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Ploum.net
L’urgence de soutenir l’énergie du libre L’urgence de soutenir l’énergie du libre Éditorial rédigé pour le Lama déchaîné n°9, l’hebdomadaire...
6 months ago
13
6 months ago
L’urgence de soutenir l’énergie du libre Éditorial rédigé pour le Lama déchaîné n°9, l’hebdomadaire réalisé par l’April afin d’alerter sur la précarité financière de l’association. J’étais limité à 300 mots. Pour un bavard comme moi, c’est un exercice très difficile ! (il est...
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
16
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...
The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life "We are lichens on a grand scale."
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Acting Out One tortuous journey from stage to screen The post Acting Out appeared first on The American...
a year ago
53
a year ago
One tortuous journey from stage to screen The post Acting Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature...
a year ago
30
a year ago
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in his lovely century-old meditation on otherness and the web of life. “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted...
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
over a year ago
78
over a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Guide Him in the Real World' In 1899, Edwin Arlington Robinson read Thoreau’s Walking, a work based on an 1851 lecture...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
In 1899, Edwin Arlington Robinson read Thoreau’s Walking, a work based on an 1851 lecture published posthumously in 1862. Robinson was not impressed by his fellow New Englander. He condemned Thoreau’s “glorified world-cowardice” in a letter to his friend Daniel Gregory...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 363.5 ...
5 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Why Restaurants Are So Expensive Now, According to Chefs and Restaurant Owners That’s still not quite enough. Because there’s a cultural expectation in America around how much...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
That’s still not quite enough. Because there’s a cultural expectation in America around how much Vietnamese food should cost, especially if it’s not presented as fine dining. Right now, our bowl of pho is $26. We use chicken from Joyce Farms, and our broth takes three days. But...
The Elysian
Week 6: Examples of Pitches
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Draft Now, Publish Later
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Winter Sun The post Winter Sun appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
The advantage of low friction goals If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day for a month. Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there. “Customization”...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Index A curated online gallery with the best design studios, designers, type foundries, and other...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
A curated online gallery with the best design studios, designers, type foundries, and other creatives worldwide. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The American Scholar
Magic Men The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Pound, rub, pound It’s something like midnight. A four-and-a-half-pound senior Chihuahua is tucked into her blanket...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
It’s something like midnight. A four-and-a-half-pound senior Chihuahua is tucked into her blanket and snuggled up next to my left rib cage inside my sleeping bag. Jen is asleep beside us. It’s 35°F. We have myriad layers happening: Jen wears a down jacket inside her sleeping bag...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult... “Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a...
7 months ago
42
7 months ago
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. “Words are events, they do things, change things,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a generation after her. To...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What a Delight in Being a Discoverer!' The library catalogue said Walter Savage Landor’s Poems, the 1964 Centaur Press edition selected and...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
The library catalogue said Walter Savage Landor’s Poems, the 1964 Centaur Press edition selected and introduced by Geoffrey Grigson, had not been checked out by another patron (hardly surprising) and should be on the shelf. I couldn’t find it. Not a good sign. That could mean the...
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
a year ago
83
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
What Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art... "We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is. We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
This Space
This kingdom by the sea Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his...
over a year ago
55
over a year ago
Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his supposedly objective appreciation of a young boy’s beauty becomes sexual obsession. This is how BBC Radio 4's In Our Time sets up a discussion of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Earliest of My Friends Is Gone' I often speak or exchange texts with my nephew. Soon he’ll turn thirty-six, but he lives in...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
I often speak or exchange texts with my nephew. Soon he’ll turn thirty-six, but he lives in Cleveland, 1,200 miles away, and I seldom see him. Distance warps the sense of duration, so I think of him as frozen in his early twenties. We spoke on Sunday and for the first time since...
This Space
A mighty contagious absence, part two On submission and resistance to AI-generated literature   To great writers, finished works weigh...
a month ago
18
a month ago
On submission and resistance to AI-generated literature   To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they work throughout their lives. For only the more feeble and distracted take an inimitable pleasure in conclusions, feeling themselves...
The American Scholar
Greg Ito The life cycle of a candle The post Greg Ito appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Refreshed His Senses, Heart, and Head' If I had been in the house all day reading during a long Ohio winter, invariably my mother would...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
If I had been in the house all day reading during a long Ohio winter, invariably my mother would say, “Go outside and blow the stink off.” My parents took a kid reading as a reproach, something unnatural and probably unhealthy – one more reason for me to be secretive. When I was...
Josh Thompson
On Magic, and Magic Strings Introduction v drafty, but wanted to get this out today. I’m publishing two pieces today, this piece...
4 months ago
31
4 months ago
Introduction v drafty, but wanted to get this out today. I’m publishing two pieces today, this piece you’re reading now is vastly more important than the other one, but it might be worth the click: On Peeing. It’s very different than this one. I’ve long had a central organizing...
