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The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Will Be No One Left Who Knew Their Cost' For the boys in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the grownups...
9 months ago
16
9 months ago
For the boys in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the grownups were leaving us alone was “playing Army.” All of us had toy guns or at least sticks. Given our ages, when dividing into good guys and bad guys, the latter were always Germans and...
The American Scholar
Kinship and Contradictions Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity The post Kinship and...
3 weeks ago
23
3 weeks ago
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity The post Kinship and Contradictions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture' My tutelary spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from Hodgkin...
5 months ago
34
5 months ago
My tutelary spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from Hodgkin lymphoma at age forty-eight. Out in the hall I spoke with three oncologists  after they had yet again examined my brother. I asked the question no one had yet asked: How much time does...
Wuthering...
What has happened to me may well be a good thing - the death of Socrates Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, the extended version of the death of Socrates.  These texts,...
a year ago
43
a year ago
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, the extended version of the death of Socrates.  These texts, especially the last three, are a large part of the fame of Socrates, the reason he is an exemplar of the wise man to this day.  He asked annoying questions, he rejected material...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects' “My bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past, all remembered with...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
“My bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past, all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J. Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
$150 Custom-Made Standing Desk My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks to catch up.) Kristi and I outfitted our space with reclaimed furniture from Craigslist (also known as “cheap”), so we wanted to keep it going with a desk. My setup at our kitchen...
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd...
7 months ago
33
7 months ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
62
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...
Josh Thompson
Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too) I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that make my life better, and might do the same for you. (If you’re an iPhone user, just Google for the iOS version of the following tools. They’re all out there) Rewire App:...
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
17
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism' Two female acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably improved. The...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Two female acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
4 months ago
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
The Elysian
This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing' I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting earworm. Much of this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Courage to Face Reality Squarely' I’m flying to Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has already...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
I’m flying to Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has already metastasized and he’s in the Cleveland Clinic, waiting to be admitted to their hospice program. Ken turned sixty-nine in April and is two and a half years younger than me. My...
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
6 months ago
4
6 months ago
this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path...
The American Scholar
“Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The...
5 months ago
18
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Getir Colors
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'For a Dream's Sake' Interviewer: “Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”  Philip Larkin: “Not without...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Interviewer: “Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”  Philip Larkin: “Not without being someone else. I think it is very much easier to imagine happiness than to experience it. Which is a pity because what you imagine makes you dissatisfied with what you experience,...
The Marginalian
We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life... "Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1995 Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or...
8 months ago
36
8 months ago
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was...
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2024
a week ago
Josh Thompson
Array divergence in Ruby Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match. You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive) valid_people =...
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine "In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Amuse and Gratify Her Own Self' In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already...
a year ago
16
a year ago
In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already suggesting themes that would go on preoccupying her:   “All things pass Love and mankind is grass”.   In scripture, grass is the default metaphor for the transience of life. In the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ill-Assorted Collection' A friend has broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty emails in...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
A friend has broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty emails in her direction. As prose they are better than average. There have been no threats of violence and little profanity. The ex’s weapon of choice is a detailed critique of every aspect...
Josh Thompson
Load Testing your app with Siege Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires authentication to access. Today, we’ll figure out how to use siege to visit many unique URLs on our page, and to get benchmarks on that process. I’ll next figure out performance...
Ben Borgers
The TikTok Peer Group
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
JumboCode+
a year ago
sbensu
Default blind In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Basecamp Talks to You
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house) Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Similar Universality of Voice' I reproach my younger self for being lazy and not seriously studying languages other than English. I...
6 months ago
38
6 months ago
I reproach my younger self for being lazy and not seriously studying languages other than English. I dabbled in Latin and German and retain a smattering of vocabulary and little grammar. If I were to study another language today my first choice would likely be Italian in order to...
Josh Thompson
How To Procfile: Run Just a Single Process Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000 RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec puma -C ./config/puma_development.rb -e development devlog: tail -f ./log/development.log mailcatcher: ruby -rbundler/setup -e...
Wuthering...
But the Moon rescues others as they swim from below - a glance at the essays and dialogues of... The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch, famous for his extraordinary...
a year ago
11
a year ago
The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch, famous for his extraordinary Parallel Lives but also the innovative author of a large mass of essays and dialogues which picked up the title Moralia (late 1st C.) along the way.  Plutarch was hardly an original...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Curious Examiner of the Human Mind' On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends...
