Ma Bell Isn't Home

(Moderately) INACTIVE as of 12/2022.

I retweet #voicefirst and Conversational AI news! Or, I used to. I'm a heterodox free agent now.

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

Nostalgic #VoiceFirst marketing featuring @EnVogueMusic.

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

If the 1987 TV movie "Strange Voices," about a woman suffering schizophrenia and starring Nancy McKeon, were released in 1997, 2007, 2017 and 2027, respectively.

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

@RHyperboreo "Meanwhile, handsome, elegant, and intelligent men find themselves isolated at home"

The complete opposite is true, lol

[minal hasan @minal_hasan]

Volume 2 of my son's Hindustani joke book is on Amazon (globally)! Volume 1 sold over 1,000 copies. :) If you have kids that speak the language, they'll like it!

https://t.co/OJOUxtBjo1

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

Backrooms is an extremely original horror film. It makes last year's much-talked-about Weapons look prosaic in comparison. It's very abstract in a way that a late 20th century horror enthusiast would have a hard time wrapping their head around. A good example of culture getting smarter, not allegedly dumber.

The backrooms as repository for people's blurry, vague memories of others and of place, and an outlet for their worst impulses as embodied in various humanoid creature thingies, is nifty. The best explanation I have for why it's a physical place is that it exists in a different universe, and that these "doorways" (from a furniture store, etc.) are a way of getting there. These doorways are apparently proliferating, but there's no evidence so far that the danger inside the backrooms is escaping into our world. But it's a still a threat in that it can attract, trap and break the minds of people who enter it.

I do wonder just how much the backrooms is totally constituted by generic office building design. Like, can you enter the backrooms from a castle in Germany and see backrooms that looks like an endless iteration of that castle? And if you remain in there long and survive, can you make your way to the kind of backrooms seen in the movie?

Anyway this movie is a nerd's paradise of contemplation.

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

BART station down SF looking nicer than I've seen it in a long time. It'll never be Stockholm, but ya know.

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

@RichardHanania I believe it. But people also have a harder time than I believing that there are in fact atheists in fox holes.

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

@Eviemagazine Cue the manosphere, who will switch from disliking women riding the c*** carousel to disliking women ditching the carousel all together

[Collin Rugg @CollinRugg]

Plans released for a $16 billion mile-long ship capable of carrying 80,000 people.

The 'Freedom Ship' would be home to about 50,000 people, with space for 10,000 tourists and 20,000 crew members.

"The Freedom Ship is envisioned as a permanently mobile city at sea designed for long-term residence rather than short-term travel," the company says.

The ship would be about 8 times the size of the current largest ship in the world, the Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas.

The plans include a 15,000-seat stadium, schools, colleges, shops, clubs, a water park, a music hall, museums, parks, and more.

The ship, which would run on nuclear, would be too large to dock and would remain in international waters.

Freedom Cruise International says it would go around the world every two to three years.

Insane.

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

@tugce190333 Mostly accurate except for 1980, Way off

[kuki @kumxem]

When was the last time u called it "Twitter"

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

@AprilMac @BurgerKing @McDonalds @Wendys @JackBox Carl's Jr comes closest to the burgers actually looking like the ads.

The only Burger King that I saw that did the same was in a rest stop in upstate New York. True story.

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

In a parallel universe, Chris Cunnigham went on to make big deal films like Spike Jonze did.

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

@Eviemagazine Nice to see you promoting a rival mag. It's the cause that counts

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

Long John Silver's went from looking like a New England seaside town to a generic rectangle over the last 40 years

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

For as high-tech as Japan is, they're curiously among the least enthusiastic adopters of voice assistants and the scanning of QR codes.

Also, the lowest rate of smart TV ownership in the world! Brazil rules on that front.

Via @Meltwater

https://t.co/gcg1vsNFaF

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

San Francisco in the 1920s. Looks like some housing development in Redmond, Washington.

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

Funny, Nigeria is the most enthusiastic about AI! Perhaps because they're so underdeveloped. Wanting AI comes from the same place of wanting development.

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

Vintage "American Juggalo" movie poster.

$5000 OBO.

@ParamountPics

[Ma Bell Isn't Home @BellSailing]

@ja94314656 @newstart_2024 Doing it because it gives your life meaning. And one day your child will presumably have a child to give THEIR life meaning?

Does life have any meaning without children? If not, what are we, ants?

[Dain Fitzgerald @DainFitzgerald]

The attitude you should have when you see that someone you went on a date with one time is now happily married