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Josh Thompson
On Learning As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development. I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Robert Caro
Why Has ‘The Power Broker’ Had Such a Long Life? NEW YORK TIMES: Robert Caro created a lasting portrait of corruption by turning the craft of...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
NEW YORK TIMES: Robert Caro created a lasting portrait of corruption by turning the craft of journalism into a pursuit of high art.
Ben Borgers
Writing Tasks Down
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 366 ...
5 months ago
Escaping Flatland
After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is...
a year ago
The American Scholar
Muscle Memory Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present The post Muscle Memory appeared...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present The post Muscle Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Owl Lake: A Vintage Treasure from Japanese Artist Keizaburo Tejima That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of...
a month ago
19
a month ago
That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of the most exasperating things in life, but also one of the most humbling, the most catalytic to our creative energies: the great calibrator of our certainties, the ultimate...
The Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world? Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
A Five-Hour Experiment Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours. He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming, Colemak typing, a form of Chinese chess...
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
11 months ago
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
15
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...
Escaping Flatland
A greeting They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
a year ago
31
a year 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
a year ago
77
a year ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
The Marginalian
You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective "The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
10 months ago
The American Scholar
The Scales The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred "I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
a year ago
Steven Scrawls
Space to Play Space to Play I remember childhood as the slow advance of a great laboring Seriousness. When I was...
4 months ago
34
4 months ago
Space to Play I remember childhood as the slow advance of a great laboring Seriousness. When I was in middle school, an awareness began to settle on me that great beings known as “colleges” watched from afar; by high school I understood that I ought to order my life to be...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Can't Quite Recall Your Name' My first high-school reunion was postponed for a year by the COVID-19 lockdown. We met in 2021 for...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
My first high-school reunion was postponed for a year by the COVID-19 lockdown. We met in 2021 for the fifty-first at a supper club on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Lake Erie was a hundred yards to the north and when conversation lagged, I could watch the ore boats moving down...
Wuthering...
The key to Finnegans Wake - there is a limit to all things so this will never do Over the last month I read Finnegans Wake (1939).  I first read some bits of it in college, in a...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
Over the last month I read Finnegans Wake (1939).  I first read some bits of it in college, in a Norton Anthology of British Literature, and other, although mostly the same, bits occasionally, mostly to remind myself what they looked like.  Anyone interested in literature should...
Escaping Flatland
Repeat great words, repeat them stubbornly Intensely Human, No 4: The Envoy of Mr Cogito
3 months ago
The American Scholar
The Challenge The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
Ben Borgers
Couch Guy
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
9 months ago
74
9 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nobody to Witness Its Effects Upon Me' Johnson, Boswell and friends met for dinner at the Crown and Anchor on April 12, 1776. Among...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Johnson, Boswell and friends met for dinner at the Crown and Anchor on April 12, 1776. Among the topics of conversation was the evergreen favorite “whether drinking improved conversation and benevolence.” Sir Joshua Reynolds maintained it did. Johnson replies:   “‘No, Sir: before...
The American Scholar
Cancer The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a legendary author who has...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
The Marginalian
Chance, Choice, and How to Claim Your Life Only a fool or an egomaniac would deny that chance shapes the vast majority of life. The time,...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
Only a fool or an egomaniac would deny that chance shapes the vast majority of life. The time, place, culture, family, body, brain, and biochemistry we are born into, the people who cross our path, the accidents that befall us — these dwarf in consequence the sum total of our...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity ...
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Money (again) Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about,...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about, because there are many different ways we can approach it. It’s easy to feel judged when someone does something with their money that I don’t do with mine. That all said, there...
Josh Thompson
A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and emotionally-charged operation to replace my 70-year-old newly-widowed mother-in-law's ancient desktop computer with a easy-for-me-to-manage Chromebook Update: I posted to r/ChromeOS...
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
8 months ago
48
8 months ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Glass Filled With a Supersaturate Solution' “[S]he is one of the few truly compelling stylists now at work. Her voice is authoritative,...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
“[S]he is one of the few truly compelling stylists now at work. Her voice is authoritative, confident, unfussy, exacting. She is never overtly confessional, which sets her apart from many poets writing since the Romantics. She makes rare company.”  And isn’t that what we look for...
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
The Marginalian
Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that...
a year ago
35
a year ago
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular chance-constellation of atoms has never before existed and will never again recur in the history of the universe. The fact of each such singularity is a wonder...
The American Scholar
“The Yellowhammer’s Nest” by John Clare Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Yellowhammer’s Nest” by John Clare appeared first on The...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Yellowhammer’s Nest” by John Clare appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Yes, it can be profitable to sell print magazines and books Collectable print projects don't have to be an expensive vanity project.
2 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1998 I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
a year ago
83
a year ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
Ben Borgers
Pebble Presentation
over a year ago
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now? And how do we build it?
7 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Dead Simple Sites The most minimal sites on the web, curated in one place. Visit original link → or View on...
a year ago
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
17
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...
This Space
39 Books: 2017 The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
a year ago
62
a year ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 363 ...