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Music at 20%
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ No One Above the Law "Malaysia." I stood up, and maybe one or two other people did too. It wasn't like the large groups...
8 months ago
8
8 months ago
"Malaysia." I stood up, and maybe one or two other people did too. It wasn't like the large groups of newly minted American citizens from other countries announced, such as China, India, or the Philippines. But it was a moment I was proud of, and when my country of origin was...
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of... “I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
9 months ago
63
9 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley The video from our live event.
9 months ago
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed... Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
a year ago
42
a year ago
Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid.  The book is of the highest interest, and is a long way from the catalogue of...
The American Scholar
Going for Gold Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten The post...
10 months ago
54
10 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.
Ben Borgers
I’m a Sucker for the Brand
over a year ago
Robert Caro
Six Books, Six New York Times Book Review Covers Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.
The American Scholar
Consolidated Ruin The post Consolidated Ruin appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
The Wanting Monster: An Almost Unbearably Tender Illustrated Spell Against the Curse of Not Enough Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your...
a month ago
12
a month ago
Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your serenity, the hammer that shatters your wholeness — to want anything is to deem your life incomplete without it. It is a perpetual motion machine that keeps you restlessly...
The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power "There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
a year ago
96
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Snow Maiden Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice The post The Snow Maiden appeared first on...
6 months ago
49
6 months ago
Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice The post The Snow Maiden appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Carl Jung on Creativity The question of what it takes to create — to make something of beauty and substance that touches...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
The question of what it takes to create — to make something of beauty and substance that touches other lives across space and time — is one of the deepest, oldest questions, perhaps because the answer to it is so unbearably simple: everything. We bring everything we are and...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses by turning three sisters who...
a year ago
89
a year ago
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses by turning three sisters who refuse to believe in his divinity into what “we in English language Backes or Reermice call the same” (Golding, 99) “[Or, as we say, bats.]” (Martin, 140).  How sad that we lost the...
Ben Borgers
Getir Colors
over a year ago
The Elysian
An online version of Da Vinci's journal? Marginalia: An experiment sharing notes from the margins of my research.
a week ago
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and... A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom “We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy Entries to the March writing prompt.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
I Love Email
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays Notes on process
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
Issues related to the city of Golden While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden. I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot. Here’s the lot in question: I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Forty Three On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San Francisco went into lockdown. It feels like a lifetime has passed between now and then, and with a sense of deja vu, like it was yesterday. Except that I wasn't at home, and I was on the...
The American Scholar
“Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov appeared first on...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Lift Off The post Lift Off appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Barefoot Sprinting Up a Grassy Hill, & Kettlebell Swings Introduction A few months ago, maybe in November, certainly by December, I began this ‘barefoot...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
Introduction A few months ago, maybe in November, certainly by December, I began this ‘barefoot sprinting up grassy hills’ thing I’m going about to talk about in detail below. Shortly after I started, I began making use of the kettlebells I’d usually ignored at the gym(s) I have...
The American Scholar
Casa Gorín The post Casa Gorín appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting + links
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike' I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
The American Scholar
“The Overture” The post “The Overture” appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham...
a year ago
28
a year ago
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–c. 1040), known in the West as Alhazen, began his life studying religion, but grew quickly disenchanted by its unquestioned dogmas and the way it turned people on each other with...
Josh Thompson
Structural Holes and Good Ideas Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Josh Thompson
On Minimalism I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”. This reluctance...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”. This reluctance is because I think the label brings in a bunch of connotations that I don’t like. Our apartment never looked like this. Source: home-designing.com What is Minimalism? a removal or...
This Space
39 Books: 2017 The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
a year ago
60
a year ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise “To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
32
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
This Space
39 Books: 1986 In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The...
a year ago
45
a year ago
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them. Both the title...
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
49
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."
Wuthering...
The books I read in December 2024 - From her earliest youth she had discovered a fondness for... A different kind of month with a different category of reading. CHINA Mountain Home: The Wilderness...
5 months ago
62
5 months ago
A different kind of month with a different category of reading. CHINA Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China (5th-13th cent.), tr. David Hinton – The teenagers in The Story of the Stone play various games based on their memorization of massive amounts of...
The American Scholar
Paige Ledom Out of the ordinary The post Paige Ledom appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The Perry Bible...
Bubbled The post Bubbled appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that...
a year ago
33
a year ago
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular chance-constellation of atoms has never before existed and will never again recur in the history of the universe. The fact of each such singularity is a wonder...
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
10 months ago
38
10 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
I’m building a cooperative media ecosystem Owned by writers interested in a better future.
5 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Bop Spotter I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy...
8 months ago
12
8 months ago
I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the street below. Visit original link → or View on...
The American Scholar
“The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone appeared first on The American...
yesterday
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.) Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article. The internet is littered with tons of fluff pieces talking about sex...
Astral Codex Ten
Why Should Intelligence Be Related To Neuron Count? ...
