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erinkpgh.bsky.social
@erinkpgh.bsky.social
360 followers 280 following 1.3K posts
Pittsburgh geek. I contain multitudes.
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erinkpgh.bsky.social
On the Kuranda Scenic Railway in Australia and we just left a station called Freshwater. Totally have the #Westworld Sweetwater arrival theme playing in my head.
Photo of a 1900-era train car with leather padded wooden benches and paneling and a high tin tiled ceiling.
November 5, 2025 at 11:09 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
The robot repair shop has an actual robot [email protected]
Photo of an airport corridor with a storefront and a sign with the Fraley’s Robot Repair logo. Just past the shop, a 3 foot tall white and black floor cleaning robot is parked and plugged into a charger.
October 28, 2025 at 10:29 AM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
So the goog’s AI doesn’t know I’m looking for William Knifeman but the algorithm does…?
Screenshot of a Google web search for “res dogs stereotype guy.” Photos of the “unknown warrior” character appear below an AI-generated synopsis that says it’s probably about the cultural themes in that tv series.
October 25, 2025 at 1:45 AM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
I clicked through so you don’t have to.
Screenshot of full post on some other service - I hope you can do the text copy thing because I don’t want to retype.
October 22, 2025 at 9:51 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Um, when did Duo grow legs?
Duolingo “lesson complete” screen with a cartoon of their mascot owl in an action pose dressed in a cute/sexy anime girl outfit. The mascot has human style legs (with a decorative garter, knee socks, and purple shoes) under its short skirt.
October 22, 2025 at 7:24 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
That sounds awesome.
Screenshot of a Duolingo question for translating Japanese. The English translation is “I eat a small cake every day.” There is a cartoon picture of the Duolingo character Zari, a young woman who dresses in pink and wears a headscarf.
October 7, 2025 at 1:24 AM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Rainbow cake at IKEA
Photo of several individually plated cake slices in a refrigerated case. Each slice has white frosting on the top/back and between thin layers of cake colored red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
September 26, 2025 at 10:09 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
“Post your last photo of DC to show what a hell-hole it is.”
The recent photos I took in DC were at a great local gourmet grocery and spirits shop (Calvert Woodley) on my way out of town a few weeks ago.
Photo of a retail shelf with green and other liqueurs. Grand Marnier is visible at the right, next to that is Faccio Bruto Centerbe (a good substitute for green chartreuse). In the center is another green liqueur I haven’t tried, its label says BORDIGA MONASTICUS Herbal Bitters. A wire shelf unit stocked with at least 30 different brands of Japanese sake and shochu. (I recommend the Drunken Whale.) At the edge of the photo you can see a similar shelf with Korean wines and liquors.
August 12, 2025 at 2:12 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
August in Portersville PA….
Photo of gas pumps at a Pilot station. Two vehicles next to each other at the pumps are towing small rustic/old timey-looking trailer houses.
August 10, 2025 at 4:11 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
This little access port is for running an extension cord into your tent but it also works for ejecting unwanted insects near your bed.
Photo of the floor of a nylon camping tent. On the left you can see the edge of a sleeping bag. Above the floor at the corner of the tent is a small yellow zipper opening, about 6 inches long. The tent floor is a gray green plastic tarp material, the tent walls are bright blue and defined by light yellow trim along the seams. The zipper is bright yellow set in a placket that looks light green.
August 3, 2025 at 3:44 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
OMG what wonderful weather we have today. I had almost forgotten that humidity went below 80% and windows could be open after 9 am. I even let the basement rejoin the household (turned off the dehumidifier and opened the door and vents). Pittsburgh #sousVideSummer
Photo of a temperature/humidity sensor. The display reads 78 degrees F and 55% humidity. The brand name Govee is printed on the bottom of the device.
July 21, 2025 at 6:09 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Feeling pretty good about the fresh air exchange in the DLCC (Pittsburgh convention center)
Hope everyone had a happy and safe #Tekko
Screenshot from an Aranet home CO2 monitor showing numbers under 900 all morning. At left is a high level (red line) around 10 am, but that’s when I was in my car with the AC on.
July 20, 2025 at 5:33 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
I had this exact experience last night when I asked Google how to open a steamer trunk with rusted hinges. The AI summary looked useful but got mixed up with car trunks. Result articles that looked good were word salad.
Screenshot of Google search result “AI Summary. It gives information about wiggling and lifting the lid of “your Excelsior steamer trunk” and then quotes detailed instructions with photos of car trunks and tips on how to un-stick them.
July 10, 2025 at 2:07 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
This is what a terrorist looks like.
