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Gaberlunzie
If you’re shopping for clothes, one option might be something made of “gabardine.” The dictionary says it’s a “firm, tightly woven fabric of worsted, cotton, polyester, or other fiber, with a twill weave,” which unfortunately does absolutely nothing to ensure that I’d be able to look at a coat and say “oh, that’s made of… Continue reading
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Contumely
In modern English, you can usually add “-ly” to a word to use it in a slightly different way. That is, if there’s something you do most of the time — it’s your “usual” practice — then you could also say you do that thing “usually.” This goes back to Old English, except that where… Continue reading
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Born Today: Ken Kutaragi
If you like videogames, you’ll be happy to know that today, August 8, is Ken Kutaragi’s birthday; he’s 73. He was working for Sony in their digital research labs in 1989 when he noticed how much his daughter loved playing games on her Nintendo. He tried to get Sony interested in video games, but they… Continue reading
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August 8
The Wright Brothers made their first flight on August 8 in 1903. But only five people were there to see it. Their first plane, the Flyer I, only flew that one day, and then a gust of wind flipped it over and wrecked it. All they had was a photograph and the reports of the… Continue reading
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A Medley
Motion Age This used to be the space age. Also the atomic age. The age of television. Before that, the radio age. The automobile age. The digital age. Those are all what we see right before our eyes. But what about a little bit in the future? Say, five or six centuries at least. That… Continue reading
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That Trip in May a Century Ago
May, 2019 On May 16, 1919, the NC-4 (a Curtiss “flying boat”) took off from Newfoundland en route to Lisbon, They were attempting the first transatlantic flight. When you think about transatlantic flights, it’s natural to assume that they’re nonstop, but this one was not. It was a flying boat, after all — the hull… Continue reading
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Secret Ingredient
“The thing is,” said Hare, “we’re just going to have to find some, and that’s all there is to it.” “But there are plenty of other things you could use instead,” said Raccoon. “No,” said Hare, “I’m making my special salad, and every single ingredient is carefully selected. Substituting one thing would change the whole… Continue reading
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Same old, same old
It’s all the same to us now, but more than a thousand years ago, Old English imported the Old Norse word “same.” It’s a word you probably use every day, but I’ll bet you wouldn’t have predicted that its actual definition is pretty long. It starts out “the ordinary adjectival and pronominal designation of identity…”… Continue reading
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Born Today: Kermit Love
You’ve almost certainly heard of Kermit the Frog, the puppet from Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and several feature films. But have you heard of Kermit Love, the puppet maker who worked with Jim Henson to create many of the puppets for those productions? Love was born Kermit Ernest Hollingshead Love on August 7, 1916,… Continue reading
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August 7
Around 1936, the US government contracted with EMK Geiling, a doctor and researcher who headed the (new) pharmacology department at the University of Chicago, to look into a series of deaths that seemed to be associated with a sulfonamide drug. Geiling had a graduate student, Frances Kathleen Oldham, who was there by accident. She’d applied… 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