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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration' The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
9
a year ago
The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September 1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Perpetual Fountain of Fun' “It was not only in the best company he uttered his best things. He was a perpetual fountain of fun;...
5 months ago
30
5 months ago
“It was not only in the best company he uttered his best things. He was a perpetual fountain of fun; an improvisatore, who raised upon some shrewd comment wild edifices of exaggeration. His talk ascended from rational wit to buffoonery; yet his towerings never daunted others. He...
Josh Thompson
Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too) I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that make my life better, and might do the same for you. (If you’re an iPhone user, just Google for the iOS version of the following tools. They’re all out there) Rewire App:...
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two things: The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence Most dangerous books of 2016 Tactical Silence I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
This Space
39 Books in one For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books:...
6 months ago
77
6 months ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books: PDF As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest... “All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
a month ago
17
a month ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light' Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten than the others, though in 1939 he...
Blog -...
Book Review - Open Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually have four to six books on the go at any time, but all of them were put on pause for the day and a half it took me to devour this book.
Josh Thompson
Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life) This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!' Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the details of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects' “My bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past, all remembered with...
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
“My bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past, all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J. Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
This Space
Notes from overground Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and...
12 months ago
35
12 months ago
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and arrived long after the novel had been reviewed in all the big newspapers so, instead of riding the wave of publication, I was dragged under by its backwash. I had to answer a question...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Role Is a Role Worth Perfecting' “The tragic Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of less than...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
“The tragic Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of less than he does of death. But that sort of free man is no more than a dead man; he is free only from life’s wellspring, lacking in love, a slave to his freedom. The thought that I must...
Steven Scrawls
I want to love fiction I want to love fiction I want to love fiction. I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
I want to love fiction I want to love fiction. I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I want to obsess over the craft of fiction, to pore over characterization and structure, to create stories that radiate color and humanity and hope. I want fiction to be a tool for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds' A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on...
7 months ago
49
7 months ago
A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker moments I wish I could.” Never a...
Ben Borgers
Stickies: Spatial note-taking
a year ago
The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
Steven Scrawls
"Progress" “Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions...
a year ago
2
a year ago
“Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s list of most-visited websites (see Notes for details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments, and come to your own...
Wuthering...
The sophists and their rehabilitation - they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their... I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for...
a year ago
32
a year ago
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for centuries in the history of philosophy as, following Plato (but not Socrates), hucksters, they, or some of them, are now taken seriously as an intermediate step between the cosmological...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living' “After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
“After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”  I didn’t know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
The Perry Bible...
Brushed The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
sbensu
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union Notes from reading the book by Zubok
10 months ago
Josh Thompson
The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently: The housing market is indeed insane. This...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently: The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is: Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper) Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures Inside my writing philosophy.
8 months ago
This Space
The end of literature, part four This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
21
3 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book) Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
3 weeks ago
This Space
39 Books: 1989 Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
7 months ago
28
7 months 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...
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously' “Montaigne is heavy going, it has to be said.”  For once the commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
“Montaigne is heavy going, it has to be said.”  For once the commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
Ben Borgers
Batching
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
2020 Annual Review please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now. Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...
This Space
39 Books: 1987 From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
24
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
Josh Thompson
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
1
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar' When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where we bought our first house and lived for seven years. The Saratoga Race Course was less than a mile away. So were Yaddo and Broadway, the main drag downtown. We...
The American Scholar
All in Your Head The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries... "At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset...
6 months ago
19
6 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?' “What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the...
10 months ago
11
10 months ago
“What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life...
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd... "Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Turning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of... Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from...
a year ago
39
a year ago
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from the Garden of Eden — a deeply damaging story about human nature, damning us and our relationship to nature. Unthinkingly, we have perpetuated this story in our present narrative...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era' We gave our sons Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
8
a year ago
We gave our sons Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,” “gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history traceable, in this...
Ben Borgers
Draft Now, Publish Later
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
On limitations that hide in your blindspot and how to find them
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Judgment Day of Man’s Illusions' In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book published in the preceding twenty-five years they believed to have been “the most undeservedly neglected.” For this reader, sorry to say, most of them remain neglected. I don’t even...
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...
6 months ago
2
6 months 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...
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...
a month ago
4
a month 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...
Ben Borgers
Professorship Bias
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Covid and Noun-Memory Effects Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of...