3 months ago
The American Scholar
“The Nakedness of Woman” The post “The Nakedness of Woman” appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Midlife Malaise The past few days have felt heavy. In a weird headspace, floating in the middle of space between a...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
The past few days have felt heavy. In a weird headspace, floating in the middle of space between a destination or goal, or rather, a state I aspire to, but seeing a road ahead of which the length is unknown. It feels like a lot of things have been taken, removed, or no longer...
The American Scholar
Family/History David Levering Lewis digs into his own origin story The post Family/History appeared first on The...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
David Levering Lewis digs into his own origin story The post Family/History appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
8 months ago
54
8 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 Elysian
We can terraform the Earth—not just Mars If we can revive a dead planet, we can revive our own.
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of...
10 months ago
40
10 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Misophonia: Beyond Sensory Sensitivity ...
3 months ago
The Marginalian
The Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music “Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote...
a year ago
20
a year ago
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the Sahara Desert. No aliveness animates the nocturne with more grandeur than the migration of birds....
Naz Hamid
Hustle to Flow A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the kitchen area. A hojicha latte is on my mind, and also a bite. My brain is at operational capacity, and I am in a flow state. The metabolic need feels high, and I need to keep my...
Josh Thompson
Workflow for developers (AKA My current tools) I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better. This is still under construction, but...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better. This is still under construction, but I’m fleshing out all the tools, tidbits, and other things that serve me well every day as I build my skills as a developer. It will always be a work in progress, but will hopefully...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Word Is a World' When someone had eaten his fill and couldn’t take another bite, my maternal grandmother, born the...
2 months ago
7
2 months ago
When someone had eaten his fill and couldn’t take another bite, my maternal grandmother, born the same year as T.S. Eliot, would say, “His sufficiency is suffonsified.” I’ve never heard another person utter those words. For most of my life I assumed the fourth word in that...
The Marginalian
Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love,... “Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love. Half a century after Whitman’s atomic...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
11 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual + reading recommendations
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.) Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.) Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Ernie Is Our Co-Pilot Hello. You’re receiving this long-dormant-now-re-reawakaned newsletter because at some point in the...
over a year ago
9
over a year ago
Hello. You’re receiving this long-dormant-now-re-reawakaned newsletter because at some point in the past you subscribed. (Thank you, by the way.) Back then, I was writing about some nexus of travels abroad, personal or professional news, and technology-ish topics. There are some...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Myth of “Do What You Love” The most striking point, to me, from Tokumitsu’s book is how easily the myth of ’do what you love’...
10 months ago
10
10 months ago
The most striking point, to me, from Tokumitsu’s book is how easily the myth of ’do what you love’ cracks when you press on it. The underlying message of such a myth, she writes, is that ‘each individual’s specialness will guide him or her to work that he or she enjoys and that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pictures and the Books That Here Surround Me'' Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in one of the lesser-known literary magazines – the British Medical Journal’s Supportive and Palliative Care, the September 2014 issue. Coincidentally, that’s the month my friend...
The Marginalian
The Majesty of Mountains and the Mountains of the Mind Mountains are some of our best metaphors for the mind and for the spirit, but they are also living...
4 weeks ago
7
4 weeks ago
Mountains are some of our best metaphors for the mind and for the spirit, but they are also living entities, sovereign and staggering. I remember the first time I saw a mountain from an airplane — forests miniaturized to moss, rivers to capillaries, the Earth crumpled like a...
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below. When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
Josh Thompson
Quick Dive into React As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir,...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir, and need to sharpen my React knowledge along the way. After working through part 1 of a slack clone in Elixir/Phoenix tutorial, I ran into some errors getting the React app up and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Conception of Life As an Enchanted State' On summer mornings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, I would follow the path behind our house through a...
a month ago
12
a month ago
On summer mornings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, I would follow the path behind our house through a growth of poplars and sassafras to the place where the white oaks and tulip trees took over. The path ended at the top of the hill where we went sledding in winter. Most mornings...
The American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt The fabric of life The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese Taking flight The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The Perry Bible...
Turn That Frown The post Turn That Frown appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
11 months ago
The Marginalian
The Pain and the God Within You: Carl Jung on the Relationship Between Psychological Suffering and... When AI first began colonizing language — which is still our best instrument for bridging the abyss...
a month ago
20
a month ago
When AI first began colonizing language — which is still our best instrument for bridging the abyss between us, a container for thought and feeling that shapes the contents — I asked chatGPT to compose a poem about a solar eclipse in the style of Walt Whitman. It returned a...
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
7 months ago
Ben Borgers
The Redemption Arc Is Coming
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poetry That Nobody Nowadays Reads' Once I patronized a library book sale where volumes were sold not by age, condition, whether...
a month ago
15
a month ago
Once I patronized a library book sale where volumes were sold not by age, condition, whether paperback or hard cover, and certainly not by literary worth but by weight. On the table by the exit was a scale, the flat-topped sort associated with butcher shops. The arrangement was a...
