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Wuthering...
Books I Read in April 2024 - this irritation passes over into patient completed understanding Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I was saying it is often irritating to listen to the repeating they are doing, always then that one has it as being to love repeating that is the whole history of each one, such a one has it...
Josh Thompson
On Money (again) Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about,...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about, because there are many different ways we can approach it. It’s easy to feel judged when someone does something with their money that I don’t do with mine. That all said, there...
The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
48
a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
Josh Thompson
Pry-ing into a Stack Trace I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting errors. I git stashed, and re-ran my tests, and still got errors. Here’s the full stacktrace: > b ruby -Itest test/models/model_name_redacted_test.rb -n=/errors/ # Running tests...
The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist... Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
6 months ago
48
6 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
This Space
Twentieth anniversary post On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have reflected on the past and present of literary blogging (there is no future) so I will not go over that waste land again except to wish more had followed the example of This Space. One of...
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made "Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building) The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
1
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...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
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
25
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,...
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023 Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
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
The American Scholar
The Support Ship The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
50
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
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
30
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...
Josh Thompson
A 40 Hour Work Week Business Insider posted an article on why we have a 40 hour work week. The author blames big...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Business Insider posted an article on why we have a 40 hour work week. The author blames big business for why we’ve not dropped below 40 hours per week. He thinks that if America became less consumer-driven, our economy would collapse. He’s got the wrong starting assumptions...
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
5 months ago
1
5 months ago
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are “shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of “profound...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors. Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Finest of Human Creatures' Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems, stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems, stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S Pritchett and drawn from The New Statesman and Nation. Founded in 1913 by the Webbs and others associated with the Fabian Society, the magazine’s politics were  left-wing and many of...
sbensu
Pricing APIs Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom' I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people...
a year ago
22
a year ago
I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists, super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph McElroy. That each of...
sbensu
Breaking changes in JSON APIs A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Falling into Place I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100%...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100% remote. At my last job, I worked remote regularly, at least one day a week, but the rest of the week, I was in the office. Remote work is becoming established around the world,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo' A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
6 months ago
47
6 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Corner Is Fraught with Memory' A.J. Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The New Yorker and the grand celebration that was...
11 months ago
28
11 months ago
A.J. Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The New Yorker and the grand celebration that was his life as a writer – was published two weeks after his death, in the January 11, 1964 issue of the magazine that had printed more than five-hundred of his pieces since he joined...
Ben Borgers
Writing Tasks Down
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Teach the Conflicts It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
38
3 months ago
It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed The post Paradise Reclaimed...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed The post Paradise Reclaimed appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
6 months ago
65
6 months ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe." This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The First to Climb a Mountain Because It Is There' On this date in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch), his...
8 months ago
52
8 months ago
On this date in 1336, just for the hell of it, Francesco Petrarca (we know him as Petrarch), his brother Gherardo and two servants climbed to the 6,263-foot summit of Mount Ventoux in Provence. Morris Bishop, Vladimir Nabokov’s closest friend at Cornell, writes in Petrarch and...
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
47
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
Josh Thompson
"Cooking" is so much more I’ve long wanted to get better at cooking. I eat a lot of food, and would like to enjoy it. I’ve...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve long wanted to get better at cooking. I eat a lot of food, and would like to enjoy it. I’ve gotten to a point where I am comfortable following a recipe, and I bet you normally are fine following a recipe too. To follow a recipe, you must have two things. These two things...
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024 For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
39
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the available energy and concentration.  Now, though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again. Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
The American Scholar
Sheep Jones Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Only Little People Frightened By the Long Night' The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our...
a year ago
12
a year ago
The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our neighborhood as expressed through the “group chat” I have never looked at moved the celebration to October 29. The reasons are unclear. What this means in practical terms is two...
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby. It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post...
6 months ago
58
6 months ago
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post Downstream of Fukushima appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books I Read in August 2023 As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted to more important things.  Plenty of...
a year ago
391
a year ago
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted to more important things.  Plenty of energy to read, though. With a respite in September, I should soon be able to write a bit on the Greek philosophers I have been reading.  The Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics work...
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
1
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 American Scholar
“I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
War Room “Bib”
a year ago
Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play... I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy.  Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do.  If we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture' My tutelary spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from Hodgkin...
4 months ago
32
4 months ago
My tutelary spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from Hodgkin lymphoma at age forty-eight. Out in the hall I spoke with three oncologists  after they had yet again examined my brother. I asked the question no one had yet asked: How much time does...
