/09/2026

Well the majority of gentlemen travelers don't have any idea what you're talking about. You may wish to reconsider your sartorial decisions

photograph taken in 1915 of John D. Rockefeller and his son, John Junior, wearing wool suits, heavy wool topcoats, silk tophats and gloves

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 18/09/2026

Thinking about how the last time I was in Oak Park I was kind of surprised at the mediocre quality and poor maintenance of many of the houses

Photo of a dilapidated early 20th century house clad in dull green siding, with deterioration visible, and a shaggy untended front lawn

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10/09/2026

Calmatters should know not to post the Ring without its parking garages

Aerial photo of the Apple ring building next to its parking garages, which are larger than it is

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 09/09/2026

Outfit it like this on the inside and I will worship

photograph showing interior of the historic, now demolished Cincinnati, Ohio main library, with cast-iron columns, spiral stairs and gaslights in a high vaulted reading room

Books in the stacks in the old Cincinnati main library

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 08/09/2026

Because by Natural and Proper Law, profits should accrue to the technology owner while the costs are distributed across the whole population. As they used to say during the bad old industrial age, "Dilution is the Solution to Pollution"

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 07/09/2026

Here it is in one image

Guy with a 2025 tier list of insulting terms for robots, including the usual ones as well as some non-starters like "P-zombie", "Abominal Intelligence", "Cogsucker" and my favorite, "Altman"

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 05/09/2026

Claude Code default output

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 05/09/2026

The fact that the ancient Romans wrote using what I habitually feel are "our" letters, still occasionally hits me

Carved Roman majuscules, part of the inscription on Trajan's Column, dedicated in 113 CE

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 02/09/2026

"Even my DOG has gone commercial!"

image from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" showing Charlie distressed as Snoppy lavishly decorates his dog house to win a prize.

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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

View along a neighborhood street with fallen autumn leaves heaped on both sides

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 29/08/2026

I remember the popular memorial that sprang up, emotionally devastating in its naive sincerity

hand lettered sign reading "in august 2004 a DMB tour bus dumped 800 pounds of poo on some people"

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 28/08/2026

The old Hitchhiker's Guide "Don't Panic" meme re-imagined as a 320-page hardcover, now available at Airport Novelty Books for $27.95

Version of a cover design that appeared on Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" of a green blob alien under the words "Don't Panic". The words appeared on the back cover of the first edition and have become a well-known phrase.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 25/08/2026

We didn't know how good we had it

viral 2017 photo of Steve Mnuchin and his wife looking smug, while holding a sheet of printed dollar bills at the U.S. Mint

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 24/08/2026

Reminding me that no one ought to post an image of the Apple "Ring" HQ that doesn't also include its parking garages

aerial photo of the iconic Apple ring headquarters building, also showing its two enormous parking garages that are larger than the ring

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 24/08/2026

Howdy from Niles, Illinois

photo of the leaning tower of Niles, Illinois, a water tank designed to resemble the leaning tower of Pisa, at one-third scale, lit by evening sun amid some trees

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 23/08/2026

Despite what I said above, and acknowledging the conventions of 19th century photographs, if you showed me this portrait taken when Eakins was about 40 I'd have to admit that it depicts a man somewhat more off-putting than a commission-seeking artist would normally present himself.

black and white portrait photograph of Eakins, a middle-aged man in a suit looking off to one side with a glowering expression on his shadowed face, not atypical of late-19th century portraits, but nevertheless not offering an appealing impression of someone you'd go to, to commission a painting.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 23/08/2026

Upstairs in the old Thompson Center for Illinois, downtown Chicago, 2022

office break room microwave and toaster under a printed sign saying not to use them at the same time because it blows a fuse. The microwave has a small stack of restroom paper hand towels on top of it

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22/08/2026

Gmail search options does not provide an "exact phrase" option and putting the words within double quotes seems to have no effect.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22/08/2026

I thought the original first panel was Nixon. I've had this image for at least seven years

Comic panel, Superman addressing Richard Nixon, "If I can't trust the President..."

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 21/08/2026

Beautiful as always. This one is old and low-res, but it always got me in the feels around this time of year

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 18/08/2026

Nightmare theater because they never got that The Jetsons is satire

image from the cartoon, showing Jane Jetson holding up a perfect mask of her face to a live-view video conference on some kind of wood-grain box TV monitor, while her real face looks drag-ass and exhausted.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 16/08/2026

When the eruption happened they were preparing for a municipal election, and a number of hand-painted candidate slogans have been found. The city seems to have been plastered with them.

Photograph of a hand-painted election poster in red Roman capital letters, painted on a tan plaster wall in Pompeii

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 13/08/2026

I've been to her grave

Photo of the granite obelisk at the grave of George Eliot, in Highgate Cemetery near London

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 12/08/2026

Agree. The American National Park Service heavy-duty grill on a post is an icon over here. Also very clearly identifies the places set aside for picnicking

catalog photo of a square steel barbecue with a moveable grill plate

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11/08/2026

The deep-set fear that the unwashed plebeians will learn of "pinata economics"

Pinata economics: instead of fruitlessly waiting for wealth to trickle down, beat the rich with blunt instruments until the gold flows

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10/08/2026

I know that both of you just yearn to live in Elwood Blues' Chicago apartment

Screen shot from The Blues Brothers, showing an L train going past Elwood's window. He's saying it goes by "so often you won't even notice it"

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 08/08/2026

My office trash bin yesterday. A day in the life of a 21st century archivist

open bin full of VHS video tapes, with a few Betamaxes and a couple of U-Matic tapes in there also. The other bin full of compact cassette audio tapes is not shown

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 04/08/2026

Mervyn Peake - The Gormenghast Trilogy - a work that needs no justification except its own uniqueness

Photo of first editions of Peake's Gomenghast novels: Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone, in dust jackets with the author's own illustrations.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 01/08/2026

I love that the Canal still functions, even if nominally. Here's a photo I took at Lock Number 9 in New York, of the gate control handles polished bright by long use.

A lock gate control panel with two bronze handles, bright with handling. The rest of the panel has a brown patina.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 01/08/2026

Maybe this newspaper headline from 1910 will help

Headline reading "Enthusiasm is Lacking -- Not Greatly Pleased"

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 31/07/2026

When they asked Yoji Enokido why the robot character Kanti has a cathode tube TV for a head in the anime "FLCL", he said, "Because I like square things."

photo of a figure of Kanti centered on his TV set head

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