6 months ago
53
6 months ago
On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends had met for the first time just a month earlier at Thomas Davies’ bookshop on Russell Street. Johnson starts the conversation with a dismissal of Thomas Gray (1716-71). In the...
The Elysian
I'm not going to have kids to save the economy Not on my list of reasons to have children.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V... “What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
a month ago
19
a month ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
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
29
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...
Josh Thompson
Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft document Inspiration comes from many places, but most strongly it draws heavily from Order Without Design. I’ve quoted in depth two pages below, but there is many other sections of the book...
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
31
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Now We Shall Never, Never See Her Again' Ian Donaldson begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his death...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Ian Donaldson begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his death but with his interment in Westminster Abbey. Though a popular playwright during his lifetime, Jonson died in poverty and was buried vertically in order to consume less valuable real...
This Space
A modern heretic Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact...
over a year ago
45
over a year ago
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact occur. I used this line, apparently from Borges, as an epigram to an essay in the early days of online writing. I can't remember what book it came from and after searching I found a...
Ben Borgers
Learnings from JumboCode
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it. Since I’m trying to write...
This Space
The end of literature, part three On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there ever since. At that time a mild alternative to barbarism was being put to death. Back in 2015 when, against all odds, a lifelong socialist and campaigner against racism and...
Ben Borgers
Productivity YouTubers
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Jason Middlebrook Tree rings in time The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For? The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'First of All a Student of Human Nature' “Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
“Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The best writers, the ones who compel us to read their work across a lifetime, whose thoughts become our own and who at last become teachers and companions, are those who work in two media: words...
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
47
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!' Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
23
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...
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
4
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...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and... A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 362 ...
6 days ago
The Elysian
Week 6: Examples of Pitches
8 months ago
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...
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
May Sarton on Generosity “Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her beautiful essay on generosity. “You open your safe and find ashes.” I feel this truth deeply, daily — for nearly two decades of offering these writings freely, I have lived by the...
Wuthering...
How Ivan Bunin and Vasily Grossman spent the war - He was in the countryside then for the last time... Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian writers from three different strands of...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian writers from three different strands of Russian literature: Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur (1929 /1972, tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) in the Gogolian and Dostoyevskian strand, Ivan Bunin’s Dark Avenues (1943/1946)...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About' A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I sympathize. I remember reading...
The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous... Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
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
42
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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death" More than any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of an...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
More than any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane, metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air' A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a...
9 months ago
27
9 months ago
A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of me that finds the obscenity...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Being Vulnerable to History' I read Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer when it was published in 1966. Readers often turn...
6 months ago
64
6 months ago
I read Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer when it was published in 1966. Readers often turn melodramatic when describing the impact a book has had on them – “life-changing,” that sort of thing. Such claims usually can be chalked up to enthusiasm untempered by critical rigor. The...
This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
Wuthering...
everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous...
7 months ago
66
7 months ago
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress (1925).  It is a monster.  Why did I read it?  No, that is not the right questions.  There are good reasons to read...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dictionary of Dead Words' How to account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language?...
a year ago
17
a year ago
How to account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language? I’ve always supposed it was laziness or the absence of imagination. Why work hard at writing or speaking when a ready-made word, phrase or thought shows up automatically like pain with a...
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
25
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,...
The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
8 months ago
58
8 months ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
Ben Borgers
Is Advice Flawed?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Caprock Adventures worth the silence The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
Website Rewrite 2
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Important That It Ought to Absorb Him' In his brief portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt himself...
a month ago
22
a month ago
In his brief portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt himself impelled to attempt an intenser vividness in description. Try, just try, so to describe something that the inattentive reader must see it, and the attentive one can never forget that he...
Josh Thompson
Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer. Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...
Ben Borgers
Lessons Learned from Hanging Posters
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and throw it at the sun—the way the water falls apart into drops, and then into mist, the way a rainbow appears for a second and is gone.
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
8 months ago
39
8 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.* Many of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion' “Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed,...
6 months ago
53
6 months ago
“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of...
Josh Thompson
Fixing Ford and Washington Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but it is doable: Step 1: Install car-friendly roundabouts targeting a ~20 mph throughput speed throughout the city and eliminate all stopsigns and stoplights Please see about...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals' This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL. yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ —...
Blog -...
Book Review - Open Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not put it down. I usually have four to six books on the go at any time, but all of them were put on pause for the day and a half it took me to devour this book.
This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
54
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
4 months ago
24
4 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed The post Paradise Reclaimed...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed The post Paradise Reclaimed 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
4
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...
