davidkwatson.bsky.social
Mathematician with some statistics. Increasingly Bayesian. Loves science and science fiction.
48 posts
230 followers
983 following
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
Ooh! Thought of another. On a plane to Florida, my wife sat next to and chatted with the game show panelist Kitty Carlisle.
comment in response to
post
This reminded me of the Christine Lavin song "Harrison Ford."
One of the most innocuous 3-second celebrity interactions ever, immortalized in a 5-minute song.
comment in response to
post
At a D.C. bookstore, Ralph Nader and I approached the cashier simultaneously. I waved him ahead of me.
Got an ambush handshake from then Wisconsin senator William Proxmire at the Capital square farmers' market in Madison.
Got waved at by Roy Rogers in between the filming of his last movie.
comment in response to
post
Well, vive la difference, as they say.
comment in response to
post
Speaking as someone who heard "Eat It" well before hearing "Beat It", I heartily agree. Weird Al could do a parody of Enya and it would be hilarious.
comment in response to
post
Alternatively, he can slide naked down a razor into a vat of alcohol (a phrase I remember from my adolescence that I haven't had occasion to use until now).
Between him and Joe Rogan, the roided up meatheads are doing a lot of damage.
comment in response to
post
On the song record single, the flip side song was Put the Bone In, supposedly about a girl asking a butcher for scraps for her injured dog. It's so bad you can hear a studio musician making a disgusted noise at one point.
comment in response to
post
Brand New Key by Melanie ("You've got a brand new pair of roller-skates…") and Toni Basil's Hey Mickey do that for me. Fortunately they don't get a lot of circulation anymore, but this was not the case for a couple of decades.
Oh, and Terry Jacks' Seasons in the Sun as well.
comment in response to
post
You think you have a drinking problem?
comment in response to
post
Kinda like the original Night Court comedy series, where Judge Harry T. Stone got his judgeship because he was the only one on a list of lawyers to pick up the phone on a big holiday weekend.
comment in response to
post
And fix video playback on the web page version so that playing videos don't have a spinning circle the whole time and the full screen button makes the VIDEO full screen instead of making the web page full screen and keeping the video the same size.
My 2 minor gripes, it's pretty great otherwise.
comment in response to
post
Never had it ever, and I'm technically (by the calendar) a somewhat advanced adult. As a (Technically!) adult, I've had cacio e pepe, aglio e olio and burro e parmigiana which could be considered the Italian versions of buttered noodles and I like those.
comment in response to
post
So maybe the Secret Squirrel/Carmen Sandiego hat is actually a good idea and should be encouraged?
comment in response to
post
Many of your burritos are definitely in the Chaotic category.
Whether they are Good, Neutral or Evil is a matter for debate.
comment in response to
post
I first read "how babies work" as meaning the kinds of jobs they can do, and honestly I can see how Musk would be really interested in that.
comment in response to
post
And he did it all on heavy doses of transcendental meditation and organic coffee.
comment in response to
post
Make sure to save one or two for a sweet, sweet burrito.
comment in response to
post
That chin in the second one is pretty funny too.
comment in response to
post
Before there were PDFs, TeX and LaTeX outputted to a .dvi file format, a "device independent" format, and you'd use software specific to your machine to view or print the file.
So we'd probably mostly be exchanging DVI files.
comment in response to
post
Hey, you went through something very scary about 50 years before you should have had to. You got this.
comment in response to
post
In my case it was Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. I'll have a powerful apprentice mage and her even more powerful elf mentor looking for me, they should track me down and rescue me in no time at all.
comment in response to
post
Maybe try making cultured butter? Add a little plain yogurt, kefir or cultured buttermilk to the cream, let it sit in a warm place overnight or longer, and then make your butter from the resulting cultured cream.
comment in response to
post
You must have put on the wrong trousers when you got up, to have such an idea.
comment in response to
post
I guess I'm lucky. So far I've only gotten 2 DMs, one from a possible porn bot and another from someone who wanted to to "give" me financial advice.
And the only one I've sent was to someone whose handle is part of a favorite dad joke I made up, just so I could tell it to him. (He took it well.)
comment in response to
post
My summary of that post is "John Scalzi's just this guy, you know?"
(Apologies to Douglas Adams.)
comment in response to
post
I think it's a load of tripe. (But in a good way!)
comment in response to
post
Sorry, for proof of life you need to post a picture of you holding a current newspaper. At least that's what the movies and thriller novels say.
comment in response to
post
A good tool for this kind of thing is the iPhone app Star Walk. It will give you an augmented reality view of where the phone is pointed, with labels for many known objects (planets, stars, constellations, etc.). There are android equivalents, I'm sure.
comment in response to
post
Doesn't the drill bit of the month club get any love here?
comment in response to
post
I thought of posting this pic, with the caption "new drone sighting" but decided too many people would take it seriously, so I decided against it.
comment in response to
post
For me to follow someone I don't know and like, they have to have a profile bio with something that interests me.
No bio essentially guarantees that I won't follow them.
comment in response to
post
I'll miss your writing there and look forward to wherever you write next. I hope I see new stuff from you soon and often.
comment in response to
post
Probably because you're missing a load-bearing wall in your mind palace, don't you think?
comment in response to
post
You jest, but someone should start a betting market (if they haven't already) on the collapse of the Russian government. Make Putin nervous.
comment in response to
post
I visualize you as doing this with an ouija board, dressed like a movie medium.
comment in response to
post
I'm sorta in that group. I'd come here once in a while but didn't see much to keep me on here for long. Bluesky seems to have reached a critical mass about the same time as the election.
comment in response to
post
Given that they make usb-c to headphone jack adapters and usb-c headphones (and similar for lightning), I fear that ship has sailed.
comment in response to
post
Eagerly awaiting your Substack or whatever it is you do next.
comment in response to
post
Their object permanence isn't that well-developed yet. Put a curtain on the door window and they'll likely forget you're there until you come out.
comment in response to
post
With me, an additional issue is distinguishing between actual notes and idle drawings I did while on the phone or in a meeting.
comment in response to
post
Didn't happen to me. Top result was an image of a scientific calculator and the calculator window had a slightly rewritten version of my calculation followed by the calculated value.
I could also use the calculator for additional computations.
comment in response to
post
When you say "sent them to the cornfield" I KNOW you are alluding to "It's a Good Life," but it bugs me that I don't know whether it's the Twilight Zone episode or the Jerome Bixby story.
comment in response to
post
For me to follow someone, I have to know something about them that I like. In particular I don't know someone and their profile is empty, they won't get followed by me.
This is the largest category of people I don't follow, and distant 2nd is if I'm not interested in what they do.
comment in response to
post
I thought about how so many anime now have live action versions and gave myself a laugh thinking about what that would be like for this show.
comment in response to
post
Schrödinger's angel?
comment in response to
post
What a cover. It's very reminiscent of 60s new-age science fiction paperback covers.
comment in response to
post
I'm disappointed you didn't use a waffle to roll it into a burrito.
comment in response to
post
Happens to me if I'm sleepy or headachy. Another thing is if I listen to a fan that's loud enough, I think I can hear distant voices that are not quite intelligible.