Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
Top Categories > literature
#all #programming #history #startups #technology #science #life #literature #architecture #travel #creative #design #comics #cartography #finance #AI #indiehacker Muted Categories [alt+←][alt+→]
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
The Power of an Audacious Goal I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love pursuing opportunities that take me beyond my comfort zone. The funny thing about going beyond your comfort zone is that once you’ve done it once or twice, you redefine your comfort...
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
a month ago
Josh Thompson
Load Testing your app with Siege Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires authentication to access. Today, we’ll figure out how to use siege to visit many unique URLs on our page, and to get benchmarks on that process. I’ll next figure out performance...
Anecdotal Evidence
'First of All a Student of Human Nature' “Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The...
9 months ago
15
9 months ago
“Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The best writers, the ones who compel us to read their work across a lifetime, whose thoughts become our own and who at last become teachers and companions, are those who work in two media: words...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects' “My bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past, all remembered with...
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
“My bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past, all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J. Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light' Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten than the others, though in 1939 he...
The Marginalian
The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds — enchanting emblems of the water cycle that makes this rocky planet a living world, drifting across our shared dome as if exhaled by some lovesick god. That we should have such a...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In...
2 weeks ago
4
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life) This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...
Ben Borgers
tmrw
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Amuse and Gratify Her Own Self' In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already...
a year ago
12
a year ago
In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already suggesting themes that would go on preoccupying her:   “All things pass Love and mankind is grass”.   In scripture, grass is the default metaphor for the transience of life. In the...
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
51
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...
The Elysian
Week 7: Boost your essays all over the internet
8 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
Escaping Flatland
Reading challenging books with kids is fun and probably useful I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three...
8 months ago
23
8 months ago
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. “I have looked a little in books,” she said.
Ben Borgers
You Might Be Right, But Shut Up
over a year ago
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...
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
29
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Book You Know You Don’t Understand' Some thirty years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted me to...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Some thirty years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted me to write a feature story for my newspaper about him and the small-press book he had written. Frank had been lobbying me for weeks by telephone. He was middle-aged but carried himself...
Josh Thompson
Mentors and Attitude Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time. Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
53
a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher, independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible.  The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds is not much help.  But luckily we have Xenophon, a close...
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist? The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow. Then, I left the...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow. Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did. Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
60
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing) Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing: what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently I feel...
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."
The Marginalian
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar' When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
6 months ago
41
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...
Ben Borgers
I Miss Google Classroom
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Signs His Name in Sparks' By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called “Muny Light." At home he was a welder, specializing in wrought-iron railings. His aesthetic sense could be summarized in a single word: big. Or heavy. Everything he built was...
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
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
27
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....
Blog -...
Book Review - Owning Your Own Shadow The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal development. According to the classic resource Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, “The shadow is that which has not entered adequately into...
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
The American Scholar
All Talk Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC. This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
Josh Thompson
Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots. Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at...
Ben Borgers
How You Perceive the World
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive' A Jewish friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the world is making...
a year ago
22
a year ago
A Jewish friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the world is making concentration on other things difficult.  . . . I wish I could tune the news out. But the stakes for the future of Israel and of Jewish life generally are too great for me to be...
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later! What are bollards The what and the why in a single image: The what and why in a...
Ben Borgers
gerp
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
50
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Mandelstam Dances Barefoot in the Snow Alone' “In the end like all great poets he became a jester”  Not the usual encomium one expects for Osip...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“In the end like all great poets he became a jester”  Not the usual encomium one expects for Osip Mandelstam, dead at age forty-seven in a Soviet camp, but the eulogist is Zbigniew Herbert, a congenitally ironic poet, ever aware of the comic in the appalling. For my birthday I...
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night.  The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example. Hippias is...
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith “Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
a year ago
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Lay a foundation Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is just another way of saying “easy things are easier to do than harder things”. Revelatory, I know. Similarly, I wrote a long time ago that: We tell ourselves we can’t accomplish...