6 months ago
The American Scholar
The Weight of a Stone Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of...
6 months ago
48
6 months ago
Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology The post The Weight of a Stone appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Perry Bible...
Bubbled The post Bubbled appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The American Scholar
“My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to... "Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of... "Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
a year ago
76
a year ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong "You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
81
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
The American Scholar
Amy Wetsch Life, magnified The post Amy Wetsch appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'After So Many Deaths I Live and Write' One needn’t be a fetishist or even a book collector – reader is close enough -- to prize an...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
One needn’t be a fetishist or even a book collector – reader is close enough -- to prize an “association copy,” a term neatly defined here: “A book that belonged to or was annotated by the author, someone close to the author, a famous or noteworthy person, or someone especially...
Ben Borgers
War Room: Expansion features
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes “That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
32
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
ben-mini
Building FirstMover I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly...
9 months ago
20
9 months ago
I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly all of them pointed me to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned NYC real estate search platform. Some of my more Type-A friends gave me extra helpful advice: Narrow your search to 2-4...
The Elysian
Maybe villages are our future—not cities Italy's Matera as a case study for revitalizing small governments and creating a future of...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
Italy's Matera as a case study for revitalizing small governments and creating a future of interconnected villages.
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024 A man sets out to draw the world.
6 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs Of God's Existence ...
4 months ago
Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
a year ago
106
a year ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it: The results: B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study – relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,... I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
64
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries.  I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Media Recap 2024 I’m including the most memorable, impactful, or beloved works of—creative genius, or something, that...
6 months ago
26
6 months ago
I’m including the most memorable, impactful, or beloved works of—creative genius, or something, that I’ve encountered this year. I’m not a critic; I am mostly just talking about things I liked. These are tremendous to me. I hope they can be tremendous to you, too. — Anh The list...
Josh Thompson
On Peeing Introduction Yes, peeing. Also called ‘pissing’, or ‘urination/urinating’. I noticed a collection of...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Introduction Yes, peeing. Also called ‘pissing’, or ‘urination/urinating’. I noticed a collection of thoughts emerging in my mind, tied together with a very specific theme. I was pretty grown before I had necessarily encountered any of these things, so if any of this is...
The Marginalian
Yellow Butterfly: A Moving Wordless Story About War, Hope, and Keeping the Light Alive In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that...
a year ago
22
a year ago
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that every great moral and spiritual leader in the history of our civilization has shared “the great goal of the internal and external liberation of man* from the evils of war” as Freud...
The American Scholar
On Book August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
About War "Outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all...
a year ago
17
a year ago
"Outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace."
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time ...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ All good things... Day 27: Oct 6, 2023 — As I drift off to sleep, I smell fire. I drowsily brush this off, equating it...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 27: Oct 6, 2023 — As I drift off to sleep, I smell fire. I drowsily brush this off, equating it to a possible nearby camper who ignores “No campfire” signs. The tent flap remains open, allowing for ventilation and for keeping overnight condensation to a minimum. In the middle...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Philosophical Stakes Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a video on good endings by Michael Arndt, screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, that basically answers the question I explored in Just Add Dinosaurs, where I argued that Matthew Dicks’...
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection “To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
a year ago
92
a year ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer "When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
35
a year ago
"When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
Ben Borgers
Software Seems Resilient
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Living Well as a Practice Quality is my third focus area, extending beyond just food choices. I’m being more intentional about...
6 months ago
19
6 months ago
Quality is my third focus area, extending beyond just food choices. I’m being more intentional about the media I consume and the things I bring into my life. This means fewer impulse purchases, more thoughtful choices about what I read and watch, and a general shift toward...
Josh Thompson
How Can You Buy Happiness? You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little. We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little. We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy things. But we should do more than just buy things. Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
The Marginalian
There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with...
7 months ago
40
7 months ago
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with ghosts — all of our disappointed hopes and our outgrown dreams, all the abandoned novels and unproven theorems, all the people we used to love, all the people we used to be. A ghost is...
The Perry Bible...
Invasion The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
7 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Resilience By Design Every morning I read about a situation that pushes us further away from what we've come to know or...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Every morning I read about a situation that pushes us further away from what we've come to know or expect. With that comes the question of how our evolving reality affects product design, particularly for those who practice it. While some tech companies are seizing opportunities...
Josh Thompson
Playing Pranks My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial list: Convincing me that I was about to eat a slice of carrot cake; it was a sponge covered with toothpaste. I bit into it. Convincing me that she had, in anger and frustration, cut off almost...
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance "Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
7 months ago
The American Scholar
Snow! The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The Elysian
We’ve raised $50,000—now I’m writing a book! My vision for the future of capitalism has been greenlit. Now let’s make it a reality.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
34
a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
Ben Borgers
The Web is a Superpower
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Rising and His Fading Is Most Beautiful; A librarian friend and I were talking about the similarities between library cataloguing and...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
A librarian friend and I were talking about the similarities between library cataloguing and taxonomy in biology – the art of classification – and the sort of people such specialized disciplines attract. Formerly a piano teacher, she was attracted to library science by way of...
