Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World'
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility....
4 months ago
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the
end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined
to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing'
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always...
7 months ago
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car
dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting
earworm. Much of this...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle'
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of...
7 months ago
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir
Nabokov on May 6, 1923:
“No, life is
no quivering quandary!
Here under
the moon things are bright and dewy.
We are...
Escaping Flatland
Thoughts on agency
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at...
6 months ago
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at 6 pm CET (9 am PST). Like last time, I’ll prepare a few questions (probably relating to today’s post since that is top of mind) but mostly we’ll just talk about whatever comes up....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us See Them There in the Shadows'
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive...
6 months ago
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive until a friend told me he was dead. What I remember is his face, his
general demeanor, roughly the sort of behavior I could expect of him. I last
saw him more than half a century...
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
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...
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Entirely Sure That I Like It'
On March 27,
1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the
United...
9 months ago
On March 27,
1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the
United States when he wrote a letter to a little-known poet living in Boston:
Dear Mr.
Robinson:
I have
enjoyed your poems especially The
Children of the Night so much that I must write to...
ben-mini
Old School Business
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs...
6 months ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users.
They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction).
They demeaned...
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
7 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path”
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 days ago
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
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...
Wuthering...
there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough - what is knowledge? - Theaetetus and Parmenides
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised
me. The early attempts to...
a year ago
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised
me. The early attempts to systematically
understand, without the help of the revealed truth of religion, difficult
concepts like existence and virtue led, almost immediately, to the question of
whether anyone can...
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something...
7 months ago
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then.
Cut forward to...
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
Josh Thompson
Circles of Influence
I was listening to a podcast today, where they said if you have problems knowing what to write...
over a year ago
I was listening to a podcast today, where they said if you have problems knowing what to write about, or you’ve hit a block, write about something that angers you.
This is easy. I could write about any number of things that we’ve all read in a newspaper, and get good and angry...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Sum of All the Losses'
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was...
a month ago
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was half an inch shorter). The crown of his trademark top hat – a stovepipe, it
was called -- measured twelve inches in height. Allowing for the silk hat settling on his head, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble'
“As a
youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other
writers. Cooper,...
11 months ago
“As a
youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other
writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead,
allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser,
some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
This Space
39 Books: 1996
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my...
7 months ago
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense'
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the...
a year ago
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband,
who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to go out of town, I would stay with him...
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Doesn't Want to Read'
In a comment
on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:
“Is that a...
a year ago
In a comment
on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:
“Is that a ‘lover
of books’ because they are books? A lover of reading books? A lover of reading
certain books? What makes one bibliophile more of a bibliophile than another?
Size of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Generous Humanity to the Miserable'
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women,...
a year ago
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women, acquaintances
of my wife, both recently divorced. The latter would likely otherwise spend the holiday
alone. The only serious expression of gratitude is welcoming others and sharing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Punners and Rhymers Must Have the Last Word'
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The...
3 months ago
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The Latin
tag is proverbial, deriving from Cicero’s Catiline orations: “O times, O manners!”
It’s the template for all lamentations. Jonathan Swift is repeating it in the
opening lines of...
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves?
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
Ben Borgers
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 2019 Edition
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating...
over a year ago
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating page-turner packed full of aha moments. The authors have
woven together decades of personal research and experience in the field of
intimate relationships to create a classic...
The Marginalian
Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard...
An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
a year ago
An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
Josh Thompson
RailsConf CFP Outline
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit...
over a year ago
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit rushed:
Idea 1: “Junior” Developers are the Solution to Many of Your Problems
Abstract:
Our industry telegraphs: “We don’t want (or know how to handle) ‘Jr. Devs’.”
Jr. Devs, or as...
This Space
39 Books: 2019
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
6 months ago
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist literature": this year's choice is a collection of lectures delivered in the early 1960s at the University of Zürich, published in English translation in 1970, with this edition being...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air'
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a...
8 months ago
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The
River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of
me that finds the obscenity...
Anecdotal Evidence
'First of All a Student of Human Nature'
“Desmond
MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”
The...
