nickbell 🆗️

@nick

Indie game generalist at Aetheric Games some of the time, and game dev lecturer at Edinburgh College other times. Undercover, queerly neurospicy nerd, attempting to infiltrate the normals with a big coat and a fake moustache.

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nickbell 🆗️@nick· 1d

Luis is right. But also, I keep seeing this screenshot everywhere, and it sure looks like slop to me.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· 7d

ryan goblin is that anything?

nickbell 🆗️@nick· 18d

It's been nearly 24 hours and I've not seen any Ebeneezer Goode jokes. Kids today, man.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Jun 19

Friday night is popping off in the Netherlands www.lightningmaps.org#m=ses;t=3;s=...;

nickbell 🆗️@nick· May 10

Dr T'Ana from Lower Decks. A Caitian (cat-like humanoid) with a grumpy expression, scruffy fur and notched ear, in science-blue uniform with a Bev-Crusher-style doctor's coat. She seems to be standing a shuttle.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· May 9

what a palette!

nickbell 🆗️@nick· May 2

this labeller is a very good labeller @facelabels.bsky.social, yes you are

An anonymised screenshort of a bluesky post. The content of the post is hidden, with the warning "Contains Trump's Face" and a button that says, "Show".

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Apr 27

A still from Ghostbusters. Venkman is pontificating in the mayor's office (or whoever's office) with Winston in the background.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Apr 27

Ara-abare from Silent Hill f, a hulking monster made out of flowers, plant growth and offal. Only a little bit like the fruit-golem in the quoted post.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Apr 25

I fear that we're overshadowing Doctor Gustav von Bunge, inventer of the bunge. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special...

a cropped wikipedia screenshot of a thumbnail and article summary for Gustav von Bunge, "known for his work..." (it is cut off)

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Apr 17

100%. Cables don't connect to the pole in any sensible way. Some just fade out. Magpie and nest are the wrong scale compared to the pole, which is round at the top but near the bottom it's lit flatly like a plank. And of course most of the jewellery are just melty blobs that merge into the twigs.

Red dotted lines and ovals drawn over the image from the top of the thread. The image is an AI-generated picture of a magpie sitting on a nest draped with an unrealistic amount of stolen jewellery, precariously balanced on top of a utility pole against an overcast sky.
The red dotted lines are added to show the path of the cables that (at first glance) ought to connect to the pole but actually, if you consider their angles and perspective, they just disappear behind it. The red ovals show two places where the cables just fade into nothing in the confusion of the dangling chains.
If you're using this alt text because you're blind, then maybe you share my frustration at how most people with normal vision seem to be able to look at slop pictures all day and not even see them.

Six enlarged details from the image from the top of the thread. The image is an AI-generated picture of a magpie and nest draped with an unrealistic, maybe even ridiculous, quantity of stolen jewellery: mostly chains and pendants, some with very brightly coloured, plasticky looking stones. The nest is precariously balanced on top of a utility pole against an overcast sky.
The enlarged details are picked out to show that the jewellery is mostly just a suggestion of jewellery shapes, mostly looking melted or half-formed. The are some twisted shapes that could be chains, or paperclips, or rubberbands, but don't really look like anything. There are places where the twigs of the next seem to be merged with the chains. In one section, some shapeless megenta gems seem to be threaded onto a twig, and some pale pink stones seem to be sprouting from the ends of twigs, as if they were flowers or fruits.
At the bottom of the layout, there are details of the pole. One shows the lighting on the pole just the nest, where it is overshadowed. Compared to the shadowing and density of the nest it isn't nearly shadowed enough. That said, you can clearly see that it's round, like a wooden utility pole. Beside it, the other detail shows the lower part of the pole, which is rendered like a flat plank of wood.
Overally, the whole thing looks obviously fake. I absolutely don't have an issue with that in itself. If someone had photobashed this together as a work of human creativity, it could be great. That would be art. Instead, someone got a generative model to spaff it out with no deliberation or expression. It's not a creation that means something, it's just a fake photograph that tells a lie, and hurts us all in myriad ways.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Apr 14

The image from the above post, but instead of "'Paddington 4', [and] 'Escape From New York'" it now says "'Paddington 4: Escape From New York'".

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Apr 10

6.25p per Freddo! Get @economist.com on the phone!

