Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad'
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
6 months ago
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift
was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”
Now there’s a
metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking.
Last time, I argued that customer success is...
The Marginalian
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous...
a year ago
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but... the prime moral privilege."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Departure Destroys a Class of Sympathies'
As a boy I
was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close
friends...
5 months ago
As a boy I
was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close
friends when young, and wonder how they adapt to unprecedented loss. They have
nothing to compare it to. The death that hit me hardest was President Kennedy’s,
a month after my eleventh...
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living...
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
4 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Him a Favor By Taking His Money'
Of all things,
I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second
Story...
a year ago
Of all things,
I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second
Story Books in that city earlier this week. The volumes in the outdoor stalls
are priced at $4 each. My friend collects Lionel Trilling and he found a copy
of Of This Time, Of That Place...
This Space
39 Books: 2012
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I...
7 months ago
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I knew would be impossible to write about, at least in a couple of distracted hours. Imagine this: through mathematical calculation, close reading and literary detective work, a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality'
This week I
will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after
forty-four...
8 months ago
This week I
will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after
forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from
earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was
surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
The 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."
3 months ago
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Air of Baffled Absence'
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see...
4 months ago
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see these
hands on the deck railing, but
Whose are
they? Have they any meaning? What?”
Some readers
will understand. The familiar can become strange with age. That’s not always a...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Philosophical Stakes
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a...
8 months 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’...
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Wagon-Load of Monkeys'
“It is not
an accident that Gulliver has become
a child’s book; only a child could be so...
a year ago
“It is not
an accident that Gulliver has become
a child’s book; only a child could be so destructive, so irresponsible and so
cruel.”
And only a
parent could acknowledge the potential for raw nastiness in the heart of a child.
V.S. Pritchett had two children and few illusions...
The American Scholar
“Guests” by Celia Thaxter
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter appeared first on The American...
5 days ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the...
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
a year ago
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
4 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten
The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The 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
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
This Space
39 Books: 2001
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
7 months ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Midst the Pomp and Toil of War'
I learned
that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never
read...
6 months ago
I learned
that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never
read poetry. I was a senior in high school. Days before we went to see the
Oscar-winning film Patton, he delivered
a lecture on the general’s military prowess, anti-Semitism and desire
to...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows'
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little
frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
The 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...
3 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...
Josh Thompson
Blessed to be Sick
Yesterday, I wrote about
reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week.
Yesterday, I was...
over a year ago
Yesterday, I wrote about
reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week.
Yesterday, I was struggling to be engaged in my work. I was easily distracted, and didn’t feel very efficient during the day. Once I identified the tasks I needed to complete before I could walk away from...
Wuthering...
Please read Greek philosophy with me - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, dog men, people jumping in...
Greek philosophy, readalong #2.
This idea got more interesting the more I thought about it, but...
a year ago
Greek philosophy, readalong #2.
This idea got more interesting the more I thought about it, but had more organizational problems, plus the greater problem that I do not think of philosophy as a strength of mine. My solution has been to convert the project into literature.
Is...
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
3 months ago
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs."
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path”
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 days ago
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
From All Souls by Saskia Hamilton
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Half the Pleasure of Reading New Books'
“[M]ost
American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have
the...
a year ago
“[M]ost
American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have
the possibility of developing literary taste have scarcely time to do so. Unless
they read the great English classics in high school and in college, they never
find time to read them.”
In...
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
7 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later!
What are bollards
The what and the why in a single image:
The what and why in a...
Josh Thompson
Refactoring practice: Get rid of `attr_accessors` in `ogre.rb` in 2 minutes
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Little Towns Should Have Had Their Chroniclers'
Every St.
Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green
and white...
9 months ago
Every St.
Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green
and white knitted shamrock and reminded me of the origin of my first name. Her
father was born in County Cork, as were her mother’s parents. I waited until
the third grade to rebel against...
Josh Thompson
How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim...
over a year ago
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim the gifs from >3Mb/each to <1Mb each, so I didn’t. If you’re on mobile, or trying to conserve data, you might want to come back to this one later.
I value my attention and focus. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Meaning of Sidereal Time'
Years ago I
was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and
part-time...
a year ago
Years ago I
was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and
part-time journalist who lived in Woodstock, N.Y. He was smart, quick, funny
and surprisingly well-read (he knew who Edward Dahlberg was). Neither of
us was much of a party-goer so we spent...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return'
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically
implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:
“Greasy,
grimy gopher guts!
