Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learn’d to Dance'
Alexander
Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:
“At length,
my Friend (while Time, with...
7 months ago
Alexander
Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:
“At length,
my Friend (while Time, with still career,
Wafts on his
gentle wing his eightieth year),
Sees his
past days safe out of Fortune’s power,
Nor dreads
approaching Fate’s uncertain hour;
Reviews his
life, and in...
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being'
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I...
10 months ago
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians
and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing.
It’s as though AI created them.” No...
The American Scholar
Guillermo
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca
History witnessed, from the picket lines
The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines
The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it?
Compare this wording:
Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible.
To this wording:
Unless I hear otherwise,...
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
Wuthering...
The Making of Americans as conceptual art - I have already made several diagrams
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram. I have already made several diagrams. I will sometime...
6 months ago
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram. I have already made several diagrams. I will sometime make a complete diagram and that will be a very long book... (580)
I am going to write about The Making of Americans as
conceptual art, art where how it is made is a central part...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Always Singular, and Never Trite or Vulgar'
“He was
never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always
Chearful, but...
a year ago
“He was
never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always
Chearful, but rarely Merry, at any sensible Rate, seldom heard to break a Jest;
and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the Levity of it: His Gravity was
Natural and without Affectation.”
The...
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons
and what's on my mind
9 months ago
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas...
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 days ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
The Marginalian
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired...
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
a year ago
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory'
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
2 months ago
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older
contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and
the 117-line title poem appeared in The
Massachusetts Review in 1970....
The Elysian
Further reading on employee ownership
My notes from the margins of my research.
4 months ago
My notes from the margins of my research.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise'
John Updike
published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
5 months ago
John Updike
published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):
“Rexroth and
Patchen and Fearing—their mothers
Perhaps
could distinguish their sons from the others,
But I am
unable. My inner eye...
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by...
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in...
10 months ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in February. I gotta catch up on my
posts.
One big book
down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible.
TRAVEL, let’s
call it
Black Lamb
and Grey Falcon
(1941), Rebecca...
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which...
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
a month ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Originality, Learning, Acuteness, Terseness of Style'
Samuel Johnson:
“Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some
in...
10 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...
Ben Borgers
Why Do I Care About Grades?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
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.
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...
The Marginalian
William James on Love
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
8 months ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness'
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
4 months ago
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,” J.V.
Cunningham replied:
“You can
write on politics or not. I do not. But is politics meant here? Or is it,
rather, ideology? The latter is religious, not political, though religion...
Wuthering...
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was...
over a year ago
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after The Frogs. In the interval many things had changed. Athens had been conquered; democracy was overthrown but restored; one endless war ended...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early, Part 3
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep...
over a year ago
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep log, to track trends. Fortunately, I did not intend to try to wake up early, because I didn’t.
Here’s what I learned in the last three weeks:
Benadryl messes with your ability to...
Josh Thompson
62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...
over a year ago
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year.
Samples:
Kristi
1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other.
We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...
The American Scholar
Moondance
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Josh Thompson presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes...
over a year ago
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes nothing but encouraging members of the GASB board (Joel Black, Jeffrey Previdi, James Brown, Brian Caputo, Kristopher Knight, Dianna Ray, and Carolyn Smith) to spend 15 minutes...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Relief, Joy, or Nostalgia'
“Of course,
no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a
specific...
7 months ago
“Of course,
no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a
specific time in one’s life, and the particular book’s smell, typeface, and
paper can be as much a part of the experience as one’s physical and emotional
circumstances.”
I used to think...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Although Too Many Readers Have Forgotten'
My education
continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards,
1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson...
3 weeks ago
My education
continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards,
1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, previously unknown to me:
“All night I
sat beside the bed
And watched
that senseless moaning head
Backwards
and forwards toss and toss,
When
suddenly he sat upright
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
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
a month ago
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
The American Scholar
Acting Out
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Notes on UX and LLM integrations
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down...
11 months ago
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down when and why they work well, or poorly.
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Forms of Evil ’Neath the Sun'
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also...
a year ago
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also runs IWP Books, an eclectic online library of titles ranging from Walter
Bagehot and A.E. Housman to Theodor Haecker and Agnes Repplier. In short, he is
a civilized man with...
Josh Thompson
Structural Holes and Good Ideas
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains.
