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Anecdotal Evidence
'The Least Motion of Wonder in Himself' In 1968, my high-school English teacher loaned me the anthology of short stories she had used at...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
In 1968, my high-school English teacher loaned me the anthology of short stories she had used at Kent State University just a few years earlier. Included were the usual suspects -- Maupassant, Hemingway, Chekhov, Eudora Welty – but I read them because I knew nothing. Among the...
Ploum.net
Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! For the last three years, I’ve been working on Offpunk, a...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! For the last three years, I’ve been working on Offpunk, a command-line gemini and web browser. Offpunk.net While my initial goal was to browse the Geminisphere offline, the mission has slowly morphed into cleaning and unenshitiffying the modern...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At a Quarter a Tome' I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I...
a month ago
20
a month ago
I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I don’t mean what I pretended to do while in the company of professors, though many of them assigned books published in soft covers. I mean self-assigned literature, beginning as a kid...
The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul "Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
over a year ago
81
over a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base primative, in this case, a “polyline”. Read the rest of this post, understand what we’re going for, then go to part 2: get your own polyline from strava. It’s not trivial to get, but its...
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
a year ago
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
14
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,...
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction ...
7 months ago
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
17
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...
Escaping Flatland
6 lessons I learned working at an art gallery On agency, doing value-aligned work, and making your job fun
8 months ago
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
35
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 Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes “That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
33
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes,...
over a year ago
92
over a year ago
My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century, perhaps written when Seneca was in...
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe … How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It...
a year ago
76
a year ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting + links
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
over a year ago
16
over 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,...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 356.5 ...
7 months ago
The Marginalian
Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the... "It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate. Those of you who love exercising for the...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate. Those of you who love exercising for the sake of exercising - you can stop reading now. This information is probably not relevant to you. Those of you who don’t like to exercise, but know you really should exercise...
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go. Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation. So, in the book,...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think? + links
8 months ago
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas... Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
6 months ago
61
6 months ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
The Marginalian
How to Make America Great: A Visionary Manifesto from the Woman Who Ran for President in 1872 In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June...
5 months ago
61
5 months ago
In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June 9, 1927) ran for President, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. Papers declared her candidacy “a brazen imposture, to be extinguished by laughter rather than by law.”...
ribbonfarm
Going Sessile One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel...
a year ago
17
a year ago
One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel beyond local weekend getaways. Almost no destination has a pain/novelty ratio that makes it worth it. On the one hand, I’ve traveled enough that few places hold the promise of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Than One Book at a Time?' We have acquired new, smaller bedside tables. More than a third of the surface area is occupied by...
5 months ago
18
5 months ago
We have acquired new, smaller bedside tables. More than a third of the surface area is occupied by the alarm clock and a lamp, leaving less space for reading matter. All further accumulation of books and magazines will, of necessity, be vertically arranged, a single stack, which...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 363 ...
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Website Like a Library
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 355.5 ...
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
How to complete a project Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept”...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you. It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cultivation As a Proficient Amateur' Perhaps the most interesting and even important person in Montaigne’s life – especially for...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Perhaps the most interesting and even important person in Montaigne’s life – especially for his readers -- was not his wife nor his friend Étienne de La Boétie, whose death in 1563 left him bereft, but Marie de Gournay (1565-1645), the model of an autodidact, who taught herself...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Where the Bathrooms Have No Name On Thanksgiving this year, Jen and I went on run. Since the morning and lunch were occupied by a...
a year ago
10
a year ago
On Thanksgiving this year, Jen and I went on run. Since the morning and lunch were occupied by a non-traditional set of meals, we departed for our excursion mid-afternoon. Maybe it’s age, maybe it was too much fizzy water at lunch coupled with the runner’s jogging motion but...
Ben Borgers
No Dessert Challenge
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
a year ago
95
a year ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
Ben Borgers
Gimme Back My Headphones
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Bookmark to Bear Recently, I discovered that the creator of Pinboard posted transphobic views from that account on...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
Recently, I discovered that the creator of Pinboard posted transphobic views from that account on (RIP) Twitter. This is disappointing, and a little digging revealed that it wasn't his first time espousing such views. I don't have time nor tolerance for this. I swiftly exported...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Happiness Could Be Impartial for Once' Robert Chandler has rescued, through translation, much of Russian literature for the Anglophone...
5 months ago
16
5 months ago
Robert Chandler has rescued, through translation, much of Russian literature for the Anglophone world – Pushkin, Andrey Plantonov, Teffi, Lev Ozerov and Vasily Grossman, among others. Most of Chandler’s own prose I've read has been in the form of brief introductions and...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 359 ...
7 months ago
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative... The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
57
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On POSIWID ...
2 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
a year ago
104
a year ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe." This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Ditch walkin' Day 11: Sept 20, 2023 — I hear footsteps and morning routines in motion. My sister-in-law and her...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Day 11: Sept 20, 2023 — I hear footsteps and morning routines in motion. My sister-in-law and her family are gearing up for work and school. I remember this flurry of activity as a kid myself — the hustle to get motivated. Jen goes upstairs to chat briefly with everyone before...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese Taking flight The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
over a year ago
73
over a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise.  “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up. (If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Josh Thompson
Mentors and Attitude Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time. Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...
