Anecdotal Evidence
'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy'
When I’m
told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me
dies. Just...
3 months ago
When I’m
told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me
dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations,
strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise
us. An
Australian, Clarence Caddell, has...
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
7 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Balance Sheet of Conscience'
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had...
a year ago
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had no doubt at all that I’d end up in a camp, and yet I wasn’t much interested
in them. Could I have been wearied in advance, by the monotony and dullness of
mass atrocities?”
That...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Joker; One Who Breaks a Jest'
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and...
a year ago
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and found myself silently singing it to the tune of “Matchmaker,Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof:
“Witcracker, witcracker, / Make me a wit . . .” In Shakespeare’s Act V, Scene 4,...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
11 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beauty, Clarity, Consolation, Truth'
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book
critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you...
a year ago
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book
critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you straight. Their world is
strictly binary -- like/dislike,
good/bad – and they are fond of superlatives: the best/the worst. Dissent sparks
crackdowns and there is no appeals...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Depression
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Midst the Pomp and Toil of War'
I learned
that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never
read...
6 months ago
I learned
that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never
read poetry. I was a senior in high school. Days before we went to see the
Oscar-winning film Patton, he delivered
a lecture on the general’s military prowess, anti-Semitism and desire
to...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
6 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years.
the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
Robert Caro
In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars...
a year ago
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars from people who cannot afford it.
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
5 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight
Following Robert Frost into the depths
The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths
The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
‘A Pocket Universe’
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,”...
7 months ago
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,” a 1969 poem by James Hayford (Star in the Shed Window: Collected Poems 1933-1988, New England Press, 1989):
“May the next book you read
Be what you need—
“A pocket...
The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous...
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
11 months ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...
over a year ago
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
2 months ago
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
Robert Caro
Alone on the Desert Her Dream Fades
A lack of basic infrastructure forced a 74‒year-old widow to carry a water bucket a mile-and-a-half...
a year ago
A lack of basic infrastructure forced a 74‒year-old widow to carry a water bucket a mile-and-a-half back to her tiny shack.
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poet's Hope'
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville...
7 months ago
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville scholar. We exchange emails several times each year, usually devoted
to what we are reading. This week she reported reading some of the writers and books I’ve
mentioned recently at...
The American Scholar
Sheep Jones
Swimming below the surface
The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Swimming below the surface
The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
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
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief'
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
5 days ago
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or
even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt
seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
a year ago
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different
A travel writer’s education
The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
7 months ago
A travel writer’s education
The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist'
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil
Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Minute Passage of Private Life'
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost...
a year ago
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost eighteen years ago. I had it narrowed down to
three or four potential titles but liked the legal/criminological connotation
of “anecdotal evidence,” which is always judged suspect by...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors.
Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
Josh Thompson
Continuous Glucose Monitors: Why & What
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the...
7 months ago
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the rear of my upper arm, usually sparks a question or two, I’ve usually stumbled through a response, now I can simply pass this page along to anyone who asks.
Since maybe 2018, every...
Escaping Flatland
On limitations that hide in your blindspot
and how to find them
9 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work...
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be interested in humans and to be in touch with yourself as a human."
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
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...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House
...
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
a year ago
"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
'It Is a Rite of Finitude'
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and...
7 months ago
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
7 months ago
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
This Space
The withdrawal of the novel
We are subjected to that which does not exist
Simone Weil
When an old friend who...
over a year ago
We are subjected to that which does not exist
Simone Weil
When an old friend who has drunk deep from the puddle of the New Atheism complained on social media that religious people believe things that are “inventions, fairy stories, not real, made up", I was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Stand for the Unacademic'
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and...
9 months ago
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and readers. Something vital was lost when the
profs colonized and laid claim to literature. John Gross puts it like this in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters
(1969; rev. ed....
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
"War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being."
Blog -...
Welcome to Anchor Point Blog
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that
self-discovery does not have to be...
over a year ago
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that
self-discovery does not have to be a solo journey. Through this blog men
can connect to resources that will help to enhance their personal
development. Many of these resources have deeply impacted my growth, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory'
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
2 months ago
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older
contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and
the 117-line title poem appeared in The
Massachusetts Review in 1970....
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
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.
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
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...
This Space
The last novel
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his...
over a year ago
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his review of JM Coetzee's The Death of Jesus captures the pervasive anxiety experienced while reading this novel better than even the most detailed plot summary, which is anyway likely...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era'
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,”
“gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists
but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history
traceable, in this...
