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Anecdotal Evidence
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter' Call me an aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
5 months ago
42
5 months ago
Call me an aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled with not stinging like...
Anecdotal Evidence
"A Fury of Self-Deception, Malice, and Conceit' There’s no getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the collective,...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
There’s no getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the collective, could carry on this way? An innocent question or observation prompts a sonic explosion. I’m unable to get that angry and loud so quickly. Perhaps if my family were threatened....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Reticent Humor' “For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry comprised the only notable American literature.”  A provocative statement that sends one scrambling for counter-examples, which aren’t difficult to find. Between 1896 and 1916 appeared...
The Elysian
Week 5: Write one (pitchable) think piece
9 months ago
The Elysian
Week 7: Boost your essays all over the internet
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Line or Two Worth Keeping All Too Rare' “He has never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm windows,...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“He has never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm windows, rather.”  That’s X.J. Kennedy on Kingsley Amis, clearly seeing his own reflection in that dirty window. Both are proof that the best writers of light verse or comic poetry are serious...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
Cheating on Field Notes
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Josh Thompson presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB. If my testimony accomplishes...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB. If my testimony accomplishes nothing but encouraging members of the GASB board (Joel Black, Jeffrey Previdi, James Brown, Brian Caputo, Kristopher Knight, Dianna Ray, and Carolyn Smith) to spend 15 minutes...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cursed with an Acute Literary Conscience' Who among critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:  “Some writers...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Who among critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:  “Some writers have a dread of platitudes. I have not. What is a platitude but an expression of the wisdom of the ages, the synopsis of a theory that was long ago propounded, tested, established,...
Ben Borgers
Now
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Thoreau’s Pencils How might a newly discovered The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness' Once asked about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Once asked about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,” J.V. Cunningham replied:  “You can write on politics or not. I do not. But is politics meant here? Or is it, rather, ideology? The latter is religious, not political, though religion...
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals? Lose weight/get in shape Make more money/start budgeting Learn a language Learn a skill Read more Stop doing something (smoking, drinking) Statistically, all of...
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'And the Third Is To Be Kind.' A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude (David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the...
a year ago
26
a year ago
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude (David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the late publisher/poet’s photographs of artists well-known and obscure. Williams was no snob when it came to talent and genius. He photographs Stevie Smith, Guy Davenport...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert' Dr. Johnson describes the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
60
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Human mind at its deepest and highest' Vladimir Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational Program in...
a year ago
37
a year ago
Vladimir Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational Program in New York:  “One of the saddest cases is perhaps that of Osip Mandelshtam--a  wonderful  poet, the  greatest poet among those trying to survive in Russia under the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something' Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
9 months ago
29
9 months ago
Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the other...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early, Part 3 I’ve written about my attempts to wake up early before. Most recently, I promised to take a sleep...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I’ve written about my attempts to wake up early before. Most recently, I promised to take a sleep log, to track trends. Fortunately, I did not intend to try to wake up early, because I didn’t. Here’s what I learned in the last three weeks: Benadryl messes with your ability to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Half-Buried Sense for Poetry' It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or...
3 weeks ago
17
3 weeks ago
It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or naively unprofessional, a mask worn to conceal the shark within, especially among literary types. Of course, critics are born to be severe, nobody’s pal. How many critics can you name whose...
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and... Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symposium is fiction, a long story.  It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
Steven Scrawls
I want to love fiction I want to love fiction I want to love fiction. I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I...
8 months ago
6
8 months ago
I want to love fiction I want to love fiction. I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I want to obsess over the craft of fiction, to pore over characterization and structure, to create stories that radiate color and humanity and hope. I want fiction to be a tool for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom' I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people...
a year ago
26
a year ago
I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists, super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph McElroy. That each of...
The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It "Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
The American Scholar
“Spring” by J. R. Solonche Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
27
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner The post A Rebel...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Many of Plato's early Socratic dialogues - It was quite lovely. I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently.  I’d read some of them before, at university or...
a year ago
41
a year ago
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently.  I’d read some of them before, at university or during my last Greek phase 25 years ago, and this time I hope to read almost all of them. I will make some notes on them in a few posts.  Give them a tag if nothing else, and make some...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 363 ...
