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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lasting Vivification of a Word' I’ve read Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the...
9 months ago
15
9 months ago
I’ve read Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the second time in a week, and have decided one might easily write a book about it. The prose is dense with interesting and useful ideas:  “The prevalent weakness, too, of many minds–the...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Goals November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals are an extension of my October goals. October was good ( October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace "Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
10 months ago
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Generous Humanity to the Miserable' Our guests for Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women,...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Our guests for Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women, acquaintances of my wife, both recently divorced. The latter would likely otherwise spend the holiday alone. The only serious expression of gratitude is welcoming others and sharing...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset...
6 months ago
18
6 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Silence Suddenly Erupts in Speech' Zbigniew Herbert visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England, Italy,...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Zbigniew Herbert visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England, Italy, France again and back to Poland. His budget was tight but Herbert was no hedonistic tourist. Nor was he a stuffy academic or critic. The essays in Barbarian in the Garden (1962;...
The American Scholar
Look Out! Why did it take so long to protect The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or 'Deep Work' (Crosspost from... Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work” (Letters to a New Developer). It ended up on Hacker News with 100 comments. I wrote this back in December 2019, forgot to post here until...
Josh Thompson
On Fables: Finishing up Antifragile I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile, says: The great economist Ariel Rubinstein gets the green lumber fallacy - it requires a great deal of intellect and honesty to see things that way. Rubinstein refuses to...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023 The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
65
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long.  Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
On Book August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On...
3 weeks ago
14
3 weeks ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Wisdom As a Kind of Courtesy' “[A] reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is both more...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“[A] reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is both more difficult than unreflective complacency and more interesting than madness.”  That’s how the poet Dick Davis characterized the concerns of Janet Lewis and her husband Yvor Winters in his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?' “During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
“During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France. This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits annihilation and destruction....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Forlorn Hope' Published in the February 1950 issue of Partisan Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature...
a month ago
16
a month ago
Published in the February 1950 issue of Partisan Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature beloved by editors and loquacious respondents – this one titled “Religion and the Intellectuals.” Such things tend to be heavy on posturing and vast generalizations. I might have been...
Ben Borgers
Girl Talk: All Day
over a year ago
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction In Part 1, I examined a few common tropes in...
6 months ago
1
6 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction In Part 1, I examined a few common tropes in stories and suggested that some stories might explore certain questions not because those questions are interesting, but because engaging with those questions allows the story to...
Ben Borgers
Overwhelmed
over a year ago
This Space
The enigma for criticism To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I...
a year ago
35
a year ago
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I watched when I was a kid. The great ones, even when I see them many times, are just an enigma.  Werner Herzog describes a few "bad films" in his autobiography, all from his...
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely... Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015. for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
The Marginalian
Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the... "It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Locked Posts on Ghost
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
On limitations that hide in your blindspot and how to find them
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
Accomplishments and Achievements We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these milestones grow in complexity as we add to our abilities - it’s been a while since I’ve been rewarded for not wetting myself - but they are usually on par with our abilities. For...
This Space
39 Books: 1996 It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my...
7 months ago
35
7 months ago
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the...
The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem? When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less' My middle son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested in “working...
a year ago
11
a year ago
My middle son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark' Philip Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and anxieties of...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Philip Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair, juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard. He will never be hip except...
The Marginalian
Between the Infinite and the Infinitesimal: A Scientist’s Search for the Fulcrum of Faith "The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a...
10 months ago
32
10 months ago
"The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a stage on which drama unfolds, it is the unfolding drama itself."
The American Scholar
What Comes Naturally The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Essence of Good Talk' A longtime reader of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the...
a year ago
5
a year ago
A longtime reader of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the afternoon evaporated. Neither of us brought a script. “Improvisation is the essence of good talk,” writes Max Beerbohm in “Lytton Strachey” (1943). “Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out...
Josh Thompson
Illdefined Success is Unattainable We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting. If it doesn’t...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting. If it doesn’t seem daunting, it’s not much of a project, and you should either ramp it up until it’s daunting, or discard it. So - we have a daunting project. Now what? If you’re like me, you’ll...
The American Scholar
The Sound of the Picturesque Charles Ives and the Visual The post The Sound of the Picturesque appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Steeplejacks Top Out the Chrysler Building,' A friend sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England. I had never...