9 months ago
“Desmond
MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”
The best
writers, the ones who compel us to read their work across a lifetime, whose
thoughts become our own and who at last become teachers and companions, are
those who work in two media: words...
Josh Thompson
Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers
I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post.
Some of it is specific to getting a remote...
over a year ago
I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post.
Some of it is specific to getting a remote job and working remotely, but all of it is applicable for any kind of software-related role. It’s probably applicable to non-software roles, but this is where most of my exprience...
The Marginalian
The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter...
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
a year ago
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
This Space
39 Books: 2001
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
7 months ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dubious or Questionable Medium'
In 1972,
Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested
poems “protesting the acceleration of the...
10 months ago
In 1972,
Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested
poems “protesting the acceleration of the undeclared Indo-Chinese War” for a
special issue to be published in September of that year. Hine said he would be “grateful
to consider any poem on this terrible and topical subject...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amateurism (in the Original Sense of the Term)'
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of...
11 months ago
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of the Greek for “self-taught.” The
range of the word’s uses in our university-smitten age is vast. Some academics apply
it to anyone without an advanced degree who presumes to have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Although Too Many Readers Have Forgotten'
My education
continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards,
1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson...
3 weeks ago
My education
continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards,
1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, previously unknown to me:
“All night I
sat beside the bed
And watched
that senseless moaning head
Backwards
and forwards toss and toss,
When
suddenly he sat upright
And...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of...
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
a month ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin. Here I will write about the second volume of
the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club. Last time, after reading the first fifth of
the novel, I...
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
3 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
Josh Thompson
Structural Holes and Good Ideas
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains.
These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
The Marginalian
Terror, Tenderness, and the Paradoxes of Human Nature: How a Marmoset Saved Leonard and Virginia...
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they...
a year ago
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they too read to their children, they too can be moved to tears by music. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky captured this as he contemplated the greatest antidote to evil, observing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Simply Bad Prose'
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78)...
10 months ago
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who
taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture
“celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
The Marginalian
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and...
a year ago
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing."
Blog -...
Book Review - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the...
over a year ago
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the masculine. Published in 1990, King, Warrior,
Magician, Lover introduces readers to the concept of mature masculine
archetypes and their immature shadows. The authors, Robert...
Wuthering...
Daryl Hine's Ovid's Heroines - I, who could a dragon hypnotize
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of...
10 months ago
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of fictional letters in verse written
by mythical heroines to their no-good boyfriends and husbands. Many end in suicide. Dido castigating Aeneas, Phaedra mourning...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture'
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.”
Understandably,
Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless
destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or
destroying books, even...
The Marginalian
The 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
"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World'
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course,...
a year ago
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider
themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and
Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
The American Scholar
Parque de la Música
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
6 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it?
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
2 months ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party. I will rejoin the party planning momentarily.
The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel
about an extended family. The main plot
is the teenage love triangle, but...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry'
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when...
9 months ago
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a
discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard
Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus. The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons. Plautus was...
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a
big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers). Both movements were popular in the Roman
Republic as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Mouldering Boots of Other Days'
The triolet,
like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French
verse form,...
9 months ago
The triolet,
like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French
verse form, usually eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter. The
first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. Among English-language
poets, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy...
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals'
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL.
yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ
—...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less'
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working...
a year ago
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday
for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Josh Thompson
Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet
I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish.
That’s not to say...
Josh Thompson
Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course.
One of the...
over a year ago
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course.
One of the topics was using “whole values”, instead of being “primative obsessed”. The example Avdi gave was clear as day.
He used a course with a duration attribute to show the...
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Also Read for Ecstasy'
A reader one-third
of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her...
8 months ago
A reader one-third
of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her questions
aren’t cynical. She sounds like a reader driven by the sort of bookish hunger I
recognize. Her tastes are eclectic, not confined strictly to the American or...
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here.
This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Here’s the gist:
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
Josh Thompson
Learn to Type - Again
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve...
over a year ago
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve learned from learning Colemak
Short, focused practice yields great results.
