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
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...
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
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 Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
a month ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
Ben Borgers
The Code That Keeps Me Alive
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Merely Mental Stenography'
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a...
4 months ago
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a literary magazine. There are too many essays, and vanishingly few good
essayists. There seems to be real confusion about whether style can conceal a
fundamental incuriosity, whether...
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
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have been minds to manipulate."
The Marginalian
Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
"Into the space ship, Granny."
a year ago
"Into the space ship, Granny."
Anecdotal Evidence
'On a Certain Street There Is a Certain Door'
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street...
6 months ago
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street there is a certain door
shut with
its bell and its exact address
and with a
flavor of lost Paradise,
which in the
early evening I can never
open to
enter. The day’s work at its...
The Elysian
The "letters to an anarchist" post-mortem
Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
a month ago
Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
11 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
Steven Scrawls
"Progress"
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions...
a year ago
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s
list of most-visited websites (see Notes for
details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments,
and come to your own...
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Facing the Facts
An antiquated take on antiquity
The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
An antiquated take on antiquity
The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
No safe landing
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici
Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
3 months ago
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici
Gabriel Josipovici has said that as a critic he is conservative but as a novelist he is radical. The second claim may not be controversial but the first will come as a surprise to those who remember what he said...
The American Scholar
A Forgotten Turner Classic
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The...
7 months ago
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The post A Forgotten Turner Classic appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will
write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really
do it.
November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza. I will be joining her by reading at least the
first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon...
The Elysian
Week 4: One pitch several places
9 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of...
"Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
"Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own weakness."
This Space
"When now?"
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Thinking This May Be My Last Summer'
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first...
7 months ago
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first war – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon – but the
second seemed a blank. On my own, I learned of the Americans – Karl Shapiro,
Anthony Hecht, Howard Nemerov. Only...
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant...
2 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Everyone’s Asking for Tips Now
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Guillermo
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shitcan the Sass'
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write...
6 months ago
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write but of familiar stuffe because my stile is lowe.” Today we call him a
master of the “plain style,” the opposite of ornate poeticizing, along with his
contemporaries George...
The Marginalian
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both...
a year ago
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged."
This Space
Kafka's great fire
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
6 months ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912:
This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024
A man sets out to draw the world.
3 weeks ago
A man sets out to draw the world.
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
"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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath'
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved,...
a month ago
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other
structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened,
carapaced,” to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement'
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
2 months ago
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of
intoxications.”
Driving while
reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light,
I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
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
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...
ribbonfarm
Truth-Seeking Modes
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This...
4 months ago
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive...
Robert Caro
Anatomy of a $9 Burglary
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all...
a year ago
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all signs indicated a simple case of burglar
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well Educated and Glad of the Fact'
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this...
a month ago
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this immersion into literature part of his or her own life, so that the experience of books has been integral with the experience of life and therefore strongly influences his or her general...
Josh Thompson
MacOS: Keyboard Shortcut to Toggle Bookmarks Bar in Firefox
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser,...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser, instead of Chrome.
Turns out, Firefox is great! It was a near-seamless transition, and Firefox has a much lower memory footprint, as well as features Chrome does not have, like...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense'
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the...
a year ago
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband,
who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to go out of town, I would stay with him...
The Marginalian
How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward...
8 months ago
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward the object and envelops it in warm corroboration, uniting us with it and positively affirming its being."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Writes On, Day After Day'
Clipped from
the New York Times, folded and tucked
into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was
the March...
a year ago
Clipped from
the New York Times, folded and tucked
into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was
the March 11, 1976 obituary for L.E. Sissman. The poet had died the previous day,
age forty-eight. On the same page is the obituary for the Italian politician
Attilio Piccioni, dead the same...
Josh Thompson
Ruby Tutorial 001
I’m playing with
Michael Hartl’s
Learn Enough Ruby book.
I’ll throw basic things I learn along the...
over a year ago
I’m playing with
Michael Hartl’s
Learn Enough Ruby book.
I’ll throw basic things I learn along the way on here.
A good starting point is using your command line. I use
iTerm2 for my terminal instead of the default Terminal installation.
To get up and running in your terminal,...
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Little Towns Should Have Had Their Chroniclers'
Every St.
Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green
and white...
9 months ago
Every St.
Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green
and white knitted shamrock and reminded me of the origin of my first name. Her
father was born in County Cork, as were her mother’s parents. I waited until
the third grade to rebel against...
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
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books
Here’s how that could look.
8 months ago
Here’s how that could look.
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
The context is smarter than you.
5 months ago
The context is smarter than you.
Josh Thompson
Issues related to the city of Golden
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...
over a year ago
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden.
I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot.
Here’s the lot in question:
I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration'
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to
tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September
1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
8 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it?
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
2 months ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party. I will rejoin the party planning momentarily.
The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel
about an extended family. The main plot
is the teenage love triangle, but...
Ben Borgers
Trash Bags in the Laundry Room
over a year ago
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
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
'Half the Pleasure of Reading New Books'
“[M]ost
American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have
the...
a year ago
“[M]ost
American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have
the possibility of developing literary taste have scarcely time to do so. Unless
they read the great English classics in high school and in college, they never
find time to read them.”
In...
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d...
2 months ago
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time
living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children,
unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
8 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'If You Want Less Trouble, Plow the Sky'
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers...
a year ago
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers tilling the soil and bringing in the sheaves. Working for
rural newspapers in the Midwest and upstate New York educated me to the
realities of mortgages, tractor accidents,...
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and...
a year ago
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing."
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past?
Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
3 months ago
Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
Ben Borgers
Streaks Are Extremely Powerful
over a year ago
The Perry Bible...
Clicked
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
sbensu
On becoming a person (book)
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
a month ago
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
8 months ago
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I
had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional
desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just
been pretending not to notice.