6 months ago
39
6 months ago
A friend sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England. I had never heard of Fred Dibnah, practitioner of a trade I didn’t know was still extant: steeplejack. In the words of the OED: “a person who climbs steeples or tall chimneys to repair them.”...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Joker; One Who Breaks a Jest' When I encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for further use and...
a year ago
8
a year ago
When I encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for further use and found myself silently singing it to the tune of “Matchmaker,Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof: “Witcracker, witcracker, / Make me a wit . . .” In Shakespeare’s Act V, Scene 4,...
Ben Borgers
Teaching Enthusiasm
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go read this article by James clear. It’s called “ The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action”. I’ve linked it a third time here. Go read it. James starts with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Have to Read the Words' “Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely compare anyone to him.”  I first read War and Peace in the eighth grade in a paperback abridgement. I remember reading it in science class, half-heartedly hiding the book behind the...
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here. Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around. Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
12
a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
Josh Thompson
How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others. A question came up recently: My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appetizing, Clear and Understandable' This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors....
a year ago
11
a year ago
This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors. Not just for diversion, or something to study. I like new vocabularies, rhythms, ways of thinking, associations of every sort.”  Stern (1928-2013) was seventy-one at the time and...
The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our... "Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual + reading recommendations
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Won’t You Turn Your Radio Down' Most of the surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered with...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Most of the surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered with yellow-on-black KTRU bumper stickers. In some cases, students have cut up the stickers and rearranged the letters into the same timeless obscenities we scrawled on the walls of the...
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process The context is smarter than you.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but with a big grain of salt. Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.” This seems to be an aspirational...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Though Lightly Made, Are Hard to Keep' Even the most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion is...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
Even the most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion is endemically human and not always a bad thing. It can serve as a useful motivator. Take the annual farce of New Year’s resolutions, those earnestly mustered plans for...
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals' This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL. yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ —...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books' “Though most of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable, Montaigne...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
“Though most of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable, Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
sbensu
How to avoid breaking APIs The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
a year ago
1
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad' An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
6 months ago
65
6 months ago
An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”   Now there’s a metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
The Marginalian
From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the...
a year ago
7
a year ago
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into...
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on. I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant From Giacometti’s sketch book
3 months ago
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you. That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in July 2023 How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month, but I promise I had a good excuse. ...
a year ago
51
a year ago
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month, but I promise I had a good excuse.  Posts on Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism will appear this month, I swear, or at least hope.  My eventual excuse this month will be, I am afraid, even better. Still, I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be' An old friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we hiked along...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
An old friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
ribbonfarm
Going Sessile One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel beyond local weekend getaways. Almost no destination has a pain/novelty ratio that makes it worth it. On the one hand, I’ve traveled enough that few places hold the promise of...
The American Scholar
Femmes Fantastiques Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
22
6 months ago
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everything is Singing, Blooming and Sparkling' In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no...
7 months ago
42
7 months ago
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no interest in “reviews, conversations about literature, gossip, successes, failures, high royalties,” and adds: “[I]n short, I’ve become a damn fool. My soul seems to be stagnating. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools' “Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
“Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A General Effect of Pleasing Impression' Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of which roughly coincided with the arrival of...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of which roughly coincided with the arrival of Anecdotal Evidence in 2006, literary memes were far more popular. Some were trivial parlor games, a way for certain readers to safely show off without having ever opened a book....
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Knows to Get a Dollar' The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s the title of a story he collected in his first...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s the title of a story he collected in his first book, Back Where I Came From (1938). “Tummler” was published in the February 26, 1938 issue of The New Yorker and begins:  “To the boys of the I.&Y., Hymie Katz is a hero. He is a...
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
On mentors What is it that motivates someone to take on someone and help them grow? Why do some learners have...
a year ago
8
a year ago
What is it that motivates someone to take on someone and help them grow? Why do some learners have that privilege?
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words' At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I routinely...
a year ago
9
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr....
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Every company should be owned by its employees Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
5 months ago
The Marginalian
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife "Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and...
9 months ago
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
a week ago
11
a week ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in both of them.  “[I]t's a similar sense of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Punners and Rhymers Must Have the Last Word' “I cannot but think that we live in a bad age, / O tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”  The...
3 months ago
16
3 months ago
“I cannot but think that we live in a bad age, / O tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”  The Latin tag is proverbial, deriving from Cicero’s Catiline orations: “O times, O manners!” It’s the template for all lamentations. Jonathan Swift is repeating it in the opening lines of...