When I start a timer for twenty minutes, I feel a sense of urgency, rather than defeat. Time boxing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Essence of Good Talk'
A longtime reader
of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the...
a year ago
A longtime reader
of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the afternoon
evaporated. Neither of us brought a script. “Improvisation is the essence of
good talk,” writes Max Beerbohm in “Lytton Strachey” (1943). “Heaven defend us
from the talker who doles out...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning?
new essay in Asterisk
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you...
over a year ago
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you.
That’s...
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.
The Marginalian
Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity
"The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
6 months ago
"The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
sbensu
How to avoid breaking APIs
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists'
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters...
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the
same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get
a craving for spaghetti...
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
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...
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
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 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 post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Goals
November 2016 Goals
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....
over a year ago
November 2016 Goals
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning.
My November goals are an extension of my
October goals.
October was good (
October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...
sbensu
APIs as ladders
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
4 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten
The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over a year ago
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the...
over a year ago
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the sake of exercising - you can stop reading now. This information is probably not relevant to you.
Those of you who don’t like to exercise, but know you really should exercise...
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...
7 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....
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
a month ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find Other Things Which We Liked Better'
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if...
9 months ago
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if he wished to join them at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street in London.
Johnson was “indisposed” and Goldsmith said, “[W]e will not go to the Mitre to-night,
since we cannot have the...
sbensu
Pricing APIs
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
10 months ago
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Read You As I Listen to Rare Music'
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal...
4 months ago
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal canons, and remains rereadable for the rest of our lives. For me that
would include Swift, Defoe and a third English novelist, a rather exotic import
from Poland: Joseph Conrad. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Oaks That Were Acorns That Were Oaks'
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like...
a year ago
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like slow hail. The crop this year is prodigious. The
patio is covered with them, more than the squirrels can keep up with. Stomping on them make a satisfying crack/pop sound. I’ve...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Thinking This May Be My Last Summer'
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first...
6 months ago
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first war – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon – but the
second seemed a blank. On my own, I learned of the Americans – Karl Shapiro,
Anthony Hecht, Howard Nemerov. Only...
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
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
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
My terminal setup
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....
over a year ago
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post.
Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup.
First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
12 months ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
Josh Thompson
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
Josh Thompson
Friends Don't Let Friends Shortrope
The first in a series about how to be a better belayer.
Short rope
[shawrt-rohp]
verb
The act of...
over a year ago
The first in a series about how to be a better belayer.
Short rope
[shawrt-rohp]
verb
The act of not giving sufficient rope to your climber.
Getting short roped is bad.
It’s not necessarily dangerous, nor does it cause you to take a whip (it can, of course) but the real reason...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Disadvantages of Wine'
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking...
3 months ago
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he
acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady M’Leod would hardly
believe him, and said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry...
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear."
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
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously'
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
2 months ago
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his
journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at
least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
The American Scholar
Sienna Martz
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas...
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 days ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
Josh Thompson
Dream Big, and Build Optionality
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to.
For example: Travel, location...
over a year ago
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to.
For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on.
But then we go right along doing all the normal...
Josh Thompson
Tiny Habits take 2
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is...
over a year ago
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones.
I
have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading
Freewith Kristi and...
This Space
The end of literature, part five
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision”
Three prompts
The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Three prompts
The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
High Variance Management
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
a month ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet...
a year ago
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet made a world largely by its rockiness. Rock gave us mountains and beaches, bridges and kitchen countertops, gave us the first Promethean fire that sparked civilization. A rock is...
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base...
3 months ago
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base primative, in this case, a “polyline”. Read the rest of this post, understand what we’re going for, then go to part 2: get your own polyline from strava. It’s not trivial to get, but its...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry'
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were...
9 months ago
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”
Things get
sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling
species of serious...
Josh Thompson
Back in the Saddle
There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your...
over a year ago
There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your ability to switch tasks to another project diminishes.
There’s plenty of evidence that humans can’t multi-task, and those who try just end up doing a lot of things poorly.
On the...
Josh Thompson
A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...
over a year ago
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...
The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
The Marginalian
The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a...
11 months ago
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a...
The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself
"What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
"What is happiness but growth in peace."
Escaping Flatland
Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various...
a year ago
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various poets I knew and submitted the results to a fanzine.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Brave Respect the Brave'
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read...