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
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...
sbensu
The person behind the idea
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
2 weeks ago
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Loss Not to Be Repaired'
“We dined at
our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he
treated...
a year ago
“We dined at
our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he
treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and
untaught. He had a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches,
and a yellow uncurled wig; and his...
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating: An Uncommon Meditation on Presence and the Aperture of Wonder
"Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the...
a year ago
"Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility."
Wuthering...
there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough - what is knowledge? - Theaetetus and Parmenides
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised
me. The early attempts to...
a year ago
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised
me. The early attempts to systematically
understand, without the help of the revealed truth of religion, difficult
concepts like existence and virtue led, almost immediately, to the question of
whether anyone can...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Poem Becomes Molten with Activity'
I’m in debt
to anthologies for much of my education. When you’re young and hungry and
everything is...
a year ago
I’m in debt
to anthologies for much of my education. When you’re young and hungry and
everything is new, such collections are like well-stocked cafeterias. You push
your tray down the line and sample what looks good. Once seated, if a friend
recommends a dish you avoided, you can...
This Space
39 Books: 1998
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
7 months ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
The American Scholar
Such as It Is
The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 days ago
The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Then Came the Barbarians'
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at...
3 months ago
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at least make him sick. When I confront a prose poem I run, though
sometimes I pause to laugh and then run. The question becomes, which is worse:
the poet’s ineptness or his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English'
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All...
a year ago
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the
same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”
It’s
fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Less Energy to Do Wrong'
On his
thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal:
“Thirty years...
10 months ago
On his
thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal:
“Thirty years old! Now I’m convinced I shall not escape death.”
At thirty I
was still immortal, blundering through life, plan-less but confident I could
transcend mere death. I don’t remember my...
The Marginalian
Love Anyway
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the...
9 months ago
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway...
The Marginalian
From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became
The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
a year ago
The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by...
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in...
10 months ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in February. I gotta catch up on my
posts.
One big book
down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible.
TRAVEL, let’s
call it
Black Lamb
and Grey Falcon
(1941), Rebecca...
ribbonfarm
Arbitrariness Costs
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary....
7 months ago
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the...
Ben Borgers
Current Self and Going to Libraries
over a year ago
The American Scholar
A Forgotten Turner Classic
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The...
6 months ago
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The post A Forgotten Turner Classic appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
“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,...
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
The American Scholar
Battle Hymns
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and...
over a year ago
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and emotionally-charged operation to replace my 70-year-old newly-widowed mother-in-law's ancient desktop computer with a easy-for-me-to-manage Chromebook
Update: I posted to r/ChromeOS...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic'
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener...
9 months ago
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated
from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially
biodegradable. Who...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Last of All Last Words Spoken Is, Good-bye'
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course,...
a year ago
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course, especially with age, and it pays to double-check the important things
if you intend to share the memories with others. I’ve just learned that a guy I
haven’t seen in half a...
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time
...
a week ago
Escaping Flatland
Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various...
a year ago
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various poets I knew and submitted the results to a fanzine.
The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Carry on With the Business of the Day'
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding...
4 months ago
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding epiphanies.
Perhaps our finest nature poet is Yvor Winters. A basic understanding of
biology is useful in discouraging pantheism and other forms of fashionable nature
mysticism.
We...
The Marginalian
Blue Glass
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
11 months ago
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and gasped at the sight of what looked like two extraordinary jewels sparkling on a bed of yellow leaves, right there on the sidewalk — chunks of cobalt glass, much larger than what a...
Josh Thompson
Rules for Fighting Fair
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...
over a year ago
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean?
So, rather than asking more...
Astral Codex Ten
Take The 2025 ACX Survey
...
2 days ago
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 2)
Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago.
I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave...
over a year ago
Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago.
I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave it on such a pessimistic note.
First, I commend you both for getting out there. You both invested a lot in making that weekend happen. You acquired the correct tools, and spent...
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles.
Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night.
You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep.
You
can...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where They Grind the Grain of Thought'
Let me sing
the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin,
Miss...
a year ago
Let me sing
the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin,
Miss Rose, Miss Whistler – my teachers, K-6, at Pearl Road Elementary School.
Most were young and pretty, more like big sisters than mothers. On the
television in Miss Shaker’s class we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar'
When high
summer arrives -- in Texas, long before this
Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
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...