The American Scholar
Raspberry Heaven A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine The post Raspberry Heaven appeared first on...
4 months ago
12
4 months ago
A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine The post Raspberry Heaven appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals? Lose weight/get in shape Make more money/start budgeting Learn a language Learn a skill Read more Stop doing something (smoking, drinking) Statistically, all of...
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and... "While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Lord, Make Me Not Too Rich. Nor Make Me Poor' “In spite of the Deconstructionists who say that communication is not really possible, we most of us...
a week ago
8
a week ago
“In spite of the Deconstructionists who say that communication is not really possible, we most of us manage to honor stop signs, and we all honor the dollar sign, whether or not we are willing to admit it.”  In 1995, R.L. Barth published The Golden Calf: Poems of Money, edited by...
The American Scholar
Consolidated Ruin The post Consolidated Ruin appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The Elysian
Week 7: Boost your essays all over the internet
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Bronze, Silver, Gold
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The Elysian
Elysian gatherings around the world Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
6 months ago
sbensu
Notes on UX and LLM integrations I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down...
a year ago
17
a year ago
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down when and why they work well, or poorly.
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
10 months ago
29
10 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...
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
62
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...
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!... Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
8 months ago
48
8 months ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and sometimes about the past.  These are all old moves, old techniques.  I was a...
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
The Elysian
I'd like to open a Singapore franchise please? Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Who Killed the Mercy Man? An obscure murder keeps resurfacing in Black story and song The post Who Killed the Mercy Man?...
a month ago
4
a month ago
An obscure murder keeps resurfacing in Black story and song The post Who Killed the Mercy Man? appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Illumination of the Past' Despite the repellant spectacle of Allen Ginsburg, poetry as a career is not a guarantee of fame and...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
Despite the repellant spectacle of Allen Ginsburg, poetry as a career is not a guarantee of fame and fortune. One of our finest recent poets, Herbert Morris, is forgotten and was hardly remembered even during his life. He published six collections between 1978 and 2000 and died...
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
a year ago
40
a year ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
ben-mini
IMG_0416 Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app. The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State This cooperative could be its own country.
10 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Relationships are coevolutionary loops Looking for Alice, part 3
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Overwhelmed
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Phone As Disruptive My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I...
10 months ago
14
10 months ago
My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I leave to go for a run, sometimes when I run errands, and often hours go by without it. This is occurring more and more. It feels light. I feel light. The literal weight of the phone...
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel fragments
12 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn's National IQ Estimates ...
5 months ago
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
Astral Codex Ten
Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative ...
5 months ago
The Marginalian
On Consolation: Notes on Our Search for Meaning and the Antidote to Resignation The thing about life is that it happens, that we can never unhappen it. Even forgiveness, for all...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
The thing about life is that it happens, that we can never unhappen it. Even forgiveness, for all its elemental power, can never bend the arrow of time, can only ever salve the hole it makes in the heart. Despair, which visits upon everyone fully alive, is simply the reflexive...
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...
a year ago
45
a year 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
Piece by Piece The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product (of the digital variety) that will be so damn goodpeople will pay me $100 or more to get it.  I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of it littered around the internet, my computer,...
The American Scholar
Rhyme, Not Repetition All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
a year ago
40
a year ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Merely the joy of writing' A rare and winning combination: a serious person who seldom takes himself seriously. He keeps his...
4 months ago
34
4 months ago
A rare and winning combination: a serious person who seldom takes himself seriously. He keeps his ego a little off to the side, muffled, away from the business at hand. It never disappears. It grows dormant, like some cases of tuberculosis. Jules Renard is such a man and writer,...
The Marginalian
Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to... "Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there."
a year ago
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures Inside my writing philosophy.
a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
11 months ago
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,... Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read,...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by Charlotte Lennox.  I had not read it, so I trailed along. An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her brain addled by novels: From...
This Space
Books of the year 2024 In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s...
6 months ago
92
6 months ago
In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s Zattere, watching the putrid water lap at the city’s foundations, I saw that we exist solely in the intermittence of our being, and that what we call I is just a shadow...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
36
10 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
23
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ For our fathers Day 17: Sept 26, 2023 — Jen’s father, Michael Schuetz, passed away on Father’s Day, June 20, 2010....
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 17: Sept 26, 2023 — Jen’s father, Michael Schuetz, passed away on Father’s Day, June 20, 2010. My father, Abdul Hamid Hussain, passed away on Father’s Day, June 18, 2017. It’s another occurrence of similarity and coincidence that feels cosmic to us. Today, we’re in...
The American Scholar
Caprock Adventures worth the silence The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
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
14
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....