The Marginalian
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without...
a year ago
32
a year ago
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without fear, without anxiety, but instead with awe and wonder at this strange and beautiful cosmos we find ourselves in."
The American Scholar
“how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Curious Examiner of the Human Mind' On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends had met for the first time just a month earlier at Thomas Davies’ bookshop on Russell Street. Johnson starts the conversation with a dismissal of Thomas Gray (1716-71). In the...
Ben Borgers
Ben Forms
a year ago
The American Scholar
Jason Middlebrook Tree rings in time The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
October 5th, 1582
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30... "We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
45
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
sbensu
The person behind the idea When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
2 weeks ago
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes,...
a year ago
55
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century, perhaps written when Seneca was in...
The Marginalian
The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect "Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
Josh Thompson
Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er) Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to a stranger and say “Excuse me, sir, I noticed that your poor belaying is totally crippling your climber’s ability to try hard, and actively eliminating any hope you had of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where I Went and Cannot Come Again' A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in reference to Chekhov. Dave Lull alerted me to Nabokov’s explication of the word in his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In the second of the four volumes, Nabokov writes:  “No...
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day. I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
Escaping Flatland
Life update + open thread and a few fragments of essays
11 months ago
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019 I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are. Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let the Words Glide Through the Air' Some years ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly...
a year ago
28
a year ago
Some years ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly Estate: The Religious Poetry of Patrick Kavanagh (The Columba Press, Dublin, 2002) by Father Tom Stack. I was grateful because it sent me back to the Irish poet (1904-67) who seems...
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
8 months ago
55
8 months ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
11
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of...
3 months ago
21
3 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work...
10 months ago
11
10 months ago
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation,” Rilke wrote to his young correspondent. The great difficulty of loving arises from the great difficulty of bridging the abyss between...
The American Scholar
Chris Combs Surveillance state The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
a month ago
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
4 months ago
1
4 months ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately? Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
ben-mini
Omotenashi In 2021, I found myself sitting with some new customers at a sushi bar in Austin, TX. The waitress...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
In 2021, I found myself sitting with some new customers at a sushi bar in Austin, TX. The waitress came to our table and placed a bottle of sake that looked like this: I was in complete awe! Our customers must’ve found me crazy as I silently inspected this newfound container....
The American Scholar
Up Close The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish That He’d Arrived Much Sooner' I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s...
a year ago
6
a year ago
I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s consider each part of the epithet. “Brilliant”? Without question. He wrote three incontestably good poems but Coleridge is an early specimen of the “public intellectual,” bristling...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not the Head But the Seat' My late friend David Myers  taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported into English,...
a year ago
14
a year ago
My late friend David Myers  taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported into English, sitzfleisch. The etymology is straightforward: sitzen (“to sit”) + Fleisch (“flesh”). In other words, what we sit on -- the buttocks, ass or derriere. Metaphorically, the OED tells us,...
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
93
a year ago
I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon. FICTION Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann The Long Valley (1938) & The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
The Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions Our calendar of upcoming events.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner The post A Rebel...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders "Into the space ship, Granny."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Flow, Like Waters After Summer Show’rs' “As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
“As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is very fine weather,’ and the other says, ‘Yes;’—one blows his nose, and the other rubs his eye-brows; (by the way, this is very much in Homer’s manner;) such seems to be the case...
sbensu
Breaking changes in JSON APIs A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s. I know that some people like to complain about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Quite Vacant Is a Mind Distress’d' I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this year. I knew a guy in high school who already yearned for retirement despite never having had a job, whereas I’d been working since I was twelve. He wanted to play golf and go...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and... A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met. OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
The Marginalian
How to Make a World: A Poem Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel...
10 months ago
23
10 months ago
Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel like metaphors — they feel like equations equating something previously unseen with something familiar in order to see more deeply into the nature of reality. One morning out on a...
Josh Thompson
Why I use a Kindle Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical issues (depending on something with a battery) or on aesthetic reasons. These are valid issues, of course, but these pale in comparison to the many, many reasons to use a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur' I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
48
a year ago
I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima donna was...
The American Scholar
Changing the Lens Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shitcan the Sass' George Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567): “I write...
6 months ago
35
6 months ago
George Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567): “I write but of familiar stuffe because my stile is lowe.” Today we call him a master of the “plain style,” the opposite of ornate poeticizing, along with his contemporaries George...