The American Scholar
Unbuilding the Mystery What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared...
a month ago
4
a month ago
What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Reading challenging books with kids is fun and probably useful I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three...
a year ago
42
a year ago
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. “I have looked a little in books,” she said.
The American Scholar
“The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The...
10 months ago
63
10 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Denver.rb meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018 We talked about performance profiling! Here’s the slides, on Dropbox I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...
Escaping Flatland
Take a part of the world that you love and give it your care Edward Weston, Armco Steel, Ohio, 1922
3 months ago
This Space
39 Books in one For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books:...
a year ago
112
a year ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books: PDF As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
11 months ago
73
11 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 American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless...
7 months ago
36
7 months ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
60 kHz
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Introducing Marginalian Editions: Extraordinary Forgotten Books Brought Back to Life I have become a person on the pages and in the margins of books. In nearly two decades of reckoning...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
I have become a person on the pages and in the margins of books. In nearly two decades of reckoning with my reading in writing, it has been my ongoing lamentation to see works of enduring beauty and substance perish out of print — because the ideas they conduct are not the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Must Be Continually Striving to Live' A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or resolutions. No golf and little travel. It’s more likely I’ll continue what I’m already doing – writing, reading, family matters – just more of it. More Montaigne, J.V. Cunningham,...
Josh Thompson
Notes on the movie Frozen, which I dislike, and Suzume, which is excellent Introduction part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to...
4 months ago
35
4 months ago
Introduction part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to someone currently best defined as ‘a young child’. I once wrote a lot about my experiences of things, then took a break, and drafted this blog post on a few pages of yellow legal pad,...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Make Better Documents Stop formatting everything to death. — Anil Dash Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
a year ago
The American Scholar
New Year, Old Year The post New Year, Old Year appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The American Scholar
‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’ Why shouldn’t America’s federal buildings speak to us in a language encompassing the old as well as...
a month ago
5
a month ago
Why shouldn’t America’s federal buildings speak to us in a language encompassing the old as well as the new? The post ‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’ appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Preparing to adopt a habit There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work. Almost as many...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Passionate Note of Victory' “The dangers for the poet in addressing so composite an audience are enormous: cuteness,...
4 months ago
31
4 months ago
“The dangers for the poet in addressing so composite an audience are enormous: cuteness, coyness, archness and condescension are only the most obvious ones.”  In 1976, Anthony Hecht wrote the preface for a new edition of Walter de la Mare’s Songs of Childhood (1902). He doesn’t...
Josh Thompson
Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress) This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant From Giacometti’s sketch book
9 months ago
The Perry Bible...
Invasion The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
7 months ago
Ben Borgers
Mornings Set the Tone
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
I Once Worked Hard When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career there. I was a college graduate (that means something, right?) working at a climbing gym, part time, teaching seven-year-olds how to climb at about $10 an hour. I had no idea what I...
The Marginalian
The Arguers: A Charming Illustrated Parable about the Absurdity of Self-righteousness Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and...
a month ago
16
a month ago
Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and disorientation, is that they turn human beings into opinion machines. We dope our pain and confusion with false certainties that stifle the willingness to understand (the nuances of...
The Marginalian
The Souls of Animals “They do not sweat and whine about their condition,” Walt Whitman wrote of the other animals, “they...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
“They do not sweat and whine about their condition,” Walt Whitman wrote of the other animals, “they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning...
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred "Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
over a year ago
90
over a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poetry Is an Art' Most bores are not aware they are boring. It’s not always their fault and the impulse to tell them...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
Most bores are not aware they are boring. It’s not always their fault and the impulse to tell them they are boring, though understandable, is almost always a waste of time. You can’t make people interesting who value their humorlessness, bad taste and stridency.  I woke the other...
Wuthering...
Books I read in September 2024 - Boring books had their origin in boring readers My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said...
9 months ago
75
9 months ago
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really do it. November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza.  I will be joining her by reading at least the first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon...
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
10 months ago
39
10 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project) As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding. I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference. Lastly, I just...
sbensu
There Is No Antimemetics Division Notes on the book.
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it? Compare this wording: Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible. To this wording: Unless I hear otherwise,...
The Elysian
I’m building a cooperative media ecosystem Owned by writers interested in a better future.
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
One Year Ago Email
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism "Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
8 months ago
63
8 months ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
The Marginalian
Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and... The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
over a year ago
The Elysian
How I read Today I spoke with Harrison about how I read.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
My terminal setup note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post. Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup. First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...
The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings “There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
a year ago
42
a year ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
The Marginalian
How Should You Live Your Life: Marie Howe’s Spare, Stunning Poem “The Maples” “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of...
a month ago
34
a month ago
“Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in one of the most sobering opening pages in literature. So here you are, having answered affirmatively, consciously or not, now facing the second...
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
12
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...