Ploum.net
The Engagement Rehab The Engagement Rehab I’ve written extensively, in French, about my quest to break my "connection...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
The Engagement Rehab I’ve written extensively, in French, about my quest to break my "connection addiction" by doing what I called "disconnections". At first, it was only doing three months without major news media and social networks. Then I tried to do one full year where I...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Balancing Tools and Culture A few weeks ago, a timely project at work rallied almost everyone to be “all hands on deck.” My...
a year ago
12
a year ago
A few weeks ago, a timely project at work rallied almost everyone to be “all hands on deck.” My immediate team uses Slack, having transitioned away from another longstanding project management platform [1]. The larger team has used this platform for years, and it contains a...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Grantland Day 22: Oct 1, 2023 — As we suspect, the weather reports prove wildly inaccurate. At 8,000 feet,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Day 22: Oct 1, 2023 — As we suspect, the weather reports prove wildly inaccurate. At 8,000 feet, we’re subject to alpine weather rules. Meaning, isolated storms can cycle in at anytime, and they do. Lightning flashes, thunder cracks. We sleep in fits and starts. I remove the...
ribbonfarm
Ribbonfarm is Retiring After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve...
9 months ago
29
9 months ago
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be...
Anecdotal Evidence
'You There in Your Straight Row on Row' On Sunday, a friend and I, after lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant, visited Kaboom Books here...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
On Sunday, a friend and I, after lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant, visited Kaboom Books here in Houston. He left with a stack of books. I found one: Adelaide Crapsey: On the Life and Work of an American Master (Pleiades Press and Gulf Coast, 2018). I know her thanks only to...
Josh Thompson
Feedback pt. 2 Traditional Feedback is Explicit Feedback is the means by which any system makes changes. From the...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
Traditional Feedback is Explicit Feedback is the means by which any system makes changes. From the gene pool to the swimming pool, feedback works to eliminate the insufficient and improve the sufficient. (See what I did with the “pool” thing?) Your car gives you feedback if the...
Astral Codex Ten
"Deros And The Ur-Abduction" In Asterisk ...
3 months ago
The American Scholar
Keepers of the Old Ways Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive The post Keepers of the Old Ways...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive The post Keepers of the Old Ways appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Twilight Of The Edgelords Should edgy heterodox centrists accept some of the blame for Trump?
3 months ago
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means "True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
25
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
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,...
over a year ago
70
over 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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Was a Good Moment of Remembrance' Out of the aether after twenty-six years came an email from Mikhail Iossel: “Greetings -- and...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
Out of the aether after twenty-six years came an email from Mikhail Iossel: “Greetings -- and apologies for writing out of that metaphoric nowhere.” In May 1999, Mikhail was a writer-in-residence at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and I was a reporter for that city’s...
The Marginalian
Raising Hare: The Moving Story of How a Helpless Creature Helped a Workaholic Wake Up from the... Narrow the aperture of your attention enough to take in any one thing fully, and it becomes a portal...
a month ago
15
a month ago
Narrow the aperture of your attention enough to take in any one thing fully, and it becomes a portal to everything. Anneal that attention enough so that you see whatever and whoever is before you free from expectation, unfiltered through your fantasies or needs, and it becomes...
The Marginalian
Insomnia and the Secret Life of Ideas: Kafka on the Relationship Between Sleeplessness and... Where we go when we go to sleep and why we go there is one of the great mysteries of the mind. Why...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
Where we go when we go to sleep and why we go there is one of the great mysteries of the mind. Why the mind at times refuses to go there, despite the pleading and bargaining of its conscious owner, is a greater mystery still. We know that ever since REM evolved in the bird brain,...
Anecdotal Evidence
On a Phrase by Jane Greer “. . . I pounce on quiet when I find it.”  Do you hear that sound? A low vibrato in the distance?...
a month ago
16
a month ago
“. . . I pounce on quiet when I find it.”  Do you hear that sound? A low vibrato in the distance? Sometimes it swells and the windows seem to rattle. It’s a pedal point reminiscent of hornets in a jar, but less reassuring. It’s the collective drone of chatter, of casually...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Lawn As White As Driven Snow' Houston’s terrain is geometrically flat, which is why most houses have no basements. From the warmth...
5 months ago
18
5 months ago
Houston’s terrain is geometrically flat, which is why most houses have no basements. From the warmth of my living room I watched a neighborhood kid try to defy gravity, seated on a plastic sled in the middle of the ice-covered street, holding the reins and achieving...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Phosphor Icons Phosphor is a flexible icon family for interfaces, diagrams, presentations — whatever, really. Visit...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
Phosphor is a flexible icon family for interfaces, diagrams, presentations — whatever, really. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
6 months ago
81
6 months ago
Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts: So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”. I...
Josh Thompson
Whole Messages in Slack I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy,...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy, #DenverDevs). My last job, I used Slack. The job before that, I got the whole company on Slack. I’ve used it for years. Slack delivers value to me, and induces little anxiety, and...
The American Scholar
Lift Off The post Lift Off appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024 Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to see clearly the contour of who we are in its points of attention and priority. “How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard wrote, “is how we spend our lives.” How we spend our minds is...
