Quotations
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And yet…
Reinhold Niebuhr was a widely known public intellectual in 20th Century America. He was a theologian who spent the bulk of his career as a professor at a seminary in Manhattan, NY. Did you know they had those there? Seems unexpected. Anyway, he had some fascinating ideas, including something called “Christian Realism.” I’m not sure Continue reading
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This pretty much sums it up
Amazing post on Reddit:“…whatever else there is to say, the most important thing about Donald Trump, the thing that is obvious from watching him speak for just 14 seconds, is that he is profoundly stupid. Whatever it is that he might be talking about or doing at any given moment, it’s clear that while he 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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Abuse of grace
Sarah McBride is a member of Congress, representing Delaware. She’s the first member of Congress to be openly transgender, and the highest level elected official in the US to be so as well. Earlier this week she had this to say as part of a conversation on Ezra Klein’s podcast: “On social media, we have 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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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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Originalism is always fabrication
Ben Thompson, whose site Stratechery is interesting, well-written, and afflicted with tunnel vision about “the web” being collection of business deals, just posted this: The original web that we know and love was the human web; that’s why advertising was the preferred business model, and Google was the big winner. Nonsense. I can’t tell whether he means personal 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
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.