Blog -...
Book Review - Owning Your Own Shadow The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal development. According to the classic resource Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, “The shadow is that which has not entered adequately into...
Josh Thompson
Climbing in "decking range" In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you need to be ready for any situation. Here’s how to give a kick-ass lead belay when your climber is close enough to the ground they could potentially deck. This is part of a series on...
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 2: Run your first tests (and make them pass) Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
1
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,...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Entertain As Well As Illuminate' “Here’s a thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”  Bracing words to...
a year ago
8
a year ago
“Here’s a thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”  Bracing words to encounter while writing a book review. The writer is the poet David Mason. Quoted is the opening sentence of his review/essay “Two Poet-Critics,” devoted to Clive James and John...
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
1
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 Borgers
No Dessert Challenge
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted' A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
a week ago
14
a week ago
A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that makes us...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep "It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State This cooperative could be its own country.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Postmodern Pigeonhole Is a Shuck' With Tom Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer of short...
a month ago
18
a month ago
With Tom Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer of short stories and of one novel, Camp Concentration, but perhaps the most entertaining of our critics. His only recent rivals have been Turner Cassity and R.S. Gwynn. “Entertainment” and...
Josh Thompson
A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and emotionally-charged operation to replace my 70-year-old newly-widowed mother-in-law's ancient desktop computer with a easy-for-me-to-manage Chromebook Update: I posted to r/ChromeOS...
The American Scholar
“The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Security Questions
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the... "It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite...
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy "Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear...
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim the gifs from >3Mb/each to <1Mb each, so I didn’t. If you’re on mobile, or trying to conserve data, you might want to come back to this one later. I value my attention and focus. I...
The American Scholar
Double Exposure On our first memories The post Double Exposure appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Wuthering...
"Socrates gone mad" - my hero Diogenes the Cynic He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the...
a year ago
7
a year ago
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the ass.  He took the example of Socrates to its limit.  Plato is the one who called him “Socrates gone mad,” but in a sense he is just the logical result of thinking through how Socrates...
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Have to Read the Words' “Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely compare anyone to him.”  I first read War and Peace in the eighth grade in a paperback abridgement. I remember reading it in science class, half-heartedly hiding the book behind the...
Ben Borgers
Do You Subvocalize?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself' The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the...
4 days ago
5
4 days ago
The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at something he says out of pity and an...
The Elysian
The "letters to an anarchist" post-mortem Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
a month ago
21
a month ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense' An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the...
a year ago
6
a year ago
An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband, who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to  go out of town, I would stay with him...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned' In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
8
a year ago
In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism”  -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world unaccompanied by...
This Space
39 Books: 2015 In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
7 months ago
47
7 months ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
a week ago
16
a week ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The American Scholar
Cats and Dogs The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
This Space
Notes from overground Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and...
11 months ago
34
11 months ago
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and arrived long after the novel had been reviewed in all the big newspapers so, instead of riding the wave of publication, I was dragged under by its backwash. I had to answer a question...
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant From Giacometti’s sketch book
3 months ago
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
54
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...
Ben Borgers
Web of Thoughts
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life "Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
8
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Top Thing of the World' John Keats’ meditation on a reader’s paradise:  “I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
John Keats’ meditation on a reader’s paradise:  “I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it and reflect from it, and dream...
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
4
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...
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
a year ago
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
6 months ago
38
6 months ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds... "But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom' Scholars of Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published between 1944...
2 months ago
21
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
Adventures With Jean Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
a year ago
Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023 I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long...
a year ago
55
a year ago
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long overdue loot at Seneca's plays, a glance at Gide's Counterfeiters, and some messing around with Plato's Republic. If I did not write in April, I at least read: GREEK PHILOSOPHY The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude' Most of Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was written and...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
Most of Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922 A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
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
59
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar' When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where we bought our first house and lived for seven years. The Saratoga Race Course was less than a mile away. So were Yaddo and Broadway, the main drag downtown. We...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows' Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
46
8 months ago
Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
The American Scholar
Facing the Facts An antiquated take on antiquity The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
This Space
Favourite books 2020 Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone...
over a year ago
33
over a year ago
Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone exceeds the number of books I'm able to read in a year let alone the number from which it was presumably narrowed down. This is why I suggested a couple of years ago such pages choose...
Wuthering...
Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz - What I wanted now was the adventure of being... Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.  Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to...
a year ago
39
a year ago
Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.  Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to me because of its unusual use of the Pre-Socratic philosophers.  This is a domestic novel, a fine example of, borrowing from Trollope, the way we live now (or, to me, the way they...