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Related But Detached' I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971. The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson,...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971. The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson, unconvincing in her early seventies. Wrong sex, wrong age, wrong play – a stillborn theatrical stunt. My reaction was perhaps the worst that staged Shakespeare can inspire – boredom...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are' “What’s essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his foolishness; not his...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
“What’s essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’ but his honesty, his complete leveling with the reader.”  I tried a little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about! The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead.  In what may be the most...
Ben Borgers
Punctuation
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School' When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
12
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At Least When Practised By a Master' I know several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories and certainly...
a year ago
12
a year ago
I know several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories and certainly not biographies, poetry or other forms of nonfiction. Some are devoted to genre fiction – mysteries, science fiction – and at least one sticks to the “classics” -- Austen and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is the Past That Cast the Stars' I and the first issue of Mad magazine arrived in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted...
a year ago
10
a year ago
I and the first issue of Mad magazine arrived in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted reader. That same month, Poetry, a journal I would start reading a few years after Mad, published its fortieth anniversary issue. Included is the work of more than fifty poets,...
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
60 kHz
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
29
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Matter of Nobody’s Style But Her Own' “It is not only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets in spring...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
“It is not only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets in spring evenings when the windows were opened) but the world in which they sounded, and the young ears they sounded for. I shall never forget how beautiful they were or what they meant to...
The Marginalian
How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing "Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward...
8 months ago
32
8 months ago
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward the object and envelops it in warm corroboration, uniting us with it and positively affirming its being."
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object' I’ve accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids. None embarrasses...
4 months ago
31
4 months ago
I’ve accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids. None embarrasses me and all make life less annoying. I’ve never been seriously ill. I take my handful of vitamins and meds in the morning. I no longer drink and never smoked. Among the last things I...
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
8 months ago
34
8 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
ben-mini
The Most Mind-Blowing Tech Moments of My Life This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of...
6 months ago
8
6 months ago
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of life. There’s nothing too heady here- just an exercise in what might have made me get so into tech. 1. WarioWare: Twisted (2006) At my community center, waiting for my friend’s karate...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism? Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of... To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
The American Scholar
“The Last Words of My English Grandmother” Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Soften, Not to Wound My Heart' It may seem unfair to reduce a poet to a single poem but consider the thousands who never wrote even...
a year ago
14
a year ago
It may seem unfair to reduce a poet to a single poem but consider the thousands who never wrote even one memorable line. Take Thomas Gray. His reputation, if any, amounts to “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751). Generations of school children once recited the poem and...
Josh Thompson
On Learning As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development. I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and... I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
a month ago
29
a month ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this chunk up. In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
Ben Borgers
Hash Tables [explained for anyone]
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Universe in Verse Book "We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and deepen the terms on which we meet ourselves and each other. At the crossing point of the two we may find a way of clarifying our experience and of sanctifying it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Point of Literature' I learned of some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible...
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
I learned of some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible human being, as though this constituted recently declassified information. Such an understanding of literature and literary history, if followed to its logical conclusion, will result in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Judgment Day of Man’s Illusions' In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book...
8 months ago
69
8 months ago
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three writers, critics and scholars to name the book published in the preceding twenty-five years they believed to have been “the most undeservedly neglected.” For this reader, sorry to say, most of them remain neglected. I don’t even...
Ben Borgers
Best Type of Bathroom Lock
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - The Alchemy of Inner Work The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an exposition of an inner...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an exposition of an inner healing art that is incredibly valuable to practitioners. Yet, each of us – regardless of trade, title, or label – is ultimately our own healing practitioner, and this book is a...
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Life That Is More Real Than Life' My nephew and I were talking about our teenage efforts to be “cool,” wearing irony like...
3 days ago
8
3 days ago
My nephew and I were talking about our teenage efforts to be “cool,” wearing irony like Kevlar, feigning sophistication while avoiding the shock of experience. Some of us outgrow it and become open to life’s surprises. Others carry the stance latently for life, like the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent' I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
a month ago
23
a month ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
8 months ago
7
8 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
Josh Thompson
Be a little better at personal email The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my phone, computer, and brain. There is no unifying theme to what will be written here. Three recommendations to email better TL;DR Email should usually be as short as possible. More of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature' “We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
“We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the writer of English...