Screenshot from a news article on the WESA FM website. (WESA is a Pittsburgh public radio station.) Headline reads “Law enforcement agencies are working with ICE to make arrests in Pennsylvania.” There is a large photo showing the head and shoulders of a person with broad shoulders. They are covered entirely by a plain green uniform garment, body armor, some sort of harness with a front-facing camera, a full balaclava type head scarf, and a plain black ball cap, worn low on the face. A small sliver of pale skin and parts of their eyes are barely visible infer the hat brim. The Buff style balaclava headscarf has a subtle dark blue color with faint white stars on the side and maybe white stripes on the front.
July 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Punctuation is important, kids.
Screenshot of a Duolingo exercise in French. The French sentence is “Je déteste les mathématiques, Et toi?” Because the English words are drag and drop options, the “correct” English sentence reads “I hate math and you.” (Without a comma or a question mark, the English sentence says that that math and you are both things that I hate.)
July 6, 2025 at 8:23 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Someone on here recommended Duck Duck Go last week and I’m liking it more and more.
Screenshot of a Duck Duck Go app search. A pop-up settings window is open with the title “How often do you want to see AI- assisted answers?” Options are “Sometimes - show when highly relevant”, “On Demand - only when Assist is clicked”, and “Never - completely disables Assist.” I have selected “Never.”
July 1, 2025 at 12:53 AM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Today’s “don’t engage, just block”
Screenshot of a troll reply to a Juneteenth post about a group of emancipated people who founded a lake resort and held Juneteenth events in Texas for years. The reply reads “Just going to throw this out there… the Irish were treated far worse and don’t need their own separate day.”
June 20, 2025 at 12:39 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Couldn’t remember Mitch McConnell’s name so I searched for “majority leader looks like turtle”. 💯 would recommend.
Screenshot of Google search results. At the top are several image results of Mitch McConnell, and the first website result is his Wikipedia entry.
June 18, 2025 at 3:34 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
I made my travel companions hike over to the robot repair shop at PIT. @tobyfraley.bsky.social
Photo of a retro robot repair shop (art installation), featuring a PA “Official Inspection Station” sign that now reads “Pennsylvania Department of Robotics” at the top.
June 7, 2025 at 12:17 AM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Ugh. The furnace is back on.
Screenshot of a weather app showing cloudy conditions and rain and temps in the 40s - 50s for the next two days.
May 23, 2025 at 2:18 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
You know it's really bad when his minions are bringing up concerns about influence purchasing and espionage (which they've mostly been fine with up till now).
Screenshot of text from the end of the BBC article linked in the previous quote post. Text reads: But those assertions have done little to calm the criticism of the deal, including from a number of Trump's allies in Congress and the right-wing media. "I think it's not worth the appearance of impropriety, whether it's improper or not," Rand Paul, Republican senator from Kentucky, told Fox News. "I wonder if our ability to judge [Qatar's] human rights record will be clouded by the fact of this large gift," Paul said. Another Republican senator, Ted Cruz of Texas, said accepting the gift would pose "significant espionage and surveillance problems".
May 21, 2025 at 7:15 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
The joint is jumping today I guess.
Screenshot from the Merlin bird ID app showing that it detected sounds from a large number of birds. The list includes Song Sparrow, House Sparrow, House Finch, Red-winged Blackbird, European Starling, Northern Mockingbird, and Carolina Wren.
May 14, 2025 at 2:01 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Bonus photos of the kind of carnage that took out the power all over Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) this Tuesday.
A tall tree is lying all the way across a brick residential street. The small root structure at the base of the tree is standing up from the sidewalk where the tree was rooted. On the other side of the street the tree is resting on parked cars. A large tree in a grassy field has splintered at the base, leaving jagged spikes of wood sticking up. People are walking around and under the tree trunk, which is bent at a right angle from the base and lying horizontally with branches touching the ground. The main trunk is above the adult people’s heads and the tree trunk is at least 5’ in diameter. A work crew is working on the top of a large tree that has fallen over from its sidewalk base and is resting on a house. That tree branches hit the house at the top of the second story and also are in contact with the porch roof . A worker in a bucket truck is talking to two other workers who have walked up the slanted tree trunk. There is plenty of room for the workers to stand together on the tree trunk at the level of the porch roof. At the tree base, the roots have pulled up the curb stone and some of the bricks that make up the road surface.
May 4, 2025 at 7:37 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Illustration of Kaonashi (No-Face) from the Ghibli movie Spirited Away.
May 2, 2025 at 2:05 PM
erinkpgh.bsky.social
Duolingo graphic with the mascot Duo as a phoenix with uncannily glowing blank eyes. Text says “I’m on a 2200 day learning streak!”
April 29, 2025 at 2:11 AM