These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Wisdom As a Kind of Courtesy'
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more...
a year ago
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more difficult than unreflective complacency and more interesting than
madness.”
That’s how
the poet Dick Davis characterized the concerns of Janet Lewis and her husband Yvor
Winters in his...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House
...
2 weeks ago
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...
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
7 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy
You're welcome.
8 months ago
ben-mini
Old School Business
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs...
6 months ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users.
They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction).
They demeaned...
The American Scholar
“Guests” by Celia Thaxter
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter appeared first on The American...
5 days ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to...
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
7 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected...
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
Wuthering...
The Nicomachean Ethics - moderate Aristotle - clarity within the limits of the subject matter
I will borrow the quotation from Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics I found on p. 186 of Gary Paul...
a year ago
I will borrow the quotation from Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics I found on p. 186 of Gary Paul Morson’s extraordinary new study of
the ethics if Russian literature:
Our discussion will be adequate if it achieves clarity
within the limits of the subject matter.
For precision...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.
The Perry Bible...
Brushed
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We...
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
5 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
3 months ago
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs."
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
'Where Silence Suddenly Erupts in Speech'
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy,...
a year ago
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy, France again and back to Poland. His budget was tight but Herbert was
no hedonistic tourist. Nor was he a stuffy academic or critic. The essays in Barbarian in the Garden (1962;...
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry'
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were...
9 months ago
“[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
'Chevengur'
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published...
11 months ago
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published in the Wall Street Journal.
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are.
Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
ben-mini
The Inner Game of Tennis
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the...
2 months ago
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the book explores how the thoughts of an athlete affect their game. It’s lauded as being at the forefront of what we now call “sports psychology”. Although my competitive sports days...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appear to the Public to be Some Sort of Miracle'
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both...
4 months ago
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both [Robert] Koch and spermine, and I praise the Lord. Kochines, spermines,
etc. all appear to the public to be some sort of miracle that has sprung
unexpectedly from someone’s head like...
Wuthering...
The best books of 2023, in a sense - "Aren't you tired of reading?"
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not...
11 months ago
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not surprise
anyone that 2023 now comes with a strong feeling of Before and After. So I will indulge in the “facetious and silly”
exercise of identifying the best books I read in 2023. Sorting...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Companionable Room'
I had a
minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books
stored...
11 months ago
I had a
minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books
stored off-site in the Library Service Center I got this message: “No items can
fulfill the submitted request.” That made no sense and I couldn’t figure out a
way around the roadblock, so I...
This Space
39 Books: 1987
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change'
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put...
8 months ago
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . .
When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling
man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
ribbonfarm
The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet
My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5...
8 months ago
My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5 most successful memes) is featured in this cute little collectible book, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet put together by Yancey Strickler (whom you may have heard of as the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Hurricane's Usefulness Has Outlasted It'
Ambrose
Bierce’s entry for hurricane in The Devil’s Dictionary (1906):
“An
atmospheric...
5 months ago
Ambrose
Bierce’s entry for hurricane in The Devil’s Dictionary (1906):
“An
atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the
tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the West Indies
and is preferred by certain old-fashioned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Soften, Not to Wound My Heart'
It may seem
unfair to reduce a poet to a single poem but consider the thousands who never
wrote even...
12 months ago
It may seem
unfair to reduce a poet to a single poem but consider the thousands who never
wrote even one memorable line. Take Thomas Gray. His reputation, if any,
amounts to “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751). Generations of school
children once recited the poem and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Look for Truth, for Knowledge, for Wisdom'
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of...
a year ago
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of the humanities, at any rate--as much as students, are the creatures of the
library. Just as the laboratory is the domain of the sciences, so the library
is the domain of the...
Ben Borgers
Current Self and Going to Libraries
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally...
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post.
...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's on the Russian Level'
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through...
5 months ago
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through George Eliot at school, but I was too young to appreciate her
then. But about a year ago I read Middlemarch.
Most marvellous book. Best
thing in nineteenth-century English fiction,...
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...
Escaping Flatland
Look for people who likes the illegible you of today, not your past achievements
Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth...
a year ago
Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth about the world, there exist groups that encourage divergence and healthy individuation.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me...
a year ago
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face
as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part.
The pathos and grandeur of these...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Last of All Last Words Spoken Is, Good-bye'
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course,...
a year ago
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course, especially with age, and it pays to double-check the important things
if you intend to share the memories with others. I’ve just learned that a guy I
haven’t seen in half a...
