Jason Pettus :blobnom:

Freelance book editor and rare book collector based out of Chicago. This is a migration from another account I've had since 2019. I do the middle-aged dad version of shitposting, whatever that's called. Mastolikes: Discordia, transgression, cyberpunk, intl travel, absurdism as lifestyle, breadmaking. Mastodislikes: Toxic positivity (aka "You Got This! Syndrome"), radicals on either side of the political divide, sports, popular music, and many more. #StopTalkingAboutLinux.

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npub16rjt4qgm2aw5mj898n0qj7ghygsxhk79qmn0m8v5mydd4wvamymss0367t

NIP-05 Address

jasonpettus@mastodon-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdpe96syd4wh2derjnehsf0ytjygrtm0zsdehank2djxk6hxwajdcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43q6hu9gn

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relay.ditto.pub

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npub16rjt4qgm2aw5mj898n0qj7ghygsxhk79qmn0m8v5mydd4wvamymss0367t

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Last Notes

2026-08-17 21:24:20 UTC

Columbia House, which has been offering records through the mail for the last 71 years, is finally closing for good next month.
https://pitchfork.com/story/columbia-house-is-shutting-down/

2026-08-15 12:02:22 UTC

I'm fascinated by the ongoing shitshow regarding Jason Arday, who had been the youngest black professor in Cambridge history, but this week killed himself after it was revealed that dozens of his papers include plagiarism and that he flat-out lied in his bio and memoir. The lies were sometimes OUTRAGEOUS (for example, that he didn't speak until 11, and didn't learn to read until 18), but Cambridge didn't investigate because of legal threats from Woke social activists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/world/europe/jason-arday-cambridge-hiring-questions.html

2026-08-14 13:40:28 UTC

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@nprofile…yz28 You SHOULD care, for the sake of your own sense of humanity. Regardless of the politics behind a situation, turning a cold eye towards human suffering is a statement of sociopathy, which voluntarily pushes you more and more towards the state of being an inhuman serial killer. Please don't be one of those people who say, "I have compassion for all humans, except the ones who don't ideologically deserve it." Divorce your political beliefs from your compassion for suffering.

2026-08-12 14:23:03 UTC

Just learned that Gen X pariah #JimGoad died earlier this summer. In the '90s he did the zine "Answer Me!", one of the most transgressive publications in human history, made for no other reason than to piss off the PC crowd; this being the '90s, it got him a six-figure deal at Simon & Schuster, where in 1997 he published "The Redneck Manifesto," which pretty convincingly shows how liberal technocrats use poor white men as a scapegoat for all of society's problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Goad

2026-08-11 16:45:46 UTC

"Don't mock me! I have a professional certificate in vibe coding!!!"
https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/grow-with-google/vibe-coding-course/

2026-07-25 21:59:07 UTC

In case you were wondering, the newly AIed Microsoft Word now thinks that "Jesus fucking Christ" needs to be changed to "Jesus's fucking Christ" in order to be grammatically correct. So, that's how Microsoft's efforts to incorporate AI into all their products is going.

2026-07-02 15:59:33 UTC

Capitalism is great, but only when it's implemented correctly, by companies understanding that customers will just go elsewhere if they deliver a shitty experience. Articles like these are proof of how badly capitalism has failed in an unregulated tech industry -- Meta is already making their smart glasses shittier and more expensive even before they have a large customer base, because of the attitude, "Customers will give us more money because we TOLD them to."
https://lifehacker.com/tech/meta-added-paywall-for-one-of-its-best-smart-glasses-features

2026-06-01 14:42:49 UTC

The owner of the Chicago Bears has been threatening that if the state of Illinois doesn't build him an obscenely expensive new domed stadium, he's moving the team to the nearby shithole of Hammond, Indiana. This weekend, the state legislature called his bluff and voted against funding such a stadium. What will happen next?
https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears-stadium/2026/05/31/bears-stadium-bill-springfield-arlington-heights-hammond-indiana

2026-05-25 03:18:49 UTC

Four of the many vaguely #cyberpunk shots I got from the #Chicago #Riverwalk tonight, where my friend Teerath's music was being featured at that night's #ArtOnTheMart large-scale #projection against the wall of the #Merchandise#Mart.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/633/041/674/085/954/original/f8db5ac9599640a4.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/633/042/068/907/925/original/4a5be6fa86ef6fa3.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/633/042/457/835/067/original/8488b75f1d3a447f.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/633/043/015/451/967/original/fb42108614706e72.jpg

2026-05-01 14:37:57 UTC

Today's national "do nothing buy nothing" protest, in which we're encouraged to do things that won't make the slightest bit of difference, just to assuage our souls and convince ourselves that we're doing something productive, is what Existentialists like me rightly claim is a symbol of everything wrong with the human race.

