Andrew Reid
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reidac.bsky.social
Andrew Reid
@reidac.bsky.social
230 followers 500 following 280 posts
Scientist, cyclist, urbanist, Linux and HPC enthusiast.
Washington DC.
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reidac.bsky.social
It begins....
#sc25
Large physical SC25 logo display at the conference center entrance in St. Louis.
November 16, 2025 at 2:26 PM
reidac.bsky.social
With alt text.
A text extract, reading: "The starting-point is for you to understand human nature and what has happened to it.* You see, our nature wasn't originally the same as it is now: it has changed. Firstly, there used to be three human genders, not just two -- male and female -- as there are nowadays. There was also a third, which was a combination of both of the other two. Its name has survived, but the gender itself has died out. In those days, there was a distinct type of androgynous person, not just the word, though like the word the gender too combined male and female; nowadays, however, only the word remains, and that counts as an insult.*" The asterisks are not resolved within the visible part of the text. There is a lowercase 'e' in the margin after the "...combination of", which presumably is a location marker.
May 26, 2025 at 7:35 PM
reidac.bsky.social
What is the point of accumulating arcane knowledge if you can't use it to score points in online word games?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad
The New York Times "spelling bee" screen for Feb. 15, 2025, with allowed letters ADIJLR and required letter B. The player has played the word "ABJAD", and the game shows that this word is not in the word list. An abjad is a writing system where vowels are generally not explicitly written, only consonants. Hebrew and Arabic writing are examples.
February 15, 2025 at 1:00 PM
reidac.bsky.social
Reminds me of my favorite selection-effect demo.
A presenter standing in front of a screen showing responses to a survey question. The available answers are "Yes, I love responding to surveys", and "No, I toss them in the bin." The "Yes" answer was selected by 99.8% of responders, and the "No" answer by 0.2%. The caption reads, "We received 500 responses and found that people love responding to surveys." An audience member has a "Hmm..." annotation above her head.
February 14, 2025 at 4:21 PM
reidac.bsky.social
From 2010, I think:
A Tom Tole political cartoon, a man stands in front of an enormous scoreboard.The scoreboard is labeled "Second Amendment Scorecard", and has two columns, "Tyrants Overthrown" and "Co-workers, students, spouses, store clerks, etc. killed". The first column is empty. The second column has hundreds of hash marks in groups of five, and the man is glumly adding another. At the bottom, there's a sketch of Tom at his drawing board saying "Tyranno of dogma alive and well."
February 8, 2025 at 3:29 PM
reidac.bsky.social
Replying rather than quote-posting, on account of I only have one orange car in my camera roll.

It's kind of a banger, though.
A Bricklin SV-1 car parked on a city street, facing out from the curb. The Bricklin SV-1 is a low, two-door "fastback" shape, with a tapered nose and a two-part bumper (for safety, hence "SV", Safety Vehicle) and pop-up headlights, which are raised in the picture. The car also has a quite thick B-pillar, and the lower body is black, it's kind of a two-tone thing. Bricklins are very rare, they were made in the 1970s in Canada, with the government subsidizing Malcolm Bricklin's project in a bid to diversify the economy of the Maritime provinces, but the company went under fairly quickly.
January 26, 2025 at 7:11 PM
reidac.bsky.social
Is the NYT trying to tell me something?
Snapshot of the NYT "Spelling Bee" game for Jan. 11, 2025, with the user having selected the word DOOM, and the app reporting this word is "already found".
January 11, 2025 at 4:33 PM
reidac.bsky.social
Name a TV show you are positive no one remembers but you.
Cast photo of the TV show "Quark", featuring Richard Benjamin as Adam Quark, Captain of a galactic sanitation cruiser, and Cyb and Patricia Barnstable as "The Bettys", two clone crew members. Capt. Quark is seated, wearing a blue outfit, while the Bettys are drapes around him in cheesecake poses and skimpy metallized outfits.
November 22, 2024 at 8:18 PM
reidac.bsky.social
There's a racecar at the Valvoline booth. Also, there is a Valvoline booth.
Photo of a Valvoline-branded conference booth with a dark green open-wheel race car visible among the people standing around.
November 20, 2024 at 6:28 PM
reidac.bsky.social
The Economist(tm) app is getting a bit too spooky for my tastes...
October 29, 2024 at 12:27 AM
reidac.bsky.social
If you see this, post a picture taken in the mountains.

Castle Mountain, between Banff and Lake Louise, Alberta, taken through wildfire smoke, August 2015.
The center of the image is shades of pale gray, which resolve on close inspection to distant mountains seen through smoke, Prominent at the center of the frame is an angular prominence, this is Castle Mountain. The dark silhouettes of pine trees make up the foreground, with two very large pine trees in the near foreground taking up positions on either side of the frame.
October 28, 2024 at 1:46 AM
reidac.bsky.social
Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #2,059,248!

I mean, it's not as impressive as some, but it was before it was opened up generally, so there's that. I was also able to pay it forward at least once during the beta.
BlueSky logo card with "#2,059,248" prominently displayed, along with my username, and "Joined Nov. 18, 2023".
September 16, 2024 at 11:06 PM
reidac.bsky.social
Got my own AI hallucination!

Watching "Angry Red Planet", and was curious about the computer.

Googled, and got an AI summary (screenshot), including "probably an illustion", apparently sourced from the linked article, which is snarking on Wikipedia time estimates.

smartbear.com/blog/2013/a-...
July 7, 2024 at 12:50 AM
reidac.bsky.social
If you see this, quote post with a beach photo from your gallery.
Sandy beach with a line of large rocks, and a mountain in the background. North Lake Tahoe.
June 17, 2024 at 1:51 AM
reidac.bsky.social
Drop a ship that's not from Star Wars or Star Trek.
Space 1999 "Eagle" transporter, viewed from the front right quarter, with landing gear deployed and sitting in a spacious grey hangar.
March 17, 2024 at 12:34 AM