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building) The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better. Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof). I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Art Must Be Giving Pleasure' On May 14, 1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of...
a year ago
14
a year ago
On May 14, 1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of Shakespeare’s plays at the New School of Social Research in New York City, W.H. Auden delivered a concluding lecture. He roots Shakespeare’s vision in the notion of original sin and what he...
This Space
This kingdom by the sea Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his...
a year ago
39
a year ago
Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his supposedly objective appreciation of a young boy’s beauty becomes sexual obsession. This is how BBC Radio 4's In Our Time sets up a discussion of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Hard to Find a Name in Human Speech' After a stop in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin Island,...
a year ago
13
a year ago
After a stop in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin Island, Chekhov’s ship encountered rough weather and high seas. Before reaching Singapore, two men had died and their bodies were thrown overboard:  “When you see a dead man wrapped in...
The American Scholar
Queen of the Night Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark The post Queen of the Night appeared...
3 months ago
44
3 months ago
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark The post Queen of the Night appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in April 2024 - this irritation passes over into patient completed understanding Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I...
8 months ago
65
8 months ago
Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I was saying it is often irritating to listen to the repeating they are doing, always then that one has it as being to love repeating that is the whole history of each one, such a one has it...
Escaping Flatland
Relationships are coevolutionary loops Looking for Alice, part 3
a year ago
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
6
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
The American Scholar
The Diagnostician of Despair Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of...
2 weeks ago
24
2 weeks ago
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of Despair appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2007 When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I write about a 350-page novel last read 17 years ago without taking several days to reread it? Answer: not at all, so I started reading. What good fortune! How well Hugo Wilcken...
Anecdotal Evidence
'By Studying Little Things' “He advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”  So did my high-school English...
5 months ago
35
5 months ago
“He advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”  So did my high-school English teacher two centuries later. Boswell took Dr. Johnson’s advice and later mined the resulting journal when assembling his Life of Johnson (1791). Much of Boswell’s London Journal...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books in the Running Brooks' One of my favorite literary analogies: “The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
One of my favorite literary analogies: “The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in...
sbensu
The Perfectionists (book) A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still' “I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part. The pathos and grandeur of these...
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
2 months ago
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
The Elysian
I’m building a cooperative media ecosystem Owned by writers interested in a better future.
6 days ago
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
8 months ago
29
8 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Lofty Vehicle, High Dudgeon' A friend is studying Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside...
a year ago
15
a year ago
A friend is studying Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside George Chapman’s version of Homer from the seventeenth century. Like me, she’s a reader not a scholar, and like generations of students and common readers I first encountered Chapman...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad' An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
7 months ago
71
7 months ago
An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”   Now there’s a metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Enormous Yes' “The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”  My ideal setting for listening to music is...
5 months ago
42
5 months ago
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”  My ideal setting for listening to music is my eleven-year-old Nissan. When I play a CD, I listen and never treat it as background. I hate the idea of music as ambient filler, a second atmosphere. My youngest son plays music...
Ben Borgers
Draft Now, Publish Later
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chap Who Doesn't Care Much About Anything' Below the masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed...
4 months ago
44
4 months ago
Below the masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed announcement:  “Today is National Orangutan Day. The apes are the largest tree-dwelling animals on Earth. They spend 90 percent of their time in trees, even sleeping in leafy nests. No wonder...
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'When We Have Excellent Books, They Sell' “People tell us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an end. But...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
“People tell us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an end. But then we look at our sales details and we smile.”  John Byron Kuhner posts a rare dispatch of hope from the world of books, the beating heart of what remains of our civilization. In...
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
40
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is. We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Meaning of Sidereal Time' Years ago I was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and part-time...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Years ago I was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and part-time journalist who lived in Woodstock, N.Y. He was smart, quick, funny and surprisingly well-read (he knew who Edward Dahlberg was). Neither of us was much of a party-goer so we spent...
The American Scholar
Parque de la Música The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
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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...
