Pylimitics

"Simplicity" rearranged


Incompetence of the powerful

  • Not an April Fool Joke

    The EU and France are more rational and intelligent than the orange baby’s régime; there’s no question about that. Nevertheless, French regulators just did something ridiculous: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking. John Gruber at Daring Fireball explains. In short: “App Tracking Transparency actually accomplished, in practice, via user-focused… Continue reading

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Lying, cheating, and laziness

    Capitalists love to talk about markets and competition — up to a point. But when market competition gets difficult, like when the capitalists in question are faced with a competitor offering a better product, or a better price, or really any other advantages, well…then they reveal that they hate competition, and their real preference is… Continue reading

  • Disturbing hints continue

    “Shortly after the [2024] election, a newspaper reporter asked Nikolai Patrushev, who is close to Putin, if Trump’s election would mean ‘positive changes from Russia’s point of view.’ Patrushev answered: ‘To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will… Continue reading

  • 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

  • Oh good

    Google, the company that originally instituted, then removed, the motto “don’t be evil,” also made a pledge about its artificial intelligence projects. Because they’re Google, a titanic pile of cash and (still in some areas) technical talent, their AI projects are world-class. They pledged that their AI applications would never involve “(1) weapons, (2) surveillance,… Continue reading

  • National Energy Emergency?

    The president, in its inaugural address, declared a “national energy emergency.” Why does it insist on existing in its own alternate (worse) reality? In our reality (“real reality”) the US is doing historically well in energy: Production, the light brown line, exceeds consumption (blue line) and while the nation both imports and exports energy products… 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. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.