Ben Borgers
Security Questions
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations.  Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So a Fool Returneth to His Folly' Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller,...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller, more annoying versions of themselves. My father had an acquaintance even he knew was a fool. By admitting such knowledge, he was violating adult solidarity. His friend's customary...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The One Who Kept VLC Free Keeping VLC free and without ads is a no-brainer. I know people focus a lot on that part but, for...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
Keeping VLC free and without ads is a no-brainer. I know people focus a lot on that part but, for me, it’s just the way it should be and it’s not difficult for me to keep it like that. Money can restrict you. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
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
13
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”....
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Eva Decker Eva Decker is a designer engineer who likes playing piano and writing CSS. Currently living in NYC...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
Eva Decker is a designer engineer who likes playing piano and writing CSS. Currently living in NYC with Samwise. — Eva Decker Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API. We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON. Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
Ben Borgers
2023 in review
a year ago
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice "The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
Wuthering...
Books I read in December 2023 - No one’s worse than you, she says Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything in the first section except the May...
a year ago
50
a year ago
Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything in the first section except the May Sarton novel and Eugene O’Neill play, balanced by a complementary pair of Holocaust memoirs. NOVELS, STORIES & A PLAY Ocean of Story, Vol. 1 (11th cent.),  Somadeva, tr. C. H....
The American Scholar
“Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius Seeing a world in a grain of sand
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden 2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
Josh Thompson
Recommended books from 2017 I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. This is intentionally fuzzy. 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is architecture and/or...
Blog -...
Book Review - Open Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually have four to six books on the go at any time, but all of them were put on pause for the day and a half it took me to devour this book.
The American Scholar
We Contain Multitudes Why do so few of us exercise the many talents with which we are born? The post We Contain Multitudes...
a month ago
4
a month ago
Why do so few of us exercise the many talents with which we are born? The post We Contain Multitudes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poetry Is Sound Before It Is Anything Else' “A word so delicious that one wishes it had cheeks, so as to kiss them.” That’s Jules...
5 months ago
28
5 months ago
“A word so delicious that one wishes it had cheeks, so as to kiss them.” That’s Jules Renard, writing in his journal in February 1888. Perhaps only a certain sort of writer, one with a musical sense who is susceptible to the pure sound of words divorced from their meaning, can...
ribbonfarm
Harberger Tax It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked...
a year ago
22
a year ago
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a...
The Perry Bible...
Brushed The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Very Empire of Connotation' “[T]he partisan of parsimony sees prose as a vehicle for meaning and nothing more, even if...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
“[T]he partisan of parsimony sees prose as a vehicle for meaning and nothing more, even if their feigned rhetoric-of-no-rhetoric is in reality one of the oldest rhetorical gambits there is.”  I have a taste for two seemingly mutually exclusive schools of prose that may not be all...
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
56
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
The American Scholar
Snake in the Grass The post Snake in the Grass appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 days ago
Josh Thompson
The How and Why of BlockValue I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer. I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Tracks of the Ancients I notice the tracks as I return from a brief scouting trip. When deciding on a campsite for the...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
I notice the tracks as I return from a brief scouting trip. When deciding on a campsite for the night, reconnaissance is necessary: one, to verify personal safety; two, to ensure picturesque views and surroundings, but distance between neighbors (if applicable); and three, to...
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
14
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...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means "True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
26
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
a year ago
17
a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015. for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
The American Scholar
Tiger Mom At a forest preserve in India, a writer sees the world anew and learns how to focus her son’s...
4 months ago
22
4 months ago
At a forest preserve in India, a writer sees the world anew and learns how to focus her son’s restless mind The post Tiger Mom appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2017 The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
a year ago
62
a year ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
Wuthering...
The Making of Americans as conceptual art - I have already made several diagrams Sometime I will be able to make a diagram.  I have already made several diagrams.  I will sometime...
a year ago
108
a year ago
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram.  I have already made several diagrams.  I will sometime make a complete diagram and that will be a very long book...  (580) I am going to write about The Making of Americans as conceptual art, art where how it is made is a central part...
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Smart Quotes for Smart People Good typography uses smart quotes, not dumb quotes. — Jason Santa Maria Visit original link → or...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
Good typography uses smart quotes, not dumb quotes. — Jason Santa Maria Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ And another one Day 24: Oct 3, 2023 — I awake after a restful slumber. The sleeping conditions were damn-near...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Day 24: Oct 3, 2023 — I awake after a restful slumber. The sleeping conditions were damn-near perfect: cool overnight temperatures and stillness in the air. We went to bed with a few options for the course of today, but it’s apparent to us we should settle in for an additional...
The Marginalian
Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, and with Fangs: The Alchemy of Unrequited Love and the Story Behind... This essay is adapted from the nineteenth chapter of my book Figuring. In the first autumn of her...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
This essay is adapted from the nineteenth chapter of my book Figuring. In the first autumn of her thirties, Emily Dickinson wrote to her confidante and eventual editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson: I had a terror — since September — I could tell to none, and so I sing, as the Boy...
The American Scholar
“Faustina, or, Rock Roses” by Elizabeth Bishop Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Faustina, or, Rock Roses” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Faustina, or, Rock Roses” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is...
a year ago
18
a year ago
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...