Little dirty
birdie feet!”
As in any
folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Doesn't Want to Read'
In a comment
on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:
“Is that a...
a year ago
In a comment
on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:
“Is that a ‘lover
of books’ because they are books? A lover of reading books? A lover of reading
certain books? What makes one bibliophile more of a bibliophile than another?
Size of the...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible.
Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
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
"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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not More Respected, Though Less Loved'
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s...
a year ago
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s birthplace
and the butt of many jokes by the former. The journey lasted eighty-three days
and both men published books recounting their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands...
The American Scholar
All in Your Head
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
Anecdotal Evidence
'Unless It From Enjoyment Spring!'
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context,...
a month ago
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context, I might have assumed the writer described was Walter de la
Mare, whose poetry I ignored for too long because teachers and critics told me
he wrote solely for children. (Something...
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year 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,...
a week 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...
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration'
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn...
a year ago
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn to for comfort, solace, inspiration.” The reviewer identifies a slightly
different category, “the books we find ourselves crazy about and hope to
revisit someday,” as distinguished,...
Wuthering...
Books finished in March 2023
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a...
a year ago
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a common practice, although mostly with photographs of book stacks. I am not sure why I have not put the lists here as well. I guess I am not sure any of this is interesting.
Soon,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Dead in Their Silences Keep Me in Memory'
Edwin Muir (1887-1959)
I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels...
a year ago
Edwin Muir (1887-1959)
I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels and
stories. I remember chancing on The
Castle at the public library in the mid-sixties, knowing nothing about
Kafka. Only now do I appreciate the debts incurred – to Kafka, to the Muirs....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools'
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in...
2 months ago
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often
discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which
eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
The Elysian
Elysian gatherings around the world
Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
4 days ago
Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
The Perry Bible...
Hacked
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
11 months ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
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...
7 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense'
“Most poetry
is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
6 months ago
“Most poetry
is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so
aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be
altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I
am always hesitant to make them...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Winter Came in August Killing Fruit and Seed'
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The...
a month ago
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The American Scholar:
“Edward Case’s
work has appeared in various journals, including the New Criterion, the Wall
Street Journal, and Modern Age.
This poem was taken from a collection of...
The American Scholar
Masters of Horror and Magic
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first...
a month ago
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...
over a year ago
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it.
Since I’m trying to write...
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
Ben Borgers
Current Self and Going to Libraries
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Given Us to Keep Is Lost'
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the...
6 months ago
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the opposite end of Massachusetts, near Lee in the Berkshires. I was there to
interview Paul Metcalf (1917-99) and his wife Nancy for my newspaper in the
summer of 1988. Paul was a...
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
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work...
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be interested in humans and to be in touch with yourself as a human."
The Marginalian
The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
3 months ago
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: November
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked.
I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I...
over a year ago
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked.
I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I thought about that as I was conducting my month. This proactive review is in line with
Viktor Frankl’s admonition to “live every day as if it were your second chance to live it.”...
The 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
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...
The American Scholar
Divided Providence
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
2 weeks ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
3 months ago
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
Josh Thompson
Build a Personal Website in Jekyll - A Detailed Guide For First-Timers
You’re a turing student, in the backend program.
You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but...
over a year ago
You’re a turing student, in the backend program.
You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but everyone who says
go start a blog
Seems to also think you have 10 hours (or 20 hours? or 2 hours? how long does this take) to sit around dealing with setting up a personal website.
Lets...
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca
History witnessed, from the picket lines
The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines
The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Designing for support teams
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
10 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taube
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against...
over a year ago
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against Sugar. My notes and a write-up on The Case Against Sugar
As I explained in that post, I find it helpful to do a ‘deep dive’ on some of the books I want to be deeply influenced by. For...
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Structural Holes and Good Ideas
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains.
These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about!
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead. In what may be the most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Itself and Forever Shipwreck'
I’ve just
finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in...
a year ago
I’ve just
finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in two issues of The New Yorker in 1979 and as a book the
following year. I read it in the magazine and I’ve since read the book –
Maxwell’s finest, written when he was seventy years...
Josh Thompson
Upgrade your job
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet
another email...
over a year ago
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet
another email I sent to a friend, recorded here.
Hi [redacted],
First I want to highlight is that flexible/remote jobs are
just like normal jobs, but more people want them, so the companies...
