Incompetence of the powerful
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There are some methods
(and then there’s the madness…) Most of the US, at least the part that gets reported in nearly any sort of media, seems to be baffled by the randomness and ignorance of the orange baby and its regime. The ongoing saga of the tariffs, for example, makes no effing sense. They’re “reciprocal” (they’re not); they’re Continue reading
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A dying empire and its assassins
Chris Hedges’ piece The Rule of Idiots rings pretty true and it’s pretty depressing. Are we really amidst the death of the American empire, the empire that never really admitted to itself that it was an empire? Or is trumpism our society can recover from? “The last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots.” Continue reading
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“I’m from the government, and…”
It’s difficult to fully understand complex structures. That’s kind of tautological; “complex” already means “difficult to understand”, at least in part. But never fear; I have a point, and it’s this: in the same way we understand the complex physics of the universe by using simplified models that are “close enough” in most cases, we understand the Continue reading
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Lest we forget
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: LEST WE FORGET THE HORRORS: AN UNENDING CATALOG OF TRUMP’S CRUELTIES, COLLUSIONS, CORRUPTIONS, AND CRIMES. by Emily Greenberg and Cliff Mayotte Continue reading
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Business Idiots
“Every institution keeps its core constituents and labor forces at arms-length, and effectively anything built at scale quickly becomes distanced from both the customer and laborer. This disconnection — or alienation — sits at the center of almost every problem I’ve ever talked about. Why would companies push generative AI in seemingly every part of Continue reading
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Which amendment was that?
ICE gestapo monsters left a 12-year-old standing alone, unaccompanied, on a sidewalk after snatching their adult companion. It seems to me this sort of thing could escalate into exactly what that amendment about “a well regulated militia” was supposed to be about. Not good. Continue reading
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The NYT appears to be wrong again
The New York Times story about the orange baby’s declaration of victory over the Houthis in Yemen is “provably unreliable in at least two ways: the timeline, and the claimed involvement of Trump.” So is Maggie Haberman just a chump who gets played constantly? Or maybe it’s all on purpose. Continue reading
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“Like a business,” they said
The idea that the US should be “run like a business” has been popular with the republic party for decades. Like many of the slogans they parrot, the actual thinkers in the party almost certainly don’t agree with it, but recognize it as a convenient talking point that will convince their base. Now they’ve got Continue reading
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Teslas are obsolete, overpriced junk
Tesla is not keeping up with the competition, not by a long shot. The real competition in electric vehicles seems to be led by companies in China and South Korea. Tesla, which has always been known for inferior build quality and doesn’t update its offerings very often. The Model X is a decade old. The Continue reading
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There are jobs, and then there are jobs
The regime of the orange baby, and the baby itself, seem to believe (or at least say, which isn’t the same thing for it) that making products — toys, for example — arbitrarily more expensive for US consumers is a good thing. Maybe, the baby spitballs, it will mean that “the jobs” move to the 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.