The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly "Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
6 months ago
32
6 months ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
News from the Universe I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special bucket-list effort I had no particular intention of making. Though now I might. It feels a bit like I’ve just seen giraffes in the wild without going to Africa. You’ve probably seen some of...
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl "If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Amber of His Style' Isaac Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays and reviews...
8 months ago
48
8 months ago
Isaac Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays and reviews -- Portraits (1931), Criticism (1932), Memories (1953) – with a promise of more to come. MacCarthy’s reputation in the U.S. is almost sub-atomic. Devotees of Bloomsbury think of hm...
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
Ben Borgers
Couch Guy
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things' “Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every possible situation. Montaigne.”  I could have signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life "At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
9 months ago
23
9 months ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines' When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took...
3 days ago
6
3 days ago
When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could write about any stray...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Companionable Room' I had a minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books stored...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
I had a minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books stored off-site in the Library Service Center I got this message: “No items can fulfill the submitted request.” That made no sense and I couldn’t figure out a way around the roadblock, so I...
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
17
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Right Things in the Right Order' “But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are so well done, but because in each case the artist has arranged exactly the right things in the right order. The choice of subject matter has been at least half of the achievement....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Brief, Dry, Almost Colorless Account ' The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and...
a year ago
28
a year ago
The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and author of A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II (1951) – has sent me back to Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma stories. Herling-Grudziński in 1971...
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
Josh Thompson
An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers) Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen on The Climber’s Guide) (Warning to mobile users: big gif) In case you didn’t guess, or you guessed wrong… I’m shooting tons of video for a course. It’s going to be awesome. It’s...
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
34
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
Fancy Quotation Marks
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
HEY’s Fun Names
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. ...
over a year ago
44
over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. 1. Roman plays.  Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night.  That “end of night” is death.  The existence of death makes everything hateful and nullifies the value of anything else.  I gotta say that 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
Endling: A Poem I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas... Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 days ago
4
2 days ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month. I did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
Blog -...
Book Review - Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby meticulously shares the...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby meticulously shares the journey of Kobe Bryant, from ancestral influences up through his final game in the NBA. He is a clear fan of Kobe’s inarguable work ethic, but he allows readers to reinforce their...
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
sbensu
Enterprise sales meets product development What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide and more of a cautionary tale.
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two things: The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence Most dangerous books of 2016 Tactical Silence I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
Date Picker Details
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
yesterday
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice. I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz Playing with dolls The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
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
36
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...
This Space
Favourite books 2020 Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone exceeds the number of books I'm able to read in a year let alone the number from which it was presumably narrowed down. This is why I suggested a couple of years ago such pages choose...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay' “A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says,...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
“A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre to which no reader under sixty...
The American Scholar
Guillermo The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play... I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy.  Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do.  If we...
The Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
Josh Thompson
Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing? A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it. This is an odd...
Ben Borgers
A Small Life Radius
over a year ago
sbensu
We need visual programming. No, not like that. Why do we keep building visual programming environments? Why do we never use them? What should we do...
5 months ago
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance "Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daft in a Socially Useful and Quite Pleasant Way' A young man and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to discourage...
6 months ago
64
6 months ago
A young man and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to discourage them. Nor do I want to encourage costly foolishness. He’s twenty-one, my age when I indulged in a similar fantasy half a century ago. With a poet and his wife – hardly the most...
This Space
No safe landing A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
2 months ago
39
2 months ago
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that as a critic he is conservative but as a novelist he is radical. The second claim may not be controversial but the first will come as a surprise to those who remember what he said...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds' A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on...
7 months ago
49
7 months ago
A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker moments I wish I could.” Never a...
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books. Related but in a different...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work "Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Relief, Joy, or Nostalgia' “Of course, no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a specific...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
“Of course, no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a specific time in one’s life, and the particular book’s smell, typeface, and paper can be as much a part of the experience as one’s physical and emotional circumstances.”  I used to think...
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise' John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):  “Rexroth and Patchen and Fearing—their mothers Perhaps could distinguish their sons from the others, But I am unable. My inner eye...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone "The people we love are built into us."