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post. ...
Robert Caro
In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars...
a year ago
1
a year ago
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars from people who cannot afford it.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy' When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just...
3 months ago
38
3 months ago
When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations, strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise us. An Australian, Clarence Caddell, has...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist' Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary. I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
The American Scholar
The Scales The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Escaping Flatland
On having more interesting ideas “To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk...
7 months ago
69
7 months ago
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least...
sbensu
Designing for support teams Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
10 months ago
1
10 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Here the Nothingness Shows Through' I watched an old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day...
8 months ago
47
8 months ago
I watched an old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day and his best man, Stanley, gives him a jigsaw puzzle as a wedding gift. Oliver dismisses it at first as “childish balderdash” and promptly gets hooked putting it together along with,...
Josh Thompson
How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook' A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd — Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017 Since then, I occasionally...
Ben Borgers
“21” by Patrick Roche
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2003 This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Entertain As Well As Illuminate' “Here’s a thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”  Bracing words to...
a year ago
8
a year ago
“Here’s a thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”  Bracing words to encounter while writing a book review. The writer is the poet David Mason. Quoted is the opening sentence of his review/essay “Two Poet-Critics,” devoted to Clive James and John...
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong "You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About' A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I sympathize. I remember reading...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing' I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always...
7 months ago
31
7 months ago
I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting earworm. Much of this...
Josh Thompson
Input metrics vs. Output metrics It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all. So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me. I don’t believe...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Friends They May Become To-morrow' “New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
“New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of...
Wuthering...
Readalongs I wish someone else would organize - Cuban literature, August Wilson plays, and many more The glory days of book blogs were full of “challenges.”  I hosted several: Scottish literature,...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
The glory days of book blogs were full of “challenges.”  I hosted several: Scottish literature, Italian, Austrian, Scandinavian, Portuguese, always limited to the 19th century and earlier to keep the scope manageable.  The idea was that I read a lot, while others were invited to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Favourable Enough for a Writer' Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men...
The American Scholar
Heart of Semi-Darkness A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the... On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl...
a year ago
6
a year ago
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet. The year is 1836. No university anywhere in the...
The Marginalian
The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with... "We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather...
11 months ago
The Marginalian
The Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music “Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote...
a year ago
8
a year ago
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the Sahara Desert. No aliveness animates the nocturne with more grandeur than the migration of birds....
This Space
The opposite direction The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact...
over a year ago
33
over a year ago
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact paperback from Spurl Editions came just as I had given up hope of ever discussing what I believed had long fascinated me about a feature of Bernhard's prose-texts. A fascination...
ribbonfarm
Imagination vs. Creativity I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with....
5 months ago
1
5 months ago
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with. Imagination is the ability to see known possibilities as being reachable from a situation. Creativity is the ability to manufacture new possibilities out of a situation. The two...
Ben Borgers
Majoring in more
a year ago
The American Scholar
The Rescuer In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
32
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books I Read in June 2023 If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or...
a year ago
58
a year ago
If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or Tall Tales (4th C. BCE), Diogenes the Cynic, tr. Guy Davenport Cynics (2008), William Desmond - for an entry in a series aimed at students, surprisingly well written.  It helps that...
The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of... To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
The American Scholar
The Power of the Common Soul Ives, music-making, and hope The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Always Singular, and Never Trite or Vulgar' “He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but rarely Merry, at any sensible Rate, seldom heard to break a Jest; and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the Levity of it: His Gravity was Natural and without Affectation.”  The...
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes. because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave. Kristi and I tend to stick...
sbensu
Everybody is the main character People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
a year ago
1
a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All' Spices meant salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there was no...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
Spices meant salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later. For some baked goods, breakfast...
The American Scholar
“The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of... "We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chap Who Doesn't Care Much About Anything' Below the masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Below the masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed announcement:  “Today is National Orangutan Day. The apes are the largest tree-dwelling animals on Earth. They spend 90 percent of their time in trees, even sleeping in leafy nests. No wonder...
Ben Borgers
Dark Sky
over a year ago
The American Scholar
A Poet of the Soil The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first...
2 months ago
40
2 months ago
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
The Marginalian
Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard... An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are Many Real Things of Beauty Here' A reader sent me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
A reader sent me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating its opposite, ugliness, exactly, though his prose definitely leans in that direction. Only a graduate-school alumnus could come up with such silly ideas. Rather, he seemed to be saying that...