The American Scholar
Snow!
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Default blind
In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
3 months ago
In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom'
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944...
2 months ago
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with
ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising
here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction
The post Riding With Mr....
4 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction
The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life
"We are lichens on a grand scale."
a year ago
"We are lichens on a grand scale."
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."
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house)
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
The Marginalian
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda
Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
a year ago
Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
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.
This Space
39 Books: 1995
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or...
7 months ago
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was...
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not.
The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
The Elysian
Am I an anarchist?
Letters to an anarchist, part seven.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part seven.
sbensu
Creative kernels
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
5 months ago
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1
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...
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes,...
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood
Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood
The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia
The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century,
perhaps written when Seneca was in...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial...
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
a year ago
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4
The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4
The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of...
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
9 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
The Marginalian
From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the...
a year ago
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into...
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and...
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
9 months ago
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them."
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are No Millers Any More'
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always...
14 hours ago
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always unsettling, as though a fundamental law of nature had been violated. Given what we
know of the person, and it may be very little, we apply
her circumstances to our own and conclude,...
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
a month ago
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
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."
The Marginalian
Terror, Tenderness, and the Paradoxes of Human Nature: How a Marmoset Saved Leonard and Virginia...
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they...
a year ago
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they too read to their children, they too can be moved to tears by music. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky captured this as he contemplated the greatest antidote to evil, observing...
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of...
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
3 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Someone Who Could Never Be a Peasant'
I first
encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov,...
3 months ago
I first
encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, already one of my
favorite writers. Alter’s contribution was “Invitation
to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics,” which Nabokov later described
as “practically flawless.” A...
The American Scholar
The Challenge
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste
...
2 weeks ago
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...
Escaping Flatland
On mentors
What is it that motivates someone to take on someone and help them grow? Why do some learners have...
a year ago
What is it that motivates someone to take on someone and help them grow? Why do some learners have that privilege?
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...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult...
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a...
a month ago
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. “Words are events, they do things, change things,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a generation after her. To...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Being Vulnerable to History'
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn...
6 months ago
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn melodramatic when describing the impact a book has
had on them – “life-changing,” that sort of thing. Such claims usually can be
chalked up to enthusiasm untempered by critical rigor. The...
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and...
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation: Symposium is fiction, a long story. It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection'
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our
nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names
come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
The American Scholar
The Wonder of It All
In search of awe
The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
In search of awe
The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few...
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few examples:
Animated, interactive curves(dynamic)
OMG Particles II(dynamic)
simple map of the us(static) <= very little code
Radial Dendrogram(static)
circle wave(dynamic)
Force-directed...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Josh Thompson
Cancel Your Cable. Seriously.
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to...
over a year ago
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to waste.
Time
Energy
Money can be earned, and if more is needed, you can spend less or earn more. Energy is what you need to bring ideas to fruition. Unlimited time with no energy gets you nowhere, as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Important That It Ought to Absorb Him'
In his brief
portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt
himself...
a month ago
In his brief
portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt
himself impelled to attempt an intenser vividness in description. Try, just
try, so to describe something that the inattentive reader must see it, and the
attentive one can never forget that he...
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...
4 weeks 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...
Josh Thompson
Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is...
7 months ago
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...
Escaping Flatland
A greeting
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
12 months 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Always at Home in One’s Past'
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any...
8 months ago
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any other and whose birthday we observed earlier this week: “One is always at home in one’s past.” That might
serve as a gloss on his autobiography, Speak,
Memory, in which he writes at...
Josh Thompson
Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994)
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the...
over a year ago
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day.
I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two things:
The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence
Most dangerous books of 2016
Tactical Silence
I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For?
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Reading challenging books with kids is fun and probably useful
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three...
8 months ago
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. “I have looked a little in books,” she said.
The American Scholar
Ups and Downs
The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
6 months ago
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
ben-mini
The Most Mind-Blowing Tech Moments of My Life
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of...
5 months ago
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of life. There’s nothing too heady here- just an exercise in what might have made me get so into tech.
1. WarioWare: Twisted (2006)
At my community center, waiting for my friend’s karate...
Josh Thompson
Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you...
over a year ago
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you.
That’s...
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.
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
7 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later!
What are bollards
The what and the why in a single image:
The what and why in a...
Josh Thompson
Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100%...
over a year ago
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100% ineffective.
