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Born Today: July 28
The Guinness World Record for surviving the longest fall in a plunging elevator was set on July 28, 1945, when Betty Lou Oliver’s elevator dropped 75 stories in the Empire State Building. Oliver broker her pelvis, back, and neck, but she recovered. She also recovered from severe burns — but she’d been burned before the… Continue reading
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That Ancient-time Religion
May 2023 Artificial intelligence is, for sure, the ‘it girl’ of the day. A bunch of people who are richer than everybody else (which leads them to assume they must be smarter than everybody else) are warning that AI is out to get us. Other people take a more utilitarian position and point out that… Continue reading
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Clocks and Chocolate
September 2022 Do you own any artificial things that are so well designed and satisfying to use that you’d happily keep them for your whole life? If you do, chances are they are already old. Newly made things are not intended to last for long, even though some of them really are satisfying and well… Continue reading
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A Magic Ring
Dog, Bear, and Hare were having a secret meeting. Not that it was secret from everyone, although didn’t really need to mention it to anyone else. It was only a secret from Magpie. It had turned out to be surprisingly hard to have a meeting that Magpie didn’t know about. She flew over the forest… Continue reading
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Writative
There are people who like to write, there are people who need to write because of their work, and then there are people who are “writative.” The difference is probably something like this: someone who likes to write might keep a journal, but having forgotten to pack their diary for a weekend trip, would simply… Continue reading
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User Interface Design Considered Harmful
Computers and their cousins — smartphones, tablets, and so on — are supposedly easier to use nowadays, right? In the early days, you had to know a set of “commands” and enter them into the computer by typing them. Often there wasn’t much, if any, on-screen help. Now we’ve got little pictures (icons) and ways… Continue reading
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Zenzizenzizenzic
If you raise a number to its second power, you have the square of the number. If you raise it to the third power, you have the cube. I’m pretty sure most people know that. But here’s an obscure bit of trivia: if you raise a number to its eighth power, what you have is… Continue reading
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Back in the Day: July 26
July 26 In 1921, the “Laugh-O-Gram Studio” opened in Kansas City, Missouri. It produced animated films from the second floor of a nondescript brick building on East 31st Street — the building is still standing, and you’d never give it a second look, unless you knew about its history. The studio had a contract for… Continue reading
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Ferreting
Hare was sitting in Raccoon’s parlor. “Somebody’s trying to ferret out what happened at the party in the barn,” he said. “Who?” asked Raccoon carelessly. “Ferret,” said Hare. “I heard you the first time,” said Raccoon, “I meant who’s doing the ferreting.” “Ferret,” said Hare again. “You can’t miss him. He looks like a smaller… Continue reading
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Noggin
The word “noggin” has a longer history than you might expect for a slang term for your head. When the word is used today, it’s used the way it appeared in “Landfall” in 1951: “Thanks, chum,’ said Vic, ‘You used your noggin.’” Roald Dahl used it, too, in “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar:” “Of… 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 other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity. You can also find some of my minor software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly write tiny utilities in Python.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com