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2013 I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
47
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right: Real...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
5 days ago
8
5 days ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Express It As Nearly As I Can' Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the...
3 weeks ago
14
3 weeks ago
Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the blogosphere. This would be around 2006, the year I launched Anecdotal Evidence. The proprietor and I exchanged a few emails. He was a reader though his blog was not exclusively devoted...
Wuthering...
The Nicomachean Ethics - moderate Aristotle - clarity within the limits of the subject matter I will borrow the quotation from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics I found on p. 186 of Gary Paul...
a year ago
42
a year ago
I will borrow the quotation from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics I found on p. 186 of Gary Paul Morson’s extraordinary new study of the ethics if Russian literature: Our discussion will be adequate if it achieves clarity within the limits of the subject matter.  For precision...
Josh Thompson
On Friction warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want. We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on. One of the...
Ben Borgers
Do You Subvocalize?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over 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
68
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Lead the Thoughts Into Domestic Privacies' A friend tells me a newspaper is looking for a fulltime obituary writer and she thinks it would be...
a year ago
11
a year ago
A friend tells me a newspaper is looking for a fulltime obituary writer and she thinks it would be an ideal job for me. I’m not in the market but she’s right. Good obituaries are small-scale biographies and always a privilege to write. The first thing I wrote as a newspaper...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever' Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I have seen in person,...
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
67
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...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of recommended books, but they come and go with time. This list is sorta ‘older’, circa 2021. 1 A newer/different list is available here These are a collection of books that come up in...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it? I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party.  I will rejoin the party planning momentarily. The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel about an extended family.  The main plot is the teenage love triangle, but...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death' I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
22
a month ago
I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished, no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without once using any of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Diana Steads Him Nothing, He Must Stay' For earned emotional intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you...
a year ago
13
a year ago
For earned emotional intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you can hardly outdo A.E. Housman, as recounted by one of his students in Richard Perceval Graves’ A. E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet (1979):   “One morning in May, 1914, when the trees in...
Wuthering...
Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways? He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world...
a year ago
50
a year ago
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world is animate and full of deities.  They say he discovered the seasons of the year, and divided the day into 365 days.  (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, p. 12,...
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
16
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.
Ben Borgers
Ben-Edit
over a year ago
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
39
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...
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...
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something' Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the other...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes' Some fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:  “I envied those past...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Some fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:  “I envied those past ages of the world When, as I thought, the energy in things Shone through their shapes, when sun and moon no less Than tree or stone or star or human face Were seen but as fantastic...
Ben Borgers
Bubble Tea Snobbery
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Writing Tasks Down
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Single Line of Calm' Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned the book but not the cash. It...
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds... "But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Befriend Time: The Gospel of Pete Seeger and Nina Simone "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
a year ago
This Space
Atheism of the novel "Here it comes: the information dumping..." From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest...
a year ago
35
a year ago
"Here it comes: the information dumping..." From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest novel, the part that is commentary on his attempt to destroy a commercially successful novel emulating "the style that The Guardian liked and promoted": The narrator is a young...
ben-mini
IMG_0416 Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
a month ago
1
a month ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app. The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Garish, Clownish, Bizarre, Stills Blocks Away' Thirty years ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The river...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Thirty years ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The river there is serpentine and the city paved a walking path along its southern shore that smoothed out some of the curves. Every day I walked two miles along the asphalt trail, turned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Least Appealing Aspects of Our Species' The twentieth century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
The twentieth century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances were extraordinary – antibiotics, insulin, the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Airplanes, television, computers, space exploration. And yet Guy Davenport was not being needlessly morbid when he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom' I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people...
a year ago
24
a year ago
I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists, super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph McElroy. That each of...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle' It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov on May 6, 1923:  “No, life is no quivering quandary! Here under the moon things are bright and dewy. We are...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being' A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing. It’s as though AI created them.” No...
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
2
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea "The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
6 months ago
24
6 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
41
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...