6 months ago
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read before, “To E.S. Salomon” (Black Beetles in Amber, 1892). Here is the memorably pertinent third stanza:
“The brave
respect the brave. The brave
Respect
the dead; but you -- you...
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays
Notes on process
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It All But Lovely As Silence Is'
Thanks to
S.J. Perelman and his 1952 collection The
Ill-Tempered Clavichord, I get confused with...
6 months ago
Thanks to
S.J. Perelman and his 1952 collection The
Ill-Tempered Clavichord, I get confused with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (1722) and with
that bone that runs from the sternum to the shoulder blade. You know, the
clavicle. Each time I need to cite one of the three, in writing...
Wuthering...
The endlessly adaptable plays of Plautus - I’ll make it into a comedy with some tragedy mixed in
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy. That they are based on the plays of...
a year ago
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy. That they are based on the plays of Menander and the other Greek New Comedy writers was irrelevant, since all of those texts were soon lost. Plautus (and his successor Terence) carried the stage traditions, the...
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the...
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
a month ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Anecdotal Evidence
'. . . Or That He Did Not'
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older...
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 American Scholar
The Rescuer
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a...
a month ago
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a profound knowledge of each other, of the soul beneath the costume of personality — that lovely Celtic notion of anam cara. We bring this knowledge, this mutual understanding, to...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
"The people we love are built into us."
a year ago
"The people we love are built into us."
Anecdotal Evidence
'They’ve No Clue of My Reality'
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me....
10 months ago
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me. I do not have to do guard duty as I am an officer, think of sergeant
Peck, sounds pretty big don’t it, eh?”
That’s
Marcus Peck, a soldier from Sand Lake, N.Y., who answered...
Josh Thompson
Thoughts on Money from 2013
I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013....
over a year ago
I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013. That’s 2.5 years ago. Reading over it, I feel satisfaction for a few reasons:
Old Josh (from July 2013) wasn’t a train wreck. As soon as I think about myself in highschool and...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Judgment Day of Man’s Illusions'
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three
writers, critics and scholars to name the book...
7 months ago
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three
writers, critics and scholars to name the book published in the preceding
twenty-five years they believed to have been “the most undeservedly neglected.”
For this reader, sorry to say, most of them remain neglected. I don’t even...
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations."
The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks...
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
10 months ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
sbensu
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
10 months ago
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
2 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five
volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel.
I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it,
but in a sense I did finish a...
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
“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 –...
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
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
Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and...
The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
a year ago
The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful...
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
11 months ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement'
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
2 months ago
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of
intoxications.”
Driving while
reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light,
I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time
...
a week ago
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
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...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5
...
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Three Ways to Decide What to be When You Grow Up
Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult...
over a year ago
Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult to answer for two reasons. The first reason is I am not yet strongly pulled into a specific position. My ideal answer would be “I want to do X role at company Y.” Short. Concise....
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy
You're welcome.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism'
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The...
11 months ago
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was
married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking
at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
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
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Was Only Coming True'
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky...
a year ago
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky (2018), a dying man’s
last fling. The title refers to the Japanese phrase for the Milky Way. It’s
mostly autobiography, a book of well-rehearsed memories, largely unstructured, much
of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Has Embalmed So Many Eminent Persons'
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries,...
8 months ago
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries, reviews of books, movies and music – for the newspapers where I
worked in Ohio, Indiana and New York. They’re clipped and saved in a chaotic file
cabinet. Most, I, like the rest of the...
The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community
The one where communes aren't the answer.
6 months ago
The one where communes aren't the answer.
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The American Scholar
The Power of the Common Soul
Ives, music-making, and hope
The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Ives, music-making, and hope
The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Favourable Enough for a Writer'
Jules Renard
writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:
“I am in no
great hurry to see the...
a year ago
Jules Renard
writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:
“I am in no
great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a
writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it
nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men...
Josh Thompson
Resources for People with Jobs
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...
over a year ago
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re
not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you
are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...
The American Scholar
Lift Off
The post Lift Off appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Lift Off appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
2 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about...
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
3 weeks ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life
"If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
"If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
Wuthering...