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
33
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...
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
a year ago
The American Scholar
A Forgotten Turner Classic Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games? The...
6 months ago
21
6 months ago
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games? The post A Forgotten Turner Classic appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
28
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Such a Touchy, Testy, Pleasant Fellow' One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the past, and sometimes last week. Years ago I wrecked a friendship with a glib remark, a wisecrack that I didn’t even believe but had convinced myself was funny (it was, in fact, but...
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us "The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
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
12
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...
This Space
39 Books: 2004 Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
7 months ago
40
7 months ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks. But do I really want to make such...
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
Ben Borgers
Kid Money
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Planning my week
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Book You Know You Don’t Understand' Some thirty years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted me to...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Some thirty years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted me to write a feature story for my newspaper about him and the small-press book he had written. Frank had been lobbying me for weeks by telephone. He was middle-aged but carried himself...
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s. I know that some people like to complain about...
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
2
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...
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
59
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...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Goals November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals are an extension of my October goals. October was good ( October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...
The Marginalian
There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with...
a month ago
10
a month ago
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with ghosts — all of our disappointed hopes and our outgrown dreams, all the abandoned novels and unproven theorems, all the people we used to love, all the people we used to be. A ghost is...
The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
8 months ago
1
8 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Cool Malignity of Othello' “As Shakespeare went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their own...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“As Shakespeare went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their own advantage but for its own sake.”  In his lecture on Othello, W.H. Auden understands, as a growing number of our contemporaries do not, that evil is autonomous and self-justifying....
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Now I Am As Lilliputian As All the Rest' “My mood is like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work, just...
8 months ago
51
8 months ago
“My mood is like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work, just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the time to read. It’s more enjoyable than writing. I feel that if I could live another forty years and spend the whole...
The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
7 months ago
75
7 months ago
A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Review Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals were an extension of October’s goals. I feel comfortable with long-term unchanging goals. They were: Deepen my knowledge of front-end web...
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'Ordinary, Helpless, Moody Human Talk' Long ago I came to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Long ago I came to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m no matchmaker and don’t have the soul of a proselytizer. I resent people telling me what I ought to like. On Wednesday two young missionaries came to the front door. One launched his...
The American Scholar
Caprock Adventures worth the silence The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection' “This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of...
a week ago
4
a week ago
“This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay but never completely still.”  In their moral and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
ribbonfarm
Ribbonfarm is Retiring After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve...
2 months ago
2
2 months ago
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be...
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API. We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON. Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
sbensu
How to: friction logs Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the...
a year ago
1
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
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is the Past That Cast the Stars' I and the first issue of Mad magazine arrived in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted...
a year ago
6
a year ago
I and the first issue of Mad magazine arrived in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted reader. That same month, Poetry, a journal I would start reading a few years after Mad, published its fortieth anniversary issue. Included is the work of more than fifty poets,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School' When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
6
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
Josh Thompson
Be a little better at personal email The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my phone, computer, and brain. There is no unifying theme to what will be written here. Three recommendations to email better TL;DR Email should usually be as short as possible. More of...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
5 days ago
8
5 days ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
The Elysian
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in December 2023 - No one’s worse than you, she says Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything in the first section except the May...
11 months ago
33
11 months ago
Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything in the first section except the May Sarton novel and Eugene O’Neill play, balanced by a complementary pair of Holocaust memoirs. NOVELS, STORIES & A PLAY Ocean of Story, Vol. 1 (11th cent.),  Somadeva, tr. C. H....
Wuthering...
Books I read in September 2024 - Boring books had their origin in boring readers My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said...
2 months ago
39
2 months ago
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really do it. November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza.  I will be joining her by reading at least the first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon...
Wuthering...
The sophists and their rehabilitation - they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their... I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for...
a year ago
32
a year ago
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for centuries in the history of philosophy as, following Plato (but not Socrates), hucksters, they, or some of them, are now taken seriously as an intermediate step between the cosmological...
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden “Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
8
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Reticent Humor' “For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry...
a year ago
10
a year ago
“For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry comprised the only notable American literature.”  A provocative statement that sends one scrambling for counter-examples, which aren’t difficult to find. Between 1896 and 1916 appeared...
Ben Borgers
Charles’ Sandwiches
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 American Scholar
Born to Be Wild One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
30
6 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous "The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
The Marginalian
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best... This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand...
a month ago
17
a month ago
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within them on each other, stirring certainties and self-righteousness to distract from the uncomfortable unknowns, from the great open...