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
10
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How It Sounds When Read Out Loud' Our eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem written...
a month ago
20
a month ago
Our eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem written seventy-five years earlier and picked students to read aloud each of its four, eight-line stanzas. She suggested we pay attention to who is speaking, as the poem is written as a dialogue...
Josh Thompson
Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate. Those of you who love exercising for the...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate. Those of you who love exercising for the sake of exercising - you can stop reading now. This information is probably not relevant to you. Those of you who don’t like to exercise, but know you really should exercise...
Ben Borgers
Reading with RSS
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture' “Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.” Understandably, Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or destroying books, even...
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
“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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learned to Dance' Hugh Kenner glosses a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Hugh Kenner glosses a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by reference to Newton’s second law of motion (published in 1687 in his Principia Mathematica, one year before Pope’s birth) and “numerous points of disequilibrium”:  “True ease in writing...
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy You're welcome.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sodding Good and Touching Was the Poem' Kingsley Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father published his...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
Kingsley Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father published his first and finest novel, Lucky Jim. Three days later, Philip Larkin completed “Born Yesterday” (The Less Deceived, 1955) and dedicated it to the little girl:  “Tightly-folded bud, I...
Wuthering...
Books I read in March 2024 - Literature was a game of pillaging, and this book showed it. A nice little run at Persian literature this month.  And I am reading in Portuguese again,...
8 months ago
27
8 months ago
A nice little run at Persian literature this month.  And I am reading in Portuguese again, slowly, slowly. PERSIAN LITERATURE, MOSTLY CLASSICAL Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1110),  Abolqasem Ferdowsi – See here for notes on this big epic in Dick Davis’s translation. The...
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Grand Marxist Stalin Did Ten In' In one of the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990,...
a week ago
8
a week ago
In one of the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990, 2008), Robert Conquest (1917-2015) writes matter-of-factly: “We are told in recent Soviet articles that on 12 December 1937 alone, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned 3,167 death...
The American Scholar
The Wonder of It All In search of awe The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a legendary author who has...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
Josh Thompson
How To Procfile: Run Just a Single Process Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000 RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec puma -C ./config/puma_development.rb -e development devlog: tail -f ./log/development.log mailcatcher: ruby -rbundler/setup -e...
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
3 months ago
18
3 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers).  Both movements were popular in the Roman Republic as...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof). I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
Josh Thompson
12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others who did something similar, and discussed all the benefits. I’ve found myself struggling with creating something and then making it public. (Public here, on another project, or at...
Josh Thompson
"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling" Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer to sport as “lead” climbing from here on out. Sorry, trad climbers). If someone is enjoying top roping, (or bouldering) why should they take on the work of learning to lead climb,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth' “If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The...
12 months ago
14
12 months ago
“If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The late Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too often earns contempt...
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind "A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo' A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
6 months ago
48
6 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
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
The American Scholar
Moondance Experience the marvel that is The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
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
43
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.”...
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
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
33
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
'A Master Etcher of Human Portraits' In celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22, 1919, seventeen...
a year ago
13
a year ago
In celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22, 1919, seventeen poets and friends were asked to contribute to a symposium published a day earlier in the New York Times Book Review. All but Robert Frost contributed. Amy Lowell wrote: “A realist,...
The Marginalian
From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer "I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Publishing my Fall 2022 class notes
a year ago
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
32
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...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis "On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what...
a year ago
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Is My Ambition Here' Does anyone still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965,...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Does anyone still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965, when Miss Wagy had us memorize it in eighth-grade English. The poem is irresistible for recitation, whether privately in times of self-doubt or at the Kiwanis luncheon: “I am...
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and... Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symposium is fiction, a long story.  It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
ribbonfarm
Bangalore Meetup Report Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal...
6 months ago
1
6 months ago
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal for organizing. I think this is the first meetup I’ve done since the last Refactor Camp in 2019. It was kinda last minute, which is why I only posted on Substack rather than here...
Ben Borgers
Tufts & Change Makers
over a year ago
The American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites The post A Toothsome...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites The post A Toothsome Tale appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
Arthur Krystal My review of two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
My review of two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some Unfinished Chaos: The Lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald – is published in Ron Slate’s On the Seawall.
