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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
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Your own LLM
The most powerful Macintosh available now is (I think) the Mac Studio. I think it’s more capable than the Mac Pro, although I could be wrong. In any event, the M2 Ultra Mac Studio is a system that would have been called a supercomputer not that long ago, and you can have one, or even… Continue reading
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It doesn’t have to be this way
In the US, we are too often unaware of the rest of the world, particularly the details about the rest of the world. This is a serious problem, because the rest of the world is figuring out a lot of things that evidently utterly stump us. Could it be the political forces that have eviscerated… Continue reading
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Once more, with feeling
To “capitulate” means to surrender. But to “recapitulate” doesn’t mean surrender again; it means to sum up. So what the heck is up with that? It all goes back to the original Latin behind “capitulate;” it comes from “caput”, which means head. The diminutive form is “capitulum”, which, being a diminutive, means “little head.” It… Continue reading
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This adds up
“The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.” —Eugene Wigner Continue reading
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Oops
From IEEE Spectrum, an interesting analysis of how AIs make mistakes, as do humans, but because the AI mistakes differ from human mistakes, the expectations we have and the infrastructure we’ve created to recognize, reduce, and correct for human mistakes doesn’t fit AIs as well. We’re actually pretty good at dealing with mistakes — to… Continue reading
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Well whattaya know…
My partner is Birdie;we talked; she’s a “cat.”We don’t have anotherfamily member like that. She’s small and she’s younger.Her fur’s gray like smoke,and we found out we laughat the same kind of joke. We both started our livesby just living outsidebut now as a familywe are safe, warm, and dry. Birdie is skinny;she was hungry,… Continue reading
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It’s cold out; wear your cardigan
It’s pretty common lately in political speech to see the phrase “playing the [x] card”. It’s generally meant as a criticism, meaning that if a politician “plays the gender card” or “plays the race card”, it somehow delegitimizes whatever point they’re trying to make. The first of these cards to be played appears to have… Continue reading
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Dao De Jing by Laozi
These are from a new translation by Ken Liu: “A country teetering on the edge of a collapse is filled with patriots.” “The more people arm themselves, the more chaotic the country.” “Lords stride about in glorious clothes, carry sharp swords, eat so much good food that they’re sick of it, and hoard wealth beyond… Continue reading
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My New Partner
My family just grew;there’s a member who’s new.Not to be wordy,Her name is Birdie. -Chocolate 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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peterharbeson@me.com