The Bacchae by Euripides - O gods, I see the greatest grief there is.
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive...
over a year ago
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive Euripides was, he did not write a play quite at the level of Agamemnon or Oedipus the King, at least until his brief exile in Macedon, where he wrote The Bacchae just before his...
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good.
I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence"
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
9 months ago
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news media following the death of John Pilger reveal the state of journalism in our time. [1] Can you name one living Anglophone journalist whose loss would prompt such widespread notice?...
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
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...
The Marginalian
What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science...
4 months ago
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science first began raising questions with spiritual undertones: What is life? Where does it begin and end? What makes it alive? But in the epochs since, having discovered muons and...
The Perry Bible...
Pop
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few...
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few examples:
Animated, interactive curves(dynamic)
OMG Particles II(dynamic)
simple map of the us(static) <= very little code
Radial Dendrogram(static)
circle wave(dynamic)
Force-directed...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
6 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years.
the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
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
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...
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
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.
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
Josh Thompson
My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me)
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or...
over a year ago
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or “you are what you eat”. Maybe that last one was Hannibal Lector,
having an old friend for dinner.
Anyway, the person that
you are is influenced by the people you spend time with....
Steven Scrawls
Doomr
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the...
10 months ago
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the website for this one.
Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the...
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it...
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever:
0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet.
They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
Josh Thompson
Deliberate Practice in Programming with Avdi Grimm and the Rake gem
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while.
I want to improve at...
over a year ago
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while.
I want to improve at things (all the things!) in general, but writing and reading code, specifically. Writing and reading code is germane to my primary occupation (software developer) and drives most of my...
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
Steven Scrawls
The Firefly Artist
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours...
a year ago
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours after dusk, a crowd gathered by the dozens, by the
hundreds, to see the firefly artist’s yearly performance. They spread
out blankets in the clearing, sharing snacks by the light of...
The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Curious Examiner of the Human Mind'
On June, 25,
1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The
friends...
6 months ago
On June, 25,
1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The
friends had met for the first time just a month earlier at Thomas Davies’
bookshop on Russell Street. Johnson starts the conversation with a dismissal of
Thomas Gray (1716-71). In the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Excellent Judge, Posterity'
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors....
9 months ago
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors. Take
Dwight Macdonald on James Gould Cozzens. And then consider Arnold Bennett
(1867-1931). Today he’s judged a respectable but minor English novelist, something
of a documentarian, if he’s...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 356.5
...
a month ago
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk
The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
5 months ago
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and throw it at the sun—the way the water falls apart into drops, and then into mist, the way a rainbow appears for a second and is gone.
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long. Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
Josh Thompson
Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...
over a year ago
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on.
I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day.
I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All'
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no...
3 months ago
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely
like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later.
For some baked goods, breakfast...
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
7 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
The Marginalian
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate...
a year ago
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go."
The Marginalian
A Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts,...
"The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be...
a year ago
"The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that...
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Lofty Vehicle, High Dudgeon'
A friend is studying
Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside...
a year ago
A friend is studying
Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside George Chapman’s version of Homer from the seventeenth
century. Like me, she’s a reader not a scholar, and like generations of
students and common readers I first encountered Chapman...
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection
The post Indiana Absurd...
7 months ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection
The post Indiana Absurd appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
...
over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
1. Roman plays. Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
The American Scholar
The Challenge
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gave Themselves Without Idle Words to Death'
Rudyard
Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties...
a year ago
Rudyard
Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties (1886), which
includes these lines: “The deaths ye died I have watched beside, / And the
lives ye led were mine.” Eugene Sledge was nineteen when he enlisted in the
Marine Corps a year...
Wuthering...
Stein's style - Mostly no one will be wanting to listen, I am certain
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every
one, not any I am just now hearing, and...
6 months ago
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every
one, not any I am just now hearing, and it is so completely an important thing,
it is a complete thing in understanding, I am going on writing, I am going on
now with a description of all whom Alfred Hersland came to know...
The Marginalian
Blue Glass
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
11 months ago
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and gasped at the sight of what looked like two extraordinary jewels sparkling on a bed of yellow leaves, right there on the sidewalk — chunks of cobalt glass, much larger than what a...
