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This sounds interesting
There’s something new that interests me;I think I need my own PC. I need to gain more oversight —What’s this I hear? A petabyte? Continue reading
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Maybe they really can’t stop lying
Ted Cruz claims:1. He went to Best Buy. This is highly suspect.2. People inside were crying. Oh come on. People drive all the way to a big box store and start crying? 3. They were crying because of the election results. Right. Exactly in line with how people act; there’s an election, they go to… Continue reading
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Pendulums go nowhere
Someone, I forget who, was interviewed on a Boston NPR station yesterday in the wake of the election results. He was some sort of observer of US politics; not a participant. Journalist or pundit or something. Anyway, he pointed out that “politics is a pendulum; it swings one way toward one party then back the… Continue reading
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It would be much more efficient…
Sam Altman is generally regarded as a smart guy, right? I mean, he’s got a lot of money, which is the way we measure smarts here in the US. Have a lot of money, say something, and it’ll be featured in the media. Now he’s claiming that people shouldn’t run open-weight LLMs on their own… Continue reading
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Step back to add perspective
in 2024 Ali Alkhatib wrote Defining AI, a definitely-worth-reading essay about trying to clarify what “AI” (in its current form, 70 years into the use of the damn term). He included this: “I think we should shed the idea that AI is a technological artifact with political features and recognize it as a political artifact… Continue reading
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They’ll just say anything at all
RFK Jr.:“There’s 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize, they don’t produce literature,” Nobel Prizes Mohamed ElBaradei, Peace, 2005Ahmed Zewail, Chemistry, 1999Naguib Mahfouz, Literature, 1988Anwar Sadat, Peace, 1978Peter Brian Medawar, Physiology or… Continue reading
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Yeah but what about the Jewish Space Lasers?
It seems the Federal Communication Commission, or at least the dimwit sycophant installed as the director, has decided that there’s such a thing as “foreign surveillance chips,” and they’re very, very bad. So bad they’re banned! It doesn’t make much sense to just ban a microchip, so they’ve banned the sale of “two gadgets” that… Continue reading
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Happy Anniversary?
Today is a Thursday, but in 1929 October 29th was a Tuesday. That came to be known as “black Tuesday,” and it pretty much marks the beginning of the Great Depression. It’s still called the “great” depression, but it’s far from the only one. The US flavor of capitalism seems to be particularly vulnerable to… 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
- This sounds interesting
- Maybe they really can’t stop lying
- Pendulums go nowhere
- It would be much more efficient…
- Step back to add perspective
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