The American Scholar
Up Close The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Corner Is Fraught with Memory' A.J. Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The New Yorker and the grand celebration that was...
12 months ago
30
12 months ago
A.J. Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The New Yorker and the grand celebration that was his life as a writer – was published two weeks after his death, in the January 11, 1964 issue of the magazine that had printed more than five-hundred of his pieces since he joined...
The Marginalian
Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the... “Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning...
8 months ago
63
8 months ago
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean...
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
56
a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher, independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible.  The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds is not much help.  But luckily we have Xenophon, a close...
Ben Borgers
October 5th, 1582
over 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
Henry James on Losing a Mother "These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
a year ago
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Interior Convulsion' Too late the other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late Jackie...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Too late the other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late Jackie Mason. I clicked on one and the inevitable followed: I went looking for more and soon descended into a privately curated  comedy show with guest stars Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End' In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult,...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m visiting my brother in hospice. No...
The American Scholar
“The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Always Singular, and Never Trite or Vulgar' “He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but rarely Merry, at any sensible Rate, seldom heard to break a Jest; and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the Levity of it: His Gravity was Natural and without Affectation.”  The...
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
66
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year 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
38
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...
Josh Thompson
Input metrics vs. Output metrics It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all. So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me. I don’t believe...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings “There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
8 months ago
25
8 months ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it? Compare this wording: Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible. To this wording: Unless I hear otherwise,...
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023 Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Josh Thompson
On Feedback Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback: Explicit feedback , which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss. Implicit feedback , which is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar' When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where we bought our first house and lived for seven years. The Saratoga Race Course was less than a mile away. So were Yaddo and Broadway, the main drag downtown. We...
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem... “Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation "There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab. We...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab. We discussed two things: asking good questions having a good workflow After the session, I promised an overview of what we discussed. Here’s that overview for “Asking good questions”....
The American Scholar
Verde Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
a month ago
12
a month ago
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew The post Verde appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert' Dr. Johnson describes the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
58
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...
Steven Scrawls
Quicksilver and Clay Quicksilver and Clay Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of quicksilver and...
12 months ago
4
12 months ago
Quicksilver and Clay Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of quicksilver and clay. The pieces of my body—my sense of humor, my beliefs, my opinions and artistic sensibilities and worldviews, everything—combine to present a cohesive self to be...
The American Scholar
Agent 37 The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
bell hooks on Love "We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until...
a year ago
11
a year ago
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago... All awakening to love is spiritual awakening."
Anecdotal Evidence
'But, Take It From This Famous Pote [sic]' Isaac Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations, this time a...
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
Isaac Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations, this time a generous 417 versions of Ode I.5, the “Ode to Pyrrha,” dating from 1621 to 2007. The one I’m familiar with is John Milton’s, described by the poet as “rendered almost word for word...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist' My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy' When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just...
3 months ago
44
3 months ago
When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations, strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise us. An Australian, Clarence Caddell, has...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 358 ...
a month ago
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details. Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
48
a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
9 months ago
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision” Three prompts The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project' Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:  “The two offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
Ben Borgers
60 kHz
over a year 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
62
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...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Man Can Be Judged By His Favorite Books' This I find in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
This I find in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas Rudd, who quotes her subject: “Each man can be judged by his favorite books.” She adds of the great Spanish thinker and novelist:  “Throughout his long life Unamuno returned to...
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project) As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding. I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference. Lastly, I just...
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
4 months ago
20
4 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
28
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 Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
53
a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Blog -...
Book Review - Owning Your Own Shadow The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal development. According to the classic resource Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, “The shadow is that which has not entered adequately into...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Sensitive As Anyone Else' “In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as...
8 months ago
31
8 months ago
“In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as sensitive as anyone else. She renders their speech with a fine and subtle ear for the shy or strident inaccuracies, for the bewilderment of missed points and for the dim, sad rhythms...
The American Scholar
“The Horses” by Edwin Muir Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Horses” by Edwin Muir appeared first on The American...
5 days ago
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi "It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have...
10 months ago
The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
The Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes “That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
16
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
The American Scholar
Bony Ramirez Beautiful parasites The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues... The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
a year ago
36
a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations.  A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument.  You say there are many gods?  But what if there were one? Or none? ...
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom "Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
6 months ago
37
6 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out' Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted....