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland
That's the joy of being a writer.
a month ago
That's the joy of being a writer.
The Marginalian
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments...
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential...
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life."
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer'
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick.
I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim
1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in
a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
6 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible.
Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Art Must Be Giving Pleasure'
On May 14,
1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of...
a year ago
On May 14,
1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of Shakespeare’s
plays at the New School of Social Research in New York City, W.H. Auden
delivered a concluding lecture. He roots Shakespeare’s vision in the notion of original sin
and what he...
The American Scholar
Up Close
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Favourable Enough for a Writer'
Jules Renard
writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:
“I am in no
great hurry to see the...
a year ago
Jules Renard
writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:
“I am in no
great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a
writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it
nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown'
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
3 weeks ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been
moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:
“O friend
unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of...
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passions and Perturbations of the Mind'
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates
fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s...
11 months ago
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates
fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): addle, colly, costard, doter, to filch, to fleer, giddyheaded, griper, hotspur, to macerate, muckhill, mutter, oligarchy, quacksalver
and squalor....
The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a week ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
The American Scholar
“The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Monsoons, Boredom, Stench'
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky.,...
9 months ago
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky., 2024), a passage from Dr. Johnson’s Idler essay for September 2, 1758:
“I suppose
every man is shocked when he hears how frequently soldiers are wishing for war.
The wish is not...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Maintaining a Stable and Orderly Civilization'
On the same
day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves...
6 months ago
On the same
day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves and
reorganized the volumes, one of our cats leaped into an open cupboard in the
kitchen. One of the four pegs supporting the middle shelf was missing and Trane’s
weight tipped it enough so a...
The Marginalian
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession...
10 months ago
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor is the use of tools, nor is music. Elephants grieve, octopuses remember and...
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Spring” by J. R. Solonche
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
Josh Thompson
Limitations of My Own Thinking
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”....
over a year ago
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”. Anytime this happens, I start tripping over myself with warnings and qualifying statements.
Here’s what would happen:
I would make a recommendation (“start a side project to help get a...
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
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...
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
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...
The Marginalian
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda
Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
a year ago
Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1)
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and...
over a year ago
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying
so hard to figure out some moves high above...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells...
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I
gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief! When I get home, I pour out my treasures into
the...
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
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what we combat."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Breathing--Still'
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections,...
11 months ago
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections, “Snowfall in
Vietnam: Poems/Maxims,” consists of ten one-line, five-syllable poems and
accompanying titles, some of which are longer than the poems. Their extreme...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Obscuration of the Luminaries of Heaven'
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the...
8 months ago
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the city
periodically coated it with tar. Rain fell on the morning of July 20 but by late
afternoon the skies had cleared and all that remained of the rain were puddles
in the water-proof street....
The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to...
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
7 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
Ben Borgers
Apple Credit Card Rewards
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking.
Last time, I argued that customer success is...
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the...
a year ago
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About'
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness...
2 months ago
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read
Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I
sympathize. I remember reading...
This Space
A loss of problems
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being...
a year ago
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being talked about on television and in newspapers. Money was the first quickly followed by each and every one that preceded it, including the journalism in The Moronic Inferno, which I...
The Marginalian
Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman...
4 months ago
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman exulted in his ode to the “puzzle of puzzles” we call Being. How puzzling indeed, and how miraculous, that of the cold silence of spacetime voice emerged, in all its warm loveliness —...
The Elysian
One essay could change the future
Please support a better media ecosystem.
2 months ago
Please support a better media ecosystem.
Josh Thompson
Corollas and U-Hauls
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a...
over a year ago
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a lot, and a lot of work went into it.
When moving across the country, you have a few options. You could higher a moving company, who comes and boxes up your house, packs a truck,...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Art and Practice of Reading Aloud to Others'
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19...
11 months ago
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown he has been reading books
aloud to his wife, most recently The Wife
of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis. His list of more than a dozen titles includes
Moby-Dick (“our overall...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Collection of Scraps and Shards of Knowledge'
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of...
4 months ago
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of scraps and shards of
knowledge known as a commonplace book.”
Like Donne (1572-1621), some of us are
magpie-minded, collecting objects shiny and drab, often without obvious
utility....
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about!
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead. In what may be the most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Now I Am As Lilliputian As All the Rest'
“My mood is
like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work,
just...