6 months ago
1
6 months ago
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'No Secret Element of Gusto Warms Up the Sermon' Gusto is one of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John Steinbeck...
a month ago
14
a month ago
Gusto is one of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John Steinbeck does not. A.J. Liebling has it. Woodward and Bernstein have never heard of it. Gusto is taking pleasure in the job at hand. About writers it suggests energy and enjoyment in playing...
Wuthering...
The Making of Americans as conceptual art - I have already made several diagrams Sometime I will be able to make a diagram.  I have already made several diagrams.  I will sometime...
6 months ago
68
6 months ago
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram.  I have already made several diagrams.  I will sometime make a complete diagram and that will be a very long book...  (580) I am going to write about The Making of Americans as conceptual art, art where how it is made is a central part...
Ben Borgers
An Eye for Design
over a year ago
Wuthering...
But the Moon rescues others as they swim from below - a glance at the essays and dialogues of... The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch, famous for his extraordinary...
a year ago
9
a year ago
The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch, famous for his extraordinary Parallel Lives but also the innovative author of a large mass of essays and dialogues which picked up the title Moralia (late 1st C.) along the way.  Plutarch was hardly an original...
Josh Thompson
What I've learned from cooking in 36 kitchens in the last year Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for (usually) ourselves and (sometimes) others in 36 (!!!) kitchens. Sometimes we’ve used a kitchen for just one night, sometimes it’s every night for two months. Needless to say, we’ve...
The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist... Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
7 months ago
49
7 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist' My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
23
7 months ago
My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement' “There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
“There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of intoxications.”   Driving while reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light, I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
The American Scholar
Survival Situation The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The...
6 months ago
22
6 months ago
The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
2
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...
Escaping Flatland
Life update + open thread and a few fragments of essays
11 months ago
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
11
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry' “[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
“[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”  Things get sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling species of serious...
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden 2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
48
a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
The American Scholar
Numbers Game A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history The post Numbers Game appeared first on...
6 months ago
24
6 months ago
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history The post Numbers Game appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition "To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Marsh Light Is Still Burning Hard' I’m suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute...
10 months ago
34
10 months ago
I’m suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute for actually reading them, a ruse for flaunting one’s hipness or sophistication. My late friend David Myers was fond of assembling such lists, which are likely to assure higher-than-average...
Josh Thompson
Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing? A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it. This is an odd...
Josh Thompson
Limitations of My Own Thinking I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”....
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”. Anytime this happens, I start tripping over myself with warnings and qualifying statements. Here’s what would happen: I would make a recommendation (“start a side project to help get a...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel" My review of The Pensive Citadel by Victor Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
12
a year ago
My review of The Pensive Citadel by Victor Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
48
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Richly, Sometimes Dreamily, Melodic' A friend has given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt...
9 months ago
35
9 months ago
A friend has given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt and Co., 1930), with a printed note before the title page:  “Three hundred copies of ‘Poems for Children’ have been specially printed and bound, and have been signed by the...
Josh Thompson
Anki and Memorization with Spaced Repetition Software This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead of time to grasp the material. For the full context, start with Learning how to Learn I’ve not been able to find any comprehensive guides to using Anki to learn programming, so this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About' A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I sympathize. I remember reading...
Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the... Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever: 0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet. They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me: This...
6 months ago
1
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me: This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
Josh Thompson
Growing in your first software development job I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017) This is tremendously...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017) This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like: I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory' Austin Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Austin Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and the 117-line title poem appeared in The Massachusetts Review in 1970....
Josh Thompson
How to Run Your Rails App in Profiling Mode Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the app locally, it is sending data to DataDog. This is super exciting, because I’m getting close to being able to glean good insights from DataDog’s Application Performance...
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep' I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else. Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say Hey, there’s...
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Which Is Spent in a Kind of Limbo' A reader has taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis Wyndham...
a year ago
8
a year ago
A reader has taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis Wyndham (1924-2017), and reports she’s enjoying herself. “I see a little Henry James in his stories,” she writes, “but he’s really not like anybody else.” Exactly right.   Wyndham’s writing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL' The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard reviews various twentieth-century...
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
2
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....
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023 Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
49
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks.  A medical deadline approaches.  That will help. As usual, I read good books.   PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
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
1
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...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 356.5 ...