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
a month ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
The American Scholar
Queen of the Night
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark
The post Queen of the Night appeared...
3 months ago
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark
The post Queen of the Night appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse.
Hey there,
I’m...
The Elysian
Hint #1
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting...
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Companionable Room'
I had a
minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books
stored...
11 months ago
I had a
minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books
stored off-site in the Library Service Center I got this message: “No items can
fulfill the submitted request.” That made no sense and I couldn’t figure out a
way around the roadblock, so I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Important Part of Anyone’s Reading'
A variation on
the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages...
2 weeks ago
A variation on
the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” – “How do you do it?” – is the one I get when a workman or
friend visits my home office where most of my books are shelved: “You read all
these?” I can reply with one of...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 2: Run your first tests (and make them pass)
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
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...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Robert Caro
In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars...
a year ago
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars from people who cannot afford it.
Blog -...
Book Review - Iron John
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I...
over a year ago
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I reluctantly admit I am not one of the more zealous.
Although the book has high points – the classic story of Iron John as put
down by the Grimm brothers stands out to me, as well as an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Obscuration of the Luminaries of Heaven'
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the...
8 months ago
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the city
periodically coated it with tar. Rain fell on the morning of July 20 but by late
afternoon the skies had cleared and all that remained of the rain were puddles
in the water-proof street....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Exhausted By Their Long Dying'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it...
a year ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it passionate and grief-stricken,
spoken by well-educated, middle-class Jewish characters in New York City
shortly after World War II. Chief among the title’s Shadows are the victims of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long'
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
8 months ago
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It’s a symptom-less and in most cases benign
disorder, but it can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. It means I see my
oncologist once a...
The Marginalian
Excellent Advice for Living: Kevin Kelly’s Life-Tested Wisdom He Wished He Knew Earlier
"The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished."
a year ago
"The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished."
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
Josh Thompson
The advantage of low friction goals
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps.
I’m trying to publish something every day...
over a year ago
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps.
I’m trying to publish something every day for a month.
Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write
something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there.
“Customization”...
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are.
Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
The Elysian
Hint #2
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
The American Scholar
The Redoubtable Bull Shark
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared...
7 months ago
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
"Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there."
The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
6 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Tomorrow I Propose to Regulate My Room'
A reader in Columbus,
Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December...
a week ago
A reader in Columbus,
Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December 21,
1968 issue of The New Yorker he found
the poem “Is There a Dr. Johnson in the House.” It’s a typical irregularly lined,
jokily rhymed production by Nash that begins:
“Do you...
The Perry Bible...
Pop
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read a Little, Listen to a Little Music'
“To tend the
world: read a little, listen to a little music.”
I was slow
to warm to the late Adam...
a year ago
“To tend the
world: read a little, listen to a little music.”
I was slow
to warm to the late Adam Zagajewski. I still prefer his essays to his poems,
which often seem sentimental and formless, as though he demanded too little of
himself when writing poetry. Only in the five...
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate"
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you!
Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by...
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in...
10 months ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in February. I gotta catch up on my
posts.
One big book
down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible.
TRAVEL, let’s
call it
Black Lamb
and Grey Falcon
(1941), Rebecca...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty'
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree...
a month ago
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it
while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before
revealing...
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky...
7 months ago
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky to roam at will through all the far provinces of light."
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Grief and Lost Belief'
In the U.S.,
Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27....
7 months ago
In the U.S.,
Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27. Formerly
called Decoration Day, it started after the Civil War as commemoration of the
nation’s war dead. The meaning and observance of holidays tend to dilute with
time. When I was a boy, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark'
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of...
a year ago
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair,
juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard.
He will never be hip except...
The American Scholar
A Forgotten Turner Classic
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The...
6 months ago
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The post A Forgotten Turner Classic appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daring to His Own Disadvantage'
“The words
poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is
against...
5 months ago
“The words
poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is
against mock society, mock poetry, mock justice, mock spirituality—against any form of enslavement—is a benefit.”
Marianne
Moore could be a soft touch when it came to reviewing. She could...
Josh Thompson
Why I use a Kindle
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to
not use one focus either on practical...
over a year ago
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to
not use one focus either on practical issues (depending on something with a battery) or on aesthetic reasons. These are valid issues, of course, but these pale in comparison to the many, many reasons
to use a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Go to the Bookcase'
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself....
a month ago
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself. It nagged me, like a commercial jingle from fifty years ago playing in my
head. The harder I dredged to recover the source, the deeper it sank. I let go
and an hour later it bubbled...