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice. I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past? Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
9 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ IRL Day 6: Sept 15 2023 Longmont, CO & Boulder, CO — I’ve known Gino Zahnd via the internet for a long,...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 6: Sept 15 2023 Longmont, CO & Boulder, CO — I’ve known Gino Zahnd via the internet for a long, long time now. We’ve never met in person, but our design and cycling circles overlap, and we share many mutual friends. We started chatting regularly during the pandemic, and I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thanks for This Fancy, Insect King' I once spent most of a day in an upstate New York marsh with a neuroethologist, a biologist who...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
I once spent most of a day in an upstate New York marsh with a neuroethologist, a biologist who studies how an animal’s nervous system determines its behavior. His specialty was the order Odonata – dragonflies and damselflies. Like any journalist who’s paying attention, I got a...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department): Here’s today’s thought for the weekend.  A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept.   [Laughter] So at a mathematical level this is...
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d...
8 months ago
30
8 months ago
Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children, unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
The American Scholar
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared...
10 months ago
40
10 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Ditch walkin' Day 11: Sept 20, 2023 — I hear footsteps and morning routines in motion. My sister-in-law and her...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Day 11: Sept 20, 2023 — I hear footsteps and morning routines in motion. My sister-in-law and her family are gearing up for work and school. I remember this flurry of activity as a kid myself — the hustle to get motivated. Jen goes upstairs to chat briefly with everyone before...
The Elysian
Metanational corporations are redesigning the world map Parag Khanna on metanational corporations and how they are opening borders, reshaping geopolitics,...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
Parag Khanna on metanational corporations and how they are opening borders, reshaping geopolitics, and creating a world of interconnected city-states.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the...
10 months ago
15
10 months ago
The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and...
Ben Borgers
HEY’s Fun Names
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Others Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem The post Others appeared first...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem The post Others appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Imagine Water Otherwise: Robert Macfarlane on the Personhood of Rivers and the Meaning of Aliveness “Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river,” Borges wrote in his timeless...
a month ago
18
a month ago
“Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river,” Borges wrote in his timeless “refutation” of time. “No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Nietzsche wrote a century earlier in his directive on how to find yourself....
Ploum.net
À la recherche de l’attention perdue À la recherche de l’attention perdue La messagerie instantanée et la politique Vous l’avez...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
À la recherche de l’attention perdue La messagerie instantanée et la politique Vous l’avez certainement vu passer : Un journaliste américain s’est fait inviter par erreur sur un chat Signal où des personnes très haut placées de l’administration américaine (y compris le...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Different Faces, Formats All the Same' In Osip Mandelstam: A Biography, Ralph Dutli describes a chance meeting in March 1934 on...
a month ago
15
a month ago
In Osip Mandelstam: A Biography, Ralph Dutli describes a chance meeting in March 1934 on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow between Boris Pasternak and Mandelstam, who recited to his friend the now-famous poem known as the “Stalin Epigram.” Mandelstam never wrote down the poem but...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Full of the Little Obscurities' “A man may profess to understand the President of the United States, but he seldom alleges, even...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
“A man may profess to understand the President of the United States, but he seldom alleges, even to himself, that he understands his own wife.”  Anecdotal Evidence attracts an admirably knowledgeable set of readers, mostly proud amateurs like its author. As best I can judge,...
The Marginalian
Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and... In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a...
a year ago
74
a year ago
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a memorial profile of “California’s Mother of Gardens” — a hopeful antidote to the undoing of the human world, celebrating the woman who covered Southern California with the loveliest...
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...
11 months ago
36
11 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
More Drowning Children ...
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Productivity YouTubers
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Half Room of Living and Loving When I can’t sleep, I read children’s books. One night, I discovered In the Half Room (public...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
When I can’t sleep, I read children’s books. One night, I discovered In the Half Room (public library) by Carson Ellis in my tsundoku — an impressionistic invitation into a world where only half of everything exists. Leafing through this quietly delightful treasure, I had a flash...
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
51
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...
The American Scholar
Unbuilding the Mystery What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared...
a month ago
4
a month ago
What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Stickies: Spatial note-taking
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'After the Rain, Perhaps, Something Will Show' Most of us are born with a brain but without a user’s manual. This soggy organ weighs on average...
3 hours ago
1
3 hours ago
Most of us are born with a brain but without a user’s manual. This soggy organ weighs on average about three pounds and contains 86 billion neurons. That’s our birthright, and we did nothing to earn it. We tend to operate our brains passively, ignoring most available perceptions....
The Marginalian
The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of...
8 months ago
35
8 months ago
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of summer and the season for tending to the inner garden, as Rilke wrote of winter. Autumn is a living metaphor for the necessary losses that shape our human lives: What falls away...
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
6 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1986 In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The...
a year ago
47
a year ago
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them. Both the title...
The American Scholar
Up Close The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
The American Scholar
“Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The American Scholar
Mystery Solved! The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work "There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018 Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on 2017 thoughts on going into 2018 book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of...
10 months ago
41
10 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
76
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...
The Elysian
We should own the economy A new book about the future of capitalism and an invitation to participate in it.
4 months ago
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made "Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
a year ago
42
a year ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Array divergence in Ruby Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match. You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive) valid_people =...