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
9 months ago
57
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?...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Deliquescence of Our Quartz-like Loves!' A chemical engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
A chemical engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word entered English in the eighteenth century and its original context was strictly scientific: deliquescence occurs when a substance absorbs moisture from the air and becomes a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Simply Bad Prose' “It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78)...
10 months ago
32
10 months ago
“It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture “celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
The American Scholar
“Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Flowering Shrubs of His Letters' To some writers we feel an unbudgeable loyalty that defies critical understanding and even good...
a year ago
10
a year ago
To some writers we feel an unbudgeable loyalty that defies critical understanding and even good taste. I can’t defend my love of Sherwood Anderson’s stories and no longer feel the need to do so. At some point a reader gives up trying to impress others with his sophistication,...
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
3 weeks ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Dancing Naked in the Mind Field Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, the autobiography of Kary Mullis, published in 1998, is...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, the autobiography of Kary Mullis, published in 1998, is reminiscent of another Nobel Prize winning autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!. Dr. Mullis and Dr. Feynman had a great deal in common, including their incomprehensible...
Ben Borgers
Daily Habits
over a year ago
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
7 months ago
30
7 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Overconsumed Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard The post...
3 weeks ago
15
3 weeks ago
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard The post Overconsumed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World' One of the ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is motility....
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
One of the ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
Josh Thompson
Climbing in "decking range" In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you need to be ready for any situation. Here’s how to give a kick-ass lead belay when your climber is close enough to the ground they could potentially deck. This is part of a series on...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master of Light But Stinging Irony' I bought Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
I bought Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that time I was giving up the practice of writing in books, which had always left me a little uncomfortable. Instead, I switched to keeping notebooks. In The Golden Gate I see that I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learn’d to Dance' Alexander Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:  “At length, my Friend (while Time, with...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
Alexander Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:  “At length, my Friend (while Time, with still career, Wafts on his gentle wing his eightieth year), Sees his past days safe out of Fortune’s power, Nor dreads approaching Fate’s uncertain hour; Reviews his life, and in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Craft Is Perfected Attention' The campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan Williams...
a year ago
6
a year ago
The campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan Williams (1929-2008) is in the neighborhood, but he’s always festive, the sort of fellow you could hire to turn around tedious parties or staff meetings. A reader says she is enjoying Williams’...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lack of Self-deception' “There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own sake.”  A fine distinction, one often lost on us. Auden is describing Shakespeare’s Richard III and refers us to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At Least When Practised By a Master' I know several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories and certainly...
a year ago
10
a year ago
I know several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories and certainly not biographies, poetry or other forms of nonfiction. Some are devoted to genre fiction – mysteries, science fiction – and at least one sticks to the “classics” -- Austen and...
The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post Downstream of Fukushima appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be in Some Respect Unique' “[L]et us not forget that ‘public’ denotes a collection not of identical units, but of units...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
“[L]et us not forget that ‘public’ denotes a collection not of identical units, but of units separable and (under close scrutiny) distinguishable one from another.”  I work with professors of statistics, among others, for whom data are the primal substance of the human world. You...
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life "It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
10
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
Josh Thompson
Aggregate and deduplicate your deprecation warnings in Rails We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a 4.2 -> 5.2 upgrade because Rails 4.2 is no longer supported. You, dear reader, have just suddenly found an interest in resolving deprecation warnings, and as one jumps a few Rails...
Ben Borgers
The TikTok Peer Group
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Yellow Butterfly: A Moving Wordless Story About War, Hope, and Keeping the Light Alive In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that...
a year ago
11
a year ago
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that every great moral and spiritual leader in the history of our civilization has shared “the great goal of the internal and external liberation of man* from the evils of war” as Freud...
Josh Thompson
How to be an awesome belayer For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport climber), these are not for you. All of this information is in the context of sport climbing on trustworthy protection - not trad climbing! How to belay when your climber is in...