I discussed with a friend the other day why they should switch from Yahoo to Gmail, and how to reduce the useless emails they receive. Below is how I suggested they move from...
Blog -...
Book Review - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the...
over a year ago
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the masculine. Published in 1990, King, Warrior,
Magician, Lover introduces readers to the concept of mature masculine
archetypes and their immature shadows. The authors, Robert...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
2 months ago
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
5 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Benefits of helplessness
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best...
over a year ago
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best friend (who I happen to be married to), and I’ve got a pretty cool job to boot. That’s the “big three”, right? (Relationships, work, location.)
Yep. Except from Thursday through...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools'
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in...
2 months ago
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often
discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which
eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
sbensu
How to: friction logs
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the...
a year ago
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the produdct the way a real user would and write down every single moment you experience some form of negative emotion.
The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power
"There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
"There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Why Not Get Out of This Rut?'
"Books offer
what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal
Christmas-present...
2 days ago
"Books offer
what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal
Christmas-present problem.”
Well, yes
and no. I’m a graceless gift giver and receiver, especially when it comes to
books. People like my middle son are inspired and have a knack for...
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also...
a month ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also mention my health. A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius
removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with
it. My recovery went well, and my liver
grew...
This Space
39 Books: 2023
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
6 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...
The Marginalian
Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building...
10 months ago
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms."
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
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."
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature...
12 months ago
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in his lovely century-old meditation on otherness and the web of life. “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted...
The American Scholar
Sienna Martz
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist'
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries
and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary.
I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes...
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
7 months ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Half-Buried Sense for Poetry'
It’s easy to
mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or...
6 days ago
It’s easy to
mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or naively
unprofessional, a mask worn to conceal the shark within, especially among
literary types. Of course, critics are born to be severe, nobody’s pal. How
many critics can you name whose...
Escaping Flatland
Advice from my editor
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make...
6 months ago
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make myself finish this one,” Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Balance Sheet of Conscience'
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had...
a year ago
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had no doubt at all that I’d end up in a camp, and yet I wasn’t much interested
in them. Could I have been wearied in advance, by the monotony and dullness of
mass atrocities?”
That...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chap Who Doesn't Care Much About Anything'
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed...
4 months ago
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed announcement:
“Today is
National Orangutan Day. The apes are the largest tree-dwelling animals on
Earth. They spend 90 percent of their time in trees, even sleeping in leafy
nests. No wonder...
Josh Thompson
Persistence
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an...
over a year ago
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an unlimited amount of money, because an unlimited amount of money would complicate my life (and probably yours) far more than we can possibly imagine.
Persistence. I keep trying to...
The American Scholar
American Horror Story
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The...
a month ago
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 355.5
...
a month ago
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder...
5 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots
Talking points for our literary salon next week.
7 months ago
Talking points for our literary salon next week.
Wuthering...
Let's read Ovid's Metamorphoses! And perhaps more.
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)
with me? We have had some discussion of
this...
a year ago
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)
with me? We have had some discussion of
this good idea, and I feel I am up to it now.
Up to writing about it.
Metamorphoses is a compendium of Greek myths that feature
transformation, which turns out to be hundreds of pages...
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'With Squeaky Wit the Light, Improper Verse'
Without
context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart...
6 months ago
Without
context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart little
couplet?:
“With
squeaky wit the light, improper verse
Falls on the
heavy lunch and makes it worse.”
I first encountered
him in the eighth grade, in English class. He was sold to us as the “poet...
The American Scholar
“To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life...
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
Wuthering...
Stein's style - Mostly no one will be wanting to listen, I am certain
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every
one, not any I am just now hearing, and...
6 months ago
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every
one, not any I am just now hearing, and it is so completely an important thing,
it is a complete thing in understanding, I am going on writing, I am going on
now with a description of all whom Alfred Hersland came to know...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books
Here’s how that could look.
7 months ago
Here’s how that could look.
Josh Thompson
Crock Pots are Foolproof, Right?
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND...
over a year ago
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND hang out with good friends. I wanted to try a
really good looking recipe, and watch Django Unchained.
The cooking instructions for the recipe was “cook on low for 7-9 hours”. I...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive'
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making...
a year ago
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making concentration on other things difficult. . . . I wish I could tune the news out. But
the stakes for the future of Israel and of Jewish life generally are too great
for me to be...
The American Scholar
The Given Child
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The...
6 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
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.
