Pylimitics

Simplicity rearranged

unmonetizable content since 1997


Book of Days

  • October 28

    The best response to discovering you’ve awakened on October 28 is to shout “Yahoo!” Since you just woke up, of course, you might first need to clear your throat by going “houyhnhnm” a couple of times. When you settle down with some coffee and check the morning business news, take note of that startup company Continue reading

  • October 27

    Dylan Thomas, who was born on October 27 in 1914, would have found it dramatic and moody that the Boston Red Sox won their first world series since 1918 on this day in 2004. “Do not go gentle into that doomed championship series,” he might have said. When the Red Sox committed four errors in Continue reading

  • October 25

    Today is the 156th birthday of John Francis Dodge, one of the founders of the Dodge Brothers Company — you can still see their name on cars today. But their first efforts in the automobile industry weren’t in building cars. When they started the company in Detroit in 1900, they only made parts. They were Continue reading

  • October 26

    October 26 is notable for several things, but in the US in the early 1800s the most notable might have been the completion of the Erie Canal in 1821. It was a very big deal back in the day; a 363-mile-long waterway connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. It meant that you could Continue reading

  • October 24

    In 1929, October 24 was “Black Thursday,” the day the New York Stock Exchange crashed by 11 percent. Then on October 24, 2008, it was “Black Friday,” the day most of the stock exchanges around the world crashed by 10 percent or more.  You might say the value of stocks those days dropped like a Continue reading

  • October 23

    If the weather is accommodating wherever you happen to be today, it’s a good day to venture outside, find a patch of grass or forest, lean down, and say loudly, directly into the ground, “CONGRATULATIONS!” The sound will carry through the earth and with luck, will be appreciated by some tiny, burrowing mammals. Because today Continue reading

  • October 22. Not always disappointing.

    We only have one day before the anniversary of the Great Disappointment. Although to everyone except the one group that at least claimed to be disappointed, the rest of the population generally continues to be not disappointed at all over how things turned out.  It all goes back to October 22, 1844, in Low Hampton, Continue reading

  • October 21: The story of a day of stories

    In the early days of exploring and settling North America, several European nations claimed territories or colonies or areas as “property” of a sort. The territories were generally consolidated into independent countries: Canada, the US, and Mexico. But France still has a North American territory. Not everyone knows about the “Overseas Collectivity of Saint Pierre Continue reading

  • October 20

    Depending on how you arrange the digits of a date, today is either 20-10-2023 or 10-20-2023. Statistically speaking, it’s 10-20-2023 for about 88.5% and 10-20-2023 for the 11.5% of the world that puts the month in the first position.  In both positions, though, October 20 sometimes represents World Statistics Day in about 49.5% of the Continue reading

  • October 19

    Vivian Hubert Howard Green was Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Quite a proper gentleman, he lectured on ecclesiastical history at St. Augustine’s College in Canterbury before his position at Lincoln College and was asked if he would consider sitting for the ordination exams. He declined, explaining that as the ecclesiastical lecturer he would be grading 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 Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but 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.