The Marginalian
Blue Glass Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
a year ago
57
a year 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moon at Times Is Hunched and Old' A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met...
4 months ago
19
4 months ago
A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met to informally talk about how things were going. Both of us were pleased and knew we had made a good choice. We already liked and trusted each other. Ann paid me an odd compliment...
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,...
6 months ago
60
6 months ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War with What He Does Not Understand' “. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one...
a month ago
18
a month ago
“. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one or another type of knowledge to exist, whereas I’m talking about peace, not rights. I want people not to see war where there isn’t any. Different branches of knowledge have always...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Seattle The heat was rising in Northern California and Oregon with the advent of an appropriately named heat...
10 months ago
10
10 months ago
The heat was rising in Northern California and Oregon with the advent of an appropriately named heat dome raising temperatures into the triple digits. Jen and I found ourselves driving further north to visit Seattle. We’d been camping with our friend Grant in the Mount Shasta...
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
7 months ago
26
7 months 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.
Ben Borgers
IKEA Backpack
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
a year ago
57
a year ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.* Many of...
Wuthering...
everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous...
a year ago
97
a year ago
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress (1925).  It is a monster.  Why did I read it?  No, that is not the right questions.  There are good reasons to read...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Last Times During our trip this year, looking at my mother, the reality suddenly hit me. She's 75. I visit my...
6 months ago
26
6 months ago
During our trip this year, looking at my mother, the reality suddenly hit me. She's 75. I visit my family in Malaysia once a year, and if she lives to 90, that means just 15 more visits together. The realization shook me. When my father passed in 2017, I hadn't considered how...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Music That Got Me Through 2020 As time goes on, I've learned something about myself: I'm now that person — that old fogey — that...
over a year ago
9
over a year ago
As time goes on, I've learned something about myself: I'm now that person — that old fogey — that mumbles under their breath about the old days when music was real. That said, there are plenty of good artists (even great artists) making meaningful music today. I just have to...
The American Scholar
A Story for Christmas The post A Story for Christmas appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The American Scholar
Star Trek: Discovery The post <em>Star Trek: Discovery</em> appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Naz Hamid
Quality, Maintenance & Craft We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman,...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle Coffee was in conversation with Jeff Veen, and one of the attendees asked him: “How do you maintain such high quality?” Freeman answers, “‘Maintaining’ is a...
Astral Codex Ten
Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs Of God's Existence ...
4 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Make America Great: A Visionary Manifesto from the Woman Who Ran for President in 1872 In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June 9, 1927) ran for President, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. Papers declared her candidacy “a brazen imposture, to be extinguished by laughter rather than by law.”...
Ploum.net
Le succès existe-t-il ? Le succès existe-t-il ? La notion de succès d’un blog Un blogueur que j’aime beaucoup, Gee, revient...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
Le succès existe-t-il ? La notion de succès d’un blog Un blogueur que j’aime beaucoup, Gee, revient sur ses 10 ans de blogging. Cela me fascine de voir l’envers du décor des autres créateurs. Gee pense avoir fait l’erreur de ne pas profiter de la vague d’enthousiasme qu’à connu...
Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
10 months ago
The Marginalian
Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024 Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to...
6 months ago
40
6 months ago
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to see clearly the contour of who we are in its points of attention and priority. “How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard wrote, “is how we spend our lives.” How we spend our minds is...
Wuthering...
Reading The Peony Pavilion with the teens in The Story of the Stone - That garden is a vast and... The teens living in the garden in the YA romantasy The Story of the Stone spend a lot of time...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
The teens living in the garden in the YA romantasy The Story of the Stone spend a lot of time reading forbidden books, much older YA romantasys.  These books are all famous classical Chinese plays.  Cao Xueqin gives a couple of chapters early on to their reading, including a list...
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
60
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,...
The Elysian
How can we rewild the Earth at scale? From global targets to backyard projects
2 days ago
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024 For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
a year ago
58
a year ago
For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the available energy and concentration.  Now, though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again. Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
Ben Borgers
War Room “Bib”
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1 Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I had. I initiated each conversation with someone that I wanted to learn from. Most I had some prior relationship with (I.E. I had met them, or I knew someone who knew them). This was...
The Marginalian
How to Meet Your Mystery: Thomas Merton on Solitude and the Soul "It is a vocation to become fully awake, even more than the common somnolence permits one to be,...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
"It is a vocation to become fully awake, even more than the common somnolence permits one to be, with its arbitrary selection of approved dreams, mixed with a few really valid and fruitful conceptions."
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: November This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I thought about that as I was conducting my month. This proactive review is in line with Viktor Frankl’s admonition to “live every day as if it were your second chance to live it.”...