The American Scholar
“The Horses” by Edwin Muir Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Horses” by Edwin Muir appeared first on The American...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beauty, Clarity, Consolation, Truth' The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you...
a year ago
11
a year ago
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you straight. Their world is strictly binary --  like/dislike, good/bad – and they are fond of superlatives: the best/the worst. Dissent sparks crackdowns and there is no appeals...
Josh Thompson
Use an Alarm to Go to Bed Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes. I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Way of The Superior Man There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that The Way of the...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that The Way of the Superior Man has. Even though it was first published more than twenty years ago, its message could not be more fitting for heterosexual men trying to navigate the intricacies of being...
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
4
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
On Money (again) Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about,...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about, because there are many different ways we can approach it. It’s easy to feel judged when someone does something with their money that I don’t do with mine. That all said, there...
This Space
The withdrawal of the novel We are subjected to that which does not exist        Simone Weil When an old friend who...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
We are subjected to that which does not exist        Simone Weil When an old friend who has drunk deep from the puddle of the New Atheism complained on social media that religious people believe things that are “inventions, fairy stories, not real, made up", I was...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese Taking flight The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The American Scholar
“Guests” by Celia Thaxter  Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter  appeared first on The American...
3 weeks ago
25
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter  appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World Has Always Seemed to Me So Various' I dropped out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to complete my...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
I dropped out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to complete my B.A. in English until 2003. The lack of a degree never got in the way of working for almost a quarter-century as a newspaper reporter. I suspect a degree in most non-STEM...
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024 The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
The American Scholar
A Story for Christmas The post A Story for Christmas appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are "We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Issues related to the city of Golden While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden. I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot. Here’s the lot in question: I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...
Wuthering...
Books I read in August 2024 My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature.  Eh, I did all right, but I...
4 months ago
20
4 months ago
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature.  Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save Ibn Battuta’s Travels and the second half of Leg over Leg for some other time.  FICTION The Arabian Nights (14th c.), many hands – In the great Hassan Haddawy...
Josh Thompson
Habits Take Preparation Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to quickly settle into a routine that makes sense for both of us. For example - I work for a company in Boston. While I could keep local working hours (Mountain Time) I prefer to...
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
5 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
7
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
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Erudition is Possible Outside Academe' A reader tells me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a non-profit...
5 months ago
27
5 months ago
A reader tells me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a non-profit that pushes “arts education,” whatever that might be. I don’t take him for an idealist. He’s bright, personable, an ambitious reader and bored. Our culture doesn’t know what to do...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?' “During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
“During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France. This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits annihilation and destruction....
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. ...
a year ago
53
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...
Ben Borgers
Software Seems Resilient
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right... "It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Don’t See Other People As Peculiar' For my money, the Canadian short story writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is...
12 months ago
16
12 months ago
For my money, the Canadian short story writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is too dull to endure. (Joseph Epstein said of her work: “Humor never obtrudes.”) Born in Montreal, Gallant moved to Europe in 1950, hoping to give up journalism and write fiction....
The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply... "A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
9 months ago
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
4 weeks ago
30
4 weeks ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
Ben Borgers
War Room — using the native date picker
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Who Needs Your Stories?' Have you ever read something – it might be a poem or a history book, almost anything – and...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
Have you ever read something – it might be a poem or a history book, almost anything – and encountered a phrase or sentence so self-contained and dense with meaning, in words so perfectly arranged, that you stop reading, ponder and write it down? You may not even continue with...
This Space
39 Books: 2004 Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
8 months ago
43
8 months ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks. But do I really want to make such...
The Marginalian
Kafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a...
a month ago
25
a month ago
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a profound knowledge of each other, of the soul beneath the costume of personality — that lovely Celtic notion of anam cara. We bring this knowledge, this mutual understanding, to...
The Elysian
Week 6: Examples of Pitches
9 months ago
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives "Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a...
a year ago
10
a year ago
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."
Josh Thompson
Train Hard When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever) When’s the last time you trained for that activity? Finally: When is the last time you trained for that activity with someone else?...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Collection of Scraps and Shards of Knowledge' “During this time we know [John] Donne was collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
“During this time we know [John] Donne was collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of scraps and shards of knowledge known as a commonplace book.” Like Donne (1572-1621), some of us are magpie-minded, collecting objects shiny and drab, often without obvious utility....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Noble Unconsciousness Is in Him' A reader asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes, and that’s...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
A reader asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes, and that’s correct. “I think people are too cynical to have heroes today,” she continues. “They’re embarrassed to say someone is a hero. Nobody’s good enough. Everybody wants to look for failure...