Josh Thompson
$150 Custom-Made Standing Desk
My desk/our kitchen table
Standing desks are
all the
rage. (I’m still waiting for
walking desks...
over a year ago
My desk/our kitchen table
Standing desks are
all the
rage. (I’m still waiting for
walking desks to catch up.)
Kristi and I outfitted our space with reclaimed furniture from Craigslist (also known as “cheap”), so we wanted to keep it going with a desk. My setup at our kitchen...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era'
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,”
“gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists
but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history
traceable, in this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Finest of Human Creatures'
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S...
10 months ago
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S Pritchett and drawn from The New Statesman and Nation. Founded in
1913 by the Webbs and others associated with the Fabian Society, the magazine’s
politics were left-wing and many of...
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
a year ago
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Astral Codex Ten
Links For December 2024
...
5 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'First Find a Thinking Being. Lots of Luck'
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself....
7 months ago
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself. That’s a confession of inadequacy, though I’m not one of those people
who says, “I don’t have a head for math,” when what they really mean is arithmetic.
Because of my job I’ve learned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November'
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
a month ago
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the Ruins (1950):
“We enter
again November; cold late light
Glazes the field, a little fever of love,
Held in numbed hands, admires the false gods;
While lonely on this coast the...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think?
+ links
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice.
I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing
Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
Part 1: The thought behind the thought
Josh Thompson
On Friction
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...
over a year ago
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want.
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on.
One of the...
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise?
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
8 months ago
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
Anecdotal Evidence
'On a Certain Street There Is a Certain Door'
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street...
6 months ago
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street there is a certain door
shut with
its bell and its exact address
and with a
flavor of lost Paradise,
which in the
early evening I can never
open to
enter. The day’s work at its...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School'
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS
bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS
bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from
a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish
outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
sbensu
How to avoid breaking APIs
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Talkative But Less Writative'
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s...
a year ago
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s Travels as the most useful
model for prose style in English. It’s not the only way to write but it’s the best
if we judge clarity the supreme virtue. Sloppy prose, unless...
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s.
I know that some people like to complain about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Breathing--Still'
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections,...
11 months ago
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections, “Snowfall in
Vietnam: Poems/Maxims,” consists of ten one-line, five-syllable poems and
accompanying titles, some of which are longer than the poems. Their extreme...
The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Arid Interrogation'
As boys, in
our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our
fathers...
4 months ago
As boys, in
our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our
fathers had, so we believed, during World War II. Could we withstand torture?
These virtues, touched with Hollywood melodrama, seemed like essential aspects of
maturity. We wanted to be...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Aesthetically They Are Still Delightful'
“Early
Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else
would make them...
7 months ago
“Early
Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else
would make them nowadays, but historically they are still important and
aesthetically they are still delightful.”
Let's not confine Philip
Larkin’s conclusion exclusively to Duke Ellington’s
early...
Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
...
over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
1. Roman plays. Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
ben-mini
IMG_0416
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
a month ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app.
The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
Josh Thompson
Tiny Habits take 2
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is...
over a year ago
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones.
I
have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading
Freewith Kristi and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Feel With Melancholy Wonder'
I was
introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies
by...
5 months ago
I was
introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies
by Edward Dahlberg, a difficult man who furthered my education. Collected in Epitaphs for Our Time: The Letters of Edward
Dahlberg (George Braziller, 1967) are five letters to...
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
a year ago
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicency, domination and oppression. It’s a condimnation of evangelicalism, but not, necessarily, any particular evangelical. There are those within evangelicalism who are ethical,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Quietly, an Aside'
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the...
11 months ago
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the opening sentence or paragraph
of a news story. The idea is to quickly grab the reader’s attention and, with
luck, hold on to it. Subtlety is discouraged in journalism. There’s much...
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Personal Affections'
Only
recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies.
It...
2 months ago
Only
recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies.
It seems to be rooted in the conviction that readers ought to read writers in
their original volumes, not someone’s curated selection, or something like
that. In common with most...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dull Night in a Buffalo Hotel'
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of...
7 months ago
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of Impressionism. He would organize isolated bits of description, usually
snapshots of people, without explicit narration or formal structure. The
effect, sometimes satirical, was...
