Technology — Andy Arthur.org

Vatican City is Overrun with Crime Thanks to Its Woke Pope – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Andy | April 16, 2026

Vatican City is Overrun with Crime Thanks to Its Woke Pope – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

As Republicans, we were excited when the Catholic Church elected an American pope. America is the greatest country in the history of the world, and it was absurd that it took 250 years for one of our own to finally be put in charge of the Holy See. Unfortunately, it turns out that Pope Leo XIV is the wrong kind of American—a woke liberal who denounces things like “violence” and “wiping out entire civilizations.” There’s no better evidence of Pope Leo’s liberal failings than Vatican City. Like all Blue cities, it’s overrun with crime. Looking for the perfect Graduation gift? Perhaps you’d enjoy this gorgeous deluxe boxed set of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Shockingly affordable!

The Vatican is in desperate need of criminal justice reform. As of today, any criminal can walk into the Vatican, confess to any crime, immediately be forgiven, and walk out with zero consequences. Any punitive measures are extremely lenient and amount to verbal commitments to pray a few “Hail Marys” or “Our Fathers,” or, at best, the Rosary. In what can only be described as leftist wish fulfillment, there appear to be no prisons in the Vatican, and the only law enforcement agency is the Swiss Guard, who look more like court jesters than a police force.

President Trump, on the other hand, understands that criminals should have to pay for their crimes. That is why he has established a process that forces criminals to pay upwards of $1 million to receive a presidential pardon.

It should come as no surprise that the Vatican’s soft-on-crime policies have resulted in a massive immigration problem. Thanks to its porous border with Italy, millions of migrants from around the world flock to the Vatican every year. In fact, even the year-round population of the Vatican seems to be entirely made up of immigrants, as its birth rate is virtually zero. With the entire city-state being run by immigrants, it’s no wonder the Vatican is a sanctuary city home to St. Peter’s Basilica—one of the largest sanctuaries on Earth.

Building the System/360 Mainframe Nearly Destroyed IBM – IEEE Spectrum

Andy | April 3, 2026

Building the System/360 Mainframe Nearly Destroyed IBM – IEEE Spectrum

In the years leading up to its 7 April 1964 launch, however, the 360 was one of the scariest dramas in American business. It took a nearly fanatical commitment at all levels of IBM to bring forth this remarkable collection of machines and software. While the technological innovations that went into the S/360 were important, how they were created and deployed bordered on disaster. The company experienced what science policy expert Keith Pavitt called “tribal warfare”: people clashing and collaborating in a rapidly growing company with unstable, and in some instances unknown, technologies, as uncertainty and ambiguity dogged all the protagonists.

Ultimately, IBM was big and diverse enough in talent, staffing, financing, and materiel to succeed. In an almost entrepreneurial fashion, it took advantage of emerging technologies, no matter where they were located within the enterprise. In hindsight, it seemed a sloppy and ill-advised endeavor, chaotic in execution and yet brilliantly successful. We live in an age that celebrates innovation, so examining cases of how innovation is done can only illuminate our understanding of the process.

This is a rather fascinating story about the history of the technology.

Knowing Coding is Important.

Andy | March 17, 2026

In the modern era, it’s important that everybody know how to do a little computer programming. Not an expert on every langauge, but basic profinency on the concepts behind computing coding can make individuals much more productive. It’s hard to describe how many times before, I’ve used little bits of code to make my life better, to automate processes, to find solutions to problems that nobody else has addressed.

The primary purposes of color television are as follows:

Andy | March 1, 2026

To sell laundry soap.
To sell imported cars.
To sell politicians.
To remind the public that law enforcement and government agencies are important, and must be expanded and given more lavish benefits.

“What Should a Well-Informed Person Know About Computers?” — by Brian Kernighan

Andy | February 22, 2026

Invited presentation at a meeting of the Old Guard of Summit NJ on January 5, 2021. Brian Kernighan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and one of the original Unix pioneers at Bell Labs. Brian described his experiences teaching "Computers in Our World," a first year course designed to inform non-technical students how modern hardware, software and communications systems operate, and their ubiquitous role in today's world. It was a 45-minute version of his one-semester talk!