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The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and... A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
a year ago
90
a year ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think? + links
11 months ago
The American Scholar
“After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson...
6 months ago
39
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'After the Rain, Perhaps, Something Will Show' Most of us are born with a brain but without a user’s manual. This soggy organ weighs on average...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Most of us are born with a brain but without a user’s manual. This soggy organ weighs on average about three pounds and contains 86 billion neurons. That’s our birthright, and we did nothing to earn it. We tend to operate our brains passively, ignoring most available perceptions....
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ I Don't Have Facebook I don’t have an account with the big blue F. It’s 2015. The social network is almost 11 years old....
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I don’t have an account with the big blue F. It’s 2015. The social network is almost 11 years old. It’s remarkable — over a decade in existence and, mostly, still going strong. I read about it a lot. I have friends who work there. I have been recruited and asked by the same...
The American Scholar
“À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The...
a year ago
83
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Wonder, Play, and How to Be More Alive We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in,...
a month ago
21
a month ago
We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that we pay for these comforting illusions with our very aliveness. Wonder — that edge state on the...
Wuthering...
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings - No one has any knowledge of those first days... My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic...
a year ago
110
a year ago
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1010), a slender 850 pages in Dick Davis’s 2006 prose (mostly) translation.  He added another 100 pages to the 2016 edition, whether filling out...
Blog -...
Book Review - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening my understanding of the...
over a year ago
43
over a year ago
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening my understanding of the masculine. Published in 1990, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover introduces readers to the concept of mature masculine archetypes and their immature shadows. The authors, Robert...
The American Scholar
Consolidated Ruin The post Consolidated Ruin appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plan Wrapped
a year ago
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
a year ago
69
a year ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
The American Scholar
Sticking With It A sobering chronicle of our toxic times The post Sticking With It appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
13
3 months ago
A sobering chronicle of our toxic times The post Sticking With It appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Everybody Gets a Star But look closer and you’ll often find a slew of petty tyrants, untrustworthy influencers,...
a year ago
16
a year ago
But look closer and you’ll often find a slew of petty tyrants, untrustworthy influencers, straight-up review bombs, or just people with bad taste. People were removing stars because they couldn’t find parking, because the Thai food was spicy, because gratuity was included and...
The Elysian
We can terraform the Earth—not just Mars If we can revive a dead planet, we can revive our own.
3 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Ditch walkin' Day 11: Sept 20, 2023 — I hear footsteps and morning routines in motion. My sister-in-law and her...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Day 11: Sept 20, 2023 — I hear footsteps and morning routines in motion. My sister-in-law and her family are gearing up for work and school. I remember this flurry of activity as a kid myself — the hustle to get motivated. Jen goes upstairs to chat briefly with everyone before...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read During Every Possible Free Moment' A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always read slowly, often taking notes, which makes it even slower. This frustrated me when I was young, and I briefly contemplated enrolling in one of Evelyn Wood’s...
The Marginalian
The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith "There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the...
a year ago
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
At the Bookstore I work hard to resist sentimental impulses and indulgence in nostalgia. Ours is a sentimental age,...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
I work hard to resist sentimental impulses and indulgence in nostalgia. Ours is a sentimental age, and at the same time an angry, unforgiving age. One strain of sentimentality especially prevalent among the aging is a rueful, self-pitying lament for what no longer exists....
Josh Thompson
A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and emotionally-charged operation to replace my 70-year-old newly-widowed mother-in-law's ancient desktop computer with a easy-for-me-to-manage Chromebook Update: I posted to r/ChromeOS...
The American Scholar
The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history The post The Epic Viking Saga of the...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history The post The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'And For It Does So Dearly Pay' Some wartime casualties are time-released. Death is deferred. In his new collection, That Mad...
4 months ago
34
4 months ago
Some wartime casualties are time-released. Death is deferred. In his new collection, That Mad Game (Scienter Press, 2025), R.L. Barth devotes three poems to a civilian, the war correspondent Albert W. Vinson, who wrote about him leading a patrol of Marines in Vietnam in 1968. The...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
a year ago
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds... "But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2014 One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
a year ago
100
a year ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity. This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
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
18
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 American Scholar
{…} by Fady Joudah Poems read aloud, beautifully The post {…} by Fady Joudah appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Coziest Place on the Moon: An Illustrated Fable about How to Live with Loneliness and What It... On July 26, 2022, as I was living through a period of acute loneliness despite being a naturally...
3 days ago
3
3 days ago
On July 26, 2022, as I was living through a period of acute loneliness despite being a naturally solitary person, NASA reported that computer modeling of data from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) had revealed several cylindrical pits on the Moon with just the right shape...
The Elysian
Social Development > Self-Development We need one much more than the other.
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely... Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
The American Scholar
Such People The post Such People appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life "It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
29
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
The Elysian
My TEDx talk about the future of fiction And publishing.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
School But Online
over a year ago
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...
8 months ago
35
8 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...
Ben Borgers
Semester 3
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and... Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
56
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symposium is fiction, a long story.  It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
over a year ago
The Elysian
CITY STATE: A discussion about autonomous governance Here's the recording from our literary salon discussion.
4 months ago
The American Scholar
The Stolen Lines The post The Stolen Lines appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Passionate Note of Victory' “The dangers for the poet in addressing so composite an audience are enormous: cuteness,...
6 months ago
40
6 months ago
“The dangers for the poet in addressing so composite an audience are enormous: cuteness, coyness, archness and condescension are only the most obvious ones.”  In 1976, Anthony Hecht wrote the preface for a new edition of Walter de la Mare’s Songs of Childhood (1902). He doesn’t...
Idle Words
Why Not Mars For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. — Richard Feynman Entrance to underground cavern on Pavonis Mons. HiRISE, 2011 The goal of this essay is to persuade you that we shouldn’t send human...
The American Scholar
Facts of the Case The post Facts of the Case appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Wuthering...
What I Read in May 2025 – “There’s the store that’s shaped like a duck,” Franca said. First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony Powell.  If this keeps happening I will have to think of something or even do something.  Here they are: A skippable piece of throat-clearing about the roman fleuve. What I think...
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
a year ago
30
a year ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots Talking points for our literary salon next week.
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
18
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”...