The American Scholar
Sheep Jones Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
Josh Thompson
Corollas and U-Hauls These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a lot, and a lot of work went into it. When moving across the country, you have a few options. You could higher a moving company, who comes and boxes up your house, packs a truck,...
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive? There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them! So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism? Letters to an anarchist, part five.
7 months ago
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Tailwind CSS
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Friday, January 21, 2022
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Only Man' “You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored it.”   Infatuation of the literary sort is likely possible only among the young. That’s my experience. I have discovered good writers in recent decades – Yvor Winters, C.H. Sisson –...
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...
a year ago
72
a year 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."
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."
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning "The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
a year ago
34
a year ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
Escaping Flatland
An essay in which my friend feels stuck and I suggest relaxing some constraints The short version is that my friend, in my opinion, thinks about what he wants in a too constrained...
4 months ago
Naz Hamid
Operating Rules for Email Collaboration Writing, giving, and soliciting feedback via your inbox. For over 25 years, I’ve been using email to...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
Writing, giving, and soliciting feedback via your inbox. For over 25 years, I’ve been using email to collaborate and work with people. Before there were any messaging platforms, project management tools, and hybrid tools like Slack and Discord, phone calls, Skype and email were...
The American Scholar
What Comes Naturally The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
9 months ago
The Marginalian
Lights On: Consciousness, the Mystery of Felt Experience, and the Fundamental Music of Reality When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of people on the yellow brick plaza in front of the Bulgarian Parliament singing protest songs to take down the Communist dictatorship, my parents got us a hamster. I would say got me a...
Ben Borgers
Dark Sky
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
FileCopy
7 months ago
Idle Words
J.D. Scholten on Coronavirus in Iowa On Sunday I spoke by video chat with my friend J.D. Scholten, who is running for Congress in Iowa's...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
On Sunday I spoke by video chat with my friend J.D. Scholten, who is running for Congress in Iowa's 4th district. J.D. is a retired baseball player who rose to national prominence in 2018, when he came within three points of unseating Steve King in what had until then been...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Stairway to the Sun We had come across Teotihuacán in research around the less city-type things to see in Mexico City,...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
We had come across Teotihuacán in research around the less city-type things to see in Mexico City, and a recommendation from a friend also backed it up. We undertook our first AirBnB Experience with Hugo & Gabriel, a well-reviewed brother duo who grew up not too far from the...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives "Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a...
a year ago
21
a year ago
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."
The American Scholar
White Easter The post White Easter appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All of Time is Cut in Two—Before and After' Rhina Espaillat writes the sonnet “How Like a Winter . . .” (And After All: Poems, 2018) in...
a month ago
14
a month ago
Rhina Espaillat writes the sonnet “How Like a Winter . . .” (And After All: Poems, 2018) in response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 17:  “So Shakespeare describes absence. Yes—but no, since every winter ends, gentling to spring’s tentative yellows, then the green and blue and bolder...
Anecdotal Evidence
'People Who Just Love the Proximity of Books' Left in a hefty anthology titled The Faber Book of War Poetry (ed. Kenneth Baker, 1996) was...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
Left in a hefty anthology titled The Faber Book of War Poetry (ed. Kenneth Baker, 1996) was a postcard from O’Gara & Wilson, Ltd. Booksellers in Chicago. More than forty years ago I visited that shop near the University of Chicago and purchased a partial set of Conrad for a...
Naz Hamid
Barbara “Nuggie” Schuetz-Hamid Rest in peace little one. I never would have guessed that a 4-lb Chihuahua would come into our...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
Rest in peace little one. I never would have guessed that a 4-lb Chihuahua would come into our lives, let alone be the animal to steal my heart before Jen’s. Our previous animals — two cats and a Boxer dog — are a stark contrast to a tiny dog that we would carry around in a sling...
Josh Thompson
Benefits of helplessness The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best friend (who I happen to be married to), and I’ve got a pretty cool job to boot. That’s the “big three”, right? (Relationships, work, location.) Yep. Except from Thursday through...
The American Scholar
A Stronger Spine The post A Stronger Spine appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Elysian
Newsletter bundles don't work A Guest Lecture with Even Armstrong on why he left Every to go independent.
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Lessons Learned from Hanging Posters
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com. This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Influential Works That Are Almost Never Read' John Ruskin would have a difficult time of it in what passes for literary culture today. First, he...
5 months ago
17
5 months ago
John Ruskin would have a difficult time of it in what passes for literary culture today. First, he was phenomenally prolific, even by Victorian standards, and how many people would read all five volumes of Modern Painters or the idea-rich sprawl of Fors Clavigera? Second, Ruskin...
Josh Thompson
The Power of an Audacious Goal I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love pursuing opportunities that take me beyond my comfort zone. The funny thing about going beyond your comfort zone is that once you’ve done it once or twice, you redefine your comfort...
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Befriending Time and Change: Debbie Millman’s Illustrated Love Letter to Gardening as a... You may or may not find the meaning of life while pacing a flower bed, but each time you plunge your...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
You may or may not find the meaning of life while pacing a flower bed, but each time you plunge your bare hands into the hummus of the Earth and run your fingers through the roots of something that hungers for the sun, you are resisting the dying of the light and saying “yes” to...
