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Not my president
In the past, I’ve always assumed that a phrase like “not my president” had to do with a hissy fit by some snowflake way out on the right or left wing of political bent. But this time the president has decided on its own that it is not my president. And that goes for more Continue reading
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Passions, Products, and Utility
or: It’s Just a Phone The MacPsych blog has an interesting post about mobile phones, on the occasion of the latest Apple “event” introducing new iPhoniana. They say: “I have read lots of differing perspective online, from fanboy exclamations of ‘the best phone everrrrrr!’ through to the much more realistic ‘it’s just a fucking phone’. As time passes, Continue reading
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Will we ever learn?
Just Another Day in the USA; Charlie Kirk shot to death on a campus in Utah (which allows anybody to carry a concealed firearm). And three students shot in a high school in Denver. That old nonsense “guns don’t kill people, people kill people?” Not exactly. People with guns kill people. Continue reading
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Sure, just make it up
“Zuckerberg joined Trump at a White House tech event on Thursday evening and sat next to the president. Trump asked Zuckerberg about Meta’s upcoming investments in AI infrastructure, “How much are you spending, would you say, over the next few years?” “Oh gosh. I mean, I think it’s probably going to be something like, I Continue reading
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Silver Lining
by Chocolate My human has an injured footand so can’t walk too far.He doesn’t know I get it,I can wait ’til he’s back to par. He feels bad and guiltythat we’re missing daily miles,But I can run & play in my back yard;I tell him with some smiles. One part of this that I don’t Continue reading
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Symiliptic report Sember 7
In creating the sixth republic, we have an advantage the founders of the first and the reformers of the fourth lacked: we have more collected data about methods and processes of governing and their outcomes. We have more tools to analyze the data as well, and other, better-functioning societies to be emulated. In addition to Continue reading
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Simple tools
There are certain things I very much like about old-school unix software. I’m talking about the command-line utilities that were each designed to do one thing very well. To accomplish a more complex task, or in modern lingo, “workflow,” you could easily combine several programs, sending the output of one to the input of another, Continue reading
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Symiliptic report August 30
Building the Sixth Republic Creating the sixth republic out of some of the fragments of the fourth and the fifth is a generational project. Like the first republic, we tried to avoid the characteristics of society that resulted in the former problems. For us, that meant the many problems that were present even at the Continue reading
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2025
“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.” “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is Continue reading
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The crisis
Dornbusch’s law: “The crisis takes longer to happen than you can possibly imagine, then happens quicker than you can possibly imagine.” Rüdiger “Rudi” Dornbusch 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 Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but 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.
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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com