The Elysian
It’s time for Thomas Jefferson's village-states His small, democratic communities would revive and defend our republic.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
“The Dream” by Theodore Roethke Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Dream” by Theodore Roethke appeared first on The...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Dream” by Theodore Roethke appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Part of the Parade The post Part of the Parade appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
How the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life “Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in...
a year ago
28
a year ago
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in the pioneering 1937 essay that invited the human imagination into the science and splendor of the marine world for the first time — a world then more mysterious than the Moon, a...
The Elysian
Am I an anarchist? Letters to an anarchist, part seven.
7 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Music in 2024 The last few years have been great for discovering even more artists, and the revivals and reunions...
6 months ago
24
6 months ago
The last few years have been great for discovering even more artists, and the revivals and reunions of some of them have produced music that is fresh, with new takes and, even better, genre-bending and blending. Here are the albums and songs that were a definite hell yes for me...
The Marginalian
Meeting the Muse at the Edge of the Light: Poet Gary Snyder on Craftsmanship vs. Creative Force It is tempting, because we make everything we make with everything we are, to take our creative...
4 months ago
35
4 months ago
It is tempting, because we make everything we make with everything we are, to take our creative potency for a personal merit. It is also tempting when we find ourselves suddenly impotent, as all artists regularly do, to blame the block on a fickle muse and rue ourselves abandoned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All That Is Human Slips Away' Varlam Shalamov (1907-82), who ought to know, opens a poem with this line: “Memory has veiled / much...
4 months ago
28
4 months ago
Varlam Shalamov (1907-82), who ought to know, opens a poem with this line: “Memory has veiled / much evil . . .” Shalamov survived almost eighteen years in the Gulag, in the Arctic region known as Kolyma. His final imprisonment, from 1937 to 1951, was imposed after he referred to...
Ben Borgers
War Room: Expansion features
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
39
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024 The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
Naz Hamid
Hustle to Flow A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the kitchen area. A hojicha latte is on my mind, and also a bite. My brain is at operational capacity, and I am in a flow state. The metabolic need feels high, and I need to keep my...
The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude “One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
29
a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
9 months ago
75
9 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate "It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Things That Might Have Been and Never Were' My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the American novelist Harry Turtledove. As I understand it, the premise is simple: change an event in the past and see what happens in subsequent history. Hitler, for instance, dies...
The Perry Bible...
Blocked The post Blocked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
3 months ago
Blog -...
Book Review - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening my understanding of the...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening my understanding of the masculine. Published in 1990, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover introduces readers to the concept of mature masculine archetypes and their immature shadows. The authors, Robert...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Dragönsteel Inspired by heavy metal logos, 1980s role-playing games, and maybe dragons and dusty, leather-bound...
12 months ago
12
12 months ago
Inspired by heavy metal logos, 1980s role-playing games, and maybe dragons and dusty, leather-bound books, Dragönsteel is our take on a modern-ish blackletter typeface. — Dan Cederholm Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred "I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Seattle The heat was rising in Northern California and Oregon with the advent of an appropriately named heat...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
The heat was rising in Northern California and Oregon with the advent of an appropriately named heat dome raising temperatures into the triple digits. Jen and I found ourselves driving further north to visit Seattle. We’d been camping with our friend Grant in the Mount Shasta...
The American Scholar
“My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak. QWERTY...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak. QWERTY has problems. Here are a few, shamelessly borrowed from Colemak.com It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more. It suffers from a...
Josh Thompson
Don't Focus on the Present If you accept the premise that training  cycles are the method by which you will improve your...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
If you accept the premise that training  cycles are the method by which you will improve your climbing, you  should be able to focus less on the day-by-day fluctuation in your performance. At least, I should be able to, since I accept that premise. Yet I still struggle to not be...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
11 months ago
72
11 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death, Indeed, Continually Hovers About Us' A high-school friend writes to ask what I remember of May 4, 1970. We would graduate in a month and...
2 months ago
10
2 months ago
A high-school friend writes to ask what I remember of May 4, 1970. We would graduate in a month and go to university in the fall. The fear and excitement of that symbolic step toward adulthood was blunted by the killing of four students by Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent State...
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
7 months ago
The Perry Bible...
Us The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Pebble Presentation
over a year ago
The Elysian
Newsletter bundles don't work A Guest Lecture with Even Armstrong on why he left Every to go independent.
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Rosebuds Are Rare As a Day in June' Fortune cookies no longer contain fortunes. Tucked inside the sugary shells are slips of paper...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
Fortune cookies no longer contain fortunes. Tucked inside the sugary shells are slips of paper printed with platitudes. I carry one such slip in my wallet, salvaged from a forgotten meal at least a decade ago: “Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Forty Three On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San Francisco went into lockdown. It feels like a lifetime has passed between now and then, and with a sense of deja vu, like it was yesterday. Except that I wasn't at home, and I was on the...
Ben Borgers
Now
6 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
What Happened To NAEP Scores? ...