8 months ago
“My mood is
like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work,
just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the
time to read. It’s more enjoyable than writing. I feel that if I could live
another forty years and spend the whole...
The Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions
Our calendar of upcoming events.
3 months ago
Our calendar of upcoming events.
Josh Thompson
Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...
over a year ago
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome.
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer.
Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...
sbensu
Pricing APIs
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
10 months ago
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of...
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
9 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
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
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
'The Artist Knows He Is Ready'
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds...
7 months ago
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds as though he seizes up when he sits down at the keyboard. To
call his condition “writer’s block” would be premature. He’s too inexperienced
for that to be happening already. The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture'
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
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
The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the...
a year ago
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things."
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
2 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Quietly, an Aside'
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the...
11 months ago
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the opening sentence or paragraph
of a news story. The idea is to quickly grab the reader’s attention and, with
luck, hold on to it. Subtlety is discouraged in journalism. There’s much...
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
Josh Thompson
MacOS: Keyboard Shortcut to Toggle Bookmarks Bar in Firefox
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser,...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser, instead of Chrome.
Turns out, Firefox is great! It was a near-seamless transition, and Firefox has a much lower memory footprint, as well as features Chrome does not have, like...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious'
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time.
It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone,
someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
The Marginalian
About War
"Outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all...
a year ago
"Outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace."
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Forlorn Hope'
Published in
the February 1950 issue of Partisan
Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature...
a month ago
Published in
the February 1950 issue of Partisan
Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature beloved by editors and loquacious
respondents – this one titled “Religion and the Intellectuals.” Such things
tend to be heavy on posturing and vast generalizations. I might have been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance'
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained...
5 months ago
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s
drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street,
top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title)
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at
Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts.
He talks about being
data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers
how to suceed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The First to Climb a Mountain Because It Is There'
On this date
in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch),
his...
8 months ago
On this date
in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch),
his brother Gherardo and two servants climbed to the 6,263-foot summit of Mount
Ventoux in Provence. Morris
Bishop, Vladimir Nabokov’s closest friend at Cornell, writes in Petrarch and...
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
3 days ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
The Marginalian
An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers
"It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and...
a year ago
"It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and often far short."
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
On Feedback
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By...
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback:
Explicit feedback
, which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss.
Implicit feedback
, which is...
Anecdotal Evidence
Kenneth C. Kurp 1955-2024
My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two...
3 months ago
My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two weeks of his life. He was age sixty-nine. I was with him as was his son, Abraham Kurp. I watched as his eyes closed and he stopped breathing. There was another sense, too, of a sudden...
The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
ribbonfarm
Truth-Seeking Modes
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This...
4 months ago
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Craft Is Perfected Attention'
The
campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan
Williams...
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’...
The American Scholar
Dottie Lo Bue
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose'
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything...
7 months ago
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls
for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty
and impose it on others; humility because...
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on...
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on 2017
thoughts on going into 2018
book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year
I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
The Marginalian
The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of...
2 months ago
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of summer and the season for tending to the inner garden, as Rilke wrote of winter. Autumn is a living metaphor for the necessary losses that shape our human lives: What falls away...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection'
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our
nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names
come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk
The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
8 months ago
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I
had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional
desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just
been pretending not to notice.
How...
Wuthering...
Philoctetes by Sophocles - Let me suffer what I must suffer
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in...
over a year ago
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in a mood of reconciliation and healing.
Literal healing. Philoctetes possesses the bow of Hercules. Either the bow, or Philoctetes himself, or both – prophecies are ambiguous...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long'
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
8 months ago
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It’s a symptom-less and in most cases benign
disorder, but it can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. It means I see my
oncologist once a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need'
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most...
6 months ago
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late
nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial
translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
The American Scholar
Snow!
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
What futuristic projects should I visit around the world?
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your...
6 months ago
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your city or project? I’d love your help plannin…
The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
2 months ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
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
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...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and...
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
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
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.
This Space
39 Books: 2015
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
7 months ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise'
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading...
4 months ago
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never
before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry.
First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Interior Decoration Doesn't Count"
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland,...
8 months ago
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland, where I visited often as a kid and worked in 1975. I was in the
basement in the general hardback fiction section where I saw the copy of Under the Volcano I bought there
forty-nine...
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
2 months ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
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
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...