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Hash Tables [explained for anyone]
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
3 months ago
The American Scholar
The Creator’s Code Are humans alone in their ability to make art? The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
4
2 weeks ago
Are humans alone in their ability to make art? The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
a year ago
The American Scholar
Bathing Badasses Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection' Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
The Marginalian
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired... Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
I Love Email
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
I’m a Sucker for the Brand
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
The Slight Edge, and why you should read it I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to most people. (I don’t make book recommendations willy-nilly, but if something seems relevant to what the person I’m speaking to is experiencing/thinking about, I make a...
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz Playing with dolls The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30... "We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
46
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
a year ago
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
a month ago
24
a month ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
This kingdom by the sea Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his...
a year ago
36
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
'An Example of Abundant Good Nature' The Rev. Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:  “I...
a month ago
15
a month ago
The Rev. Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:  “I am seventy-two years of age, at which period there comes over one a shameful love of ease and repose, common to dogs, horses, clergymen and even to Edinburgh Reviewers. Then an idea...
This Space
39 Books: 2001 In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
Ben Borgers
Muted
over a year ago
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me? Letters to an anarchist, part one.
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness "Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
78
a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
The American Scholar
Ground Truth A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
15
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
4 months ago
1
4 months ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately? Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
This Space
39 Books: 2007 When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I write about a 350-page novel last read 17 years ago without taking several days to reread it? Answer: not at all, so I started reading. What good fortune! How well Hugo Wilcken...
Escaping Flatland
A greeting They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
12 months ago
13
12 months ago
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas day, sometime in the 1570s, he was out walking when he came upon a rose that had, in the blistering cold, put forth a flower. It was a hellebore, a winter rose. Moved by the...
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected... I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
33
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Essence of Good Talk' A longtime reader of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the...
a year ago
6
a year ago
A longtime reader of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the afternoon evaporated. Neither of us brought a script. “Improvisation is the essence of good talk,” writes Max Beerbohm in “Lytton Strachey” (1943). “Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out...
The American Scholar
Interlude: The Idea of “The West” A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The...
8 months ago
25
8 months ago
A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession...
10 months ago
21
10 months ago
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor is the use of tools, nor is music. Elephants grieve, octopuses remember and...
Ben Borgers
One Year Ago Email
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes too distant. I should also...
a month ago
20
a month ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes too distant. I should also mention my health.  A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with it.  My recovery went well, and my liver grew...
Robert Caro
Alone on the Desert Her Dream Fades A lack of basic infrastructure forced a 74‒year-old widow to carry a water bucket a mile-and-a-half...
a year ago
1
a year ago
A lack of basic infrastructure forced a 74‒year-old widow to carry a water bucket a mile-and-a-half back to her tiny shack.
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
8 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Integrity Intensely Human, No 3
10 months ago
The Elysian
Week 7: Boost your essays all over the internet
8 months ago
This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912: This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
This Space
The opposite direction The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact paperback from Spurl Editions came just as I had given up hope of ever discussing what I believed had long fascinated me about a feature of Bernhard's prose-texts. A fascination...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need' One of R.L. Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a cupboard, most...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
One of R.L. Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred "Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Signs His Name in Sparks' By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called “Muny Light." At home he was a welder, specializing in wrought-iron railings. His aesthetic sense could be summarized in a single word: big. Or heavy. Everything he built was...
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day. I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
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
14
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection “There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance...
a year ago
23
a year ago
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness' My roommate freshman year was the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
a month ago
21
a month ago
My roommate freshman year was the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S. after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His tastes often...
Josh Thompson
Typing in Colemac 2.0 I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill. My hope is that as...
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
40
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 American Scholar
Paolo Arao Acts of devotion The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 357 ...
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality' This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
The American Scholar
“Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The...
4 months ago
17
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Code That Keeps Me Alive
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024 The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
IKEA Backpack
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
a year ago
The American Scholar
The Rescuer In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
33
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness' Once asked about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
4 months ago
33
4 months ago
Once asked about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,” J.V. Cunningham replied:  “You can write on politics or not. I do not. But is politics meant here? Or is it, rather, ideology? The latter is religious, not political, though religion...
The American Scholar
The Patron Subjects Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings? The...
a month ago
19
a month 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out' Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted....
5 months ago
25
5 months ago
Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend, respect the reader’s intelligence....
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff` I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API. One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it. I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful... On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
11 months ago
45
11 months ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
Ben Borgers
Gamelan Music
over a year ago
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
a year ago
This Space
Further in the opposite direction Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal...
a year ago
36
a year ago
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood as a religious claim: the very...
ribbonfarm
Imagination vs. Creativity I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with....