4 months ago
The American Scholar
“water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union Notes from reading the book by Zubok
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Everyone’s Asking for Tips Now
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pictures and the Books That Here Surround Me'' Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in...
a month ago
12
a month ago
Some five years before his death from cancer, Clive James published the poem “Change of Domicile” in one of the lesser-known literary magazines – the British Medical Journal’s Supportive and Palliative Care, the September 2014 issue. Coincidentally, that’s the month my friend...
The American Scholar
Another You The post Another You appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Metaprogramming in Ruby: method_missing I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but I wanted to take them out and apply them to some easy Exercisms. I feel some disclosure may be useful. In no way, at all, should you ever implement any of the “solutions” I’m...
The American Scholar
Aging Out Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
28
7 months ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 We Need More Than Fewer, Better Things Given this understanding of benefits and harms, then, the mantra of “fewer, better things” carries...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Given this understanding of benefits and harms, then, the mantra of “fewer, better things” carries an implied equivalence between better and longer. But I’m pretty sure that my nonexistent grandchildren aren’t looking forward to inheriting my inexpensive plastic garbage can,...
Astral Codex Ten
More Drowning Children ...
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year.  Samples: Kristi 1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other.  We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem "I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
over a year ago
Steven Scrawls
Against Confidence Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my writing makes me feel confident, it probably has a title like “Look At My Cleverly Constructed Argument/Insight” (subtitle: “Also Look At My Pretty Words”). If I release writing...
The Marginalian
Wherever You Are, Stop What You’re Doing Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater,...
6 months ago
75
6 months ago
Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater, to glorify” — more than the act of noticing its details, and nothing sanctifies it more: Kneeling to look at a lichen is a devotional act. We bless our own lives by recognizing and...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The cost of fueling my body I’ve become a bit obsessed with how much it costs to fuel my body during the working hours. — Dave...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
I’ve become a bit obsessed with how much it costs to fuel my body during the working hours. — Dave Rupert Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
sbensu
Everybody is the main character People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
Astral Codex Ten
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals ...
5 months ago
The Elysian
Democracy should happen online A Guest Lecture with Margo Loor, co-founder of the Estonian participatory democracy platform Citizen...
4 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with... "We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather...
a year ago
The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial... An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words' Catharine Savage Brosman describes her late husband, Patric Savage, like this:  “I am bereft   “of...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Catharine Savage Brosman describes her late husband, Patric Savage, like this:  “I am bereft   “of curator, you see, of one who cared tremendously— for books, for me—but would have sacrificed the whole collection for my sake.”   The poem is “Pat Curating His Library” (Arm in Arm,...
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own. Previous reviews: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 My review breaks down into a few broad categories: Travel Relationships & Community Leadville Trail...
The American Scholar
“The Horses” by Ted Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Horses” by Ted Hughes appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid
Forty-Seven I turned another year older. A collection of small moments and choices that let me be me. One...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
I turned another year older. A collection of small moments and choices that let me be me. One guidepost for each year I've been alive — some I've practiced for decades, and a few new ones. Feel out the day and go where your energy wants you to. Your energy is precious. Don’t let...
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
a year ago
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...
10 months ago
69
10 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...
The American Scholar
A Pair of Elephants The post A Pair of Elephants appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Kiln and the Quantum of Relationships Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for meaning, will lavish you with metaphors that become backdoors into the locked room of your most urgent reckonings. In my nascent adventures in pottery, I have observed with great...
The American Scholar
“Snow” by Louis MacNeice Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snow” by Louis MacNeice appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Towards Standardizing Place The difference between locations and places is an important nuance. Humans build out, demarcate, and...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
The difference between locations and places is an important nuance. Humans build out, demarcate, and describe discrete venues and areas in space. The questions we ask only deal in coordinates because they have to; we’d rather ask questions about roads, paths, houses, stores,...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of... I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the 2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
8 months ago
51
8 months ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the 2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin.  Here I will write about the second volume of the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club.  Last time, after reading the first fifth of the novel, I...
Ben Borgers
Blocks recap
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
a year ago
77
a year ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
11 months ago
The Marginalian
Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work...
a year ago
37
a year ago
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation,” Rilke wrote to his young correspondent. The great difficulty of loving arises from the great difficulty of bridging the abyss between...
This Space
39 Books: 2011 How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
a year ago
89
a year ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
a year ago
87
a year ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read During Every Possible Free Moment' A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always read slowly, often taking notes, which makes it even slower. This frustrated me when I was young, and I briefly contemplated enrolling in one of Evelyn Wood’s...
The American Scholar
The Bears The post The Bears appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 High Desert Road Map From Morongo Valley to 29 Palms, there’s plenty to explore. Here are a few of our favorite...
12 months ago
18
12 months ago
From Morongo Valley to 29 Palms, there’s plenty to explore. Here are a few of our favorite places. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Boy Meets Girl At the request of my much loyal readership (I’m looking at you Lacey), the story of how I came to be...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
At the request of my much loyal readership (I’m looking at you Lacey), the story of how I came to be with girl seems to be of interest. I know, I know. I disappear for a bit from writing and then I return smitten, enamoured and very much exploring a journey I’m quite glad to be...
sbensu
Payments vs Transfers Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has a lot more requirements than a transfer system and I rarely see the crypto ecosystem acknowledge these when building "payment" products.