The American Scholar
The Rescuer In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
a year ago
51
a year ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Benchmarking a page protected by a login with Apache Benchmark I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and concepts from Nate’s book and working on applying the lessons to the app I work on in my day job. I had a chance to attend Nate’s workshop in Denver a few days ago, as well; while...
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English...
10 months ago
77
10 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night.  That “end of night” is death.  The existence of death makes everything hateful and nullifies the value of anything else.  I gotta say that the...
Wuthering...
Two poisonous Tanizaki novels, Naomi and Quicksand - the same as a fruit that I’d cultivated myself Two Junichiro Tanizaki novels from the 1920s for Japanese Literature Month over at Dolce...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
Two Junichiro Tanizaki novels from the 1920s for Japanese Literature Month over at Dolce Bellezza.  Always interesting to see what people are reading.  Thanks as usual.  18th edition! The two novels I read, Naomi (1924) and Quicksand (1928-30), are closely related.  Both...
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.
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month. I did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
Josh Thompson
Piece by Piece The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product (of the digital variety) that will be so damn goodpeople will pay me $100 or more to get it.  I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of it littered around the internet, my computer,...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 372.5 ...
3 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5 ...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Things Become Other Things — by Craig Mod The absolute best place to buy TBOT's Random House edition is from your local bookshop. Go in, tell...
7 months ago
24
7 months ago
The absolute best place to buy TBOT's Random House edition is from your local bookshop. Go in, tell ’em you're looking for this book by this guy named Craig Mod. Regale them with your excitement about said book. Do you think this is going to be a great book? Say, ‘I think this is...
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,... I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
63
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries.  I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
11 months ago
57
11 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'But They Are Very Bad Poems' Eugenio Montale speaking with an interviewer, American poet W.S. Di Piero, in 1973:  “Political...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
Eugenio Montale speaking with an interviewer, American poet W.S. Di Piero, in 1973:  “Political ideas are best expressed in prose. Why should we express political ideas in such an abstruse language as poetry? If I were to write against the war in Viet Nam, I would write in prose,...
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice "The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
Idle Words
Protests and Power In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead. When the George Floyd protests began to spread nationally in the summer of 2020, I...
This Space
39 Books: 2012 Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I...
a year ago
96
a year ago
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I knew would be impossible to write about, at least in a couple of distracted hours. Imagine this: through mathematical calculation, close reading and literary detective work, a...
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
13
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....
Josh Thompson
Denver.rb meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018 We talked about performance profiling! Here’s the slides, on Dropbox I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Unbuilding the Mystery What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared...
a month ago
2
a month ago
What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Miss Leoparda: A Painted Parable of the Third Way and How to Change the World When told that there are only two options on the table and when both are limiting, most people,...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
When told that there are only two options on the table and when both are limiting, most people, conditioned by the option dispensary we call society, will choose the lesser of the two limitations. Some will try to find a third option to put on the table; they may or may not...
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
11 months ago
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...
a year ago
94
a year 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
William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships "Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s. I know that some people like to complain about...
The Elysian
A self-governing forest Terra0 thinks nature should become economically independent.
a week ago
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech Some brief notes about the subject
a year ago
The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings "Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Archives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life,...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life, with its duration so short it obliges us to surpass ourselves."
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes too distant. I should also...
7 months ago
50
7 months ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes too distant. I should also mention my health.  A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with it.  My recovery went well, and my liver grew...
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
10 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Meet the San Francisco techie using AI to wage war against health insurance denials With the slogan ‘Make your health insurance company cry too,’ Karau’s site makes filing appeals...
10 months ago
37
10 months ago
With the slogan ‘Make your health insurance company cry too,’ Karau’s site makes filing appeals faster and easier. A recent study found that Affordable Care Act patients appeal only about 0.1% of rejected claims, and she hopes her platform will encourage more people to fight...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
11 months ago
69
11 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
Robert Caro
A Peek Inside Robert Caro’s Home Library, Hidden Shelves and All THE WASHINGTON POST takes us inside Robert Caro’s literary collection, and shows us the most...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
THE WASHINGTON POST takes us inside Robert Caro’s literary collection, and shows us the most precious volumes in his home library.
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
a year ago
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Date Picker Details
over a year ago
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."
over a year ago
Wuthering...
it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap - Peter Adamson's Classical Philosophy, the... Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without...
over a year ago
79
over a year ago
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without Any Gaps.  What can that mean, without any gaps? We’ve finished Aristotle, and it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap.  In an undergraduate philosophy course you...
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
84
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
The Marginalian
2,000 Years of Kindness From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
over a year ago
80
over a year ago
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project) As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding. I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference. Lastly, I just...
Ploum.net
My colleague Julius My colleague Julius Traduction en français Lazygyu의 한국어 번역 Do you know Julius? You certainly know...
