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T is for tiller, man
In the early days of automobile design, none of the standards we’re used to had emerged yet. Most very early cars didn’t have steering wheels; you steered them with a lever, which was called a “tiller”. English has two “tiller” words. The first has to do with farming; a tiller in that sense is either… Continue reading
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Sir Percy (part 1)
0. The unexpected name of Sir Percy Whatnot Sterling Bishop Sterling Whatnot Percy burst upon the insular culture of London academia in a flash of grandiose, well-funded activity in May of 1842. His announcement of a new Publishing Society devoted to the Mathematics of Leonardo of Fibonacci was a most welcome addition to the book… Continue reading
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Time and Again
August, 2022 Time is not what we think it is. What we perceive it to be. Time seems to pass steadily, in just one direction. We regulate our lives with time; our perceptions are full of what seem to be regular, reliable cycles and markers. The sun rises and sets. Our hearts beat. Living creatures,… Continue reading
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Yahoo Serious
Surely you’ve heard of Yahoo, whose birthday is today. No, I don’t mean the internet service; I mean Yahoo Serious, who turns 69 today. Yahoo Serious was born Greg Gomez Pead in Australia. After high school he enrolled in the National Art School in Sydney, but for undisclosetd reasons he was kicked out. After that… Continue reading
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Pandiculate
Although print magazines are fading in popularity thanks to web-based versions, they still exist in a multitude of categories, just has they have for over a century. The business model of print magazines has been pretty stable the whole time; most of them make their money by printing advertisements. The key to that, of course,… Continue reading
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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
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
- Pendulums go nowhere
- It would be much more efficient…
- Step back to add perspective
- They’ll just say anything at all
- Educational Trip
Categories
Artificial Intelligence
Chocolatiana
Essays
History, sort of
Immorality
Incompetence
Quotations
Resistance
Stories
Tales from the Forest
Technicalities
Tragedy
Unanticipated Consequences
Privacy policy
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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com