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For? The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Ben Borgers
Streaks Are Extremely Powerful
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Am I a Gym Bro Now?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Late Night Sprints
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books Read in May 2024 – Some are certainly knowing what they are meaning, some are certainly not... A month without writing anything.  Plenty of reading, though. FICTIONS The Autobiography of an...
6 months ago
57
6 months ago
A month without writing anything.  Plenty of reading, though. FICTIONS The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James Weldon Johnson The Making of Americans (1925), Gertrude Stein – read over the course of months.  The quotation up above is from p. 783.  I will write about...
The Marginalian
Look Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for... How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year 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...
Wuthering...
My cancer - "It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is." Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since the diagnosis last summer, since it was known for a fact that I had something serious, things have moved fast.  It has been like boarding a train.  Once in motion there is no way...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Brio Enough Here' A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or an...
a year ago
13
a year ago
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or an energy drink. We have an Italian restaurant in Houston called Brio. My Italian dictionary translates it as “zest” and the OED gives “liveliness, vivacity, ‘go.’” It suggests...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building) The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better. Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
Wuthering...
Books I read in August 2024 My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature.  Eh, I did all right, but I...
3 months ago
18
3 months ago
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature.  Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save Ibn Battuta’s Travels and the second half of Leg over Leg for some other time.  FICTION The Arabian Nights (14th c.), many hands – In the great Hassan Haddawy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble' “As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper,...
11 months ago
28
11 months ago
“As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead, allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser, some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby. It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Exhausted By Their Long Dying' Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson is a novel of endless conversation, much of it...
a year ago
18
a year ago
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson is a novel of endless conversation, much of it passionate and grief-stricken, spoken by well-educated, middle-class Jewish characters in New York City shortly after World War II. Chief among the title’s Shadows are the victims of the...
The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish... On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge — a tender...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Reticent Humor' “For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry...
a year ago
10
a year ago
“For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry comprised the only notable American literature.”  A provocative statement that sends one scrambling for counter-examples, which aren’t difficult to find. Between 1896 and 1916 appeared...
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
65
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
2023 in review
11 months ago
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
6 months ago
39
6 months ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Twitter Not Found
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fruit of My Studies' I’ve been invited to join an online book club and have politely declined. I even like some of the...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
I’ve been invited to join an online book club and have politely declined. I even like some of the readers who already belong, but by nature I’m not a joiner of anything. As soon as an arrangement among friendly individuals becomes formalized – by that I mean, organized, with...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Bystander Angel, He Records the Dying' My late-life swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission but I’m...
a year ago
9
a year ago
My late-life swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission but I’m unlikely to read Proust for a third time. The shorter form is ideally adapted to my circadian rhythms. I can read two or three before going to bed. Of late, the masters: Chekhov,...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old "Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being."
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
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
12
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...
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: November This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I thought about that as I was conducting my month. This proactive review is in line with Viktor Frankl’s admonition to “live every day as if it were your second chance to live it.”...
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills. Why do social skills matter? Most people get...
Wuthering...
"Socrates gone mad" - my hero Diogenes the Cynic He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the...
a year ago
9
a year ago
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the ass.  He took the example of Socrates to its limit.  Plato is the one who called him “Socrates gone mad,” but in a sense he is just the logical result of thinking through how Socrates...
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 Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,... Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read,...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by Charlotte Lennox.  I had not read it, so I trailed along. An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her brain addled by novels: From...
The Marginalian
Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of...
4 months ago
57
4 months ago
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of the heart graver than making another our higher power. This may seem inevitable — because to love is always to see the divine in each other, because all love is a yearning for the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Probity Was Perhaps the Highest Good' As a newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural Indiana in 1983....
8 months ago
17
8 months ago
As a newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural Indiana in 1983. At the age of eighteen, William Spranger had fatally shot a town marshal, William Miner, in the back with the officer’s service revolver. The jury found Spranger guilty and Judge...