Two four-packs of Freddos, reduced from £1.55 to £0.25.
They're purplish, foilish packets with a frog character on them.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Apr 4

Quote reply the crack team of your most feared enemies assembled, to bring you down

David Bowie as the Goblin King in Labyrinth

Patricia Arquette as Ms Cobel in Severance

Ethan Phillips as Neelix in Star Trek: Voyager

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Mar 31

#tdov ✊ power, respect and safety to trans folk, visible or otherwise

David Lynch (as Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks) saying (subtitled) "FIX YOUR HEARTS OR DIE!" (He's recounting to trans agent Denise Bryson what he said to transphobes in relation to her.)

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Mar 29

I mean, kinda both? maps.app.goo.gl/hcUiqEZEjenY... maps.app.goo.gl/4fZhAu8XvY7o... maps.app.goo.gl/gn1uFYSDEJfy...

screenshot of a 3d scene from google maps, showing Edinburgh city centre, with a big mess of different historical architecture seen looking south-west at the top of the Mile and Castle Esplanade, from an imaginary viewpoint above Prince's St.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Mar 29

@attie.ai, just say no

a screenshot showing the account @attie.ai being reported as a bot

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Mar 17

why do they all look like

Lisa Simpson, bemused and aghast at the dinner table, eyes down, slack jawed. Maybe smiling incredulously?

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Mar 14

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Mar 12

ooo, close I see noise, especially on the colour pairs where I couldn't see the edge. Cleaned my monitor recently, but this made me see just how uneven the backlighting is.

A screenshot with a score of 0.0037.
Link with more details: https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/?r=AXMhKP__72z5

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Mar 9

I'd play it #StarWarsOutlaws #StarWars #Andor

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Feb 23

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Feb 13

On the left, Silent Hill: Townfall. On the right, St Monans, Fife. wait...

A screenshot from Google street view, showing Mid Shore, St Monans, Fife. It's a shorefront street with Georgian(?) Scottish architecture and British street furntiure like bin, telephone pole, 20 mph speed limit sign (in the distance) and a distinctive acorn-shaped vintage streetlamp.

A screenshot from Silent Hill: Townfall, showing a foggy shorefront street with Georgian(?) Scottish architecture and British street furntiure including a bin, telephone pole, 20 mph speed limit sign and a distinctive acorn-shaped vintage streetlamp shining though the fog. It's too foggy to see a lot of details, and some of the buildings are merged/altered, but it looks like it's probably based on the location in the other image.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Feb 11

Aww man I hate it when my consciousness makes me do things.

Screenshot from a trailer for a video game. There's a subtitle on the screen that says, "I think my consciousness is making me do it..."

The actual game is an over-the-shoulder third-person view of a guy with what looks like a bunch of neon-pink cybernetic parts, in a wooden cabin with trees outside. Someone, maybe an enemy, is coming in through the huge door (you could drive a bus into this cabin) and there's some kind of pink spheroid forcefield going on for some reason.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Feb 9

Hello @sqydstudio.bsky.social and @utkarshrajsingh.com, we're neighbours, apparently, by whatever metric this is. 😆

A very zoomed in shot of the map above, which shows three accounts very close together.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Feb 9

Apparently I'm more "professional" than I am "indie" lol, naa bluesky-map.theo.io

Screenshot of a "map" of bluesky users, which looks like grainy globs of green goo. There is a large dense cluster labelled "Video Game Industry Professionals", in which the bluesky handle @nick.aetheric-games.com is highlighted, and a separate cluster labelled "Indie Game Developers & Digital Artists".

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Jan 13

In The Fisherman and the Jinni, from the 1001 Nights, the genie is tricked into returning to the copper pot that he just escaped from, just to prove that he can. Because he is powerful and stupid (like an LLM). This story is at least half a millenium old.

A public domain illustration of The Fisherman and the Jinni. The genie, or jinni, towers over the fisherman. He has a lot of jewellery and decorative wear, a goblin-esque face, massive fangs and is brandishing a scimitar. Below is the copper pot he just emerged from.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fisherman_2.jpg

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Jan 13

That's one of the main things about genies, right? Famously.

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Jan 13

"You can't put the genie back in the bottle," is a thing people say about genAI. A lot. But, like ...huh?

nickbell 🆗️@nick· Jan 10

Hey @discord.com, if you already know these answers, are you just like, evil? Or what?