The American Scholar
The Rascal of Pont-Aven Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life The post The Rascal of Pont-Aven appeared first on...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life The post The Rascal of Pont-Aven appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Parallel Gratitude She needed attention. Every half hour to an hour just before we'd fall asleep, she'd whine. She'd...
7 months ago
20
7 months ago
She needed attention. Every half hour to an hour just before we'd fall asleep, she'd whine. She'd cry out, and I'd dutifully carry her to the bathroom to do her necessary business, then clean up after. We theorized it was a stomach bug. This went on for three nights, finding me...
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional Maybe your desires are delusional The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Maybe your desires are delusional The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just been pretending not to notice. How...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Being Hired to Care One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make as they start to dip their toes into advising is...
10 months ago
13
10 months ago
One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make as they start to dip their toes into advising is try to anchor their work to specific deliverables. Doing this is bad for a number of reasons, but the primary one is that when you’re being brought on as an advisor, you’re not...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Internet trail magic Day 19: Sept 28, 2023 — We pull into a driveway in a quiet and pristine neighborhood. Jen and I...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Day 19: Sept 28, 2023 — We pull into a driveway in a quiet and pristine neighborhood. Jen and I approach the house of people I’ve known for years, but only from the internet. This will be the first time meeting in person. Craig opens the door, and we immediately hug. Following is...
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
Ploum.net
Ne venez pas dire que vous n’étiez pas prévenus… Ne venez pas dire que vous n’étiez pas prévenus… …c’est juste que vous pensiez ne pas être...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
Ne venez pas dire que vous n’étiez pas prévenus… …c’est juste que vous pensiez ne pas être concernés Depuis des décennies, je fais partie de ces gens qui tentent d’alerter sur les terrifiantes possibilités qu’offre l’aveuglement technologique dans lequel nous sommes plongés. Je...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Amasa 25K, My First Trail Race Two years ago, I broke my elbow. A year ago, I put cycling on hold due to discomfort on the bike and...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Two years ago, I broke my elbow. A year ago, I put cycling on hold due to discomfort on the bike and soon after started running as a cardio and endurance-based complement to my longstanding passion for rock climbing. Trail running and ultras have captured my attention in recent...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 HEX – A typographic company HEX Projects is a typographic company founded by Nick Sherman that makes fonts and websites. — Nick...
6 months ago
32
6 months ago
HEX Projects is a typographic company founded by Nick Sherman that makes fonts and websites. — Nick Sherman Gah, Nick Sherman's typefaces are lovely. HEX Franklin is used in a few places I've spotted but I'm particularly interested in Manifold, NYC Sans, Jubilee, and...
The Elysian
One year of my work, printed The Elysian Volume II is here.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
11 months ago
80
11 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...
The Marginalian
Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi "It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have...
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
30
a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
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...
8 months ago
40
8 months 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...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 375 ...
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
Parking in Golden Parking in Golden is broken. This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Parking in Golden is broken. This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian traffic in Golden to break, in the same way that if a machine on a manufacturing line breaks, adjacent components need to stop, or it will also malfunction. The topic of parking (at...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.) I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Image to Mesh Gradient Generate beautiful gradients from colors or from a photo. Visit original link → or View on...
10 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 364.5 ...
5 months ago
The American Scholar
Revenants The post Revenants appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Wuthering...
Books Read in May 2024 – Some are certainly knowing what they are meaning, some are certainly not... A month without writing anything.  Plenty of reading, though. FICTIONS The Autobiography of an...
a year ago
94
a year ago
A month without writing anything.  Plenty of reading, though. FICTIONS The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James Weldon Johnson The Making of Americans (1925), Gertrude Stein – read over the course of months.  The quotation up above is from p. 783.  I will write about...
The American Scholar
Winter Sun The post Winter Sun appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 This Glorious Machine Riding an e-bike is like discovering a long forgotten secret of the universe or, perhaps, inventing...
6 months ago
16
6 months ago
Riding an e-bike is like discovering a long forgotten secret of the universe or, perhaps, inventing something worthy of a heartfelt ‘eureka.’ — Robin Rendle Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
a year ago
52
a year ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
The Elysian
Expanding your research "Research with me" session two.
4 months ago
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death "To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
over a year ago
54
over a year ago
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her."
Ben Borgers
Social Jealousy
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Dragönsteel Inspired by heavy metal logos, 1980s role-playing games, and maybe dragons and dusty, leather-bound...
11 months ago
12
11 months ago
Inspired by heavy metal logos, 1980s role-playing games, and maybe dragons and dusty, leather-bound books, Dragönsteel is our take on a modern-ish blackletter typeface. — Dan Cederholm Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Wuthering...
everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous...
a year ago
99
a year ago
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress (1925).  It is a monster.  Why did I read it?  No, that is not the right questions.  There are good reasons to read...
