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Globalization is not what you think
Selections from The New Anarchists. It’s no longer new; David Graeber wrote it in 2002. • “The phrase ‘anti-globalization movement’ is a coinage of the US media and activists have never felt comfortable with it. Insofar as this is a movement against anything, it’s against neoliberalism, which can be defined as a kind of market… Continue reading
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Is that an ace up your sleeve?
To “finagle” is to “use dishonest or devious means to bring something about”. It’s still in use, and although many people believe that it’s a regional expression common only to the northeast US, the Dictionary of American Regional English points out that the word is used throughout the US. Its spelling varies though; sometimes it’s… Continue reading
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A River Runs Through It
This is the ending of A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. “Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. “Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually… Continue reading
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The good old days
In 1903, J.M.Barrie (author of Peter Pan) wrote “The Little White Bird”, which contains this line “Whom did I see but the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these gardens.” “Whilom,” which has pretty much vanished from use in the past century, is — or was — the past version of… Continue reading
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Minute by minute, hour by hour
Whenever you see an English word beginning with “bi-“, you can be fairly sure that it has something to do with the number two. “Bi-“ comes to English from Latin, although its roots are even older; in Ancient Greek it was “δι-“, and in Sanskrit it was “dvi-“. Even in Latin, “bi-” served the same… Continue reading
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The propagation of timber
Every profession seems to have its own jargon; specialized words for the specialized things that go on in that particular sphere. Sometimes some professional jargon breaks out to become more commonly used. Just about everybody in the US has at least a general idea what a “class action” is, but that was originally limited to… Continue reading
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National Energy Emergency?
The president, in its inaugural address, declared a “national energy emergency.” Why does it insist on existing in its own alternate (worse) reality? In our reality (“real reality”) the US is doing historically well in energy: Production, the light brown line, exceeds consumption (blue line) and while the nation both imports and exports energy products… Continue reading
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The orange baby
You know what I’m talking about. What I want to make very clear is that I think it’s most reasonably referred to as a “what” and an “it” rather than a “who.” It doesn’t operate like a person; a human. It’s never been part of our social fabric, as you can see by reading Lucky… Continue reading
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Stargate, eh?
Orange baby evidently just “announced” an initiative for building AI infrastructure. It’s big talk, mentioning half a trillion dollars (eventually, honest) and touting all sorts of “dominance” of AI research and development; an area that is not a good fit for the dumb thuggery underlying the whole idea of “dominance.” I find the hunger for… Continue reading
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2025 is a mess, and so is every year
Months are a mess. That is, the names of months are a mess. For instance, “September”, the ninth month, comes from the Latin root “sept-“, meaning seventh. Not only that, but “October” should be the eighth month, “November” the ninth, and “December” the tenth. The names we use for months come from Latin, and as… 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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