Robert Caro
Six Books, Six New York Times Book Review Covers
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover...
a year ago
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path”
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 days ago
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Wisdom As a Kind of Courtesy'
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more...
a year ago
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more difficult than unreflective complacency and more interesting than
madness.”
That’s how
the poet Dick Davis characterized the concerns of Janet Lewis and her husband Yvor
Winters in his...
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
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
'Related But Detached'
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson,...
10 months ago
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson, unconvincing in her early seventies.
Wrong sex, wrong age, wrong play – a stillborn theatrical stunt. My reaction was perhaps the
worst that staged Shakespeare can inspire – boredom...
Wuthering...
Naming the garden in The Story of the Stone - the pleasures of incomprehension
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was
born with the jade stone in his...
2 months ago
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was
born with the jade stone in his mouth, is an Imperial Concubine, a high
prestige slave of the Emperor. She is
likely herself still a teen when we learn, in Chapter 16 of The Story of the
Stone, that she has been...
Wuthering...
How Ivan Bunin and Vasily Grossman spent the war - He was in the countryside then for the last time...
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of...
2 months ago
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of Russian literature: Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur
(1929 /1972, tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) in the Gogolian and
Dostoyevskian strand, Ivan Bunin’s Dark Avenues (1943/1946)...
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
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...
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise?
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
8 months ago
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
Josh Thompson
Be Gentle to You
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....
over a year ago
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?)
These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Possible Verdicts Are Five'
As binary
thinking -- a rush to judgment about books, food, our fellow humans and just
about...
a year ago
As binary
thinking -- a rush to judgment about books, food, our fellow humans and just
about everything else -- becomes harsher and more fashionable, interesting
conversation withers. Have you noticed how
quickly people dismiss a subject before it has been pondered and probed?...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL'
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of...
2 months ago
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page
pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard
reviews various twentieth-century...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity
...
a month ago
This Space
A review from abroad
In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the...
over a year ago
In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the Norwegian edition of Le Monde diplomatique as a supplement to the delightfully named Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. Even though I can't read Danish, it was not only a highlight of the...
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
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.”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Though Lightly Made, Are Hard to Keep'
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is...
11 months ago
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is endemically human and not always a bad thing. It can serve as a useful
motivator. Take the annual farce of New Year’s resolutions, those earnestly mustered plans for...
The American Scholar
The Power of the Common Soul
Ives, music-making, and hope
The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Ives, music-making, and hope
The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy...
2 weeks ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
5 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Half the Pleasure of Reading New Books'
“[M]ost
American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have
the...
a year ago
“[M]ost
American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have
the possibility of developing literary taste have scarcely time to do so. Unless
they read the great English classics in high school and in college, they never
find time to read them.”
In...
The American Scholar
Femmes Fantastiques
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing
The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing
The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum...
a year ago
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge."
This Space
39 Books: 2014
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
7 months ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity.
This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
This Space
39 Books: 2002
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
7 months ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5.
Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
The American Scholar
Cancer
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'But There Must Have Been More'
One of the unexpected
gifts of being young and working as a newspaper reporter was the...
a year ago
One of the unexpected
gifts of being young and working as a newspaper reporter was the giddy
sensation of being thrown into life and finally mistaken for an adult. Some of
the one-time abstractions – murder, suicide, cancer – become real. Once you’ve
interviewed the parents of a...
Josh Thompson
A message for high schoolers
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three...
over a year ago
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three topics:
Credentialism
Signaling
Opportunity cost
If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers. I’ve got a few links for you farther down in this...
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
6 months ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
Ben Borgers
Best Type of Bathroom Lock
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The best books of 2023, in a sense - "Aren't you tired of reading?"
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not...
11 months ago
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not surprise
anyone that 2023 now comes with a strong feeling of Before and After. So I will indulge in the “facetious and silly”
exercise of identifying the best books I read in 2023. Sorting...
The Marginalian
The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence
How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
a year ago
How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
a week ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Was No One There Anymore'
Jorge Luis Borges
published his final story collection, Shakespeare’s
Memory, in 1983, three years...
a year ago
Jorge Luis Borges
published his final story collection, Shakespeare’s
Memory, in 1983, three years before his death. The first story in the volume
is “August 25, 1983.” The narrator is Borges or at least one version of Borges.
He enters a hotel and sees his own name signed in the...
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
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.
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
10 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
The Marginalian
Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love
"Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
a year ago
"Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
The Marginalian
Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that...
