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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Is Not Dead'
Sadness
nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories
abound. We...
6 days ago
Sadness
nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories
abound. We underestimate ourselves when it comes to emotional capacity. Only
the insane know one emotion at a time, which is why bliss and clinical
depression are rare states and why Joseph...
Josh Thompson
Illdefined Success is Unattainable
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t...
over a year ago
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t seem daunting, it’s not much of a project, and you should either ramp it up until it’s daunting, or discard it.
So - we have a daunting project. Now what? If you’re like me, you’ll...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Demographer of the Common Woe'
Only in the
last twenty years or so have I started accumulating deaths, logging them on a...
a year ago
Only in the
last twenty years or so have I started accumulating deaths, logging them on a internal
list and weighing them against my own precious self. I’ve led a improbably
healthy life which only encouraged the universal young man’s conviction that I
was immune to mortality and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality'
This week I
will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after
forty-four...
8 months ago
This week I
will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after
forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from
earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was
surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
7 months ago
Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted...
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading.
FICTION
Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
6 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading.
FICTION
Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the
most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H.
Lawrence and Ronald Firbank! I feel I
should write about it; I feel I should read...
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot
Word Rot
Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever
face will have been...
a year ago
Word Rot
Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever
face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you.
That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and
that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
Wuthering...
My cancer - "It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is."
Liver cancer. That
was a surprise. I knew something was
wrong, but I was not expecting that.
Since...
a year ago
Liver cancer. That
was a surprise. I knew something was
wrong, but I was not expecting that.
Since the diagnosis last summer, since it was known for a
fact that I had something serious, things have moved fast. It has been like boarding a train. Once in motion there is no way...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
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...
This Space
39 Books: 1990
The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two...
8 months ago
The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two more since. The second one came along this year. In 1989, I got a temporary job in the archives of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum where I met Carl Erlewyn-Lajeunesse, an...
Josh Thompson
A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...
over a year ago
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey.
In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories:
What went well
What didn’t go well
What I might have...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
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...
9 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 American Scholar
The Snow Maiden
Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice
The post The Snow Maiden appeared first on...
4 days ago
Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice
The post The Snow Maiden appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet...
4 months ago
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us."
Anecdotal Evidence
"A Fury of Self-Deception, Malice, and Conceit'
There’s no
getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the
collective,...
2 months ago
There’s no
getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the
collective, could carry on this way? An innocent question or observation prompts
a sonic explosion. I’m unable to get that angry and loud so quickly. Perhaps
if my family were threatened....
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How to be an awesome belayer
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...
over a year ago
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport climber), these are not for you. All of this information is in the context of sport climbing on trustworthy protection - not trad climbing!
How to belay when your climber is in...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
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
'Not At All Reliable for Climbing On'
Decades ago
I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New...
9 months ago
Decades ago
I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New York’s
Adirondack Mountains in his bare feet. Surprisingly, he completed the shoeless stunt
without serious injury. It was one of those Ripley’s-Believe-It-or-Not
accomplishments that seems...
Josh Thompson
Winter on Two Pairs of Socks
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the...
over a year ago
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the wardrobe.
I’ll cover more about what we wear another time, but for now, I want to give you an idea. With the right socks, you can go an entire winter with just two pairs of socks. You...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Has Embalmed So Many Eminent Persons'
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries,...
9 months ago
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries, reviews of books, movies and music – for the newspapers where I
worked in Ohio, Indiana and New York. They’re clipped and saved in a chaotic file
cabinet. Most, I, like the rest of the...
The Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world?
Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
6 months ago
Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
Anecdotal Evidence
'First Find a Thinking Being. Lots of Luck'
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself....
7 months ago
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself. That’s a confession of inadequacy, though I’m not one of those people
who says, “I don’t have a head for math,” when what they really mean is arithmetic.
Because of my job I’ve learned...
This Space
Literature likes to hide
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's...
a year ago
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's first book, published in 1954. It is difficult to find a copy now but you can download a digital version of the book via the link. The opening chapter is a 50-page study of "Tintern...
sbensu
Everybody is the main character
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
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
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter'
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
5 months ago
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears
at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled
with not stinging like...
Ben Borgers
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Masters of Horror and Magic
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first...
2 months ago
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
No one buys books
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?”
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
The American Scholar
Acting Out
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Noble Unconsciousness Is in Him'
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s...
5 months ago
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s correct. “I think people are too cynical to have heroes today,” she
continues. “They’re embarrassed to say someone is a hero. Nobody’s good enough.