Josh Thompson
Driven by Compression Progress Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!' I was surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine served in...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
I was surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”: “Oldfield, with more than Harpy throat endu’d, Cries, ‘send me, Gods! a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Forms of Evil ’Neath the Sun' Isaac Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He also...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He also runs IWP Books, an eclectic online library of titles ranging from Walter Bagehot and A.E. Housman to Theodor Haecker and Agnes Repplier. In short, he is a civilized man with...
Josh Thompson
How to Wake Up Early An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early (Read Part Two, and Part Three) My...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early (Read Part Two, and Part Three) My understanding of sleep has evolved. When I was born, I spent most of my time asleep (if I recall correctly…) and gradually spent less and less time sleeping, until I was down to about...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of... I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the 2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
a month ago
21
a month ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the 2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin.  Here I will write about the second volume of the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club.  Last time, after reading the first fifth of the novel, I...
Josh Thompson
Dream Big, and Build Optionality We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on. But then we go right along doing all the normal...
Ben Borgers
Sunk Cost Chinese
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Realises How Absolutely Modern the Best of the Old Things Are' My late father-in-law left me The Works of Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American...
10 months ago
18
10 months ago
My late father-in-law left me The Works of Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American edition published by Scribner’s in 1899 when the author was thirty-four years old. As a writer, Kipling was a wonder of nature, as prodigious as Shakespeare and Dickens. To put...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Discussian of General Ideas' A friend who is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve ever...
4 months ago
20
4 months ago
A friend who is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve ever possessed tells me he plans to reread Animal House and 1984. Neither have I read since junior-high school, probably the ideal time for such books, which are among the most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Dead in Their Silences Keep Me in Memory' Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels and stories. I remember chancing on The Castle at the public library in the mid-sixties, knowing nothing about Kafka. Only now do I appreciate the debts incurred – to Kafka, to the Muirs....
The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the... “To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
2 months ago
13
2 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
2
9 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than the alternatives? Trope: The Chosen One What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of...
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own. Previous reviews: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 My review breaks down into a few broad categories: Travel Relationships & Community Leadville Trail...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.) I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
60
6 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden “Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
Josh Thompson
Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code. Here’s the context: In my day-to-day, I work on a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Treated Us Like Adults' I grew up thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my neighborhood....
11 months ago
29
11 months ago
I grew up thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my neighborhood. I never saw writers on television. My parents never talked about them, as they might actors and politicians, who also were unreal. Without thinking too deeply about it, I put...
The American Scholar
Bridges The post Bridges appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months 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.
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration' The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
9
a year ago
The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September 1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty' Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before revealing...
The American Scholar
Tunneling to Freedom In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp The post...
6 months ago
49
6 months ago
In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp The post Tunneling to Freedom appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love “Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of...
a year ago
40
a year ago
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.” We love to forget ourselves, but also to remember what we are: mortal creatures lustful of meaning, radiant with life, eternally alone and eternally...
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
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
a month ago
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun Tenderness and grit The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects' Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote... "War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
11 months ago
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read, and desks I saw, in July - hoping he might tell me, / tell me what the waves don't... Right, July, July, so long ago.  I was on the road a little bit, making literary pilgrimages. ...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
Right, July, July, so long ago.  I was on the road a little bit, making literary pilgrimages.  Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for example, to Herman Melville’s Arrowhead: On this spot, not at this exact desk but in front of this exact window, Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick,...
Josh Thompson
Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20 When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”. But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Ordinary, Helpless, Moody Human Talk' Long ago I came to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Long ago I came to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m no matchmaker and don’t have the soul of a proselytizer. I resent people telling me what I ought to like. On Wednesday two young missionaries came to the front door. One launched his...
The American Scholar
The Writer in the Family The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero The post The Writer in the Family appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book) Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
3 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao Acts of devotion The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
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
2
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Writes On, Day After Day' Clipped from the New York Times, folded and tucked into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was the March...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
Clipped from the New York Times, folded and tucked into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was the March 11, 1976 obituary for L.E. Sissman. The poet had died the previous day, age forty-eight. On the same page is the obituary for the Italian politician Attilio Piccioni, dead the same...
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 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
47
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.
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
54
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality' This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...