The American Scholar
Ask Already The post Ask Already appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
a year ago
23
a year ago
this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path...
The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself "What is happiness but growth in peace."
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea... Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or...
9 months ago
68
9 months ago
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or sanitation. Imagine being a gifted child in that world, knowing you are born into a body that will never be granted the basic rights of citizenship in any country, into a mind that will...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Attempt But Little At a Time' A blog turns out to be an education undertaken in public. Its proprietor is more student than...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
A blog turns out to be an education undertaken in public. Its proprietor is more student than teacher, and one is fortunate to encounter numerous tutors along the way, between the covers of books and out there in the bigger world. I seldom sit down at the keyboard with the goal...
Ben Borgers
The real reason for my multiple majors
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best... This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand...
8 months ago
47
8 months ago
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within them on each other, stirring certainties and self-righteousness to distract from the uncomfortable unknowns, from the great open...
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!... Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
8 months ago
48
8 months ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and sometimes about the past.  These are all old moves, old techniques.  I was a...
Astral Codex Ten
Yet Another Reason To Hate College Admissions Essays ...
2 months ago
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
25
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...
sbensu
Twitter's Sith and Jedi In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can...
a year ago
15
a year ago
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can reach. But when they lean into hate, they lose their soul to it. Twitter offers the same bargain as the Force.
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
10 months ago
40
10 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Wall by Jen Craig “This novel gives the reader one of the best depictions of thinking in fiction that I have read in a...
over a year ago
50
over a year ago
“This novel gives the reader one of the best depictions of thinking in fiction that I have read in a long time” – Talking Big "... combines exactitude and vagueness, immediacy and distance, to approximate how scatty, worm-like human thought might be represented on the page" – The...
Ben Borgers
A Sixth Sense for Errors
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Foursquare Open Source Places: A new foundational dataset for the geospatial community It is reasonable to ask, why a company like Foursquare who has spent years building a proprietary...
7 months ago
20
7 months ago
It is reasonable to ask, why a company like Foursquare who has spent years building a proprietary dataset would freely open a layer of that data to the community. So reasonable in fact that many of my colleagues thought I had lost my mind when I shared the news that we would be...
This Space
At home he’s a tourist: The Moment by Peter Holm Jensen Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday...
over a year ago
75
over a year ago
Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday speech, a word or two is usually added to supplement the weedy noun: people say “At this moment in time”, which is when I ask: can a moment be in anything else; a moment in lampposts...
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
79
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ I Don't Have Facebook I don’t have an account with the big blue F. It’s 2015. The social network is almost 11 years old....
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
I don’t have an account with the big blue F. It’s 2015. The social network is almost 11 years old. It’s remarkable — over a decade in existence and, mostly, still going strong. I read about it a lot. I have friends who work there. I have been recruited and asked by the same...
The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of... "We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 I’m a commis in a Chinese restaurant kitchen, this is what I do I’m a 23-year-old Chinese Singaporean woman. After graduating culinary school in 2016, I started as...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
I’m a 23-year-old Chinese Singaporean woman. After graduating culinary school in 2016, I started as a commis (also known as 马王, or minion) in a Chinese restaurant kitchen along Orchard road. This is a description of my everyday work, in English, written for friends and family who...
This Space
The end of literature, part four This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
55
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr ...
2 months ago
The American Scholar
The Shipping News Ian Kumekawa tells the story of the global economy in one barge The post The Shipping News appeared...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
Ian Kumekawa tells the story of the global economy in one barge The post The Shipping News appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Light in the Abyss Between Us Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a friend’s son came home from school to recount with something between shock and exhilaration how he realized while talking to a classmate that the notion of a mental image is not merely...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected generosity is potency
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep' I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else. Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say Hey, there’s...
This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
89
a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Shuttle Back and Forth' Metempsychosis is another word I learned from Ulysses. Up till then I used the more plebian-sounding...
a month ago
15
a month ago
Metempsychosis is another word I learned from Ulysses. Up till then I used the more plebian-sounding reincarnation. In the fourth chapter, “Calypso,” Molly Bloom is in bed reading a novel, Ruby: Pride of the Ring. She encounters metempsychosis in the text and asks Leopold, who...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Among Those Who Read There is Great Variety' Writing is famously the most narcissistic of professions, even worse than acting or being a...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
Writing is famously the most narcissistic of professions, even worse than acting or being a politician. We’re forever carrying on about ourselves and our precious insights, like the kid in class who raises his hand and goes “Ooh! Ooh!” each time the teacher asks a question....
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Bad Apple Artworks Everything you see here is made by myself by hand. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Think, to Read, to Meditate, to React' Often, I think of the late Adam Zagajewski urging young poets – and by extension, the rest of us --...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
Often, I think of the late Adam Zagajewski urging young poets – and by extension, the rest of us -- to “read everything.” The suggestion is not dictatorial. The Pole even admits he is a “chaotic reader,” as most of us are. I’ve never been systematic about much of anything...