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
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...
This Space
39 Books: 2010
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad."
By this time I had given up reviewing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On Satan’s Chamberlains Highseated in Berlin'
In 2011, in
an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of...
a year ago
In 2011, in
an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of Man, published as a
wartime morale booster in 1916, edited by the Poet Laureate, Robert
Bridges. It’s the fourth edition, from 1923. I knew the title because of the
contribution...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cursed with an Acute Literary Conscience'
Who among
critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:
“Some
writers...
a year ago
Who among
critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:
“Some
writers have a dread of platitudes. I have not. What is a platitude but an
expression of the wisdom of the ages, the synopsis of a theory that was long
ago propounded, tested, established,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'If the Nation Is to Be Saved From This Menace'
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming...
10 months ago
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming a nation of minor poets.”
P.G.
Wodehouse is being kind. He wrote “The Alarming Spread of Poetry” in 1916 when
the blight was fresh and perhaps still reversible. His Exhibit A is...
ben-mini
IMG_0416
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
a month ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app.
The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Used to Stand in Front of the Windows'
In my dream I
was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would
bleach the...
11 months ago
In my dream I
was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would
bleach the color from the cover of a book. At the center of a display that
seemed to be made of cotton gauze was not just any book but a first edition of Ulysses. In the rare books collection...
sbensu
The person behind the idea
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
2 weeks ago
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting with
orcs, walking, walking, walking, anguish, walking, walking, walking, bit
more fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking.
—Goodreads review of “The Lord of the Rings”
Im returning...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of...
over a year ago
I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of recommended books, but they come and go with time. This list is sorta ‘older’, circa 2021. 1 A newer/different list is available here
These are a collection of books that come up in...
Josh Thompson
How to fly… like a boss
I am in a quest to
level up my life. Free flights is a big part of this. I’ve not gotten too many...
over a year ago
I am in a quest to
level up my life. Free flights is a big part of this. I’ve not gotten too many of those yet, but the next best thing is free seat upgrades. I’m not talking about first class - that’s beyond me, at the moment. I’m talking about getting stuck in the back of the...
Ben Borgers
The Code That Keeps Me Alive
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Treated Us Like Adults'
I grew up
thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my
neighborhood....
11 months ago
I grew up
thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my
neighborhood. I never saw writers on television. My parents never talked about them, as they might actors and politicians,
who also were unreal. Without thinking too
deeply about it, I put...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Misrepresenting the Past and Its Culture'
I was still
a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du
jour in the sixties. Television was a...
a year ago
I was still
a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du
jour in the sixties. Television was a “cool” medium, according to Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964).
The cooler the medium, McLuhan wrote, “the more someone has to uncover and
engage in the media” and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose'
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on
January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an
understanding of the...
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 2
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice.
I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist'
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries
and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary.
I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader'
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it,...
6 months ago
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists,
first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call
it—by which a man rises to understand...
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
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amid Tremendous History, New Pity'
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty...
9 months ago
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty of which he published during his lifetime. Early on, several of them
were my primers, an inviting way to learning the poetic tradition in English on
the cheap. One of them, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Air of Baffled Absence'
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see...
4 months ago
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see these
hands on the deck railing, but
Whose are
they? Have they any meaning? What?”
Some readers
will understand. The familiar can become strange with age. That’s not always a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Moralizing Purge of the Past'
"I think we
are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that
early...
8 months ago
"I think we
are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that
early Christianity inflicted on the same pagan learning. There will be another
Dark Ages in our lifetimes; and another Renaissance, too, but not one that we
will live to see.”
I’m...
Wuthering...
The best books of 2023, in a sense - "Aren't you tired of reading?"
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not...
11 months ago
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not surprise
anyone that 2023 now comes with a strong feeling of Before and After. So I will indulge in the “facetious and silly”
exercise of identifying the best books I read in 2023. Sorting...
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?”
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
The Marginalian
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired...
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
a year ago
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lack of Self-deception'
“There is a
difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is
an...
a year ago
“There is a
difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is
an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own
sake.”