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
7
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where They Grind the Grain of Thought' Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss...
a year ago
30
a year ago
Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss Rose, Miss Whistler – my teachers, K-6, at Pearl Road Elementary School. Most were young and pretty, more like big sisters than mothers. On the television in Miss Shaker’s class we...
Josh Thompson
A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey. In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories: What went well What didn’t go well What I might have...
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t: I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it. I felt like nothing I...
Ben Borgers
Pictures as Memories
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish... On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
The Marginalian
Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love "Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Chevengur' My review of Chevengur by Andrey Platonov, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published...
a year ago
15
a year ago
My review of Chevengur by Andrey Platonov, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published in the Wall Street Journal.
The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang' I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
3 months ago
20
3 months ago
I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a young man asked if he...
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
4 months ago
33
4 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the... "I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Known to All But Themselves' Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the...
6 months ago
28
6 months ago
Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the bigger culture. There’s so much I don’t know or understand, and that knowledge of my ignorance no longer bothers me very much. I still like learning things but there was a time when...
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
8 months ago
59
8 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Never Relied on His Sensibility Alone' In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the...
a month ago
12
a month ago
In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the three-volume Hours in a Library (1874-7) and father of Virginia Woolf. For a century England had specialized in producing formidably well-read, non-academic literary critics. In addition...
This Space
39 Books: 1987 From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
30
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
The American Scholar
Up Close The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year 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
16
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 American Scholar
My Cousin Manya One survivor’s story The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity ...
a month ago
The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Favourable Enough for a Writer' Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men...
The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
6 months ago
63
6 months ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
7 months ago
66
7 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
Ben Borgers
I Don’t Get Getir
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
First pass with Elixir/Phoenix I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The tutorial author says At the time of writing, I have ~1 week experience with Phoenix. Similar to Rubber Ducky Debugging, I am writing this blog post to force myself to think differently...
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good. I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Quickly It Would Slip By' “[S]ome of the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
“[S]ome of the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events themselves seemed to possess at the time, or rather – since memory has a filter of its own, sometimes surprising in what it suppresses or retains, but always significant – some of them stand out...
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
Josh Thompson
Playing Pranks My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial list: Convincing me that I was about to eat a slice of carrot cake; it was a sponge covered with toothpaste. I bit into it. Convincing me that she had, in anger and frustration, cut off almost...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful' “There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too...
a month ago
19
a month ago
“There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my sorrows down on the page.”  Janet...
Josh Thompson
An Intro to Customer Success Customer Success - what is it? When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Customer Success - what is it? When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately think I do either Customer Support, or sales. In a way, they are correct. I do both. Today, and more in the future, I’ll dig deep into this particular industry. A traditional...
Wuthering...
The books I read in November 2024 - like a hideous spinster who has learned the grim humor of the... Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower...
3 weeks ago
25
3 weeks ago
Thank goodness I write these down. FICTION The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower Club (c. 1760), Cao Xueqin – written up long ago. Cartucho (1931) & My Mother's Hands (1938), Nellie Campobello – Brutal vignettes of the Mexican revolution by a diehard partisan, a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Personal Affections' Only recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies. It...
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
Only recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies. It seems to be rooted in the conviction that readers ought to read writers in their original volumes, not someone’s curated selection, or something like that. In common with most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned' In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
10
a year ago
In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism”  -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world unaccompanied by...
This Space
39 Books: 2020 It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
Ben Borgers
Ben Forms
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Rules for Fighting Fair When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean? So, rather than asking more...
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy You're welcome.
8 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023 Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
55
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks.  A medical deadline approaches.  That will help. As usual, I read good books.   PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
Wuthering...
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings - No one has any knowledge of those first days... My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic...
9 months ago
68
9 months ago
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1010), a slender 850 pages in Dick Davis’s 2006 prose (mostly) translation.  He added another 100 pages to the 2016 edition, whether filling out...