Everybody wants to look for failure...
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished...
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chronic Independence of Mind'
“A chronic
independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly
been safer...
a month ago
“A chronic
independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly
been safer to praise independence than to exemplify it.”
Bracing
words from one of literature’s inveterate outsiders, English poet and critic C.H.
Sisson (1914-2003). He’s writing about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Disadvantages of Wine'
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking...
3 months ago
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he
acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady M’Leod would hardly
believe him, and said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or 'Deep Work' (Crosspost from...
Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill...
over a year ago
Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work” (Letters to a New Developer). It ended up on Hacker News with 100 comments. I wrote this back in December 2019, forgot to post here until...
This Space
39 Books: 1994
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
8 months ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
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 American Scholar
From Las Cosas Nuevas by Ennio Moltedo
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
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....
3 weeks 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...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth.
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night. The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example.
Hippias is...
This Space
39 Books: 1997
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
8 months ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
Steven Scrawls
Not As Giants Love
Not As Giants Love
Short story, ~2000 words
A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I...
6 months ago
Not As Giants Love
Short story, ~2000 words
A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I thought the
most painful thing you could’ve said was no. I don’t know if you
remember, but when you said “Of course I still love you” and asked if
I still loved you, I started to...
The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
7 months ago
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and neighbors who don’t always believe what they see
The post Red Tide Warning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Man Can Be Judged By His Favorite Books'
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas...
6 months ago
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas Rudd, who quotes her subject: “Each
man can be judged by his favorite books.” She adds of the great Spanish thinker
and novelist:
“Throughout
his long life Unamuno returned to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom'
I’ve reminded
my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring
people...
a year ago
I’ve reminded
my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring
people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists,
super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph
McElroy. That each of...
The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community
The one where communes aren't the answer.
7 months ago
The one where communes aren't the answer.
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
over a year ago
This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into
life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us
when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Escaping Flatland
Relationships are coevolutionary loops
Looking for Alice, part 3
a year ago
Looking for Alice, part 3
This Space
39 Books: 2003
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
The American Scholar
Up Close
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Dizzying but Invisible Depth
The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is...
over a year ago
The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is shutdown, so it’s not easily sharable. I’m reposting here because this is such a useful post.
Dizzying but invisible depth
You just went to the Google home page.
Simple, isn’t...
The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots
Talking points for our literary salon next week.
8 months ago
Talking points for our literary salon next week.
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...
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
'One I Loved Taught Here, Provoking Strife'
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the...
2 months ago
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the university published a commemorative volume, Laurel, Archaic, Rude: A Collection of Poems. It gathers twenty-six
poems written by former students, including Edgar Bowers,...
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel
fragments
5 months ago
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable...
9 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable things, but I have limits.
Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post.
Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin
Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
The American Scholar
Divided Providence
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
a month ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Perry Bible...
Clicked
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
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…
Anecdotal Evidence
'Weightier Than All the Gear I’ll Carry'
I was a lazy
student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I...
2 months ago
I was a lazy
student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I retained
was a lasting interest in mythology, Roman history and etymology. I probably
learned more English words than Latin – celerity,
pulchritude, jocular, spelunker, procrastination,...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Principle Is Growth'
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in...
9 months ago
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in our front yard – all are gone,
one carried away by a tornado) in a field guide: the study of trees. From the
Greek for “tree.” A close synonym is silvics,
this time from the Latin. I...
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely...
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus. The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons. Plautus was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Talkative But Less Writative'
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s...
a year ago
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s Travels as the most useful
model for prose style in English. It’s not the only way to write but it’s the best
if we judge clarity the supreme virtue. Sloppy prose, unless...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Goddam Stone Wall You Butt Your Head Into'
Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old
Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a...
4 hours ago
Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old
Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a chronological state. I can slough
it off any time I wish. Such is the power of delusion. I retire today. On
Thursday I went to the police department on campus to get my retiree’s ID...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
7 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I
saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was
abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Josh Thompson
Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb
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
'Originality, Learning, Acuteness, Terseness of Style'
Samuel Johnson:
“Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some
in...
11 months ago
Samuel Johnson:
“Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some
in dress, some in polity, some in language.”
John Horne Tooke:
“I wonder whether they invented the choice appellations you have just repeated.”
Johnson: “No,
sir! Indignant wise men...