6 months ago
15
6 months ago
My colleague Julius Traduction en français Lazygyu의 한국어 번역 Do you know Julius? You certainly know who I’m talking about! I met Julius at university. A measured, friendly young man. He always wore a smile on his face. What struck me about Julius, aside from his always perfectly...
The American Scholar
The Patron Subjects Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings? The...
7 months ago
45
7 months ago
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings? The post The Patron Subjects appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The...
a year ago
45
a year ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Google Won the Kids
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
a year ago
36
a year ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best... This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand...
7 months ago
45
7 months ago
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within them on each other, stirring certainties and self-righteousness to distract from the uncomfortable unknowns, from the great open...
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d...
8 months ago
28
8 months ago
Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children, unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
a year ago
74
a year ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
The American Scholar
“The Dream” by Theodore Roethke Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Dream” by Theodore Roethke appeared first on The...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Dream” by Theodore Roethke appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Anima: One Woman’s Search for Meaning in the Footsteps of Bulgarian Mountain Shepherds "All our lives we perform tasks while waiting for something to click into place. For somewhere to...
5 days ago
The Elysian
Multi-country civilizations are good, actually A vibe shift in favor of annexation would be counterproductive 🌏
3 months ago
Wuthering...
What I Read in April 2025 – Have we cherished expectations? I should make that the new official slogan of the blog.  It is from p. 614 of Finnegans Wake, one of...
a month ago
21
a month ago
I should make that the new official slogan of the blog.  It is from p. 614 of Finnegans Wake, one of the books I recently read. FICTION The Sword in the Stone (1938), T. H. White – I for some reason did not read this as a youth.  It is wonderful, full of anachronism and parody...
The Marginalian
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife "Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and...
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Links For December 2024 ...
6 months ago
Wuthering...
"Socrates gone mad" - my hero Diogenes the Cynic He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the...
a year ago
26
a year ago
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the ass.  He took the example of Socrates to its limit.  Plato is the one who called him “Socrates gone mad,” but in a sense he is just the logical result of thinking through how Socrates...
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title) Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts. He talks about being data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers how to suceed...
Ploum.net
Mon collègue Julius Mon collègue Julius Translation in English Lazygyu의 한국어 번역 Vous connaissez Julius ? Mais si,...
6 months ago
17
6 months ago
Mon collègue Julius Translation in English Lazygyu의 한국어 번역 Vous connaissez Julius ? Mais si, Julius ! Vous voyez certainement de qui je veux parler ! J’ai rencontré Julius à l’université. Un jeune homme discret, sympathique, le sourire aux lèvres. Ce qui m’a d’abord frappé chez...
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us "The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
Idle Words
J.D. Scholten on Coronavirus in Iowa On Sunday I spoke by video chat with my friend J.D. Scholten, who is running for Congress in Iowa's...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
On Sunday I spoke by video chat with my friend J.D. Scholten, who is running for Congress in Iowa's 4th district. J.D. is a retired baseball player who rose to national prominence in 2018, when he came within three points of unseating Steve King in what had until then been...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 359 ...
6 months ago
The Elysian
Am I a Democrat or a Republican? The case for going label-less.
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
over a year ago
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
12
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...
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
9 months ago
72
9 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
73
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A State of Vagary, Doubt and Indecision' There’s a tidy part of me that wants things resolved, whether a lawsuit or a differential equation....
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
There’s a tidy part of me that wants things resolved, whether a lawsuit or a differential equation. No sloppy inconsistencies, no denouements hanging by a thread. I used to love IRS Form 1040EZ: subtract one number from another, sign your name and wait for the refund. I had a...
The Marginalian
How to See the Golden Light: Oliver Sacks in Love "The day steeps everything in golden liquid... A sidewalk cafe in the evening, with a wonderful...
4 months ago
32
4 months ago
"The day steeps everything in golden liquid... A sidewalk cafe in the evening, with a wonderful amber light flooding through the doors and windows: huge, mad stars in an indigo sky. For this, you have to be great, crazy, or wildly in love."
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain "Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
a year ago
96
a year ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Aggregate and deduplicate your deprecation warnings in Rails We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a 4.2 -> 5.2 upgrade because Rails 4.2 is no longer supported. You, dear reader, have just suddenly found an interest in resolving deprecation warnings, and as one jumps a few Rails...
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taube I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against Sugar. My notes and a write-up on The Case Against Sugar As I explained in that post, I find it helpful to do a ‘deep dive’ on some of the books I want to be deeply influenced by. For...
This Space
Proust regained I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
24
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 365.5 ...
5 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Inclusive Design Principles These Inclusive Design Principles are about putting people first. It's about designing for the needs...
9 months ago
15
9 months ago
These Inclusive Design Principles are about putting people first. It's about designing for the needs of people with permanent, temporary, situational, or changing disabilities — all of us really. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
This Space
39 Books: 1989 Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
a year ago
53
a year ago
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film. The only thing I remember of the...