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
The Marginalian
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best...
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand...
a month ago
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within them on each other, stirring certainties and self-righteousness to distract from the uncomfortable unknowns, from the great open...
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
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...
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus. The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons. Plautus was...
Josh Thompson
How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We...
over a year ago
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We discussed two things:
asking good questions
having a good workflow
After the session, I promised an overview of what we discussed. Here’s that overview for “Asking good questions”....
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Overconsumed
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard
The post...
3 weeks ago
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard
The post Overconsumed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'First of All a Student of Human Nature'
“Desmond
MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”
The...
9 months ago
“Desmond
MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”
The best
writers, the ones who compel us to read their work across a lifetime, whose
thoughts become our own and who at last become teachers and companions, are
those who work in two media: words...
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life
"If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
"If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fragility of Happiness'
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation...
a year ago
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation of a Russian novel due for publication in November. The proofs arrived on Thursday and I sent Chris an email letting him know I was
already reading the book. The email bounced back...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being'
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I...
10 months ago
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians
and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing.
It’s as though AI created them.” No...
The Marginalian
Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our...
a year ago
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our image of our nature and our real nature."
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Center of Our Mediterranean Civilization'
My youngest
son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a
university...
5 months ago
My youngest
son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a
university study program. He’ll be a senior in the fall. I first visited Paris (and
Europe) in 1973, age twenty, and stayed in a hotel on the Rue de Maubeuge, 10th
arrondissement. Headlines in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Sum of All the Losses'
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was...
a month ago
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was half an inch shorter). The crown of his trademark top hat – a stovepipe, it
was called -- measured twelve inches in height. Allowing for the silk hat settling on his head, the...
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year 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...
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter'
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
4 months ago
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears
at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled
with not stinging like...
Josh Thompson
Depression
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom'
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944...
2 months ago
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with
ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising
here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
The American Scholar
Under a Spell Everlasting
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from...
2 weeks ago
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war
The post Under a Spell Everlasting appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Thoughts on agency
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at...
6 months ago
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at 6 pm CET (9 am PST). Like last time, I’ll prepare a few questions (probably relating to today’s post since that is top of mind) but mostly we’ll just talk about whatever comes up....
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War,
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
7 months ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'If the Nation Is to Be Saved From This Menace'
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming...
10 months ago
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming a nation of minor poets.”
P.G.
Wodehouse is being kind. He wrote “The Alarming Spread of Poetry” in 1916 when
the blight was fresh and perhaps still reversible. His Exhibit A is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise'
John Updike
published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
5 months ago
John Updike
published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):
“Rexroth and
Patchen and Fearing—their mothers
Perhaps
could distinguish their sons from the others,
But I am
unable. My inner eye...
This Space
Proust regained
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government
Ok but what can we do about it?
a week ago
Ok but what can we do about it?
Josh Thompson
A 40 Hour Work Week
Business Insider posted an article on why we have a
40 hour work week.
The author blames big...
over a year ago
Business Insider posted an article on why we have a
40 hour work week.
The author blames big business for why we’ve not dropped below 40 hours per week. He thinks that if America became less consumer-driven, our economy would collapse.
He’s got the wrong starting assumptions...
The American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant...
2 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists'
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters...
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the
same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get
a craving for spaghetti...
sbensu
APIs as ladders
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
The Marginalian
The Living Wonder of Leafcutter Ants, in Mesmerizing Stop Motion
Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature’s vastest, most sophisticated societies — a...
a year ago
Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature’s vastest, most sophisticated societies — a single mature colony can contain as many ants as there are people on Earth, living with a great deal more social harmony and consonance of purpose than we do. They are also one of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Wisdom As a Kind of Courtesy'
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more...
a year ago
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more difficult than unreflective complacency and more interesting than
madness.”
That’s how
the poet Dick Davis characterized the concerns of Janet Lewis and her husband Yvor
Winters in his...
Josh Thompson
On Minimalism
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”.
This reluctance...
over a year ago
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”.
This reluctance is because I think the label brings in a bunch of connotations that I don’t like.
Our apartment never looked like this. Source: home-designing.com
What is Minimalism?
a removal or...
Wuthering...
it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap - Peter Adamson's Classical Philosophy, the...
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without...
a year ago
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without Any Gaps. What can that mean, without any gaps?