Ben Borgers
Doubly Parasocial Relationships
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'And the Third Is To Be Kind.' A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude (David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the...
a year ago
21
a year ago
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude (David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the late publisher/poet’s photographs of artists well-known and obscure. Williams was no snob when it came to talent and genius. He photographs Stevie Smith, Guy Davenport...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken' “This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
“This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and understanding, and often still do. The...
The American Scholar
“The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1994 Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer "When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
11
a year ago
"When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
a year ago
Wuthering...
Stein's style - Mostly no one will be wanting to listen, I am certain Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every one, not any I am just now hearing, and...
6 months ago
67
6 months ago
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every one, not any I am just now hearing, and it is so completely an important thing, it is a complete thing in understanding, I am going on writing, I am going on now with a description of all whom Alfred Hersland came to know...
The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
2 months ago
37
2 months ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken "The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1 Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I had. I initiated each conversation with someone that I wanted to learn from. Most I had some prior relationship with (I.E. I had met them, or I knew someone who knew them). This was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Given Us to Keep Is Lost' Howard Nemerov reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at the...
6 months ago
18
6 months ago
Howard Nemerov reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at the opposite end of Massachusetts, near Lee in the Berkshires. I was there to interview Paul Metcalf (1917-99) and his wife Nancy for my newspaper in the summer of 1988. Paul was a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Less Energy to Do Wrong' On his thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal: “Thirty years...
10 months ago
13
10 months ago
On his thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal: “Thirty years old! Now I’m convinced I shall not escape death.”  At thirty I was still immortal, blundering through life, plan-less but confident I could transcend mere death. I don’t remember my...
This Space
The end of literature, part three On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there ever since. At that time a mild alternative to barbarism was being put to death. Back in 2015 when, against all odds, a lifelong socialist and campaigner against racism and...
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe … How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It...
6 months ago
46
6 months ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Benefits of helplessness The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best friend (who I happen to be married to), and I’ve got a pretty cool job to boot. That’s the “big three”, right? (Relationships, work, location.) Yep. Except from Thursday through...
The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison "We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
8 months ago
This Space
Drowning is Fine by Darren Allen For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born in 1932 to a German-speaking Jewish family in what was also Paul Celan’s hometown, Czernowitz, then in Romania, now in Ukraine, and who wrote exclusively in Hebrew after he had...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When Young Men Go to Die' Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I...
7 months ago
50
7 months ago
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I was a kid and often fired my brother’s pellet gun. My experience with firearms is entirely second- or third-hand via the movies, which give me the illusion that I know...
The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Such a Touchy, Testy, Pleasant Fellow' One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the past, and sometimes last week. Years ago I wrecked a friendship with a glib remark, a wisecrack that I didn’t even believe but had convinced myself was funny (it was, in fact, but...
Ben Borgers
Website Like a Library
over a year ago
The Perry Bible...
Please The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning "The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
This Space
The disappearance of criticism, part two A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was...
over a year ago
33
over a year ago
A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was reading; by its neutrality of tone, by its calm. Unruffled was another word he used. We all might recognise this feeling while assuming it is admiration, respect, perhaps even...
Ben Borgers
Batching
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality "We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Important Part of Anyone’s Reading' A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages...
2 weeks ago
13
2 weeks ago
A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” – “How do you do it?” – is the one I get when a workman or friend visits my home office where most of my books are shelved: “You read all these?” I can reply with one of...
Ben Borgers
The Web is a Superpower
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Jeremy Denk plays Charles Ives and Blind Tom Wiggins - a pleasing conjunction of Wuthering... More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures. Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox,...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures. Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of insurance executive Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata (c. 1913).  It was a pleasing congruence of Wuthering Expectations themes.  I have nothing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry' I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when...
9 months ago
16
9 months ago
I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
Ben Borgers
Cheating on Field Notes
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products. How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month? Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
The Marginalian
The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the... Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote...
6 months ago
40
6 months ago
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, not yet knowing I too was to become a writer, I found myself wandering the vast cool halls of the Penn Museum. There among the thousands of ancient artifacts was one to...