The Marginalian
The Lily vs. the Eagle: D.H. Lawrence on the Key to Balancing Mutuality and Self-Possession in Love If you live long enough and wide enough, you come to see that love is simply the breadth of the...
5 months ago
42
5 months ago
If you live long enough and wide enough, you come to see that love is simply the breadth of the aperture through which you let in the reality of another and the quality of attention you pay what you see. It is, in this sense, not a phenomenon that happens unto you but a creative...
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products. How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month? Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ To Comprehend To stand in a landscape that is hard to comprehend is to know that not all that should be celebrated...
a year ago
10
a year ago
To stand in a landscape that is hard to comprehend is to know that not all that should be celebrated is human-made. To understand that to get here, it took hundreds, thousands, millions of denominations of time to render this environment is a lesson in a slow life that we’ve...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
over a year ago
125
over a year ago
I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon. FICTION Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann The Long Valley (1938) & The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are Not So Full of Evil As of Inanity' Montaigne devotes a brief essay to a pair of pre-Socratic Greek thinkers, “Of Democritus and...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Montaigne devotes a brief essay to a pair of pre-Socratic Greek thinkers, “Of Democritus and Heraclitus.” The former is reputed to have been a misanthrope, perhaps a melancholic. The latter was known as “the laughing philosopher.”  The essayist begins by weighing the importance...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And For It Does So Dearly Pay' Some wartime casualties are time-released. Death is deferred. In his new collection, That Mad...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
Some wartime casualties are time-released. Death is deferred. In his new collection, That Mad Game (Scienter Press, 2025), R.L. Barth devotes three poems to a civilian, the war correspondent Albert W. Vinson, who wrote about him leading a patrol of Marines in Vietnam in 1968. The...
Josh Thompson
Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots. Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at...
The Marginalian
Lights On: Consciousness, the Mystery of Felt Experience, and the Fundamental Music of Reality When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of people on the yellow brick plaza in front of the Bulgarian Parliament singing protest songs to take down the Communist dictatorship, my parents got us a hamster. I would say got me a...
Escaping Flatland
Life update + open thread and a few fragments of essays
a year ago
Ben Borgers
The Redemption Arc Is Coming
over a year ago
Robert Caro
Robert Caro on the Art of Biography I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd... "Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...
The Marginalian
Gary Snyder on How to Unbreak the World "What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
"What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands and minds."
Astral Codex Ten
How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn's National IQ Estimates ...
5 months ago
Ploum.net
De la décadence technologique et des luddites technophiles De la décadence technologique et des luddites technophiles La valeur de texte brut Thierry s’essaie...
5 months ago
30
5 months ago
De la décadence technologique et des luddites technophiles La valeur de texte brut Thierry s’essaie à publier son blog sur le réseau Gemini, mais a du mal avec le format minimaliste. Qui est justement pour moi la meilleure partie du protocole Gemini. La low-tech peut-elle...
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves? Letters to an anarchist, part three.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
10 months ago
43
10 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Laravel
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
7 months ago
66
7 months ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation "There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Certain Saving Humor' “Except for a certain saving humor, I should indeed have been a full monster.”  One definition of a...
5 months ago
18
5 months ago
“Except for a certain saving humor, I should indeed have been a full monster.”  One definition of a friend is someone with whom you can share any joke or other comic effort without fear of offending him. It may not be funny – the only pertinent criterion for judging humorousness...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Music is Memory Stone Temple Pilots’ “Kitchenware & Candybars” comes on, and suddenly I'm 17 again, driving...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
Stone Temple Pilots’ “Kitchenware & Candybars” comes on, and suddenly I'm 17 again, driving underneath the amber glow of late-night deserted streets in Kuala Lumpur. I can feel the sharp air conditioning in the car against my skin, keeping the tropical heat and humidity outside...
Ben Borgers
tmrw
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Resilience By Design Every morning I read about a situation that pushes us further away from what we've come to know or...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Every morning I read about a situation that pushes us further away from what we've come to know or expect. With that comes the question of how our evolving reality affects product design, particularly for those who practice it. While some tech companies are seizing opportunities...
The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote... "War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
a year ago
Naz Hamid
Goodbye, Instagram Thanks for the memories, but good riddance. I deleted Instagram. Two days ago. The reasons are as...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
Thanks for the memories, but good riddance. I deleted Instagram. Two days ago. The reasons are as you would expect: doomscrolling, fatigue, vapidness, and of course, all of the horrifying[1] things Meta enables. Concerning Instagram itself, the list is long. The app started...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023 The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
101
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long.  Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us Think That We Build Forever' I’ve just learned that the English poet Clive Wilmer died on March 13 at age eighty. I knew him...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
I’ve just learned that the English poet Clive Wilmer died on March 13 at age eighty. I knew him first as a friend and champion of Edgar Bowers, Thom Gunn and Dick Davis, a co-translator of the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti, a serious reader of John Ruskin and a fine poet in his...