Astral Codex Ten
It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism
Responding to a recent essay on wealth inequality in a post-singularity economy
23 hours ago
Responding to a recent essay on wealth inequality in a post-singularity economy
sbensu
Creative kernels
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
6 months ago
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
The Marginalian
“Little Women” Author Louisa May Alcott on the Creative Rewards of Being Single
"Liberty is a better husband than love."
a year ago
"Liberty is a better husband than love."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Just to Sweeten the Cup'
“It is to be
remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The
March of Literature (1939), “that a passage...
2 weeks ago
“It is to be
remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The
March of Literature (1939), “that a passage of good prose is a work of art
absolute in itself and with no more dependence on its contents than is a fugue
of Bach, a minuet of Mozart, or the writing for piano of...
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’...
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep'
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else.
Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say
Hey, there’s...
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up.
(If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Josh Thompson
Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation)
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the...
8 months ago
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey; everything and nothing changed.
Lots changed because all of I sudden, I could clearly label a dynamic that had always irked me. I could see that some people would avoid...
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 Elysian
I'm not going to have kids to save the economy
Not on my list of reasons to have children.
8 months ago
Not on my list of reasons to have children.
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Cantos II and III - or just III, it turns out - And Cole and Swift, and little...
A month ago I wrote about the first Canto of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Now I will move through the...
11 months ago
A month ago I wrote about the first Canto of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Now I will move through the Cantos two or
three at a time, just leafing through the books, really, with luck getting at
what Ovid is doing. Cantos II and III
today.
Ovid established his cosmology and created...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Thing Always to Be Guarded Against'
“Poetry,
geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural
history,...
6 months ago
“Poetry,
geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural
history, books on sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is
before you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is,
not to admire and applaud...
The Elysian
Elysian gatherings around the world
Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
2 weeks ago
Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
Josh Thompson
"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling"
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer...
over a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer to sport as “lead” climbing from here on out. Sorry, trad climbers).
If someone is enjoying top roping, (or bouldering) why should they take on the work of learning to lead climb,...
Escaping Flatland
After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is...
11 months ago
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is possible to play. Then AI beat them.
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books'
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne...
4 months ago
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of
school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald
Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
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...
2 weeks 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shitcan the Sass'
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write...
6 months ago
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write but of familiar stuffe because my stile is lowe.” Today we call him a
master of the “plain style,” the opposite of ornate poeticizing, along with his
contemporaries George...
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
2 months ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Pure Absence, No Place, Nowhere, Not'
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of...
4 months ago
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of the book is the account of
Lenin’s autopsy, following his death at age fifty-two from atherosclerosis.
When tapped with tweezers, his cerebral arteries pinged like stone. They...
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry'
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were...
10 months ago
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”
Things get
sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling
species of serious...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection'
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
12 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Grief and Lost Belief'
In the U.S.,
Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27....
7 months ago
In the U.S.,
Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27. Formerly
called Decoration Day, it started after the Civil War as commemoration of the
nation’s war dead. The meaning and observance of holidays tend to dilute with
time. When I was a boy, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us'
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but
I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his
eighties, much honored as a poet,...
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
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."
The Elysian
One year of my work, printed
The Elysian Volume II is here.
2 months ago
The Elysian Volume II is here.
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d...
2 months ago
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time
living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children,
unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
Escaping Flatland
The third chair
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
Josh Thompson
The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...
over a year ago
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...
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 Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself
"What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
"What is happiness but growth in peace."
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books
Here’s how that could look.
8 months ago
Here’s how that could look.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Hundred Words for the Word Brother'
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother...
2 months ago
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother of mine, [Arnaud, Lord of] Saint-Martin,
twenty-three years old, who had already given pretty good proof of his valor, while
playing tennis was struck by a ball a little above the...
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed...
5 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.
Astral Codex Ten
H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens
2 days ago
Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online
On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
9 months ago
On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate
The post In the Endless...
a month ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate
The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well Educated and Glad of the Fact'
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this...
a month ago
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this immersion into literature part of his or her own life, so that the experience of books has been integral with the experience of life and therefore strongly influences his or her general...
The American Scholar
Queen of the Night
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark
The post Queen of the Night appeared...
3 months ago
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark
The post Queen of the Night appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Entertain As Well As Illuminate'
“Here’s a
thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”
Bracing
words to...
a year ago
“Here’s a
thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”
Bracing
words to encounter while writing a book review. The writer is the poet
David Mason. Quoted is the opening sentence of his review/essay “Two Poet-Critics,” devoted to Clive James and John...