Ben Borgers
Bin System
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Publishing Class Notes
over a year ago
sbensu
Payments vs Transfers Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has...
over a year ago
27
over a year ago
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has a lot more requirements than a transfer system and I rarely see the crypto ecosystem acknowledge these when building "payment" products.
The Marginalian
On Play The necessities of survival make our lives livable, but everything that makes them worth living...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
The necessities of survival make our lives livable, but everything that makes them worth living partakes of the art of the unnecessary: beauty (the cave was no warmer or safer for our paintings, and what about the bowerbird?), love (how easily we could propagate our genes without...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Noteworthy Action of Human Life' I dreamed my late brother was here in Houston, a city he never visited. He was phobic about flying...
3 months ago
25
3 months ago
I dreamed my late brother was here in Houston, a city he never visited. He was phobic about flying and traveled by air only twice in his life, when very young. We were seated across from each other, on the couches by the front window. What I remember of the dream is brief, little...
The Marginalian
The Stubborn Art of Turning Suffering into Strength: Václav Havel’s Extraordinary Letters from... “I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” Oscar Wilde wrote from prison....
4 months ago
39
4 months ago
“I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” Oscar Wilde wrote from prison. “There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.” The cruel kindness of life is that our sturdiest fulcrum of...
Ben Borgers
Writing Tasks Down
over a year ago
The Elysian
US states should have autonomy—like EU countries All we need to change is taxation.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Brought Us This Far' Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a...
2 weeks ago
8
2 weeks ago
Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a reader asks. His assumption, never directly articulated, is that reading is compensation for the absence of something far more important. I suppose people have been facing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Among Those Who Read There is Great Variety' Writing is famously the most narcissistic of professions, even worse than acting or being a...
a month ago
16
a month ago
Writing is famously the most narcissistic of professions, even worse than acting or being a politician. We’re forever carrying on about ourselves and our precious insights, like the kid in class who raises his hand and goes “Ooh! Ooh!” each time the teacher asks a question....
The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
a year ago
85
a year ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
over a year ago
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...
over a year ago
73
over 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...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The anatomy of Andy Spade's style You don’t have to spend a lot to look good; good taste isn’t bound by price. Spade is a testiment to...
6 months ago
29
6 months ago
You don’t have to spend a lot to look good; good taste isn’t bound by price. Spade is a testiment to this, while he’s a successful businessman. He sticks to his affordable, all-American classics. I'm somewhat entering my uniform years. I've come around to clothes that feel...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson Day 5: Sept 14, 2023 — “But you can't predict the weather, Ms. Jackson.” — Ms. Jackson, Outkast We...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 5: Sept 14, 2023 — “But you can't predict the weather, Ms. Jackson.” — Ms. Jackson, Outkast We leave Vernal, Utah, and pass through Dinosaur, Utah. It’s the tiny town that leads into one of the many routes towards Dinosaur National Monument. It’s home to some 1,500 dinosaur...
Ben Borgers
tmrw
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe … How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It...
a year ago
74
a year ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Web of Thoughts
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ And another one Day 24: Oct 3, 2023 — I awake after a restful slumber. The sleeping conditions were damn-near...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Day 24: Oct 3, 2023 — I awake after a restful slumber. The sleeping conditions were damn-near perfect: cool overnight temperatures and stillness in the air. We went to bed with a few options for the course of today, but it’s apparent to us we should settle in for an additional...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Is a Genial Companion' Tess Lewis has translated one of Montaigne’s early essays, “Of Pedantry” (c. 1572-78), in which the...
2 months ago
7
2 months ago
Tess Lewis has translated one of Montaigne’s early essays, “Of Pedantry” (c. 1572-78), in which the Frenchman issues one caution and, mid-paragraph, seems to reverse himself:  “I would be inclined to conclude that just as plants are suffocated with too much moisture and...
Ben Borgers
Recording Screencasts
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2002 The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
a year ago
81
a year ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5. Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
Josh Thompson
What Do You Do? I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?” They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?” Sometimes this is a conversational...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Piccalilli Front-end education for the real world. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
10 months ago
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
43
a year ago
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they too read to their children, they too can be moved to tears by music. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky captured this as he contemplated the greatest antidote to evil, observing...
The Elysian
If you have a social mission, go into business An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative,...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative, and building social companies.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Full of the Little Obscurities' “A man may profess to understand the President of the United States, but he seldom alleges, even...
a week ago
9
a week ago
“A man may profess to understand the President of the United States, but he seldom alleges, even to himself, that he understands his own wife.”  Anecdotal Evidence attracts an admirably knowledgeable set of readers, mostly proud amateurs like its author. As best I can judge,...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books Here’s how that could look.
a year ago
The American Scholar
The Redoubtable Bull Shark Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared...
a year ago
53
a year ago
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
`ls` command to show directory contents I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory. tree -L 2 will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this: > tree -L 2 . ├──...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr ...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
2018 Reading Review & Recommendations I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. (This metric is intentionally fuzzy.) 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is...