Blog -...
Book Review - Zen in the Art of Archery Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely being the most popular book about Japanese culture and martial arts ever. This is a bold statement I cannot contest, having read only three other books about Zen: the...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
15
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Interesting to Me Than the Future' “The past has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found pessimists...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
“The past has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles or that everyone should share them; in...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
93
a year ago
I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon. FICTION Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann The Long Valley (1938) & The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
The Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes “That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate "It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Writer on Board The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
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
This Space
39 Books in one For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books:...
6 months ago
76
6 months ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books: PDF As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
The American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Hint #1 I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
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
46
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death" More than any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of an...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
More than any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane, metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
The Marginalian
Look Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for... How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Why I use a Kindle Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical issues (depending on something with a battery) or on aesthetic reasons. These are valid issues, of course, but these pale in comparison to the many, many reasons to use a...
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
Wuthering...
The books I read in November 2024 - like a hideous spinster who has learned the grim humor of the... Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower...
a week ago
8
a week ago
Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower Club (c. 1760), Cao Xueqin – written up long ago. Cartucho (1931) & My Mother's Hands (1938), Nellie Campobello – Brutal vignettes of the Mexican revolution by a diehard partisan, a...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘A Pocket Universe’ We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,”...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,” a 1969 poem by James Hayford (Star in the Shed Window: Collected Poems 1933-1988, New England Press, 1989): “May the next book you read Be what you need— “A pocket...
The Marginalian
The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds — enchanting emblems of the water cycle that makes this rocky planet a living world, drifting across our shared dome as if exhaled by some lovesick god. That we should have such a...
Ben Borgers
War Room: Expansion features
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike' I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
Josh Thompson
Dizzying but Invisible Depth The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is shutdown, so it’s not easily sharable. I’m reposting here because this is such a useful post. Dizzying but invisible depth You just went to the Google home page. Simple, isn’t...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 359 ...
a week ago
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night.  The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example. Hippias is...
This Space
The Lascaux Notebooks by Jean-Luc Champerret Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there...
over a year ago
50
over a year ago
Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there after millennia in darkness, and Notebooks, suggesting a private endeavour, preparation, a work to come. While neither is secret as such, neither was meant for the light. Two intrigues...
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
6
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Accepter and Recorder of Things as They Are' It has been a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been read and...
a year ago
32
a year ago
It has been a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been read and enjoyed. A reader in New York City tells me the title character of V.S. Pritchett’s 1951 novel Mr. Beluncle reminds her of her late father, a man she describes as “feckless.” And...
The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and... A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
9 months ago
50
9 months ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Their Thoughts, Their Longings, Hopes, Their Fate' A new record: stopped three times at train crossings in a single day without leaving the city,...
10 months ago
23
10 months ago
A new record: stopped three times at train crossings in a single day without leaving the city, driving only to the university library and back, twenty-two miles. Because of its sprawling, unplanned nature, Houston is a dense web of train tracks, as John Bainbridge, a staff writer...
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional Maybe your desires are delusional The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
8 months ago
1
8 months ago
Maybe your desires are delusional The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just been pretending not to notice. How...
The American Scholar
“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The...
a week ago
11
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Quite Vacant Is a Mind Distress’d' I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
I’ll be going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring later this year. I knew a guy in high school who already yearned for retirement despite never having had a job, whereas I’d been working since I was twelve. He wanted to play golf and go...
The Marginalian
Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being "You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum...
a year ago
16
a year ago
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge."
Ben Borgers
An emoji picker epiphany
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers) Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen on The Climber’s Guide) (Warning to mobile users: big gif) In case you didn’t guess, or you guessed wrong… I’m shooting tons of video for a course. It’s going to be awesome. It’s...
The Elysian
One year of my work, printed The Elysian Volume II is here.
2 months ago
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
9 months ago
2
9 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House ...
2 weeks ago
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues... The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
a year ago
34
a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations.  A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument.  You say there are many gods?  But what if there were one? Or none? ...
Ben Borgers
Website Like a Library
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions" “Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
“Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’ or ‘ithyphallic’ will send them ‘scurrying’ to their dictionaries (why do they always ‘scurry’ or even ‘scuttle’? A new word, rightly used, should be an occasion for festive...