The Marginalian
Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
"Into the space ship, Granny."
a year ago
"Into the space ship, Granny."
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
9 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
This Space
39 Books: 1988
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days...
8 months ago
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days when they existed, especially because it was found in Portsmouth, not the most literary of cities despite Dickens and Conan-Doyle (or perhaps because of Dickens and Conan-Doyle)....
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a
big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers). Both movements were popular in the Roman
Republic as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along'
“Persistently
obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”
A truth I
had...
2 months ago
“Persistently
obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”
A truth I
had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not
the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy...
The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the...
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
a year ago
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
Josh Thompson
How to take payments via Stripe on a Static Site
I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I...
over a year ago
I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I wish existed, but have never been able to find.
For example, I’ve read a bunch of books that talk about good Object-Oriented design, or refactoring code, or writing better tests....
The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
7 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
This Space
39 Books: 1985
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
2 months ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023
I had a good time.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
I had a good time.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon.
FICTION
Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann
The Long Valley (1938)
&
The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
Escaping Flatland
Integrity
Intensely Human, No 3
10 months ago
The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of...
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
6 months ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
Wuthering...
Diogenes Laertius and the fun of the fragment
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book...
a year ago
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book (widely copied scroll) of Aristotle’s, but a large mass of what are perhaps transcribed lecture notes survived, barely, in a single manuscript, so that is our Aristotle. I don’t know...
The American Scholar
All in Your Head
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
A greeting
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
a year ago
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas day, sometime in the 1570s, he was out walking when he came upon a rose that had, in the blistering cold, put forth a flower. It was a hellebore, a winter rose. Moved by the...
The Marginalian
Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have...
9 months ago
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have been minds to manipulate."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stimulated to Vigour and Activity'
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of...
8 months ago
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of Dr. Johnson’s Rambler and Idler essays. In his peculiar memoir Praeterita (1885), Ruskin tells us “had
it not been for constant reading of the Bible, I might probably have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know'
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own
when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens
puts it, “knows where the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For the Ordinary Educated Man'
I’ve read
most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the
sole passage...
5 months ago
I’ve read
most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the
sole passage I have almost committed to memory:
“Literature
exists for the ordinary educated man, and any literature that actively requires
enormous training can be at best of only peripheral...
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
4 months ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately?
Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
7 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Celebrating an American Icon
The post Celebrating an American Icon appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Celebrating an American Icon appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better.
Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
Josh Thompson
Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and...
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything...
over a year ago
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse.
Hey there,
I’m...
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby.
It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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,...
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."
Blog -...
Book Review - Iron John
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I...
over a year ago
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I reluctantly admit I am not one of the more zealous.
Although the book has high points – the classic story of Iron John as put
down by the Grimm brothers stands out to me, as well as an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Sensitive As Anyone Else'
“In common
with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people
are as...
8 months ago
“In common
with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people
are as sensitive as anyone else. She renders their speech with a fine and
subtle ear for the shy or strident inaccuracies, for the bewilderment of missed
points and for the dim, sad rhythms...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it?
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
2 months ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party. I will rejoin the party planning momentarily.
The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel
about an extended family. The main plot
is the teenage love triangle, but...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make a Friend or Sonnet'
Some deny
that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust
and...
10 months ago
Some deny
that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust
and affection thrive only in the physical world. I was once sympathetic to this
idea, which was more revealing of my own digital backwardness than of the
nature of friendship. My thinking...
The Marginalian
Some Blessings to Begin with
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are...
3 days ago
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are some gladnesses I have gathered, and two new bird divinations I have made, as a conscious way of consecrating our days with the blessed fact that we weren’t promised any of this —...
Ben Borgers
Giving Out Chick-fil-A on a Schedule App
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World'
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course,...
a year ago
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider
themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and
Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
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."
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
7 months ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it.
From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
The Perry Bible...
Please
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
5 months ago
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
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,”...
a month 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...
Steven Scrawls
Against Confidence
Against Confidence
I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel
confident.
If my...
a year ago
Against Confidence
I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel
confident.
If my writing makes me feel confident, it probably has a title like
“Look At My Cleverly Constructed Argument/Insight” (subtitle: “Also Look
At My Pretty Words”). If I release writing...
Josh Thompson
Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something...
7 months ago
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then.
Cut forward to...
Josh Thompson
Thoughts on Money from 2013
I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013....
over a year ago
I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013. That’s 2.5 years ago. Reading over it, I feel satisfaction for a few reasons:
Old Josh (from July 2013) wasn’t a train wreck. As soon as I think about myself in highschool and...