Ben Borgers
Habit Toddler
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
What is JumboCode?
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Permanently a Monument As Anything' Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely...
6 months ago
42
6 months ago
Once it was a commonplace: a letter in the mailbox, handwritten or typed, in an envelope most likely moistened with the sender’s tongue and sealed. A person-to-person letter, not junk mail, credit-card come-ons, campaign postcards, jury summonses and the rest of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur' I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
54
a year ago
I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima donna was...
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation' There’s an art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the reviewer...
a year ago
10
a year ago
There’s an art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Honest Before Anything Else' A reader doesn’t understand how tastes in books and writers might evolve across a lifetime, how...
2 weeks ago
20
2 weeks ago
A reader doesn’t understand how tastes in books and writers might evolve across a lifetime, how indifference might replace enthusiasm and love, indifference. He mentions Hart Crane, a poet I’m unlikely ever to reread. I swooned over The Bridge in high school, spurred on by our...
The Marginalian
Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that...
12 months ago
18
12 months ago
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular chance-constellation of atoms has never before existed and will never again recur in the history of the universe. The fact of each such singularity is a wonder...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night. At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
2 weeks ago
30
2 weeks ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791).  First, David Hawkes, the original translator of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job.  Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin, dies,...
Escaping Flatland
6 lessons I learned working at an art gallery On agency, doing value-aligned work, and making your job fun
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks... There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
11 months ago
22
11 months ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Time Reading, Reading, Reading' “I’m not doing any work, just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the...
a week ago
23
a week ago
“I’m not doing any work, just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the time to read. It’s more enjoyable than writing. I feel that if I could live another forty years and spend the whole time reading, reading, reading, and learning how to write with...
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6) I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby . These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby . These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lack of Self-deception' “There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an...
a year ago
15
a year ago
“There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own sake.”  A fine distinction, one often lost on us. Auden is describing Shakespeare’s Richard III and refers us to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Hallmark of What Is Truly Priceless' “. . . what literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”  A bit melodramatic, no?...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
“. . . what literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”  A bit melodramatic, no? Grandiose? Perhaps expressed by a writer worried about sales or a reader boosting his self-esteem? Could be. But there’s something to it. Maybe it amounts to more than...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about... The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
a month ago
20
a month ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
sbensu
APIs as ladders APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in both of them.  “[I]t's a similar sense of...
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...
11 months ago
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work "There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poet's Hope' Erica Light is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and Melville...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
Erica Light is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and Melville scholar. We exchange emails several times each year, usually devoted to what we are reading. This week she reported reading some of the writers and books I’ve mentioned recently at...
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.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Look Out! Why did it take so long to protect The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20 When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”. But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Interlude: The Idea of “The West” A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The...
8 months ago
27
8 months ago
A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Have to Read the Words' “Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
“Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely compare anyone to him.”  I first read War and Peace in the eighth grade in a paperback abridgement. I remember reading it in science class, half-heartedly hiding the book behind the...
Josh Thompson
Depression I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Worked His Weaponed Wit' A reader is displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a...
a year ago
27
a year ago
A reader is displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a long time ago about Robert Bly. Granted, criticizing Bly is like shooting fish in the bathtub with a bazooka. I was a little ashamed of myself but that passed. My consolation is...
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path” Three new prompts The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
On Priesthoods ...
15 hours ago
Ben Borgers
Twitter Not Found
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
The Content Machine
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
10 months ago
4
10 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
This Space
Favourite books 2021 If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills. Why do social skills matter? Most people get...
Ben Borgers
Muted
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Nicomachean Ethics - moderate Aristotle - clarity within the limits of the subject matter I will borrow the quotation from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics I found on p. 186 of Gary Paul...
a year ago
46
a year ago
I will borrow the quotation from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics I found on p. 186 of Gary Paul Morson’s extraordinary new study of the ethics if Russian literature: Our discussion will be adequate if it achieves clarity within the limits of the subject matter.  For precision...
Josh Thompson
Limitations of My Own Thinking I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”....