11 months ago
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular chance-constellation of atoms has never before existed and will never again recur in the history of the universe. The fact of each such singularity is a wonder...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful'
“There have
been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious,
too...
3 weeks ago
“There have
been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious,
too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry
is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my
sorrows down on the page.”
Janet...
Josh Thompson
Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress)
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...
over a year ago
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed...
4 months ago
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
4 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Goals
November 2016 Goals
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....
over a year ago
November 2016 Goals
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning.
My November goals are an extension of my
October goals.
October was good (
October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...
Josh Thompson
Habits, Milestones, and Climbing
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...
over a year ago
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months.
I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...
Josh Thompson
How to complete a project
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept”...
over a year ago
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you.
It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be Made Out of Emotions, Colors, Life Itself'
“[Robert
Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved
their...
5 months ago
“[Robert
Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved
their vocation by playing the games with language and perception that poets
play, three Musketeers at a time when not much else was disturbing the quiet
little cemetery of English...
The Marginalian
How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward...
8 months ago
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward the object and envelops it in warm corroboration, uniting us with it and positively affirming its being."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Aesthetically They Are Still Delightful'
“Early
Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else
would make them...
7 months ago
“Early
Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else
would make them nowadays, but historically they are still important and
aesthetically they are still delightful.”
Let's not confine Philip
Larkin’s conclusion exclusively to Duke Ellington’s
early...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader'
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it,...
6 months ago
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists,
first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call
it—by which a man rises to understand...
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine'
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
a month ago
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No
commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I
do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the
show in the garden. Butterflies,...
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes,...
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood
Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood
The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia
The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century,
perhaps written when Seneca was in...
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy
Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy
Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right?
I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build:
I should have done the following...
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
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...
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy'
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong,...
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”
One hint: it’s
a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy.
Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows'
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little
frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
The Marginalian
The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily...
10 months ago
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily envisioned, for he was a toddler in Germany when a British chocolatier created the first modern version of what we now think of as chocolate: a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
6 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it?
Compare this wording:
Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible.
To this wording:
Unless I hear otherwise,...
Ben Borgers
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
over a year ago
This Space
Twentieth anniversary post
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.
In recent years many posts have...
2 months ago
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.
In recent years many posts have reflected on the past and present of literary blogging (there is no future) so I will not go over that waste land again except to wish more had followed the example of This Space. One of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
Josh Thompson
What Do You Do?
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...
over a year ago
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?”
They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?”
Sometimes this is a conversational...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bright Books! the Perspectives to Our Weak Sights'
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593),...
8 months ago
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593), Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Henry
Vaughan (April 17, 1621), Daniel Defoe (April 24, 1731), Edward Gibbon (April
27, 1737), William Hazlitt (April 10, 1778), Anthony Trollope (April...
This Space
39 Books: 2017
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
7 months ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals'
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL.
yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ
—...
The American Scholar
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry 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
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....
Blog -...
Book Review - The Alchemy of Inner Work
The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an
exposition of an inner...
over a year ago
The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an
exposition of an inner healing art that is incredibly valuable to
practitioners. Yet, each of us – regardless of trade, title, or label – is
ultimately our own healing practitioner, and this book is a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely Cultivated and Painstakingly Honest'
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as...
a month ago
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as good an apologia for her manner of writing, among others, as I’ve ever encountered:
“Silence is
more eloquent than speech – a truism; but sometimes something that someone...
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also...
a month ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also mention my health. A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius
removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with
it. My recovery went well, and my liver
grew...
The American Scholar
The Support Ship
The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors
I’m learning Spanish right now,
as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...
over a year ago
I’m learning Spanish right now,
as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of
learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....
The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Generous Humanity to the Miserable'
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women,...
a year ago
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women, acquaintances
of my wife, both recently divorced. The latter would likely otherwise spend the holiday
alone. The only serious expression of gratitude is welcoming others and sharing...
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Write Less Say More
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one...
over a year ago
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one of the suggestions: “do away with weasel words, the passive voice, adverbs, cliches.”
I’m adding “complex sentences” to the list.
Out of curiosity, I looked through things that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They’ve No Clue of My Reality'
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me....
10 months ago
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me. I do not have to do guard duty as I am an officer, think of sergeant
Peck, sounds pretty big don’t it, eh?”
That’s
Marcus Peck, a soldier from Sand Lake, N.Y., who answered...
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
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...
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