Wuthering...
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of...
over a year ago
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete plays. The last surviving tragedy, even if it hardly recognizable as a tragedy, it provides a coherent ending to the tragic tradition. It is...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense'
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the...
a year ago
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband,
who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to go out of town, I would stay with him...
Josh Thompson
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 Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy
Entries to the March writing prompt.
8 months ago
Entries to the March writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too'
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he...
11 months ago
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he was
reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his
voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him
silently reading and never...
The Marginalian
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
a year ago
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
Ben Borgers
Best Type of Bathroom Lock
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
6 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Understand Our Fellow Creatures a Little Better'
Edwin
Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de
Forest Smith on...
3 months ago
Edwin
Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de
Forest Smith on May 13, 1896:
“If printed
lines are good for anything, they are bound to be picked up some time; and
then, if some poor devil of a man or woman feels any better or any stronger...
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io
A while back, I wrote a long interview for
Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for
Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below.
When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
The person behind the idea
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
a month ago
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post...
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
a month ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Adieu! for Once Again the Fierce Dispute'
Among John
Keats’ closest friends was the modestly gifted poet John Hamilton Reynolds...
a year ago
Among John
Keats’ closest friends was the modestly gifted poet John Hamilton Reynolds (1794-1852).
It was to Reynolds that Keats wrote in a February 3, 1818 letter:
“We hate
poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put
its hand in its breeches...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original...
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most
Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I
have seen outside of Latin American literature.
Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
The American Scholar
Cats and Dogs
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
Wuthering...
Many of Plato's early Socratic dialogues - It was quite lovely.
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or...
a year ago
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or during my last Greek phase 25 years ago, and this time I hope to read almost all of them.
I will make some notes on them in a few posts. Give them a tag if nothing else, and make some...
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
The Marginalian
Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the...
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl...
a year ago
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet. The year is 1836. No university anywhere in the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish That He’d Arrived Much Sooner'
I offended
a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.”
Let’s...
a year ago
I offended
a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.”
Let’s consider each part of the epithet. “Brilliant”? Without question. He wrote
three incontestably good poems but Coleridge is an early specimen of the “public
intellectual,” bristling...
The American Scholar
Rap Rap Rap
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
7 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
a year 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 Marginalian
200 Years of Solitude: Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists in Praise of the Creative and...
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows...
5 months ago
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Memories Packed in the Rapid-Access File'
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to...
4 months ago
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to hospice in the morning went by the professional name “Lazarus” –
an omen I choose to leave unexamined and merely enjoy. Ken would have enjoyed
it.
Shortly after his death one of the...
The Marginalian
Yellow Butterfly: A Moving Wordless Story About War, Hope, and Keeping the Light Alive
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that...
a year ago
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that every great moral and spiritual leader in the history of our civilization has shared “the great goal of the internal and external liberation of man* from the evils of war” as Freud...
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
2 weeks 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists'
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters...
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the
same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get
a craving for spaghetti...
Josh Thompson
How Can You Buy Happiness?
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy
things. But we should do more than just buy
things.
Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
This Space
Proust regained
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Sum of All the Losses'
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was...
a month ago
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was half an inch shorter). The crown of his trademark top hat – a stovepipe, it
was called -- measured twelve inches in height. Allowing for the silk hat settling on his head, the...
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals?
Lose weight/get in shape
Make more money/start budgeting
Learn a language
Learn a skill
Read more
Stop doing something (smoking, drinking)
Statistically, all of...
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
a year ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
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...
The American Scholar
“Guests” by Celia Thaxter
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter appeared first on The American...
2 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Winter Came in August Killing Fruit and Seed'
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The...
2 months ago
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The American Scholar:
“Edward Case’s
work has appeared in various journals, including the New Criterion, the Wall
Street Journal, and Modern Age.
This poem was taken from a collection of...
The American Scholar
Stereotypes and the City
What to make of HBO’s attempts to diversify an iconic show?
The post Stereotypes and the City...
8 months ago
What to make of HBO’s attempts to diversify an iconic show?
The post Stereotypes and the City appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
4 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
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...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Brief, Dry, Almost Colorless Account '
The Polish
writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) --
Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura
and...
a year ago
The Polish
writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) --
Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura
and author of A World Apart: Imprisonment
in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II (1951) – has sent me back to
Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma stories. Herling-Grudziński in 1971...