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”. Anytime this happens, I start tripping over myself with warnings and qualifying statements. Here’s what would happen: I would make a recommendation (“start a side project to help get a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken' “This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
“This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and understanding, and often still do. The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On Satan’s Chamberlains Highseated in Berlin' In 2011, in an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of...
a year ago
11
a year ago
In 2011, in an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of Man, published as a wartime morale booster in 1916, edited by the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges. It’s the fourth edition, from 1923. I knew the title because of the contribution...
Ben Borgers
Bronze, Silver, Gold
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Basecamp Talks to You
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Growing in your first software development job I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017) This is tremendously...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017) This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like: I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...
The Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun "Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Aesthetically They Are Still Delightful' “Early Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else would make them...
8 months ago
40
8 months ago
“Early Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else would make them nowadays, but historically they are still important and aesthetically they are still delightful.”  Let's not confine Philip Larkin’s conclusion exclusively to Duke Ellington’s early...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Was No One There Anymore' Jorge Luis Borges published his final story collection, Shakespeare’s Memory, in 1983, three years...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Jorge Luis Borges published his final story collection, Shakespeare’s Memory, in 1983, three years before his death. The first story in the volume is “August 25, 1983.” The narrator is Borges or at least one version of Borges. He enters a hotel and sees his own name signed in the...
Steven Scrawls
"Progress" “Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions...
a year ago
6
a year ago
“Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s list of most-visited websites (see Notes for details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments, and come to your own...
ribbonfarm
News from the Universe I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special...
8 months ago
6
8 months ago
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special bucket-list effort I had no particular intention of making. Though now I might. It feels a bit like I’ve just seen giraffes in the wild without going to Africa. You’ve probably seen some of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death' I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
30
a month ago
I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished, no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without once using any of...
Ben Borgers
Trash Bags in the Laundry Room
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Mandelstam Dances Barefoot in the Snow Alone' “In the end like all great poets he became a jester”  Not the usual encomium one expects for Osip...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“In the end like all great poets he became a jester”  Not the usual encomium one expects for Osip Mandelstam, dead at age forty-seven in a Soviet camp, but the eulogist is Zbigniew Herbert, a congenitally ironic poet, ever aware of the comic in the appalling. For my birthday I...
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taube I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against Sugar. My notes and a write-up on The Case Against Sugar As I explained in that post, I find it helpful to do a ‘deep dive’ on some of the books I want to be deeply influenced by. For...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Culmination of Contemporary Economism' For half a century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were themselves...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
For half a century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were themselves works of art. In later years he relied more on accounts with hotel chains and the glass office buildings in downtown Cleveland. Frames for these corporate accounts he called...
The American Scholar
Divided Providence Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title) Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts. He talks about being data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers how to suceed...
Ben Borgers
Welcome to TikTok
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour... The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
52
a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help book, one of the founding self-help books.  The Meditations of...
Josh Thompson
Habits, Milestones, and Climbing Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months. I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!' Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the details of the...
Ben Borgers
Covid Test Instructions
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
RailsConf Presentation: 'Junior' Developers are a Solution to Many of your Problems Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able to help. Shoot me an email at joshthompson@hey.com or book some time to talk at https://calendly.com/joshthompson/coffee. This talk is available on railsconf.org, here:...
The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to... "Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
The American Scholar
Under a Spell Everlasting Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war The post Under a Spell Everlasting appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
Escaping Flatland
On having more interesting ideas “To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk...
7 months ago
75
7 months ago
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of recommended books, but they come and go with time. This list is sorta ‘older’, circa 2021. 1 A newer/different list is available here These are a collection of books that come up in...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death "To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”, I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”, I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking. Last time, I argued that customer success is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Which Is Spent in a Kind of Limbo' A reader has taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis Wyndham...
a year ago
12
a year ago
A reader has taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis Wyndham (1924-2017), and reports she’s enjoying herself. “I see a little Henry James in his stories,” she writes, “but he’s really not like anybody else.” Exactly right.   Wyndham’s writing...
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
6
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...
Wuthering...
there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough - what is knowledge? - Theaetetus and Parmenides The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to...
a year ago
39
a year ago
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to systematically understand, without the help of the revealed truth of religion, difficult concepts like existence and virtue led, almost immediately, to the question of whether anyone can...
Ben Borgers
Fancy Quotation Marks
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
4 months ago
62
4 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.
