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Underground (The)
May 17 2026 A lot of systems, institutions, and norms are breaking down. Some are vast and global. Others are small and local. And maybe my impression of this is hopelessly mired in my own local context, and like a large language model, I’m inexplicably hallucinating. I read a lot, though, and I’m not the Continue reading
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weekend reading
“the old is dying and the new cannot be born” –Antonio Gramsci “We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit.” –Paul Feyerabend “How do LLMs affect productivity and quality? (Much like leaded petrol. There’s some potential benefit for individual users with literally decades of expertise, Continue reading
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Well that was a surprise
I was kicked to the curb by my suddenly-previous employer. Along with a large chunk of my suddenly-previous department. This is not uncommon in the technology industry where I’ve worked for decades, and it’s not the first time for me. It’s always annoying, though, and for some it can be devastating. It’s always life-changing in Continue reading
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Everything learns
I don’t think it’s true that the orange baby isn’t rational. The problem it has is what it has experienced its whole life and career: getting away with everything it tried, no matter what. In some way you could look at it (the o.b.) as simply a statistical outlier, like an astonishingly lengthy string of Continue reading
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Time to do better
The US is not going back to the way we were. And good riddance, in my view. Without meaning to, American society and business practices have become a means of enriching and aggrandizing despicable people. This is not entirely new, but it seems to me that it’s more common and systemic now. There is not Continue reading
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When you’re paid to undermine yourself
Minas Karamanis has done some thinking about using LLMs. How they can help and, on the other hand, how they can undermine your own abilities and career. This is probably obvious, but it all depends on how you use them. Karamanis is an astrophysicist at Berkeley, but I think what he says applies to any Continue reading
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It doesn’t care, except about power
The orange baby just launched a war it won’t explain. None of the lickspittles in its cabal will explain it either. Here’s a possibility. The premises: • Americans are coming to despise the orange baby, its pretend government, and its policies. • The orange baby knows this, even though what it says is, as usual, Continue reading
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DOGEing off
Remember how mental midget Musk was supposedly eliminating “inefficiency” and “overspending” in government? And his squad of infant tech bros were supposed to be really smart? Yeah, well, in their quest to steal personal data from government agencies, they seem to have missed ninety-three billion dollars that the eminently unqualified Fox News host Hegseth wasted Continue reading
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Why? Why? Why?
“Because [it is] insane. Because [it’s] venal. Because [it’s] a malignant narcissist. Because [it’s] a sociopath. Because [it]e has a fragile ego. Because those around [it] exacerbate and play to those traits to advance their own interests. Because CEOs and investors do likewise to fill their coffers. Because to some people, whether it is insane Continue reading
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Distracted yet?
The orange baby will do anything, kill anybody, to save itself. It deserves at least to be in prison, and it knows it. Cue clips of it admitting it’s “not getting into heaven.” Of course, it’s only ever pretended to care about religion, and it probably doesn’t believe in heaven at all. Look at what’s Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
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