6 months ago
27
6 months ago
Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend, respect the reader’s intelligence....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry' I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
This Space
39 Books: 2023 This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
7 months ago
74
7 months ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
Josh Thompson
Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right? It gets harder to realize once you...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right? It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you. That’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Memories Packed in the Rapid-Access File' Last Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me from hotel to...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Last Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me from hotel to hospice in the morning went by the professional name “Lazarus” – an omen I choose to leave unexamined and merely enjoy. Ken would have enjoyed it. Shortly after his death one of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A General Effect of Pleasing Impression' Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of which roughly coincided with the arrival of...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of which roughly coincided with the arrival of Anecdotal Evidence in 2006, literary memes were far more popular. Some were trivial parlor games, a way for certain readers to safely show off without having ever opened a book....
Anecdotal Evidence
'How It Sounds When Read Out Loud' Our eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem written...
a month ago
28
a month ago
Our eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem written seventy-five years earlier and picked students to read aloud each of its four, eight-line stanzas. She suggested we pay attention to who is speaking, as the poem is written as a dialogue...
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical literature.  I had never heard of him, partly because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean satire” even though...
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....
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
11 months ago
4
11 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015. for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset...
7 months ago
21
7 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate" Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you! Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not the Head But the Seat' My late friend David Myers  taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported into English,...
a year ago
15
a year ago
My late friend David Myers  taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported into English, sitzfleisch. The etymology is straightforward: sitzen (“to sit”) + Fleisch (“flesh”). In other words, what we sit on -- the buttocks, ass or derriere. Metaphorically, the OED tells us,...
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes Hope blooms The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate. Those of you who love exercising for the...
over a year ago
4
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...
This Space
The end of literature, part five "Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
61
5 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
Josh Thompson
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department): Here’s today’s thought for the weekend.  A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept.   [Laughter] So at a mathematical level this is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be at Home in Other Places' At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or...
a month ago
12
a month ago
At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or drug problems. Like most in that field, he values his clients and dislikes the bosses, who live by the dictates of bureaucracy. Barbers are like bartenders. The good ones usually...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long' Several years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
9 months ago
24
9 months ago
Several years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It’s a symptom-less and in most cases benign disorder, but it can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. It means I see my oncologist once a...
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The...
7 months ago
28
7 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
How many hours a week do you (actually) spend on your salary job? I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who...
5 months ago
55
5 months ago
I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who work salary jobs work significantly fewer tha…
Josh Thompson
62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year.  Samples: Kristi 1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other.  We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL' The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard reviews various twentieth-century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Obscuration of the Luminaries of Heaven' In 1963, our street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the...
9 months ago
27
9 months ago
In 1963, our street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the city periodically coated it with tar. Rain fell on the morning of July 20 but by late afternoon the skies had cleared and all that remained of the rain were puddles in the water-proof street....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Moralizing Purge of the Past' "I think we are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that early...
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
"I think we are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that early Christianity inflicted on the same pagan learning. There will be another Dark Ages in our lifetimes; and another Renaissance, too, but not one that we will live to see.”  I’m...
This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist literature": this year's choice is a collection of lectures delivered in the early 1960s at the University of Zürich, published in English translation in 1970, with this edition being...
Josh Thompson
Blessed to be Sick Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was struggling to be engaged in my work. I was easily distracted, and didn’t feel very efficient during the day. Once I identified the tasks I needed to complete before I could walk away from...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest... “All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures Inside my writing philosophy.
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Relief, Joy, or Nostalgia' “Of course, no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a specific...
8 months ago
62
8 months ago
“Of course, no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a specific time in one’s life, and the particular book’s smell, typeface, and paper can be as much a part of the experience as one’s physical and emotional circumstances.”  I used to think...
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.
The Elysian
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
This Space
Favourite books 2022 This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable...
over a year ago
51
over a year ago
This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable books of the year lists, though I enjoyed those not included in this selection. Jon Fosse – Septology Thomas Bernhard – The Rest is Slander "we are concealing a secret, a secret...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
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
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books Here’s how that could look.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
Welcome to TikTok
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
It's Fun to Do Things with Care
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Till Love and Fame to Nothingness Do Sink' Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.” The reader reads the life of another, reflects on it and applies the lessons he deduces to himself. In the early pages of his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Leave Him Something to Imagine' “I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable strait line.”  By the time a persevering reader has reached Book...
The American Scholar
From All Souls by Saskia Hamilton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Daily Habits
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English' “We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”  It’s fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
Ben Borgers
Bin System
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Zen in the Art of Archery Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely being the most popular book about Japanese culture and martial arts ever. This is a bold statement I cannot contest, having read only three other books about Zen: the...