Wuthering...
there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough - what is knowledge? - Theaetetus and Parmenides The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to...
a year ago
36
a year ago
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to systematically understand, without the help of the revealed truth of religion, difficult concepts like existence and virtue led, almost immediately, to the question of whether anyone can...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion' “Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed,...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return' I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
8
a year ago
I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:  “Greasy, grimy gopher guts! Little dirty birdie feet!”   As in any folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
The American Scholar
Guillermo The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
sbensu
When coordination pays off Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
10
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted' A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
a week ago
14
a week ago
A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that makes us...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Poem Saves Time and Space' Discovering a good writer long after his death is a gift and a betrayal. Gratitude mingles with...
7 months ago
37
7 months ago
Discovering a good writer long after his death is a gift and a betrayal. Gratitude mingles with regret and even guilt. Selfishly, we wish he had truly been our contemporary and we had been smarter and watched him develop as a writer. Instead, we compensate by scrambling after his...
The Elysian
Free speech in the age of social media A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create...
a week ago
7
a week ago
A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create something better.
Anecdotal Evidence
'In a More Just World' Our youngest son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a junior...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Our youngest son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a junior at Rice, he lived off-campus in an apartment. This year he’s back in a dormitory so most of his “housewares” – clothing, dishes and utensils, tchotchkes – have been heaped in his...
The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL' The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard reviews various twentieth-century...
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It "Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
Wuthering...
The sophists and their rehabilitation - they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their... I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for...
a year ago
32
a year ago
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for centuries in the history of philosophy as, following Plato (but not Socrates), hucksters, they, or some of them, are now taken seriously as an intermediate step between the cosmological...
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Ben Borgers
Mornings Set the Tone
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy "Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
a year ago
53
a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and... I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
a week ago
14
a week ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this chunk up. In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power "There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
The Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world? Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Misrepresenting the Past and Its Culture' I was still a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du jour in the sixties. Television was a...
a year ago
6
a year ago
I was still a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du jour in the sixties. Television was a “cool” medium, according to Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). The cooler the medium, McLuhan wrote, “the more someone has to uncover and engage in the media” and...
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
The American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt The fabric of life The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
bell hooks on Love "We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until...
a year ago
9
a year ago
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago... All awakening to love is spiritual awakening."
The Elysian
The future according to artists The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
21
3 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which... “Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
a month ago
22
a month ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
Josh Thompson
Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the topics was using “whole values”, instead of being “primative obsessed”. The example Avdi gave was clear as day. He used a course with a duration attribute to show the...
Josh Thompson
Type. Publish. Done. Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly.  He said, in short: I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...
Wuthering...
The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How...
over a year ago
38
over a year ago
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How tastes, or circumstances, had changed in the seventy years since Wealth, our last Aristophanes play.  The political and social satire is gone, the sexual and scatological jokes are...
Blog -...
Book Review - Iron John Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of ardent fans, but I...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of ardent fans, but I reluctantly admit I am not one of the more zealous. Although the book has high points – the classic story of Iron John as put down by the Grimm brothers stands out to me, as well as an...
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Example of Abundant Good Nature' The Rev. Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:  “I...
a month ago
15
a month ago
The Rev. Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:  “I am seventy-two years of age, at which period there comes over one a shameful love of ease and repose, common to dogs, horses, clergymen and even to Edinburgh Reviewers. Then an idea...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Almost Sure to Please Others' I prefer the prose to the verse of two great poets: John Keats and Marianne Moore. That’s heresy, I...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
I prefer the prose to the verse of two great poets: John Keats and Marianne Moore. That’s heresy, I know, and I’m not trying to be provocative. I can judge only by my frequency of rereading and the resultant pleasure. Keats’ letters are endlessly amusing,...
Josh Thompson
The Present You It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the present you, or the future you. I...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the present you, or the future you. I wish the future me could sit beside the present me, and discuss how I was going about my day. Instead, it’s a rather one-sided conversation. There are obvious choices, like food,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'New Eyes Each Year' From 1955 until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin worked as a librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
From 1955 until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin worked as a librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, eventually becoming its director. Although Larkin complained about the time-consuming nature of the job, taking him away from poetry and other writing,...
The Perry Bible...
The Hare and the Tortoise The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
The American Scholar
Double Exposure On our first memories The post Double Exposure appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred "I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
11 months ago
48
11 months ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
9 months ago
56
9 months ago
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news media following the death of John Pilger reveal the state of journalism in our time. [1] Can you name one living Anglophone journalist whose loss would prompt such widespread notice?...