The Marginalian
The Whole of It Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form of living against it and not with it — the pain of loss, aching for what has been and no longer is; the pain of longing, aching for what could be but is not yet and may never be;...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Site Nonsite: Live at Delia's Third Happening Months of work went into this show, resulting in six fresh arrangements and two new songs, and I was...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
Months of work went into this show, resulting in six fresh arrangements and two new songs, and I was unexpectedly happy with everything captured on the night. This document feels like a fitting conclusion to the first chapter of Site Nonsite. — Simon Collison A real treat for the...
Ben Borgers
Streaks Are Extremely Powerful
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
ben-mini
Modality Switching Online I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail,...
a year ago
17
a year ago
I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail, I roll my eyes. He tends to meander. My dad’s messages can range from 40 seconds to 2 minutes. He typically wants to inform me of something, like an upcoming family event or an...
The Marginalian
Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal "Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
11 months ago
Josh Thompson
An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers) Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen on The Climber’s Guide) (Warning to mobile users: big gif) In case you didn’t guess, or you guessed wrong… I’m shooting tons of video for a course. It’s going to be awesome. It’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Superintending What He Cannot Regulate' In my family we can’t get away from the “Y” chromosome. Having children is known as “going to the...
a week ago
9
a week ago
In my family we can’t get away from the “Y” chromosome. Having children is known as “going to the Y.” I have three sons, no daughters, and my brother, who died last summer, was my sole sibling. My mother had five brothers, no sisters. My father, two brothers, no sisters, etc....
Ploum.net
La fin d’un monde ? La fin d’un monde ? La fin de nos souvenirs Nous sommes envahis d’IA. Bien plus que vous ne le...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
La fin d’un monde ? La fin de nos souvenirs Nous sommes envahis d’IA. Bien plus que vous ne le pensez. Chaque fois que votre téléphone prend une photo, ce n’est pas la réalité qui s’affiche, mais une reconstruction « probable » de ce que vous avez envie de voir. C’est la raison...
The American Scholar
Paige Ledom Out of the ordinary The post Paige Ledom appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
Am I a Gym Bro Now?
over a year ago
ben-mini
Platform or Point Solution? A while back, I wrote a post titled “What is a Platform?”. I defined what a platform is and why tech...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
A while back, I wrote a post titled “What is a Platform?”. I defined what a platform is and why tech companies are so determined to become labeled as one. My definition of a platform is a tool that allows users to define and build their own things, which can be used by other...
The Elysian
CITY STATE: A discussion about autonomous governance Here's the recording from our literary salon discussion.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise “To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
35
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
ben-mini
Old School Business In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs...
a year ago
17
a year ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users. They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction). They demeaned...
This Space
An anniversary appeal On this day last year I began posting every day for 39 days to commemorate 39 years since I began...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
On this day last year I began posting every day for 39 days to commemorate 39 years since I began reading books. I dug out a folder of book lists I'd kept since 1986, chose one book from each year that I'd not written about before and wrote what ever the book suggested to me....
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Love Letter to Words and the Meaning Between Them Growing up immersed in theorems and equations, I took great comfort in the pristine clarity of...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Growing up immersed in theorems and equations, I took great comfort in the pristine clarity of mathematics, the way numbers, symbols, and figures each mean one thing only, with no room for interpretation — a little unit of truth, unhaunted by the chimera of meaning. I felt like I...
Ben Borgers
5% of things go wrong
a year ago
The American Scholar
“Piano Fire” by Claudia Emerson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Piano Fire” by Claudia Emerson appeared first on The...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Piano Fire” by Claudia Emerson appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Fight With Cudgels Meditations on death, Goya, and the immutability of art The post A Fight With Cudgels appeared first...
a month ago
5
a month ago
Meditations on death, Goya, and the immutability of art The post A Fight With Cudgels appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Was a Good Moment of Remembrance' Out of the aether after twenty-six years came an email from Mikhail Iossel: “Greetings -- and...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
Out of the aether after twenty-six years came an email from Mikhail Iossel: “Greetings -- and apologies for writing out of that metaphoric nowhere.” In May 1999, Mikhail was a writer-in-residence at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and I was a reporter for that city’s...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and...
Ben Borgers
gerp
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Spring” by J. R. Solonche Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American...
a year ago
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures Inside my writing philosophy.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Still So Much I Do Not Know' I have encountered the neologism “egowriting” used to describe -- with approval -- such genres as...
4 months ago
28
4 months ago
I have encountered the neologism “egowriting” used to describe -- with approval -- such genres as memoirs, diaries, journals, letters, blog posts, commonplace books, notebooks and essays--almost anything. In other words, a broad collection of forms in which the author and his...
Naz Hamid
Quality, Maintenance & Craft We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman,...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle Coffee was in conversation with Jeff Veen, and one of the attendees asked him: “How do you maintain such high quality?” Freeman answers, “‘Maintaining’ is a...
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Quiet Power of Car-Free Neighborhoods Don’t just take my word for it. Researchers have found that about half of urban noise is...
10 months ago
13
10 months ago
Don’t just take my word for it. Researchers have found that about half of urban noise is attributable to motor vehicles. In some places the share is higher, such as in Toronto, where traffic produces about 60% of the background din. And silencing that cacophony can lead to...
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Brain Can Observe Itself
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Social Jealousy
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago