Incompetence of the powerful
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Blaming
Politics in the US seems to be more about nonsensical blaming than it used to be. I think it’s because once they’re elected, the greedheads and powerheads just assume that the rest of us are stupid, and will just accept whatever tripe comes out of their mouths. This may be at least partly due to… Continue reading
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History continues
I had never heard of Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas before, but what’s going on there is yet another case of large scale immorality and incompetence. In this case by the regime of the orange baby, but it’s been going on a lot longer. In the linked article, Haines Eason asks: “Can you name… Continue reading
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Just tariffic
The orange baby just sent a “letter” (evidently on its twitter platform) to South Korea threatening to impose large tariffs on South Korean goods unless they do something about the “Trade Deficits (sic) engendered by your Tariff, and Non Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers.” South Korea and the US have had a free trade agreement,… Continue reading
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Business as usual
“As with Musk, what is striking about {Sam} Altman is not that he is a rich guy who is concerned with increasing the wealth of rich guys. That is to be expected. What leaps out to me is the extent to which these men who fancy themselves visionaries are actually sunk neck-deep in the dreary… Continue reading
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Future infamy
Funny thing happened in 1857. The US Supreme Court heard the case Dred Scott v. Sandford. Their ruling was that African Americans could never be considered citizens of the US, and that Congress could not prohibit the practice of slavery in the territories of the rapidly expanding United States. The decision was written by Roger… Continue reading
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Orange Gangster
The term “gangster empire” seems pretty apt. The orange baby has, throughout its adult life, functioned like a crime boss (or at least like what normal people understand a “crime boss” to be. Source material: Lucky Loser. “We have now entered a new phase of Western-led global savagery — prefigured by the genocide in Gaza… Continue reading
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There is a FASCIST DICTATOR in the US now
This is not something to worry about maybe happening; it’s immediate and real. The orange baby actually was elected for real. Then handed a “can’t be prosecuted for anything” card by John Roberts’ court. Now it’s not going to allow any possibility (or election) to remove it from office, because that’s how fascist dictators operate.… Continue reading
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Just the latest version of nonsense
The Pessimists Archive posted an article about how modern refrigeration really started in the US in the late 1840s, when the inventor Dr. John Gorrie served ice to guests in the summer, in Florida. He got a patent on his new process a couple years later. But this was Florida, which has been…well, Florida…for a… Continue reading
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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
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
- Can’t keep a secret?
- Look to the rigging
- Ocean’s 128GB
- How much is that doggie in the window?
- Hang on, I’m busy
Categories
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Essays
History, sort of
Immorality
Incompetence
Quotations
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Tales from the Forest
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Unanticipated Consequences