Josh Thompson
Ruby Tutorial 001 I’m playing with Michael Hartl’s Learn Enough Ruby book. I’ll throw basic things I learn along the...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’m playing with Michael Hartl’s Learn Enough Ruby book. I’ll throw basic things I learn along the way on here. A good starting point is using your command line. I use iTerm2 for my terminal instead of the default Terminal installation. To get up and running in your terminal,...
The American Scholar
“water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People') I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a program like the Flatiron School or the Turing School). I’m a graduate of the Turing School, and have written a lot about the program, like: My reflections on Turing an 8-part guide to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Off to Welter and Waste' The Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the Night of the...
a year ago
9
a year ago
The Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the Night of the Murdered Poets, and he wasn’t among them. In the final stanza of his poem “About the Jews” (trans. G.S. Smith), dating from the 1950s, Slutsky writes:  “From the war I came back safe So...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Review Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals were an extension of October’s goals. I feel comfortable with long-term unchanging goals. They were: Deepen my knowledge of front-end web...
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
42
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes.  Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted. The conceit is as usual excellent.  Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Mouldering Boots of Other Days' The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form,...
9 months ago
46
9 months ago
The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form, usually eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter. The first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. Among English-language poets, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist' My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
23
7 months ago
My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
The American Scholar
The Source The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right... "It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
The American Scholar
A Messy Mix The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes Hope blooms The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic' Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener...
9 months ago
16
9 months ago
Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially biodegradable. Who...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appear to the Public to be Some Sort of Miracle' On Christmas Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:  “I believe in both...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
On Christmas Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:  “I believe in both [Robert] Koch and spermine, and I praise the Lord. Kochines, spermines, etc. all appear to the public to be some sort of miracle that has sprung unexpectedly from someone’s head like...
Ben Borgers
5 Pages a Day
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Agent 37 The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Arid Interrogation' As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers had, so we believed, during World War II. Could we withstand torture? These virtues, touched with Hollywood melodrama, seemed like essential aspects of maturity. We wanted to be...
Josh Thompson
How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim the gifs from >3Mb/each to <1Mb each, so I didn’t. If you’re on mobile, or trying to conserve data, you might want to come back to this one later. I value my attention and focus. I...
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz Playing with dolls The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry' “[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
“[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”  Things get sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling species of serious...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,... I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
41
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries.  I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
47
6 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Known to All But Themselves' Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the...
5 months ago
25
5 months ago
Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the bigger culture. There’s so much I don’t know or understand, and that knowledge of my ignorance no longer bothers me very much. I still like learning things but there was a time when...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar' When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
6 months ago
40
6 months ago
When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where we bought our first house and lived for seven years. The Saratoga Race Course was less than a mile away. So were Yaddo and Broadway, the main drag downtown. We...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along' “Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
“Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think? + links
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Hope This Explanation Is Wrong' One of life’s unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements of...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
One of life’s unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements of words encountered in childhood or youth, and revisited regularly for a lifetime, still inspire delight, while others, in effect, evaporate before we hear them? In the latter...
This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad." By this time I had given up reviewing...
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself' The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the...
4 days ago
5
4 days ago
The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at something he says out of pity and an...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024 A man sets out to draw the world.
a week ago
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right? I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build: I should have done the following...
This Space
The Opposite Direction, a book Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of...
a year ago
43
a year ago
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of this blog.  This is the second collection after This Space of Writing and the title comes from the adolescent Thomas Bernhard's phrase repeated to an official at the labour exchange...
Josh Thompson
My terminal setup note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post. Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup. First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...
Ben Borgers
Basecamp Talks to You
over a year ago
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details. Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
46
a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1989 Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
7 months ago
28
7 months ago
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film. The only thing I remember of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where They Grind the Grain of Thought' Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss...
a year ago
25
a year ago
Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss Rose, Miss Whistler – my teachers, K-6, at Pearl Road Elementary School. Most were young and pretty, more like big sisters than mothers. On the television in Miss Shaker’s class we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense' An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the...
a year ago
6
a year ago
An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband, who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to  go out of town, I would stay with him...
Josh Thompson
Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.) Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article. The internet is littered with tons of fluff pieces talking about sex...
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive? There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them! So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V... “What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
4 weeks ago
12
4 weeks ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
This Space
39 Books: 2018 In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
6 months ago
54
6 months ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
Josh Thompson
Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994) As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...