Blogfog
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The local and the flood
The local was washed away in the spew. You know the spew. It’s the relentless flood of information overwhelming us online. So much email the majority is automatically deleted. Same situation with text messages. Social media is even worse — there’s so much nobody can keep up with it, even though thanks to the automatic… Continue reading
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Design as divisive; design as inclusive
Among other pursuits, I’ve been a software interaction designer. That’s basically a user interface designer without doing the graphics. When I was doing interaction design, I always started from user research. In order to design something that works for users who are not like you, it’s critically important to learn about them. You start by… Continue reading
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Dark Tower indeed
The Dark Tower , Stephen King’s multivolume epic, takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting he describes with “the world had moved on.” Everything fell apart. Nobody knew why, but nearly everything people depended on simply stopped working and went into decline and decay. Full disclosure: I’ve read some of the series but not all of… Continue reading
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Writing and reading
I was reminded of the memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. I read it a few years ago, mostly because I found the title intriguing. What reminded me was this post from Herman Martinus, the developer and maintainer of Bear. He cited this passage from Murakami:“…I can’t grasp… Continue reading
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Why do we keep doing this?
I don’t know if it’s a uniquely American thing, or maybe a uniquely human thing, but damn, we fall for scams. All the time. Maybe it’s an off-the-charts ability that a few people have that make them able to come up with what they know is a lie, and get everybody within earshot to believe… Continue reading
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Contradictions
Terry Goodier’s essay The Boring Internet is all about the low level protocols that underpin Internet services. He points out that there’s nothing pretty or easy about protocols. And he points it out in a visual essay that’s lovely to see. The form of the essay and the form of its subject are a contradiction.… Continue reading
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The stepping stones and the flow
There are two kinds of digital places you can put your creations. In one of them, what you create remains and becomes a kind of stepping stone for crossing a stream. In the other, what you create disappears and becomes part of the stream, as if you’d poured a cup of water into a brook. … Continue reading
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Ring in the web
Pylimitics.net just joined the Wordy Webring. You can see this just below the dynamic “recent posts” list: A webring is an old idea (“old” in internet time at least); the idea is that the site creator has connected with other sites that you might also like. It turns out that web rings are still active,… 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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Godwin’s Law 2026
“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Republicans, MAGA, or Trump approaches one.” Even earlier is the Reduction ad Hitlerum fallacy, a Leo Strauss creation from 1953. It’s a description of an attempt to counter an argument by claiming the same notion can be attributed to Hitler or Nazis. As… 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. You can also find some of my minor software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly write tiny utilities in Python.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!