History, sort of
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The last man in the Canterbury waste land
Cold misty rain, supposedly all week. it’s not a soaking rain, but the damp chill seems icier than even the silent cold days of midwinter. The forecast for the week is gray and dank; every day shows rain. I wonder how long weather forecasting will continue. I wonder about the mediocrity of “the world’s richest… Continue reading
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Tomorrow
From The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, 1924 “I. The Burial of the DeadApril is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain.Winter kept us warm, coveringEarth in forgetful snow, feedingA little life with dried tubers.Summer surprised us, coming over the StarnbergerseeWith a shower of… Continue reading
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Inept, faithless, and arrogant
Steve Schmidt put it eloquently: “Donald Trump’s national security team has been exposed — and permanently unmasked — as moral degenerates. They are incompetent clowns, who beggar description because they stand peerless in the entire history of America as singularly inept, faithless and arrogant. Michael Waltz, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Stephen… Continue reading
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Is it over?
Now people are being disappeared here in the US by squads of thugs who think they’re empowered by authority. Mahmoud Khalil is now an overtly political prisoner here. We have political prisoners now. We disappear people now. Here are two sources of Khalil’s letter from the concentration camp:Document CloudGuardian US(Posting more than one link to… Continue reading
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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
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 newsletter, Artisanal Scribbles, where I’m grappling with writing, authentic human authorship, integrity, and the craft of beauty in the AI age. You can also find some of my old software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly wrote tiny utilities in Python and shell scripts. I’m mostly retired from coding nowadays.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
Recent Posts
- Thought Experiment
- Can any good come of any of it?
- What is it about Florida?
- Why does anybody listen to this grifter?
- Fashionable or able to fashion
Categories
Artificial Intelligence
Chocolatiana
Essays
History, sort of
Immorality
Incompetence
Quotations
Resistance
Stories
Tales from the Forest
Technicalities
Tragedy
Unanticipated Consequences