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Having your druthers
Word of the day: druthers There’s an English phrase — primarily an Americanism — that you may not have encountered, at least not recently. If I had my druthers, of course, people would still use it all the time, but its use has always tended to be regional (used more in the southern states), and… Continue reading
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Cantrev
If you’re interested in ancient tales set in the British Isles, and you’ve already read Beowulf, you might turn to the Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge or the Welsh Mabinogion. There’s a certain structure pretty common to epic stories from thousands of years ago; they’re a bit like super hero comics. There’s someone extraordinary who performs… Continue reading
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Born Today: Charlotte Fowler Wells
The history of science is pretty interesting; all sorts of discoveries — and entire fields of study — have flourished, only to be eventually disproven. This is still going on; just look at the news in the past few weeks about a “room-temperature superconductor,” or think back a few years to “cold fusion.” Charlotte Fowler… Continue reading
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August 14
You never know — it might have been a dark and stormy night on August 14, 1975. A young couple, whose names were not Janet or Brad, might have been driving on King’s Road in London when one of their tires went flat. No mobile phones in those days, so they went in search of… Continue reading
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Cheshire Cat
One of the (many) oddball characters in Alice in Wonderland is the Cheshire Cat. He doesn’t really do much in the story besides grin, and then gradually disappear (except for his grin). Have you ever wondered why a grinning feline would be called a “Cheshire Cat”? Lewis Carroll could have just invented it — he… Continue reading
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Sewers
It would be pretty unlikely to find a sewer in a sewer, and although a sewer might work in a sewer’s vicinity, if the sewer malfunctioned or ceased working altogether the sewer would almost certainly move to a new location a comfortable distance from the sewer. What we have there is a perfectly good sentence,… Continue reading
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August 13
August 13 is the most sinister of days — it’s International Lefthanders Day. Somewhere around ten percent of the people in the world are left-handed, and for some reason, men are somewhat more likely to be left handed than women. The word “sinister” came from Latin, where it originally meant left-handed — but even then… Continue reading
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Eating Your Words
Dog and Ferret were due in Hare’s meadow, along with the rest of the guests, at about noon. Squirrel and Raccoon were helping Hare get everything ready for Sunday Brunch. Magpie, was watching from a low branch in Hare’s oak tree and explaining — the whole event had been her idea. “Tell me again, why… Continue reading
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Vinegar
As liquids used in cooking go, vinegar is not particularly remarkable. It’s basically diluted acetic acid. The interesting aspect of vinegar is the enormous variety of ways you can make it. The word “vinegar” came originally from Old French (“van egre”) in the early 1300s. One of the oldest surviving mentions of “vinegar” is from… 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
- C’mon give it up, sluggish human
- The True Chew
- The Cycles within the Arc
- I’d rather have a taco
- 20-something Hubris
Categories
Artificial Intelligence
Chocolatiana
Essays
History, sort of
Immorality
Incompetence
Quotations
Resistance
Stories
Tales from the Forest
Technicalities
Tragedy
Unanticipated Consequences
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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com