Escaping Flatland
Talking to part of a friend
Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
a year ago
Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
a month ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
The Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world?
Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
5 months ago
Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
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,...
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
5 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist'
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil
Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Training for climbing (progress update)
I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I...
over a year ago
I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I learned:
I completed the workout twelve times, but I took a twelve-day break between workout eleven and twelve. I first skipped a workout because I had ripped skin open on one of my...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Island Within
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no
beginning and no end,...
over a year ago
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no
beginning and no end, and perhaps, to the unmindful, no meaning. To those
who remain anchored emerges buried treasure from every line. I kept being
drawn back in, not as an addiction, but, as I...
ben-mini
IMG_0416
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
a month ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app.
The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
The American Scholar
Thoreau’s Pencils
How might a newly discovered
The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
How might a newly discovered
The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting...
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
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...
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6)
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Smart Dinner Jacket and Patent Leather Pumps'
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which...
a year ago
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which was more genteel and less interesting than it sounds. Reading the police
blotter each morning or scanning new filings in the county clerk’s office left this
reporter feeling less...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself'
The saddest
man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a
jokester, the...
4 days ago
The saddest
man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a
jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his
inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at
something he says out of pity and an...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
5 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both...
a year ago
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged."
The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living...
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
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...
2 weeks 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
'I Am Breathing--Still'
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections,...
11 months ago
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections, “Snowfall in
Vietnam: Poems/Maxims,” consists of ten one-line, five-syllable poems and
accompanying titles, some of which are longer than the poems. Their extreme...
The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
a year ago
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
The Marginalian
Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be...
a year ago
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams."
Josh Thompson
Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers
I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post.
Some of it is specific to getting a remote...
over a year ago
I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post.
Some of it is specific to getting a remote job and working remotely, but all of it is applicable for any kind of software-related role. It’s probably applicable to non-software roles, but this is where most of my exprience...
Josh Thompson
Dream Big, and Build Optionality
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to.
For example: Travel, location...
over a year ago
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to.
For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on.
But then we go right along doing all the normal...
Josh Thompson
The How and Why of BlockValue
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...
over a year ago
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer.
I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...
Josh Thompson
Array divergence in Ruby
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...
over a year ago
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match.
You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive)
valid_people =...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Cheap and Commercial'
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment,...
9 months ago
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment, and I had never heard of the man. Indirectly,
generations after his time, Henry G. Bohn (1796-1884) served as one of my
tutors. His celebrator above is Theodore Dalrymple writing in...
The Marginalian
Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea...
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or...
3 months ago
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or sanitation. Imagine being a gifted child in that world, knowing you are born into a body that will never be granted the basic rights of citizenship in any country, into a mind that will...
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Giving Out Chick-fil-A on a Schedule App
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are'
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his...
3 months ago
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’
but his honesty, his complete
leveling with the reader.”
I tried a
little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
The American Scholar
Aging Out
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
2 weeks ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Domestic Privacies"
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of...
9 months ago
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of Literature,” when she refers to Dr. Johnson as “grand master of
English prose.” She also practices what Anecdotal Evidence preaches: “the
intersection of books and life.” We might...
This Space
39 Books: 1998
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
7 months ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
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
'Not Simply Bad Prose'
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78)...
10 months ago
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who
taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture
“celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Reticent Humor'
“For nearly
twenty years after the publication of The
Children of the Night in 1896, poetry...
a year ago
“For nearly
twenty years after the publication of The
Children of the Night in 1896, poetry comprised the only notable American literature.”
A
provocative statement that sends one scrambling for counter-examples, which
aren’t difficult to find. Between 1896 and 1916 appeared...
Wuthering...
What has happened to me may well be a good thing - the death of Socrates
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts,...
a year ago
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts, especially the last three, are a large part of the fame of
Socrates, the reason he is an exemplar of the wise man to this day. He asked annoying questions, he rejected
material...
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest...
"We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
3 months ago
"We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or Jupiter."
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018
Slides are available here on Dropbox
Git Push, Git Paid
Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned:
Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
Escaping Flatland
Pseudonyms lets you practice agency
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
4 months ago
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay'
“A good deal
that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil
says,...
7 months ago
“A good deal
that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil
says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I
do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre
to which no reader under sixty...
Josh Thompson
The Millionaire Next Door
I’m struggling to know what to write about
The Millionaire Next Door.
It’s got many wonderful...
over a year ago
I’m struggling to know what to write about
The Millionaire Next Door.
It’s got many wonderful traits, and I strongly recommend that you read it (I wouldn’t mention it otherwise) but it’s got some flaws. I’m afraid if I focus on the flaws, I’ll turn people off from it that might...
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
Josh Thompson
Denver.rb meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018
We talked about performance profiling!
Here’s the slides, on Dropbox
I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Perpetual Fountain of Fun'
“It was not
only in the best company he uttered his best things. He was a perpetual
fountain of fun;...
5 months ago
“It was not
only in the best company he uttered his best things. He was a perpetual
fountain of fun; an improvisatore, who
raised upon some shrewd comment wild edifices of exaggeration. His talk
ascended from rational wit to buffoonery; yet his towerings never daunted
others. He...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Bright, Cheerful, Salubrious Hell'
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.”...
11 months ago
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.” He celebrates the city of his birth (in 1872) and youth –
the Edwardian era – and implicitly critiques the London of the interbellum
years:
“London has been
cosmopolitanised,...
Wuthering...
Philoctetes by Sophocles - Let me suffer what I must suffer
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in...
over a year ago
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in a mood of reconciliation and healing.
Literal healing. Philoctetes possesses the bow of Hercules. Either the bow, or Philoctetes himself, or both – prophecies are ambiguous...
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
6 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Unless It From Enjoyment Spring!'
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context,...
a month ago
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context, I might have assumed the writer described was Walter de la
Mare, whose poetry I ignored for too long because teachers and critics told me
he wrote solely for children. (Something...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose'
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on
January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an
understanding of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books I Have Liked'
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists....
2 weeks ago
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists. They read deeply but narrowly, only science fiction or the Latin
classics in translation. That strategy is alien to me because by nature I’m an
omnivore, moving from Henry James to...
Steven Scrawls
Against Confidence
Against Confidence
I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel
confident.
If my...
11 months 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine'
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
a month ago
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No
commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I
do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the
show in the garden. Butterflies,...
sbensu
Designing for support teams
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
10 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Anecdotal Evidence
'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...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Generosity
“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her...
a year ago
“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her beautiful essay on generosity. “You open your safe and find ashes.” I feel this truth deeply, daily — for nearly two decades of offering these writings freely, I have lived by the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing'
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always...
7 months ago
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car
dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting
earworm. Much of this...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
8 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic'
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener...
9 months ago
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated
from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially
biodegradable. Who...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight'
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
4 months ago
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing
incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on
Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice
bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
Josh Thompson
Continuous Glucose Monitors: Why & What
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the...
7 months ago
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the rear of my upper arm, usually sparks a question or two, I’ve usually stumbled through a response, now I can simply pass this page along to anyone who asks.
Since maybe 2018, every...
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
6 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
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes'
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past...
a month ago
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past ages of the world
When, as I
thought, the energy in things
Shone
through their shapes, when sun and moon no less
Than tree or
stone or star or human face
Were seen
but as fantastic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Interior Decoration Doesn't Count"
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland,...
8 months ago
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland, where I visited often as a kid and worked in 1975. I was in the
basement in the general hardback fiction section where I saw the copy of Under the Volcano I bought there
forty-nine...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seeing Means Going Over the Details'
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by...
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by Émile-Auguste
Chartier (1868-1951), the French proto-blogger better known as Alain. He was a professor
of philosophy whose students included Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Both excerpts
are taken from...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Mandelstam Dances Barefoot in the Snow Alone'
“In the end
like all great poets he became a jester”
Not the usual
encomium one expects for Osip...
a month ago
“In the end
like all great poets he became a jester”
Not the usual
encomium one expects for Osip Mandelstam, dead at age forty-seven in a Soviet camp,
but the eulogist is Zbigniew Herbert, a congenitally ironic poet, ever aware of
the comic in the appalling. For my birthday I...
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
Josh Thompson
Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft...
over a year ago
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft document
Inspiration comes from many places, but most strongly it draws heavily from Order Without Design. I’ve quoted in depth two pages below, but there is many other sections of the book...
The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings
"Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
11 months ago
"Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
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...
a month 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 Marginalian
The Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the...
"We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or...
a year ago
"We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or insulated from our own past experiences. Instead, all human experience is part phantom — the product of deep-set predictions."
Josh Thompson
2020 Annual Review
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...
over a year ago
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now.
Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
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