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with. Imagination is the ability to see known possibilities as being reachable from a situation. Creativity is the ability to manufacture new possibilities out of a situation. The two...
The Perry Bible...
Clicked The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
sbensu
The secondary market in gift cards This post by patio11 covers a few things that I learned working with gift cards over the years.
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Their Thoughts, Their Longings, Hopes, Their Fate' A new record: stopped three times at train crossings in a single day without leaving the city,...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
A new record: stopped three times at train crossings in a single day without leaving the city, driving only to the university library and back, twenty-two miles. Because of its sprawling, unplanned nature, Houston is a dense web of train tracks, as John Bainbridge, a staff writer...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Monsoons, Boredom, Stench' R.L. Barth takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky.,...
9 months ago
22
9 months ago
R.L. Barth takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky., 2024), a passage from Dr. Johnson’s Idler essay for September 2, 1758:  “I suppose every man is shocked when he hears how frequently soldiers are wishing for war. The wish is not...
Josh Thompson
How to be an awesome belayer For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport climber), these are not for you. All of this information is in the context of sport climbing on trustworthy protection - not trad climbing! How to belay when your climber is in...
Ben Borgers
Saturday, January 15, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
60
6 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Marginalian
A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality "Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
3 hours ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth' “If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The...
12 months ago
14
12 months ago
“If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The late Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too often earns contempt...
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel. I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it, but in a sense I did finish a...
sbensu
Breaking changes in JSON APIs A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
a year ago
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024 For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
40
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the available energy and concentration.  Now, though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again. Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Daily Habits
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not At All Abashed Before the Fact' “We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has...
a year ago
10
a year ago
“We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own carcass, has most time to consider others.”  What a remarkable sentence, one I would never have the guts to write. It’s not the sentiment but the form that’s so...
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy You're welcome.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Troublesome Error, a Pernicious Foppery'' Let’s be grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant words...
7 months ago
54
7 months ago
Let’s be grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant words as cant and foppery, so as to avoid the more precise but less polite bullshit. For foppery, the OED offers among its definitions “foolishness, imbecility, stupidity, folly.” It’s...
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom "Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
5 months ago
34
5 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master of Light But Stinging Irony' I bought Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
I bought Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that time I was giving up the practice of writing in books, which had always left me a little uncomfortable. Instead, I switched to keeping notebooks. In The Golden Gate I see that I...
Ben Borgers
5 Weeks Left
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
60
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light “One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
36
a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
ribbonfarm
Harberger Tax It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked...
9 months ago
2
9 months ago
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a...
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious' I hadn’t opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
9
a week ago
I hadn’t opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time. It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone, someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
The Marginalian
The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in both of them.  “[I]t's a similar sense of...
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons and what's on my mind
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He’s a Person of Joy, a Fanatic' Unlike my sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music is good,...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Unlike my sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music is good, that’s what I’m doing, listening. Otherwise, I don’t need a soundtrack for my life. I would find that annoyingly attention-splitting. What I do instead is periodically take a break...
The American Scholar
Look Out! Why did it take so long to protect The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Itself and Forever Shipwreck' I’ve just finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I’ve just finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in two issues of The New Yorker in 1979 and as a book the following year. I read it in the magazine and I’ve since read the book – Maxwell’s finest, written when he was seventy years...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Permanently a Monument As Anything' Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely moistened with the sender’s tongue and sealed. A person-to-person letter, not junk mail, credit-card come-ons, campaign postcards, jury summonses and the rest of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?' “During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
“During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France. This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits annihilation and destruction....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less' My middle son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested in “working...
a year ago
11
a year ago
My middle son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning? new essay in Asterisk
2 months ago
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life "Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
8
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'They’ve No Clue of My Reality' “We are all well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you sent me....
10 months ago
15
10 months ago
“We are all well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you sent me. I do not have to do guard duty as I am an officer, think of sergeant Peck, sounds pretty big don’t it, eh?”  That’s Marcus Peck, a soldier from Sand Lake, N.Y., who answered...
Ben Borgers
War Room — using the native date picker
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection' “This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of...
a week ago
5
a week ago
“This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay but never completely still.”  In their moral and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Friends They May Become To-morrow' “New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
“New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned' In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
8
a year ago
In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism”  -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world unaccompanied by...
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
4 months ago
51
4 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5 ...