The American Scholar
The Rescuer In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
33
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
23
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Silence Suddenly Erupts in Speech' Zbigniew Herbert visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England, Italy,...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Zbigniew Herbert visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England, Italy, France again and back to Poland. His budget was tight but Herbert was no hedonistic tourist. Nor was he a stuffy academic or critic. The essays in Barbarian in the Garden (1962;...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Permanently a Monument As Anything' Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely...
5 months ago
39
5 months ago
Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely moistened with the sender’s tongue and sealed. A person-to-person letter, not junk mail, credit-card come-ons, campaign postcards, jury summonses and the rest of the...
The Marginalian
The Poetic Science of the Ghost Pipe: Emily Dickinson and the Secret of Earth’s Most Supernatural... "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In...
2 weeks ago
4
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
1
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
Ben Borgers
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes Hope blooms The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cloudy, Cloudy Is the Stuff of Stones' The best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s...
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
The best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s theory of subjective idealism – he called it “immaterialism” -- is recounted by James Boswell on August 6, 1763:  “After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But Johnson Fought Back' Epigraphs to books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
Epigraphs to books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add little or nothing to the manner in which we read the book and often amount to our author showing off, touting his own vast reading or giving himself an unearned endorsement. The most...
This Space
Favourite books 2021 If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Make Yourself a Seer: The Teenage Arthur Rimbaud on How to Be a Poet and a Prophet of Possibility "The day of a single universal language will dawn!... This language will be of the soul, for the...
a year ago
5
a year ago
"The day of a single universal language will dawn!... This language will be of the soul, for the soul, encompassing everything, scents, sounds, colors, one thought mounting another."
The American Scholar
Magic Men The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Pure Absence, No Place, Nowhere, Not' I remember in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of...
4 months ago
50
4 months ago
I remember in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of the book is the account of Lenin’s autopsy, following his death at age fifty-two from atherosclerosis. When tapped with tweezers, his cerebral arteries pinged like stone. They...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Worked His Weaponed Wit' A reader is displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a...
a year ago
25
a year ago
A reader is displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a long time ago about Robert Bly. Granted, criticizing Bly is like shooting fish in the bathtub with a bazooka. I was a little ashamed of myself but that passed. My consolation is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Weightier Than All the Gear I’ll Carry' I was a lazy student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
I was a lazy student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I retained was a lasting interest in mythology, Roman history and etymology. I probably learned more English words than Latin – celerity, pulchritude, jocular, spelunker, procrastination,...
The Marginalian
The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Richly, Sometimes Dreamily, Melodic' A friend has given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt...
9 months ago
35
9 months ago
A friend has given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt and Co., 1930), with a printed note before the title page:  “Three hundred copies of ‘Poems for Children’ have been specially printed and bound, and have been signed by the...
The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply... "A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books. Related but in a different...
Anecdotal Evidence
'. . . Or That He Did Not' Some of us enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying older...
6 months ago
44
6 months ago
Some of us enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying older texts can identify historical figures and help us decipher obsolete words. As Joyce advised in the Wake: “Wipe your glosses with what you know.” My preference with Shakespeare...
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem? When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End' In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult,...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m visiting my brother in hospice. No...
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
18
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
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments... "The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
a year ago
30
a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred "Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
Josh Thompson
Write It Now The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took 2x as long as I wish it had. I could make it 10x better with another hour of work, but I only have 20 minutes. I’m a fan of “conceptual frameworks” This concept has been important...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Man of My Kidney' I met my nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the fourth...
7 months ago
35
7 months ago
I met my nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the fourth floor of the hospital. Between patients he was eating a banana, his breakfast, and carried a stack of folders in his other hand. On the front of his white lab coat was his name, the...
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
Wuthering...
Jon Fosse's Septology - art "can only say something while keeping silent about what it actually... Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter...
a month ago
20
a month ago
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand one of his paintings.  Each of the novel’s seven sections begins with Asle looking at the painting: AND I SEE MYSELF STANDING and looking at the picture...
The Marginalian
Love Anyway You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the...
9 months ago
55
9 months ago
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway...
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
60
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Meaning of Sidereal Time' Years ago I was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and part-time...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Years ago I was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and part-time journalist who lived in Woodstock, N.Y. He was smart, quick, funny and surprisingly well-read (he knew who Edward Dahlberg was). Neither of us was much of a party-goer so we spent...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2023 In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to...
a year ago
11
a year ago
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were—it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘Of Course’ “Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.” —Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
Astral Codex Ten
Against The Generalized Anti-Caution Argument ...