Ben Borgers
Music at 20%
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Certificate of Naturalization' In our basement was a gray file cabinet we were forbidden to touch. Naturally I opened it and in one...
4 months ago
34
4 months ago
In our basement was a gray file cabinet we were forbidden to touch. Naturally I opened it and in one of the drawers I found an old leather wallet containing the ID cards of a stranger with the surname Kurpiewski. Who is this? Why is the name so similar to ours? I couldn’t ask...
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
13
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'First Find a Thinking Being. Lots of Luck' As a non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math itself....
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
As a non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math itself. That’s a confession of inadequacy, though I’m not one of those people who says, “I don’t have a head for math,” when what they really mean is arithmetic. Because of my job I’ve learned...
The Marginalian
Terror, Tenderness, and the Paradoxes of Human Nature: How a Marmoset Saved Leonard and Virginia... The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they too read to their children, they too can be moved to tears by music. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky captured this as he contemplated the greatest antidote to evil, observing...
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...
a month ago
12
a month 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.
Idle Words
The Lunacy of Artemis In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on...
7 months ago
5
7 months ago
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead. A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House ...
a month ago
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...
3 months ago
47
3 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...
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024 For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
12 months ago
44
12 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the available energy and concentration.  Now, though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again. Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
The American Scholar
Masters of Horror and Magic The German folklorists who helped build a nation The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
The German folklorists who helped build a nation The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
A Small Life Radius
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on...
8 months ago
28
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed... Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
11 months ago
25
11 months ago
Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid.  The book is of the highest interest, and is a long way from the catalogue of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Generous Humanity to the Miserable' Our guests for Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women,...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Our guests for Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women, acquaintances of my wife, both recently divorced. The latter would likely otherwise spend the holiday alone. The only serious expression of gratitude is welcoming others and sharing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Is Some Twentie Sev’rall Men at Least' Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some twentie sev’rall men at least / Each sev’rall houre.” What sounds self-dramatizing in the American simply acknowledges our inconstancy, our fickle nature, in Herbert’s poem “Giddinesse.” In...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
9 months ago
6
9 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Quick Dive into React As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir,...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir, and need to sharpen my React knowledge along the way. After working through part 1 of a slack clone in Elixir/Phoenix tutorial, I ran into some errors getting the React app up and...
Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the... Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever: 0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet. They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World' “His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course,...
a year ago
15
a year ago
“His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
Ben Borgers
Giving Out Chick-fil-A on a Schedule App
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty' Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before revealing...
The Marginalian
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
14
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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets Who Are Plain and Gladsome' Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses...
9 months ago
36
9 months ago
Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses (“Books are a load of crap”). It’s certain to rile the pompous and pretentious, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the sputtering. I’ve happened on a first-rate anthology of...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Liked to Hold Ideas Up to the Light' The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not...
12 months ago
15
12 months ago
The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not just what I think, is Guy’s Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination (North Point Press, 1981). I bought it that year in a lesbian bookstore in Manhattan. Over the previous decade...
The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
a month ago
31
a month ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Amber of His Style' Isaac Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays and reviews...
8 months ago
55
8 months ago
Isaac Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays and reviews -- Portraits (1931), Criticism (1932), Memories (1953) – with a promise of more to come. MacCarthy’s reputation in the U.S. is almost sub-atomic. Devotees of Bloomsbury think of hm...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Dead in Their Silences Keep Me in Memory' Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels and stories. I remember chancing on The Castle at the public library in the mid-sixties, knowing nothing about Kafka. Only now do I appreciate the debts incurred – to Kafka, to the Muirs....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Could, Some Could Not, Shake Off Misery' Last week I wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
Last week I wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old Marine Corporal in Vietnam, and the war correspondent who wrote a dispatch about him for a newspaper. Two days later, after learning that the stringer, Albert W. Vinson, soon took his own life,...
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
7
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...
Steven Scrawls
Stone Hands Reaching Stone Hands Reaching I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find myself...
6 months ago
6
6 months ago
Stone Hands Reaching I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find myself touching a stone forearm. It’s cold, of course, and it’s coarser than skin, but tracing along the arms is enough to bring back memories of being comforted, of being held, when I was a...
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
44
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,...