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The Marginalian
Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love "All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building...
10 months ago
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
yesterday
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poet's Hope' Erica Light is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and Melville...
7 months ago
31
7 months ago
Erica Light is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and Melville scholar. We exchange emails several times each year, usually devoted to what we are reading. This week she reported reading some of the writers and books I’ve mentioned recently at...
Wuthering...
The books I read in November 2024 - like a hideous spinster who has learned the grim humor of the... Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower Club (c. 1760), Cao Xueqin – written up long ago. Cartucho (1931) & My Mother's Hands (1938), Nellie Campobello – Brutal vignettes of the Mexican revolution by a diehard partisan, a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Fluttered Around Like Blue Snowflakes' As a former newspaper reporter I regularly read three hard-copy newspapers: The Leader, a...
11 months ago
21
11 months ago
As a former newspaper reporter I regularly read three hard-copy newspapers: The Leader, a neighborhood weekly here in Houston; the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal; and County Highway. That’s down from thirty years ago when I read seven or eight papers every day (like a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Much Can Be Accomplished' Cleveland is traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though I...
4 months ago
39
4 months ago
Cleveland is traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though I haven’t lived in the city since 1977. The designation suggests working-class neighborhoods, many of them Slavic. Ethnicity was important, and not usually in the sense of bigotry. I was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Weightier Than All the Gear I’ll Carry' I was a lazy student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
I was a lazy student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I retained was a lasting interest in mythology, Roman history and etymology. I probably learned more English words than Latin – celerity, pulchritude, jocular, spelunker, procrastination,...
The Marginalian
What Makes a Compassionate World: Sophie de Grouchy’s Visionary 18th-Century Appeal to Parents and... The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood...
11 months ago
31
11 months ago
The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood under a totalitarian dictatorship. Desperate for assurance that the future need not hold the total moral collapse of democracy, I reached out to my eldest friend for perspective....
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
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
1
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
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
This Space
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
50
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden “Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
Ben Borgers
Bubble Tea Snobbery
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions "This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the... "I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
a month ago
20
a month ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills. Why do social skills matter? Most people get...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects' Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
The American Scholar
The Writer in the Family The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero The post The Writer in the Family appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Martha Foley’s Granddaughters What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett The...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett The post Martha Foley’s Granddaughters appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays Notes on process
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months 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
32
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:...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Prison ...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Marge of Lake Lebarge' Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often feels alien, as though we were recalling the memories of someone else. In the past, of course, we were someone else. As a kid I watched ridiculous amounts of television, which is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appetizing, Clear and Understandable' This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors....
a year ago
12
a year ago
This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors. Not just for diversion, or something to study. I like new vocabularies, rhythms, ways of thinking, associations of every sort.”  Stern (1928-2013) was seventy-one at the time and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One I Loved Taught Here, Provoking Strife' When Yvor Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty years, the...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
When Yvor Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty years, the university published a commemorative volume, Laurel, Archaic, Rude: A Collection of Poems. It gathers twenty-six poems written by former students, including Edgar Bowers,...
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Planning my week
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Shadow Cabinet of Writers' “All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be powerful enough to make for some isolated masterpiece a small niche in literary history -- Henry Green’s Loving and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune's Maggot have both...
This Space
A review from abroad In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the Norwegian edition of Le Monde diplomatique as a supplement to the delightfully named Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. Even though I can't read Danish, it was not only a highlight of the...
The American Scholar
The Source The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of... "We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish He Would Explain His Explanation' On this date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the latter’s...
8 months ago
29
8 months ago
On this date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the latter’s house in Piccadilly. Earlier, Coleridge had a friend deliver to Byron a copy of his latest and last play, Zapolya, and a letter explaining that for the previous fifteen years he had...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Someone Who Could Never Be a Peasant' I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov,...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, already one of my favorite writers. Alter’s contribution was “Invitation to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics,” which Nabokov later described as “practically flawless.” A...
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Have to Read the Words' “Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely compare anyone to him.”  I first read War and Peace in the eighth grade in a paperback abridgement. I remember reading it in science class, half-heartedly hiding the book behind the...
Ben Borgers
3:00 a.m. Radio
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t: I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it. I felt like nothing I...