We’ve finished Aristotle, and it’s right about here that
there would normally be a gap. In an
undergraduate philosophy course you...
Escaping Flatland
Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various...
a year ago
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various poets I knew and submitted the results to a fanzine.
The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
Josh Thompson
OK, some new books
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that...
over a year ago
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that proclamation.
Do I really want to limit myself to just the books that I’ve already picked for myself?
Yes. Maybe.
There’s a kind of book I don’t want to read any more of. That’s the “get...
Josh Thompson
Crock Pots are Foolproof, Right?
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND...
over a year ago
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND hang out with good friends. I wanted to try a
really good looking recipe, and watch Django Unchained.
The cooking instructions for the recipe was “cook on low for 7-9 hours”. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Colder Here Than Organized Charity'
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once...
9 months ago
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once business-like and chatty: “I hope subsequent activities haven’t yet
sufficed to obliterate our Boston dinner last fall from your memory.” The men had
first met in 1953 when each...
Josh Thompson
Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1
Meet people.
Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I...
over a year ago
Meet people.
Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I had. I initiated each conversation with someone that I wanted to learn from. Most I had some prior relationship with (I.E. I had met them, or I knew someone who knew them). This was...
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good.
I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
Josh Thompson
Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...
over a year ago
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on.
I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...
The Marginalian
The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a...
11 months ago
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a...
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Becoming an Early Riser
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to...
over a year ago
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to hear about when being awoken by their parents
Getting out of bed is a struggle. I’ve spent the better part of twenty four years setting my alarm as late as possible so I could have...
sbensu
High Variance Management
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Class Council: “Brutally Honest”
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally...
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post.
...
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Mystery Solved!
The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Sound of the Picturesque
Charles Ives and the Visual
The post The Sound of the Picturesque appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Charles Ives and the Visual
The post The Sound of the Picturesque appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply...
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
8 months ago
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized as mutually dependent."
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
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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Such a Touchy, Testy, Pleasant Fellow'
One of the
curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we
said in the...
7 months ago
One of the
curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we
said in the past, and sometimes last week. Years ago I wrecked a friendship
with a glib remark, a wisecrack that I didn’t even believe but had convinced
myself was funny (it was, in fact, but...
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
Input metrics vs. Output metrics
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something.
If you’re working on any...
over a year ago
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something.
If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come
slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all.
So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me.
I don’t believe...
The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind
"A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
"A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going."
Josh Thompson
Parking in Golden
Parking in Golden is broken.
This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian...
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...
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
Robert Caro
Six Books, Six New York Times Book Review Covers
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover...
a year ago
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.
This Space
Blood Knowledge by Kirsty Gunn
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem"...
3 weeks ago
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem" said Muriel Spark, adding by explanation: "The longer they become, the more they seem to lose value". We might wonder then if the most value is to be found in the shortest novels,...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Saint’s Strange Way to Practice Death"
Among the road
kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the...
9 months ago
Among the road
kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the strangely
spelled opossum (from the Powhatan). The least common, incidentally, is the
armadillo, with two KIAs sighted in twenty years, both being pecked at by
crows. Natives here seem uncommonly...
The Marginalian
Terror, Tenderness, and the Paradoxes of Human Nature: How a Marmoset Saved Leonard and Virginia...
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they...
a year ago
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they too read to their children, they too can be moved to tears by music. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky captured this as he contemplated the greatest antidote to evil, observing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out'
Long ago an
editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they
wanted....
5 months ago
Long ago an
editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they
wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking
approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend,
respect the reader’s intelligence....
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in...
6 months ago
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in stories and suggested that some stories might explore
certain questions not because those questions are interesting, but
because engaging with those questions allows the story to...
This Space
39 Books: 2003
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
Josh Thompson
June trip to the New River Gorge
The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until...
over a year ago
The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until Friday, near-certain thunderstorms.
Typical of the New, the weather proved unpredictable, and we had glorious sun the entire trip.
I was eager to get out to the New, since my last...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist'
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil
Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play...
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy. Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do. If we...
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all...
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely Cultivated and Painstakingly Honest'
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as...
a month ago
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as good an apologia for her manner of writing, among others, as I’ve ever encountered:
“Silence is
more eloquent than speech – a truism; but sometimes something that someone...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Is the Andy Warhol of Art'
Guy
Davenport was our Johnny Appleseed of culture. He was an academic who published
in Harper’s and...
