History, sort of
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Look on my works and despair
I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them Continue reading
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Not the first
Elon Musk is not the first tech billionaire asshat to bend governments to his self interest. About twenty years ago, Bill Gates was the world’s leading asshat. He’s worked for years to launder his image, but my take is that he’s still nothing more than the greedy, narcissistic, lying, egotistical bully he’s been his whole Continue reading
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The early days
The early days of personal computing were not that long ago. Part of those days was a tidal wave of innovation and creativity. There were whole categories of applications that I’m not sure even exist any more. For one thing, there were viable alternatives to the Excel spreadsheet de-facto monopoly, and at least several incorporated Continue reading
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Railroad yard engines and history
The port of Baltimore has just begun using an electric rail car mover. Again. Here’s a photo of the new one: And here’s a photo of one of the ones they used back in 1912: Continue reading
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Your necklace is rusty. Get it at the carnival?
“Tawdry” means cheap and showy — like plastic jewelry, for example. But the word has an interesting history. In the 600s (or possibly the 800s; sources disagree), there was a queen in part of England (in those days kingdoms — and ‘queendoms’ — were often about the size of a modern town) named Aethelthrȳth. She Continue reading
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Same old same old
The thing about dictionaries in English is this: they’re descriptive, not prescriptive. Words don’t enter English because you find them in the dictionary; it works in exactly the opposite way. Words enter English, then eventually they (probably) show up in a dictionary. So how, exactly, do words enter English? Social media! The original social medium Continue reading
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About that history you were taught…
This is a photo of a model reconstruction of Bologna, Italy, somewhere around 1300 or so. What the heck are all those towers?!? We know they were there because the foundations are still there today in Bologna. They were built by wealthy families to protect themselves and all their stuff when the 99% got angry Continue reading
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You can’t say we weren’t warned
Thirty-one years ago, in 1994, the Internet existed but not everybody knew that yet. Even those of us who did know about it didn’t always have an convenient connection; computers had only barely begun to be portable, and you certainly weren’t going to access much on that telephone in your home that had a handset Continue reading
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A Sunday drive
In the early days of automobile design, none of the standards we’re used to had emerged yet, even the most basic ones. Most very early cars didn’t have steering wheels. you steered them with a lever, which was called a “tiller.” English has two “tiller” words. The first has to do with farming; a tiller Continue reading
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Conquered Today
It was this date, in 30BCE, that the Roman leader Octavian took control of Alexandria, Egypt, which after that was part of the Roman Republic. Octavian went on to take control of the entire Roman Empire, and for various reasons (Rome was very complicated), was also known as Gaius Julius Caesar (Octavian was adopted by 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.