The American Scholar
What’s Not to Like? On similes, good and bad The post What’s Not to Like? appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month 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
14
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moon at Times Is Hunched and Old' A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met...
5 months ago
20
5 months ago
A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met to informally talk about how things were going. Both of us were pleased and knew we had made a good choice. We already liked and trusted each other. Ann paid me an odd compliment...
The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
10 months ago
76
10 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song "When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life... Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Fancy Quotation Marks
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Is Substack so Bad? All those readers that Substack shows you as a positive thing on your dashboard are worth very...
6 months ago
23
6 months ago
All those readers that Substack shows you as a positive thing on your dashboard are worth very little. Upon leaving Substack authors have found that users acquired via the Substack recommendation engine have higher churn than organic growth and are less likely to open your...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 370 ...
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pictures and the Books That Here Surround Me'' Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in one of the lesser-known literary magazines – the British Medical Journal’s Supportive and Palliative Care, the September 2014 issue. Coincidentally, that’s the month my friend...
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
a year ago
42
a year ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ On a Low and a High A few days separate us from our time at Canyon of the Ancients and our last camp from this fall...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
A few days separate us from our time at Canyon of the Ancients and our last camp from this fall trip. After a mangled tale of an ER (mis)visit and a return for refuge at Sage Canyon (this time camping just outside the Workshop Loft — thank you, Grant, for the use of your bathroom...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What a Delight in Being a Discoverer!' The library catalogue said Walter Savage Landor’s Poems, the 1964 Centaur Press edition selected and...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
The library catalogue said Walter Savage Landor’s Poems, the 1964 Centaur Press edition selected and introduced by Geoffrey Grigson, had not been checked out by another patron (hardly surprising) and should be on the shelf. I couldn’t find it. Not a good sign. That could mean the...
Josh Thompson
Mentors and Attitude Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time. Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...
Ben Borgers
tmrw
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Jon Fosse's Septology - art "can only say something while keeping silent about what it actually... Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand one of his paintings.  Each of the novel’s seven sections begins with Asle looking at the painting: AND I SEE MYSELF STANDING and looking at the picture...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Earliest of My Friends Is Gone' I often speak or exchange texts with my nephew. Soon he’ll turn thirty-six, but he lives in...
3 months ago
26
3 months ago
I often speak or exchange texts with my nephew. Soon he’ll turn thirty-six, but he lives in Cleveland, 1,200 miles away, and I seldom see him. Distance warps the sense of duration, so I think of him as frozen in his early twenties. We spoke on Sunday and for the first time since...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 361 ...
6 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog What’s odd about you is what’s interesting.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Was Written By a Madman' Can we be privately embarrassed in the solitude of our skulls, without an audience?...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
Can we be privately embarrassed in the solitude of our skulls, without an audience? Embarrassment seems like a response to a social setting. In that sense, it resembles involuntary amusement. To laugh helplessly, out loud when alone, is rare among the sane. I think embarrassment...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Nothing Bad About It A year ago, Jen and I made an overland run from the south end of Anza-Borrego to the northern end....
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
A year ago, Jen and I made an overland run from the south end of Anza-Borrego to the northern end. On the last night in Hawk Canyon, a super windy night made for less than ideal sleep. We ended up closing up the tent and sleeping in the front seats. Thankfully, the seats in a...
The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life "At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
a year ago
39
a year ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life "We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
over a year ago
The Elysian
Week 3: The dream pitch
a year ago
The Elysian
Multi-country civilizations are good, actually A vibe shift in favor of annexation would be counterproductive 🌏
3 months ago
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace "Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
a year ago
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Verse 31 from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore...
2 weeks ago
14
2 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: How do we create the next Renaissance? Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create...
a year ago
43
a year ago
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create a world where artists are better funded and…
Josh Thompson
LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions I recently worked through a LeetCode problem. The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem. The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution. Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission. So, once I fixed it so it...
Josh Thompson
The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And For It Does So Dearly Pay' Some wartime casualties are time-released. Death is deferred. In his new collection, That Mad...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
Some wartime casualties are time-released. Death is deferred. In his new collection, That Mad Game (Scienter Press, 2025), R.L. Barth devotes three poems to a civilian, the war correspondent Albert W. Vinson, who wrote about him leading a patrol of Marines in Vietnam in 1968. The...
Ben Borgers
Bagel Institute
over a year 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
27
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...
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
a year ago
19
a year ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
The American Scholar
Burned The post Burned appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
ribbonfarm
Bangalore Meetup Report Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal...
a year ago
18
a year ago
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal for organizing. I think this is the first meetup I’ve done since the last Refactor Camp in 2019. It was kinda last minute, which is why I only posted on Substack rather than here...
The American Scholar
Lingua Obscura Laura Spinney on the spread of Proto-Indo-European The post Lingua Obscura appeared first on The...
a month ago
14
a month ago
Laura Spinney on the spread of Proto-Indo-European The post Lingua Obscura appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Week 5: Write one (pitchable) think piece
a year ago
Ben Borgers
An emoji picker epiphany
over a year ago