Pylimitics

"Simplicity" rearranged


  • A whale of a tale, but fishy

    If a sailor pulled up his anchor only to discover that one of the flukes had snagged a big fluke, they would probably dismiss it as just a fluke. But the real fluke would, of course, be that the sailor had inadvertently encountered all three English words that are “fluke” in the course of a… Continue reading

  • This post is okay for now

    In the computing field there’s a word: “kludge.” It’s mysterious in a couple of ways. It means a solution to a problem — usually a software solution — that’s clumsy, thrown together, and inelegant, but works anyway (at least for the moment).  The first mystery about “kludge” is how it’s spelled. The word is generally… Continue reading

  • Walk like an Egyptian

    Although the ancient Egyptians were as far in the past for the ancient Greeks as those Greeks are to us, some of the ideas of their astrologers have stuck around as solidly as the Pyramids. Those astrologers calculated that there were two days every month when you definitely shouldn’t start anything important. Don’t begin a… Continue reading

  • The Mars Volta

    There’s a new album from The Mars Volta: Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos Del Vacio Mercurial, unpredictable group of musicians satisfies two of Timothy Snyder’s tests for freedom: sovereign and unpredictable. Lucro Sucio: Los Ojos del Vacío in English means filthy lucre, vacant eyes. Continue reading

  • Don’t delay!

    Everything that’s on sale is for sale, but not everything for sale is on sale. It hasn’t always been that way. If you go back far enough — say to the 700s — “sell” meant to give. You can find it in Beowulf, and that’s what it meant in those days.  A couple of centuries… Continue reading

  • No Kings

    “We live in a moment when our freedoms are once again under attack from the highest office in the land. We see things that would be familiar to our revolutionary predecessors: the silencing of critics, the disappearing of people from our streets, demands for unquestioning fealty.” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey Continue reading

  • People who live in different places, even though they speak the same language, tend to have different accents. Accents are not as diverse as they used to be, probably because everybody now listens to the same voices on TV, radio, and digital media. Even on local radio and TV stations, announcers seem to mostly sound… Continue reading

  • You can’t fine me, read page 942

    It’s tax-returnseason in the US, which means that people across the country have been eagerly searching for “loopholes.” And the regime, of course, is all about loopholes, like most grifters. A loophole is a detail in a rule or law or regulation that enables you to argue, with varying degrees of success, that the rule… Continue reading

  • I mean, really?

    I mean to explore a fantastic word today, but in the meantime, let’s instead talk about a very pedestrian one. How about… “meantime”? “Meantime” has the same meaning as “meanwhile,” and they’re both in common usage. Both refer to the unspecified time that occurs between one thing and another. The interesting thing about “meantime” is… Continue reading

  • Hey here’s an idea

    I realize that “ideas” and “thinking” are not features of the current regime in America — or should I say “Amerika” — but here’s one anyway. If trade deficits are such a crucial thing, maybe review an industry where we have a big trade surplus: education. Thousands of foreign students want to come here to… Continue reading

About Me

I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.

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