Ben Borgers
War Room
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
15
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dispensing True Charm' Joseph Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still writing, still...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Joseph Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still writing, still reading, still sending notes of encouragement to those of us who can use the occasional infusion of sprightliness. In the last month he has published reviews and essays devoted to...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my... Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
9 months ago
65
9 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are, because of Metamorphoses.  Venus and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion.  Icarus –...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about... The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
3 weeks ago
11
3 weeks ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died...
6 months ago
40
6 months ago
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air' A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of me that finds the obscenity...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too' St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he...
10 months ago
13
10 months ago
St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him silently reading and never...
Ben Borgers
The Redemption Arc Is Coming
over a year ago
Steven Scrawls
The Firefly Artist The Firefly Artist Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly imprisonment. Two hours...
a year ago
2
a year ago
The Firefly Artist Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly imprisonment. Two hours after dusk, a crowd gathered by the dozens, by the hundreds, to see the firefly artist’s yearly performance. They spread out blankets in the clearing, sharing snacks by the light of...
Ben Borgers
You Might Be Right, But Shut Up
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...
7 months ago
37
7 months 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us See Them There in the Shadows' A childhood acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still alive...
6 months ago
39
6 months ago
A childhood acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still alive until a friend told me he was dead. What I remember is his face, his general demeanor, roughly the sort of behavior I could expect of him. I last saw him more than half a century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English' “We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All...
a year ago
8
a year ago
“We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”  It’s fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Flow, Like Waters After Summer Show’rs' “As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
“As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is very fine weather,’ and the other says, ‘Yes;’—one blows his nose, and the other rubs his eye-brows; (by the way, this is very much in Homer’s manner;) such seems to be the case...
sbensu
APIs as ladders APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time ...
a week ago
Josh Thompson
Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and... Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse. Hey there, I’m...
The Marginalian
Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work...
10 months ago
11
10 months ago
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation,” Rilke wrote to his young correspondent. The great difficulty of loving arises from the great difficulty of bridging the abyss between...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On a Certain Street There Is a Certain Door' Borges titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers, his 1972 collection, "J.M.":  “On a certain street...
6 months ago
27
6 months ago
Borges titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers, his 1972 collection, "J.M.":  “On a certain street there is a certain door shut with its bell and its exact address and with a flavor of lost Paradise, which in the early evening I can never open to enter. The day’s work at its...
This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
6 months ago
66
6 months ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe." This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
Josh Thompson
Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation' There’s an art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the reviewer...
a year ago
7
a year ago
There’s an art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
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,...
a year ago
30
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."
Escaping Flatland
Authenticity as dialogue John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gave Themselves Without Idle Words to Death' Rudyard Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Rudyard Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties (1886), which includes these lines: “The deaths ye died I have watched beside, / And the lives ye led were mine.” Eugene Sledge was nineteen when he enlisted in the Marine Corps a year...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid' On Tuesday I wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
On Tuesday I wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and 1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being' A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing. It’s as though AI created them.” No...
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Never Relied on His Sensibility Alone' In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the three-volume Hours in a Library (1874-7) and father of Virginia Woolf. For a century England had specialized in producing formidably well-read, non-academic literary critics. In addition...
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
sbensu
Everybody is the main character People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
a year ago
1
a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night.  The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example. Hippias is...
Josh Thompson
Blessed to be Sick Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was struggling to be engaged in my work. I was easily distracted, and didn’t feel very efficient during the day. Once I identified the tasks I needed to complete before I could walk away from...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Greatness Is Difficult' “It is dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins for our own...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“It is dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.”  Among writers, Dr. Johnson is the first fallible...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words' At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I routinely...
a year ago
9
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags' A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me...
9 months ago
51
9 months ago
A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m happy for you. But if you tell me...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Until He Un-Alived' “But at bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and if a poet...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
“But at bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and if a poet loses his pleasure-seeking audience he has lost the only audience worth having, for which the dutiful mob that signs on every September is no substitute.”  Philip Larkin’s...
Ben Borgers
Did MCAS Matter?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Talkative But Less Writative' Lately I’ve been reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Lately I’ve been reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s Travels as the most useful model for prose style in English. It’s not the only way to write but it’s the best if we judge clarity the supreme virtue. Sloppy prose, unless...
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Art and Practice of Reading Aloud to Others' A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells me that since the start of the COVID-19...
11 months ago
32
11 months ago
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells me that since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown he has been reading books aloud to his wife, most recently The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis. His list of more than a dozen titles includes Moby-Dick (“our overall...
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
a week ago
18
a week ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...