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N.N. Scott

@nnscott.com

910 followers 2.6K following 450 posts

Archives and Records. Chicagoland. "Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only too capable of producing secondary causes." -- Rudyard Kipling, 1905

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10h

Awwww

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10h

Today I saw a bride and groom, with much joy and laughter, having their romantic photo taken coming together through adjacent turnstiles at a CTA station. Unfathomably based, and "Very Chicago"

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 10h

The author & popular historian William Manchester served as a marine in the Battle of Okinawa. I remember reading in his autobiography that he never wanted to have anything to do with the Salvation Army, ever again in his entire life.

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 11h

After I got them everything hurt. The underneath side of my tongue hurt

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 16h

Not a justification, but the average age of readership of these things must be +70 and the simplest explanation of this is elder white suburbanite grouching about something that changed. I still remember a 75-year-old co-worker who would read the daily comics at lunch each day with a beatific smile.

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 17h

I think historians have strong personal and professional incentives to treat abrupt changes, apple carts kicked over and the like, as the inevitable outcome of deep long-running subterranean processes that only historians can identify. But sometimes someone just comes along and kicks over the cart.

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 17h

"History is the enemy of memory. The two stalk each other across the fields of the past, claiming the same terrain."
-- Richard White (1998)

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 17h

Powerball, for your mental health

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 19h

"And you will often save yourself much discouragement by remembering what I have so often asserted,--that if anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to be refinement that is wanting, not force; and connection, not alteration."
-- John Ruskin (1857)

John Ruskin, watercolor sketch of small trees and stones on a slope, amid snow.

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 20h

Loan guarantees. They cosign for you

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 20h

Lying on a swimming pool recliner in a bathing suit, flipping through the KJV Book of Ruth on his phone, as one does

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 20h

"The most poetic words in the Old Testament" is sort of catching me sideways.

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

"Had he been better able to suppose:
He might sit on a sofa on a balcony
Above the Mediterranean, emerald
Becoming emeralds. He might watch the palms
Flap green ears in the heat..."
-- Wallace Stevens (1942)

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

Nicholson and Duvall are both excellent in the film. I visited the hotel on Mount Hood that provided the exterior; it was weird to go inside and see not the Overlook interiors but stuff like wagon wheel chandeliers and statues of bears cut from logs, lol.

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

Agree, though a bit more extreme -- I found the book dull & repetitious. I read somewhere that contrary to his rep as a demanding termagant, Kubrick was so patient & gentle with Danny Lloyd that he coaxed amazingly long scenes from the boy, of the sort that child actors typically can't sustain.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

I agree but the change may be deeper still. There once were many secular alternatives, from profession-based groups like the Elks & Odd Fellows, to unions & political parties which in those days requested significant service from members and offered real support (employment, health insurance).

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

<whispers> The major theme of "Forrest Gump"

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

I don't think I've interacted personally with someone who promotes EA, but if it is as you say, that would make it one of a wide range of convenient belief systems, some of long pedigree, that allow us to think the poor, sick and abused deserve what they got and we have no responsibility to them.

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

Trump take borger

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

I would be really angry if I got that one. Especially if -- as I suspect -- it still has lottery numbers on the back

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

Sympathy. The only (perhaps) semi-helpful thought I can offer is that vindictive nutcases, abusers & those who think the law means only "punish people I don't like" have always been numerous. Our times have enabled them & made them prominent, but they're no more of them now than at any other time.

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 1d

Fortunately everyone who saw it will tell their friends how great it is and that number is sure to rise, day by day

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 2d

Not true but a famous and enduring meme

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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 2d

Perhaps they’ll spend the time in prayer

N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 2d

"It's incredible that those guys exist, but they really do" 🫠