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,...
7 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...
The American Scholar
Dottie Lo Bue
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
2 weeks ago
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts:
So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”.
I...
The American Scholar
The Weight of a Stone
Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of...
yesterday
Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology
The post The Weight of a Stone appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive?
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them!
So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is the Past That Cast the Stars'
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted...
a year ago
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted reader. That same month, Poetry, a journal I would start reading
a few years after Mad, published its fortieth anniversary issue. Included is the work of more than fifty poets,...
This Space
The end of literature, part four
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here.
This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Here’s the gist:
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
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."
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice.
I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
Wuthering...
Books finished in March 2023
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a...
a year ago
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a common practice, although mostly with photographs of book stacks. I am not sure why I have not put the lists here as well. I guess I am not sure any of this is interesting.
Soon,...
The American Scholar
The Source
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
News from the Universe
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special...
7 months ago
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special bucket-list effort I had no particular intention of making. Though now I might. It feels a bit like I’ve just seen giraffes in the wild without going to Africa. You’ve probably seen some of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Its Masters’ Love Is'
The late
D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according
to some...
6 months ago
The late
D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according
to some aspect of their subject matter. Melville is your
go-to cetology guy and Edith Wharton took care of sleds. Or, as Nabokov said of
Hemingway’s books: “something about bells, balls and...
Josh Thompson
Load Testing your app with Siege
Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires...
over a year ago
Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires authentication to access.
Today, we’ll figure out how to use siege to visit many unique URLs on our page, and to get benchmarks on that process. I’ll next figure out performance...
The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
6 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Glory Seemingly Reserved For Poems'
“He was born
in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894.
Irreparably...
5 months ago
“He was born
in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894.
Irreparably Semitic, Isaac was the son of a rag merchant from Kiev and a
Moldavian Jewess. Catastrophe has been the normal climate of his life.”
Though born
within five years of each other,...
This Space
39 Books: 2001
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
7 months ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish...
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes true psychic creativity from obsessional productiveness."
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
a month ago
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
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...
3 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
Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...
over a year ago
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”.
But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2011
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit'
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool...
4 months ago
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool head in a tight situation.”
Long before
he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a
patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
Blog -...
Book Review - Codependent No More
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary
nearly a decade ago,...
over a year ago
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary
nearly a decade ago, Codependent No More is a startling, powerful book that
has touched the lives of so very many.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amid Tremendous History, New Pity'
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty...
9 months ago
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty of which he published during his lifetime. Early on, several of them
were my primers, an inviting way to learning the poetic tradition in English on
the cheap. One of them, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thus Massive Was the Vessel, Built in Vain'
Gee-whiz technology soon grows
obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy...
5 months ago
Gee-whiz technology soon grows
obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy airship – blimp, dirigible, Zeppelin –
successfully tracked the heavy cruiser USS
Houston as it carried President Franklin Roosevelt on a secret voyage from
Annapolis, Md., to...
The American Scholar
Three Poems
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No'
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
a month ago
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English
fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For
me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
The Marginalian
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous...
a year ago
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but... the prime moral privilege."
This Space
39 Books: 2023
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
7 months ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read a Little, Listen to a Little Music'
“To tend the
world: read a little, listen to a little music.”
I was slow
to warm to the late Adam...
a year ago
“To tend the
world: read a little, listen to a little music.”
I was slow
to warm to the late Adam Zagajewski. I still prefer his essays to his poems,
which often seem sentimental and formless, as though he demanded too little of
himself when writing poetry. Only in the five...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Settle Down'
A reader has
happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine...
3 weeks ago
A reader has
happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe,
500-1453 (1971), one he finds “especially amusing”:
“Cosmas [Indicopleustes]
tells us of monks who, ignoring their vows, live unchastely, engage in trade
and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Postmodern Pigeonhole Is a Shuck'
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short...
a month ago
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short stories and of one novel, Camp
Concentration, but perhaps the most entertaining of our critics. His only
recent rivals have been Turner Cassity and R.S. Gwynn. “Entertainment” and...
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...
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...
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.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 362.5
...
yesterday
The Perry Bible...
Hacked
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
9 months ago
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
7 months ago
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Pick Up a Machete and Start Exploring'
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov...
10 months ago
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov (1920) and Richard Wilbur (1921). I’m reminded of how important contemporary
American writers were to me when I was young, in the 60s and 70s. Everything
was new and promising, and I...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
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