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N.N. Scott

@nnscott.com
1.3K followers 2.9K following 1.7K posts

Archives and Records, Chicagoland. Inappropriately esoteric interests. "A chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only too capable of producing secondary causes." -- Rudyard Kipling, 1905

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10h
Hence Tom Lehrer's immortal stanzas: "To the beer and Benzedrine To the way that the dean Tried so hard to be pals with us all To excuses we fibbed To the papers we cribbed From the genius who lived down the hall..." -- from "Bright College Days", circa 1955
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10h
If I were willing to credit the CBS people with having brains, I'd say they know the Kalshi data is worthless but they figure it'll make great "horserace" video coverage with different colored lines going every which way, patterns changing all the time, something something AI, what's not to like?
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10h
Rainy all day in Chicagoland, I'm calling it's time. This beautiful version of "Homeward Through The Haze" was recorded in 1974 but released on a CD set in 1991. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY5u...
youtube.com
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Homeward Through The Haze - 1974
YouTube video by RustedTelevisione
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
Taking the stick and trashing the leaves, like a boss
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
The woman has Takes
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
I had a boss who would answer emails with a single word. "No". I drank from the firehose
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
Having all the fun for yourself
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
If it's that old, the rare-earth magnets in it will be beefy. I once scored a load of defunct 20-year-old external HDDs and was astonished at the size and power of the magnets. I suggest hanging onto those bad boys.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
I continue to believe that the technology is not the problem and was never the problem. People are the problem. The solution is regulation and active participation in the processes of government. Let's do some of that and fix AI.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
...then forbidding the government to provide services that help people navigate it, because a business corporation bribed enough Congress members with campaign donations and other perks to be allowed to charge us for that service.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
Americans seem to just obsessively hate government and regulation, even though it's precisely those things that protect our bodies, our food, our livelihoods. It often seems that we do them badly on purpose, as in creating a tax code that is effectively a complex algorithm written in words...
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
...arrive in the service of some of the worst jerks alive? Probably not, but it wouldn't be the first time that happened. The solution is simply (not easily) the thing everyone in the USA pretends to hate: good government.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
I agree with this, it's good to develop tools that help and serve people. Unfortunately because human life and society are mixed up, that thread is a mare's nest of three or four different contentions twisting around each other in argument. Did a technology that could be of enormous help need to...
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h
monkey paw curls
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 12h
Yes, but those are huge brackets that won't go away. Of course people want that. People would like to have a person do it for them. In light of the history of the past few thousand years, it's not much of a stretch to guess that the convenient, trustworthy option will end up also being expensive.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 16h
🙄
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 16h
I think I know #1 but #2 got past me
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 16h
God: There's this thing called path dependency
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 17h
"I'm not reading one bit over 240 pages per week, that's my limit, though of course if it's in the original German I could do more"
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 19h
Kind 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.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 19h
I don't recall exactly but I suppose Sam is just remembering Gandalf's fireworks in Hobbiton?
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 19h
I thought about that, but it's the exception that tests the rule. They only use them once, there are no rockets, and nobody has any canons. As far as I recall the hosts of Mordor only use ballistas, arrows and rams to attack Minas Tirith.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 20h
"You will be visited by Three Spirits..."
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 21h
If I wanted to listen to something that sounds kind of like 1980s synth-pop, there are already more hours of it online than I could listen to before I die. There is no market for what Nick is suggesting. The same goes for on-the-fly generated movies, novels, animation, and so on.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 21h
This 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.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 21h
Also, the graphic generating machines are much better now but I can go to DeviantArt today and browse the new "art" that's coming out and after a few minutes it all gets the Midwestern "Yeah, No"
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 21h
Having run through fads provided to me by my YouTube algorithm, going from "wow this is awesome, can't get enough" to "well that's run its course, everything of that kind is repetitious sludge", I feel that I know exactly how the AI auto-generated music thing will go.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 21h
Nick: "With the power of AI you, the almighty consumer, will be able to conjure an infinite amount of any kind of entertainment out of the void!" Consumer: <makes some choices> Nick: "Ah no, not that kind of entertainment. That's bad. No not that kind, either. What are you trying, wait, eep..."
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22h
<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.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22h
"As an example of my work, I offer a limerick about a cat"
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22h
Yeah, Soylent is still around also; one can buy a tub of it for $40 on Amazon. Anyway Nick Saraev is wrong because the 9-hour repeat version of "Upping My P(Doom)" has already been posted, music is over
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22h
Not that it matters here but Kaliningrad is an "enclave" in the same way that Alaska is for the USA
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22h
dog voices: "It's not safe to go alone, I will protect you"
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22h
Be extra funny* if the new prez does this after having had both of them on their podcast for glazing radical-centrist interviews during the campaign *not really, nothing about any of this is funny
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 22h
I'm expecting to hear that a non-trivial number of people show up at the polling place this November, discover that Trump is not on the ballot, and walk away leaving their ballot blank
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 30/09/2026
I still use a Galaxy Note tablet I bought in 2011 as an ebook reader. It works fine
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 30/09/2026
I used an iPhone 6s Plus for a solid ten years, through updates ending, apps failing or being unable to install. What finally got me to buy a new phone was when Bluesky quit working lol
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 30/09/2026
He doesn't have any of the excuses that your average Chicago dry goods wholesaler millionaire in like, 1885 would have had for looking like that.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 30/09/2026
“My dog has taken to his bed in despair“
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 30/09/2026
I think the existential threat would be if one of these things connects to the wrong system & initiates an unintended nuclear weapons launch. I don't think that's likely. The most likely scenario is a grinding business depression as systems fight systems until proper regulations are established.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 30/09/2026
Thinking about thousands of these things slowly dying in the dark back of desk and kitchen drawers six months from now, with a feeling like that scene in the Herzog documentary where the penguin shuffles away toward the distant mountains.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 30/09/2026
You're absolutely correct, but I would have noped out at "1 of 73"
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 29/09/2026
But a lot of rich financiers, industrialists and media owners still wanted him to be president so that made it okay
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 29/09/2026
In college I had a friend who, when liberally lubricated (which was often) would go on long tirades about plans to start a record label that would "only publish the good bands". Don't know why I suddenly thought of that. No reason, I guess.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 29/09/2026
It's okay, the Dalai Lama forgives you for blocking him
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 28/09/2026
Going Away. Going Away Fast
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 28/09/2026
Toronto never looked better
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 28/09/2026
How dare you deprive blue-shirt of his fair royalties from that pizza that he made
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 28/09/2026
I 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?
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 28/09/2026
"All mimsy were the borogroves, and the momeraths outgrabe."
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