The American Scholar
Keepers of the Old Ways Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive The post Keepers of the Old Ways...
5 months ago
56
5 months ago
Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive The post Keepers of the Old Ways appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1994 Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
a year ago
95
a year ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Familiar Hearts of Strangers' “At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
“At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the holiness and immaculate fragility of the hidden striver below.”  In his letters to family and friends, Chekhov can be harsh, hectoring and even smutty, though seldom in the stories except...
The American Scholar
A Stranger in the Seven Hills A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on...
10 months ago
36
10 months ago
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Ask Me Anything (2/2025) ...
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
Success is not support We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and customer success. Support vs. Success First, what’s the difference between “customer support” and “customer success”? Lincoln Murphey says: Customer Success is proactively working...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poetry Is Sound Before It Is Anything Else' “A word so delicious that one wishes it had cheeks, so as to kiss them.” That’s Jules...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
“A word so delicious that one wishes it had cheeks, so as to kiss them.” That’s Jules Renard, writing in his journal in February 1888. Perhaps only a certain sort of writer, one with a musical sense who is susceptible to the pure sound of words divorced from their meaning, can...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Utterly Intoxicated by His Affection' Montaigne’s charming opening to his essay “Of the Education of Children”: “I have never seen a...
a month ago
16
a month ago
Montaigne’s charming opening to his essay “Of the Education of Children”: “I have never seen a father who failed to claim his son, however mangy or hunchbacked he was. Not that he does not perceive his defect, unless he is utterly intoxicated by his affection; but the fact...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
73
9 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you. That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
The American Scholar
Asteroid Hunters The scientists and engineers who defend our planet day and night from potentially hazardous space...
4 months ago
14
4 months ago
The scientists and engineers who defend our planet day and night from potentially hazardous space rocks The post Asteroid Hunters appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Recommended books from 2017 I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. This is intentionally fuzzy. 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is architecture and/or...
The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
74
a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own. Previous reviews: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 My review breaks down into a few broad categories: Travel Relationships & Community Leadville Trail...
The Marginalian
Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love "All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building...
a year ago
Ploum.net
20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 3) 20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 3) Previously in "20 years of Linux on the Deskop": After...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 3) Previously in "20 years of Linux on the Deskop": After contributing to the launch of Ubuntu as the "perfect Linux desktop", Ploum realises that Ubuntu is drifting away from both Debian and GNOME. But something else is about to shake the...
The American Scholar
Just Yesterday The post Just Yesterday appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
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...
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018 Slides are available here on Dropbox Git Push, Git Paid Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned: Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again Sweet merciful Jesus, stop talking. Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
Sweet merciful Jesus, stop talking. Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know exactly what they're going to use AI for, you do not need AI for anything - or rather, you do not need to do anything to reap the benefits. Artificial intelligence, as it exists and is...
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life "Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
22
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
The American Scholar
Cobi Moules Landscapes of queer joy The post Cobi Moules appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life "At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
a year ago
37
a year ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
Astral Codex Ten
The Twins Join The Linguistic-Symbolic Order ...
a month ago
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort ‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean...
10 months ago
23
10 months ago
‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean Resort Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Generosity “Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her...
a year ago
22
a year ago
“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her beautiful essay on generosity. “You open your safe and find ashes.” I feel this truth deeply, daily — for nearly two decades of offering these writings freely, I have lived by the...
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
a year ago
21
a year ago
this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path...
Ben Borgers
5 Weeks Left
over a year ago
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
16
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...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Dungeons & Dragons taught me how to write alt text I don’t remember the issue number, or the original author. However, I do remember it was from an...
11 months ago
9
11 months ago
I don’t remember the issue number, or the original author. However, I do remember it was from an advice column. The problem was the person who was running the game wanting to enliven his descriptions, as they felt like their narration was both boring and confusing. The advice for...
The Marginalian
William James on Love "If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
a year ago
47
a year ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding Let's brainstorm the future together.
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes “That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
30
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Diana Antohe Threads of memory and home The post Diana Antohe appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 356 ...
7 months ago
The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul "Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
sbensu
Notes on UX and LLM integrations I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down...
a year ago
15
a year ago
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down when and why they work well, or poorly.
Ben Borgers
Is Advice Flawed?
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Type. Publish. Done. Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly.  He said, in short: I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
37
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The zoo within the zoo Day 15: Sept 24, 2023 — Blueprint Coffee is the OG third-wave coffee purveyor in St. Louis. We...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 15: Sept 24, 2023 — Blueprint Coffee is the OG third-wave coffee purveyor in St. Louis. We usually visit the Delmar venue, but with a new-to-us location nearby, we make that our destination. Housed in a former automotive brake service shop, this newer spot is airy, casual,...
The Elysian
Suggestion Box This is where to leave ideas for my We Should Own The Economy project.
3 months ago