6 months ago
Guy
Davenport was our Johnny Appleseed of culture. He was an academic who published
in Harper’s and the Journal of the American Institute of Architects;
Life magazine and Art News; National Review and Inquiry.
He sowed allusions without regard for pretentious pieties. He loved...
The American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1989
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
7 months ago
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film.
The only thing I remember of the...
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder...
5 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise'
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading...
4 months ago
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never
before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry.
First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
5 months ago
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are
“shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that
his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of
“profound...
Josh Thompson
"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling"
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer...
over a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer to sport as “lead” climbing from here on out. Sorry, trad climbers).
If someone is enjoying top roping, (or bouldering) why should they take on the work of learning to lead climb,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Point of Literature'
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible...
a month ago
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible human
being, as though this constituted recently declassified information. Such an understanding
of literature and literary history, if followed to its logical conclusion, will
result in a...
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons
and what's on my mind
9 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1991
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is...
7 months ago
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is Beauty Good. I had seen it two years earlier chosen in a newspaper books of the year listing alongside Jacques Roubaud's Le Grand Incendie de Londres and Thomas Bernhard's Old...
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30...
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
5 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Review
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you...
over a year ago
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning.
My November goals were an extension of October’s goals. I feel comfortable with long-term unchanging goals.
They were:
Deepen my knowledge of front-end web...
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...
6 months 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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Was Only Coming True'
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky...
a year ago
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky (2018), a dying man’s
last fling. The title refers to the Japanese phrase for the Milky Way. It’s
mostly autobiography, a book of well-rehearsed memories, largely unstructured, much
of...
This Space
39 Books: 2023
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
6 months ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
The American Scholar
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags'
A gift I
prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If
you tell me...
9 months ago
A gift I
prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If
you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy
yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m
happy for you. But if you tell me...
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham...
a year ago
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–c. 1040), known in the West as Alhazen, began his life studying religion, but grew quickly disenchanted by its unquestioned dogmas and the way it turned people on each other with...
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Use an Alarm to Go to Bed
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....
over a year ago
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes.
I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?'
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the...
10 months ago
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and
sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that
the man who sees the fun of life...
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post...
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
The future according to artists
The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
8 months ago
The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of...
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
6 months ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance
From our May writing prompt.
4 months ago
From our May writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Profoundly Bitter Lesson'
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum...
a year ago
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum George
Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering. He has published
an essay, “A Moral Rot at Rice University”:
“I was well
aware that antisemitism is alive and well in the US,...
Josh Thompson
Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...
over a year ago
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code.
Here’s the context:
In my day-to-day, I work on a...
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
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
'On the Cello of Shared Grief'
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
5 days ago
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or
even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt
seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour...
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters
from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help
book, one of the founding self-help books.
The Meditations of...
Josh Thompson
Jaywalking: What, So What, What To Do
What Is “Jaywalking”
authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note...
7 months ago
What Is “Jaywalking”
authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note in my mind, as I write this. Some people might “believe in jaywalking” and view non-car-users as an underclass, and act in such a way that makes this belief manifestly obvious....
The Perry Bible...
Clicked
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Josh Thompson
How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook'
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep...
over a year ago
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd
— Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017
Since then, I occasionally...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s...
a month ago
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s notebooks, collected in Notes
from Hampstead (trans. John Hargraves, 1998). While I admire the work of a
handful of critics – Dryden, Johnson, Winters, Cunningham, a few others –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Look for Truth, for Knowledge, for Wisdom'
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of...
a year ago
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of the humanities, at any rate--as much as students, are the creatures of the
library. Just as the laboratory is the domain of the sciences, so the library
is the domain of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Excellent Judge, Posterity'
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors....
9 months ago
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors. Take
Dwight Macdonald on James Gould Cozzens. And then consider Arnold Bennett
(1867-1931). Today he’s judged a respectable but minor English novelist, something
of a documentarian, if he’s...
The American Scholar
Chris Combs
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Fond of Books and Fond of Reading'
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled...
8 months ago
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled A Note Book with Commentaries. This
is the 1950 edition published by William Heinemann and comes with an indecipherable
pencil inscription on the front end paper that may be...
The American Scholar
Caprock
Adventures worth the silence
The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Adventures worth the silence
The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry'
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when...
9 months ago
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a
discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard
Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
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