2026-04-30 20:49:31 UTC

I'm not sure WHEN this screenshot from #Pluribus will be of help to your coming meme, but I'm sure it will eventually WILL. You're welcome!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/495/621/998/956/239/original/2228f3637948fe55.png

2026-03-03 19:13:28 UTC

The bad news: The endlessly incompetent NASA, in collusion with a fatally corrupt private spacecraft industry, has delayed the date of Americans stepping on the moon yet again, from their original goal of 2024 to now 2030, even as the Chinese keep having success after success after success.
The good news: The Prada spacesuits they paid $228 million for are still very pretty!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/166/830/114/160/888/original/551f6f9ba4886ff5.jpg

2026-02-04 19:01:50 UTC

What #OpenClaw (formerly #Moltbot [formerly #Clawdbot]) should teach us is that it's entirely possible for a group of ethical developers to create an easy-to-install #local #private #AI bot for a spare computer at #home.
Now some clever coders need to sit down and actually create the free open-source software (#FOSS). That's when AI becomes truly powerful for the first time, when you can just run a home version on an old computer that's free of any corporate manipulation at all.

2026-02-01 17:29:56 UTC

A corporate-controlled AI bot will never exist for any other reason than to sell you things.
AI will never become truly useful until it becomes a protocol, not a product.

2026-01-29 02:17:14 UTC

I'm 56 and ashamed I still read comics; so I read only free pirated ones I immediately throw away, and only read on the toilet and in bed. That said, I've been hugely impressed with Scott Snyder's new "Absolute" line for DC, in which he reimagines the origin stories of all their famous superheroes in an alternative universe. He's using it as an excuse to hire the smartest writers in the industry, then pairing them with trippy cutting-edge artists. Really impressive, clever, adult-worthy stuff.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/975/974/589/142/079/original/b1edf9154b6c5d16.jpg

2025-05-09 16:58:24 UTC

Hey, remember a few years ago when the US banned Chinese computer company Huawei from using any American operating system, and they declared they would just invent their own operating system and then use every resource they have to convince the rest of the world to use it and abandon Windows and Android? Guess what got announced this week? Thanks as always for the fascinating article, @nprofile…7klc !
https://tedium.co/2025/05/09/huawei-harmonyos-next-new-operating-system/

2025-05-01 21:03:41 UTC

A fascinating article on how some developing countries like Pakistan are far, FAR out-adopting solar power for a national grid than historically industrialized nations, in large part because spotty energy plans by unstable governments for decades in these areas forced individual citizens to put their own power systems together, making solar panels a much more widely adopted and embraced technology among the general population. Thanks as always for the tip, @nprofile…fynq !
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/04/pakistans-22-gw-solar-shock-how-a-fragile-state-went-full-clean-energy

2025-04-08 21:46:14 UTC

The REAL future of electric cars: This custom camper van has not only a roof of solar panels but a slide-out shelf that doubles their width. They're so efficient that the van recently made an entire preplanned 1,200-mile journey without having to plug into a charging station even once. Thanks as always for the reading tip, @nprofile…fynq !
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/stella-vita-solar-campervan-netherlands-spc-intl/index.html

2025-03-11 00:38:13 UTC

I thought today I'd read some on the best ways to invest if you're only starting in your fifties, and all the articles say to "picture your retirement goals," which got me on a tear at the #Google #AI #image generator while high later that night.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/140/997/850/990/665/original/4fb01915aa5646f8.png

2025-03-11 00:06:43 UTC

2025-01-26 15:46:27 UTC

People complain about AI bots by saying that they aren't capable of original thoughts, but can only spit out stuff they already know; but I gotta say, that pretty much also describes about 95% of all the humans I've ever met

2025-01-21 23:38:58 UTC

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@nprofile…w0lm It's exactly like reading on a Kindle, although I really love that it will fit in my pocket and that I can so easily take it on the go. The real game-changer is the Android interface, though; I now do ALL my online news reading through it, and my little fold-up Bluetooth keyboard works with it perfectly, so I now do all my writing on it as well. Do the bigger Booxs have Android too?