The Marginalian
Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard... An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
a month ago
28
a month ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are No Millers Any More' I’ve just learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is always...
2 weeks ago
16
2 weeks ago
I’ve just learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is always unsettling, as though a fundamental law of nature had been violated. Given what we know of the person, and it may be very little, we apply her circumstances to our own and conclude,...
Josh Thompson
Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on. I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines Part 2 - Get Your Data (as a polyline) From Strava Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline,...
3 months ago
8
3 months ago
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline, though, it was a path of a walk I went on. (Technically, just a fragment of a path). this is a heavy draft, I’ve had issues getting this all working well in the past, still have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words' Louis MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
a year ago
19
a year ago
Louis MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations (1957):  “When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards And reading and even speaking have been replaced By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you Will find...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Is Not Dead' Sadness nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories abound. We...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Sadness nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories abound. We underestimate ourselves when it comes to emotional capacity. Only the insane know one emotion at a time, which is why bliss and clinical depression are rare states and why Joseph...
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up. (If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Josh Thompson
Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves? Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a month ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 355.5 ...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
2 weeks ago
17
2 weeks ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
Josh Thompson
Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do “tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience) ‘tongue tie’ was something...
7 months ago
4
7 months ago
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience) ‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then. Cut forward to...
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
45
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...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House ...
a month ago
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
34
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...
The Elysian
Hint #1 I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
War Room — using the native date picker
a year ago
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all... When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom "Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
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
36
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...
sbensu
Designing for support teams Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
11 months ago
4
11 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature' Sometimes an eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his wish to...
8 months ago
32
8 months ago
Sometimes an eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern English language...
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
58
3 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.
Josh Thompson
Be Gentle to You There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?) These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...
The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom “We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
The Elysian
Every company should be owned by its employees Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
How to Move Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen: We both are in process with new jobs I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
This Space
Favourite books 2020 Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone exceeds the number of books I'm able to read in a year let alone the number from which it was presumably narrowed down. This is why I suggested a couple of years ago such pages choose...
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
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
18
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...
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
23
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...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
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
4
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....
This Space
39 Books: 1999 I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
8 months ago
62
8 months ago
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others published around the same time, such as from Quartet Encounters and Carcanet, the latter with a fussy variant on the title: The Book of Disquietude. But this one is the most pleasurable...
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
2 weeks ago
30
2 weeks ago
Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts: So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”. I...
ben-mini
Old School Business In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs...
7 months ago
4
7 months ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users. They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction). They demeaned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Tomorrow I Propose to Regulate My Room' A reader in Columbus, Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December...
3 weeks ago
23
3 weeks ago
A reader in Columbus, Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December 21, 1968 issue of The New Yorker he found the poem “Is There a Dr. Johnson in the House.” It’s a typical irregularly lined, jokily rhymed production by Nash that begins:  “Do you...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too' St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him silently reading and never...
Ben Borgers
Heart Reacts
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Good Vibrations One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound The post Good Vibrations appeared...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound The post Good Vibrations appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
War Room
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Arid Interrogation' As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers...
4 months ago
46
4 months ago
As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers had, so we believed, during World War II. Could we withstand torture? These virtues, touched with Hollywood melodrama, seemed like essential aspects of maturity. We wanted to be...
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken "The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy ...
a month ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in March 2024 - Literature was a game of pillaging, and this book showed it. A nice little run at Persian literature this month.  And I am reading in Portuguese again,...
8 months ago
29
8 months ago
A nice little run at Persian literature this month.  And I am reading in Portuguese again, slowly, slowly. PERSIAN LITERATURE, MOSTLY CLASSICAL Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1110),  Abolqasem Ferdowsi – See here for notes on this big epic in Dick Davis’s translation. The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daring to His Own Disadvantage' “The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against...
5 months ago
54
5 months ago
“The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against mock society, mock poetry, mock justice, mock spirituality—against  any form of enslavement—is a benefit.”  Marianne Moore could be a soft touch when it came to reviewing. She could...
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...
Escaping Flatland
In praise of insular groups Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a...
8 months ago
50
8 months ago
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Profound Secret Both to Himself and the World' English majors will recall the evisceration of John Keats in an 1818 review of Endymion in...
a year ago
12
a year ago
English majors will recall the evisceration of John Keats in an 1818 review of Endymion in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. John Gibson Lockhart, using the pen name “Z,” mocked Keats’ “Cockney” poetry, his medical training and even his friendship with Leigh Hunt. He dismissed the...