4 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go read this article by James clear. It’s called “ The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action”. I’ve linked it a third time here. Go read it. James starts with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World Has Always Seemed to Me So Various' I dropped out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to complete my...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
I dropped out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to complete my B.A. in English until 2003. The lack of a degree never got in the way of working for almost a quarter-century as a newspaper reporter. I suspect a degree in most non-STEM...
The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our... How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
8 months ago
36
8 months ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
sbensu
There Is No Antimemetics Division Notes on the book.
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
Website Rewrite 2
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone "An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
The Marginalian
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating: An Uncommon Meditation on Presence and the Aperture of Wonder "Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Current Self and Going to Libraries
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Snow! The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
October 5th, 1582
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below. When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Last Laugh The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Lay a foundation Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is just another way of saying “easy things are easier to do than harder things”. Revelatory, I know. Similarly, I wrote a long time ago that: We tell ourselves we can’t accomplish...
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
6 days ago
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland That's the joy of being a writer.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Remarkable Literary Judgment' She was twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I assume was her...
4 months ago
21
4 months ago
She was twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I assume was her mother. She sat on the aisle two rows ahead of me. The cabin of the plane glowed with screens while she was reading Andrew R. MacAndrew’s 1961 translation of Dead Souls, the Signet...
Ben Borgers
Reading with RSS
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Will Leave Behind Trenches' “You wouldn’t give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of fortune...
a month ago
30
a month ago
“You wouldn’t give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of fortune heirs / To the bloody myths of the twentieth city.”  Today is the centenary of Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert. The Anglophone world has been fortunate. Herbert’s poems...
Wuthering...
Books I read, and desks I saw, in July - hoping he might tell me, / tell me what the waves don't... Right, July, July, so long ago.  I was on the road a little bit, making literary pilgrimages. ...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
Right, July, July, so long ago.  I was on the road a little bit, making literary pilgrimages.  Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for example, to Herman Melville’s Arrowhead: On this spot, not at this exact desk but in front of this exact window, Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick,...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
15
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
I Miss Google Classroom
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soil Must Have Been Prepared' Tom Disch took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Tom Disch took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of Indolence” (1748), eighty-one Spenserian stanzas by the Scottish poet James Thomson. The poem is a sort of mock-epical hymn to the Protestant work ethic, a virtue ably represented by...
The American Scholar
A Messy Mix The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious' I hadn’t opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
9
a week ago
I hadn’t opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time. It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone, someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
4 months ago
1
4 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024 The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!' Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the details of the...
The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life "At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
9 months ago
22
9 months ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something' Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the other...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance' As expected, Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Sustained...
5 months ago
52
5 months ago
As expected, Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street, top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
11 months ago
Ben Borgers
Productivity YouTubers
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here. Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around. Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
Wuthering...
there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough - what is knowledge? - Theaetetus and Parmenides The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to...
a year ago
36
a year ago
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to systematically understand, without the help of the revealed truth of religion, difficult concepts like existence and virtue led, almost immediately, to the question of whether anyone can...
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive' A Jewish friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the world is making...
a year ago
20
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...
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
40
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...
Josh Thompson
Use an Alarm to Go to Bed Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes. I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes. because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave. Kristi and I tend to stick...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work "Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
The Redemption Arc Is Coming
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light' Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten than the others, though in 1939 he...
Ben Borgers
Basecamp Talks to You
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day. I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
Ben Borgers
Gamelan Music
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Merely Mental Stenography' “Allow me a small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in a...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
“Allow me a small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in a literary magazine. There are too many essays, and vanishingly few good essayists. There seems to be real confusion about whether style can conceal a fundamental incuriosity, whether...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not At All Reliable for Climbing On' Decades ago I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New...
8 months ago
15
8 months ago
Decades ago I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New York’s Adirondack Mountains in his bare feet. Surprisingly, he completed the shoeless stunt without serious injury. It was one of those Ripley’s-Believe-It-or-Not accomplishments that seems...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness' Once asked about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
4 months ago
32
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fragility of Happiness' Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review a new translation...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review a new translation of a Russian novel due for publication in November. The proofs arrived on Thursday and I sent Chris an email letting him know I was already reading the book. The email bounced back...
Josh Thompson
On Fables: Finishing up Antifragile I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile, says: The great economist Ariel Rubinstein gets the green lumber fallacy - it requires a great deal of intellect and honesty to see things that way. Rubinstein refuses to...
Ben Borgers
Pi
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations.  Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...