2025-01-21 17:19:43 UTC

I can tell that my #Boox #Palma was made by a Chinese company, because their default fonts are so stylized that you often can't even understand what the device is trying to tell you
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/867/482/719/346/377/original/4e9d1c785985dde3.jpg

2025-01-14 16:29:41 UTC

Congrats to @nprofile…asy0 for getting an official Pixelfed mobile app up and running this week. I've been using it for several years now (and am a monthly paying subscriber) and have been very happy there, an app that essentially works just like Mastodon but where you can post 10 photos instead of 4, and have a higher text limit. Strongly recommended, but don't forget to also donate money; the service accepts zero VC funds.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/14/decentralized-instagram-alternative-pixelfed-launches-mobile-apps/

2025-01-03 20:22:45 UTC

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@nprofile…fynq Other shocking moments in deaf history:
Deaf people were originally called "deaf and dumb," because it was assumed that the medical conditions that cause deafness also cause mental retardation at the same time.
The largest deaf university in America wasn't allowed to hire a deaf president until 1989, under the belief that deaf people aren't smart enough to hold leadership positions. This only changed after a two-week blockade of the campus by its students.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_President_Now

2025-01-03 20:15:43 UTC

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@nprofile…fynq I've only become deaf in middle age, so I only learned then about the history of the deaf community in the US, which is SHOCKING. ASL wasn't declared a language by the government until 1989, which meant that before then, deaf people weren't allowed to have ASL interpreters even at their own court trials or medical appointments. For DECADES the official instruction method for deaf people was lip reading, which utterly doesn't work; students used to have their hands tied to their chairs.

2024-11-27 23:03:47 UTC

A cheeky new paper by two mathematicians posits that although you COULD get the complete works of Shakespeare if you let monkeys bang randomly on typewriters for enough time, the heat death of the universe will likely happen before that moment is actually achieved. Thanks as always for the link, @nprofile…fynq !
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748kmvwyv9o

2024-11-25 03:29:13 UTC

I know that those who aren't into #AI #image #generation and creating fake US Midwestern cities as fun worldbuilding projects, like I am, have been getting annoyed at the increasing amount of posts I've been devoting to it; so I decided to start a brand-new blog on the subject, so that those who are interested can voluntarily opt-in. It has its own Mastodon link you can follow, at the bottom of this introduction I'm linking to.
https://write.as/tales-from-progress-city/what-is-progress-city-6z5v

2024-11-16 00:30:32 UTC

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@nprofile…fynq I think you and I are roughly around the same age (I'm 55). When I was a kid and the pilot of "Battlestar Galactica" first aired, I remember screaming, "IT'S JUST LIKE 'CHARIOTS OF THE GODS!!!'"

2024-11-15 23:17:52 UTC

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@nprofile…fynq HELL YEAH
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/489/515/560/243/708/original/4c26bbbf56b4588d.jpg

2024-11-15 21:12:06 UTC

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@nprofile…fynq I would chalk up spontaneous human combustion to the overall appetite in the '70s for all things weird and unexplained, including the Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, demonic possession, and the huge surge in popularity astrology experienced in these years.

2024-11-13 20:48:20 UTC

A post showed up in my feed today that really confused me, claiming that depending on what Mastodon instance you're on, you might be told that a post has a hundred replies, while someone else on another instance might be told that it has a thousand replies. The always reliable @npub1w9a…04m0 boosted it, so I'm assuming it's true, but I don't understand why this happens or what causes it. Thanks in advance for your plainly written explanation!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/477/605/215/333/373/original/c5fb1202a60a6c0b.png

2024-10-30 23:09:35 UTC

Although it mostly worked flawlessly, the two big bummers about #migrating a #Mastodon account is that you can't bring over your posts from your previous account (even though the software lets you export the posts????), and you also have to recreate all your filters. After five years at my old account, I had something like 200 filters set up, and now at my new account I'm being reminded all over of why I need to set them up again.