A fine
distinction, one often lost on us. Auden is describing Shakespeare’s Richard
III and refers us to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Songful, Tuneful Land'
"None
can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the
sound of names;...
11 months ago
"None
can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the
sound of names; and there is no part of the world where nomenclature is so rich,
poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the United States of America.”
Robert Louis
Stevenson means place names. He’s...
This Space
A rare sort of writer
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've...
over a year ago
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've written over the years – after a brief interlude.
I read him first in July 1988 after borrowing The Lessons of Modernism from the second floor of Portsmouth Central Library because...
Josh Thompson
RailsConf Presentation: 'Junior' Developers are a Solution to Many of your Problems
Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able...
over a year ago
Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able to help. Shoot me an email at joshthompson@hey.com or book some time to talk at https://calendly.com/joshthompson/coffee.
This talk is available on railsconf.org, here:...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books
Here’s how that could look.
7 months ago
Here’s how that could look.
Josh Thompson
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
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...
Wuthering...
Please read the Roman plays with me (although not all of them) - Plautus, Terence, Seneca
Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1.
Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the...
a year ago
Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1.
Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the surviving Roman plays to remind myself what they are like. Twenty-six comedies and ten tragedies have survived. I read about half of them long ago and plan to reread fewer than...
ben-mini
The Most Mind-Blowing Tech Moments of My Life
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of...
5 months ago
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of life. There’s nothing too heady here- just an exercise in what might have made me get so into tech.
1. WarioWare: Twisted (2006)
At my community center, waiting for my friend’s karate...
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
6 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
2 months ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Discussian of General Ideas'
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever...
4 months ago
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever possessed tells me he plans to reread Animal
House and 1984. Neither have I
read since junior-high school, probably the ideal time for such books, which
are among the most...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Cheap and Commercial'
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment,...
9 months ago
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment, and I had never heard of the man. Indirectly,
generations after his time, Henry G. Bohn (1796-1884) served as one of my
tutors. His celebrator above is Theodore Dalrymple writing in...
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate
The post In the Endless...
2 weeks ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate
The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
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...
This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
8 months ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
The Marginalian
The Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking,...
"If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of...
a year ago
"If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of all, that new emotional imagination... begotten of enlarged sympathies and a more sensitive habit of feeling."
This Space
39 Books: 1987
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive?
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them!
So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
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
"It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite unlike anything I have ever seen in the upper world."
Josh Thompson
Three Levels of Competence
Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing.
Yeah. Me too.
I’ve spent an unusual amount...
over a year ago
Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing.
Yeah. Me too.
I’ve spent an unusual amount of time working with beginners, to help them improve at climbing. I’ve also worked a lot with (what I would consider to be) intermediate climbers, so
can get better. I’ve certainly...
This Space
"When now?"
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
4 months ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately?
Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better.
Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I...
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
The American Scholar
Three Poems
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers
"It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and...
a year ago
"It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and often far short."
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of...
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are Many Real Things of Beauty Here'
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating...
2 months ago
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating its
opposite, ugliness, exactly, though his prose definitely leans in that
direction. Only a graduate-school alumnus could come up with such silly ideas.
Rather, he seemed to be saying that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Diana Steads Him Nothing, He Must Stay'
For earned emotional
intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you...
a year ago
For earned emotional
intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you can
hardly outdo A.E. Housman, as recounted by one of his students in Richard
Perceval Graves’ A. E. Housman: The
Scholar-Poet (1979):
“One morning
in May, 1914, when the trees in...
The Marginalian
The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily...
10 months ago
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily envisioned, for he was a toddler in Germany when a British chocolatier created the first modern version of what we now think of as chocolate: a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor, and...
The American Scholar
“Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows'
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little
frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4
The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4
The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
Josh Thompson
Mentors and Attitude
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...
over a year ago
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time.
Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...
The American Scholar
Three Poems
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Persistence
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an...
over a year ago
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an unlimited amount of money, because an unlimited amount of money would complicate my life (and probably yours) far more than we can possibly imagine.
Persistence. I keep trying to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers'
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it...
10 months ago
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should
equal Argus his Eyes . . .”
The first surgery
on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of...
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
9 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
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