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Covid Test Instructions
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel" My review of The Pensive Citadel by Victor Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
14
a year ago
My review of The Pensive Citadel by Victor Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
This Space
39 Books: 2002 The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5. Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose' “Where did you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”  Creating anything...
7 months ago
39
7 months ago
“Where did you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”  Creating anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty and impose it on others; humility because...
Ben Borgers
It Does Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Are Wary of My Plain-speaking' A reader alerts me to a parlor game proposed by The Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
A reader alerts me to a parlor game proposed by The Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my younger self had read? Julian Barnes suggests volumes devoted to “the true nature of war, empire and race,” which sounds a bit like retrospective virtue-signaling. William Boyd’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Have Part of His Life to Himself' “I am not obliged to do any more.”  Retirement is my choice. For most of my life I assumed I would...
a week ago
16
a week ago
“I am not obliged to do any more.”  Retirement is my choice. For most of my life I assumed I would drop dead at the keyboard in my office, mid-sentence, but next week I retire. I have always enjoyed work, the sense of contributing something to an enterprise, no matter how...
sbensu
The person behind the idea When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
a month ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
51
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
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...
Wuthering...
Please read Greek philosophy with me - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, dog men, people jumping in... Greek philosophy, readalong #2. This idea got more interesting the more I thought about it, but...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
Greek philosophy, readalong #2. This idea got more interesting the more I thought about it, but had more organizational problems, plus the greater problem that I do not think of philosophy as a strength of mine.  My solution has been to convert the project into literature. Is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seeing Means Going Over the Details' Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by...
a year ago
49
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by Émile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951), the French proto-blogger better known as Alain. He was a professor of philosophy whose students included Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Both excerpts are taken from...
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you. That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
Ben Borgers
Novel Food
over a year ago
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
67
6 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
The Elysian
Am I an anarchist? Letters to an anarchist, part seven.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023 Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
Josh Thompson
Preparing to adopt a habit There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work. Almost as many...
Josh Thompson
A Five-Hour Experiment Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours. He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming, Colemak typing, a form of Chinese chess...
Josh Thompson
How to be an awesome belayer For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport climber), these are not for you. All of this information is in the context of sport climbing on trustworthy protection - not trad climbing! How to belay when your climber is in...
Josh Thompson
A message for high schoolers tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three topics: Credentialism Signaling Opportunity cost If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers. I’ve got a few links for you farther down in this...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work "Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
18
a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
The Perry Bible...
Pop The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
ben-mini
Building FirstMover I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly...
3 months ago
6
3 months ago
I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly all of them pointed me to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned NYC real estate search platform. Some of my more Type-A friends gave me extra helpful advice: Narrow your search to 2-4...
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few examples: Animated, interactive curves(dynamic) OMG Particles II(dynamic) simple map of the us(static) <= very little code Radial Dendrogram(static) circle wave(dynamic) Force-directed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Grief and Lost Belief' In the U.S., Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27....
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
In the U.S., Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27. Formerly called Decoration Day, it started after the Civil War as commemoration of the nation’s war dead. The meaning and observance of holidays tend to dilute with time. When I was a boy, the...
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
6
over a year ago
I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but I wanted to take them out and apply them to some easy Exercisms. I feel some disclosure may be useful. In no way, at all, should you ever implement any of the “solutions” I’m...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
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
35
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...
Ben Borgers
Gerald R. Gill Papers
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope' Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of...
4 months ago
17
4 months ago
Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century, the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the modern sciences, the men who created modern...
This Space
The end of something Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike...
a year ago
53
a year ago
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike Magazine (not to be confused with Spiked), which I helped to found when the world wide web was forming, and to comment on the direction online literary culture had taken. By that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Joker; One Who Breaks a Jest' When I encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for further use and...
a year ago
11
a year ago
When I encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for further use and found myself silently singing it to the tune of “Matchmaker,Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof: “Witcracker, witcracker, / Make me a wit . . .” In Shakespeare’s Act V, Scene 4,...
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing “The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
8 months ago
59
8 months ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amateurism (in the Original Sense of the Term)' Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in 1534 via French, from a Latinized form of...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in 1534 via French, from a Latinized form of the Greek for “self-taught.” The range of the word’s uses in our university-smitten age is vast. Some academics apply it to anyone without an advanced degree who presumes to have...
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
10 months ago
61
10 months ago
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news media following the death of John Pilger reveal the state of journalism in our time. [1] Can you name one living Anglophone journalist whose loss would prompt such widespread notice?...