Pylimitics

"Simplicity" rearranged

  • September 30

    September 30 is the day, in 1954, that the USS Nautilus was commissioned. It was not only the world’s first nuclear submarine; it was the first nuclear-powered vessel of any kind. People in 1954 thought nuclear power was going to define the future. There were predictions that electricity was going to be free because nuclear… Continue reading

  • The Calculation of Desire

    It’s very difficult, recently, to escape the flood of news stories about artificial intelligence, many of them created by the latest version of artificial intelligence. “AI” is an initialism now recognized by far too many people. When I say “latest version” of AI, artificial intelligence has been around by that name since the mid-1950s, and… Continue reading

  • But why would I hate wisdom?

    It’s pretty conventional, in mainline western-civilization thinking at least, to have a high regard for the combination of knowledge and judgment we’d call “wisdom.” In fact, if you were to rate English words by their positive connotation for most people, “wisdom” would probably come out somewhere near the top of the list. At least so… Continue reading

  • Dog TV

    You know my opinion of squirrels:they’re as stupid as stupid can be.There are lots of kinds of creaturesBut squirrels? The worst, says me. My humans(you know, those guys with thumbs)turned on Dog TVand boy was it dumb. They claimed it would give mean interest boostbut I thinkthe thing is squirrel-produced. -Chocolate Continue reading

  • September 29

    September 29, coincidentally, is the date of some surprising coincidences. Some of them have been purposeful, at least sort of. It was this date in 1990, for example, that the Washington National Cathedral was completed. It took a while to finish — the cornerstone was laid on exactly the same date, but in 1907. That’s… Continue reading

  • Autumn Time

    Autumn has just begun in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s the most interesting season, for me at least, and it has its own feeling. It’s hard to put words to that feeling. Hart Crane, about a century ago, wrote Fear: The host, he says that all is wellAnd the fire-wood glow is bright;The food has a… Continue reading

  • September 28

    If you read yesterday’s “book of days” post, you might have noticed that the Christmas Carol Good King Wenceslaus showed up because one of the two Kings Wenceslaus — Wenceslaus II in that case — was born that day in 1271. If you didn’t read it, you have a second chance — because the other… Continue reading

  • This makes my head spin

    Quite a long time ago — about a thousand years, in fact — if you lived in the British Isles and did something foolish, you’d be called “dusilec,” or “dyslíc.” That’s a word that’s been obsolete for quite a long time too, so long that even one of its derivatives doesn’t make sense to us… Continue reading

  • September 27

    Google currently says that September 27, 1998 marks the birth of its search engine. That’s not what they’ve always said, though. It’s not the day they registered their domain name, google.com — that was September 15, 1997. It’s not the day the company was incorporated either. That was September 4, 1998. It’s not the day… Continue reading

  • No Sitting Around

    There are humans in my familya couple are quite small.MY little ones are not so bad,but I do not like them all. Today it was annoying;I thought I was getting walked,but instead we just went outside and I satand my full-size human just talked. Two words came up more than seven times:the words were “school”… Continue reading

About Me

I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.

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