How...
The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem?
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
5 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Disadvantages of Wine'
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking...
3 months ago
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he
acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady M’Leod would hardly
believe him, and said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amid Tremendous History, New Pity'
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty...
9 months ago
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty of which he published during his lifetime. Early on, several of them
were my primers, an inviting way to learning the poetic tradition in English on
the cheap. One of them, the...
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks...
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
11 months ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
7 months ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it.
From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
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...
The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
Josh Thompson
The Millionaire Next Door
I’m struggling to know what to write about
The Millionaire Next Door.
It’s got many wonderful...
over a year ago
I’m struggling to know what to write about
The Millionaire Next Door.
It’s got many wonderful traits, and I strongly recommend that you read it (I wouldn’t mention it otherwise) but it’s got some flaws. I’m afraid if I focus on the flaws, I’ll turn people off from it that might...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master Etcher of Human Portraits'
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen...
a year ago
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen poets and friends were asked to contribute to a symposium published
a day earlier in the New York Times Book
Review. All but Robert Frost contributed. Amy Lowell wrote: “A realist,...
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba.
Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba.
Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales
Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes.
because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave.
Kristi and I tend to stick...
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not.
The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
Josh Thompson
What Do You Do?
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...
over a year ago
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?”
They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?”
Sometimes this is a conversational...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or 'Deep Work' (Crosspost from...
Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill...
over a year ago
Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work” (Letters to a New Developer). It ended up on Hacker News with 100 comments. I wrote this back in December 2019, forgot to post here until...
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
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write
some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a
History of a Family’s Progress (1925).
It is a monster. Why did I read
it? No, that is not the right
questions. There are good reasons to
read...
The Marginalian
Marie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated
"It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
9 months ago
"It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I...
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"*
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
This Space
Books of the year 2024
In order of being read.
Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned…
One night, along Venice’s...
2 weeks ago
In order of being read.
Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned…
One night, along Venice’s Zattere, watching the putrid water lap at the city’s foundations, I saw that we exist solely in the intermittence of our being, and that what we call I is just a shadow...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Quite Vacant Is a Mind Distress’d'
I’ll be
going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring
later this...
6 months ago
I’ll be
going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring
later this year. I knew a guy in high school who already yearned for retirement
despite never having had a job, whereas I’d been working since I was twelve. He
wanted to play golf and go...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Line or Two Worth Keeping All Too Rare'
“He has
never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm
windows,...
a year ago
“He has
never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm
windows, rather.”
That’s X.J. Kennedy on Kingsley Amis, clearly seeing his own reflection in that dirty
window. Both are proof that the best writers of light verse or comic poetry are
serious...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
7 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
The American Scholar
Chris Combs
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Now You Are Elsewhere'
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell...
10 months ago
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell for his charms. Chief among them are elegance, technical
virtuosity, wit and devotion to his native turf, Southern California. Like one
of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler,...
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
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...
The Elysian
Hint #1
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
Josh Thompson
Driven by Compression Progress
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains.
These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Wrapping my head around local politics 001
Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.*
As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local...
over a year ago
Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.*
As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local community”, and don’t know the best way to “mobilize my resources”.
vomit. I hate admitting that. But I still want to figure out
if it is possible for me (little old me) to do...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Consider Seriously My Condition'
Soon after
he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished...
a year ago
Soon after
he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished salvaging
everything useful from the wreckage, Robinson Crusoe builds a calendar:
“After I had
been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts that I should
lose my reckoning of...
Josh Thompson
Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...
over a year ago
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com.
This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...
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
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…
The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
10 months ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential...
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life."
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 2
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Quickly It Would Slip By'
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events...
4 months ago
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events themselves
seemed to possess at the time, or rather – since memory has a filter of its
own, sometimes surprising in what it suppresses or retains, but always significant
– some of them stand out...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less'
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working...
a year ago
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday
for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words'
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
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...
Josh Thompson
Workflow for developers (AKA My current tools)
I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better.
This is still under construction, but...
over a year ago
I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better.
This is still under construction, but I’m fleshing out all the tools, tidbits, and other things that serve me well every day as I build my skills as a developer. It will always be a work in progress, but will hopefully...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are Many Real Things of Beauty Here'
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating...
3 months ago
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating its
opposite, ugliness, exactly, though his prose definitely leans in that
direction. Only a graduate-school alumnus could come up with such silly ideas.
Rather, he seemed to be saying that...
Josh Thompson
First pass with Elixir/Phoenix
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack.
The...
over a year ago
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack.
The tutorial author says
At the time of writing, I have ~1 week experience with Phoenix. Similar to Rubber Ducky Debugging, I am writing this blog post to force myself to think differently...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Canto I, "Of shapes transformde to bodies straunge"
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE). Just some of the things I am looking for...
a year ago
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE). Just some of the things I am looking for or
enjoying while reading Ovid’s epic of “forms changed / into new bodies.” (tr. Charles Martin, 2004, p. 15). Or, per Arthur Golding (1567, p. 3 of the
Paul Dry paperback) “Of...
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
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious...
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
3 months ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...
The Marginalian
Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love,...
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental...
3 months ago
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love. Half a century after Whitman’s atomic...
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
The Marginalian
Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work...
11 months ago
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation,” Rilke wrote to his young correspondent. The great difficulty of loving arises from the great difficulty of bridging the abyss between...
sbensu
Designing for support teams
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
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.
Wuthering...
The best books of 2023, in a sense - "Aren't you tired of reading?"
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not...
a year ago
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not surprise
anyone that 2023 now comes with a strong feeling of Before and After. So I will indulge in the “facetious and silly”
exercise of identifying the best books I read in 2023. Sorting...
The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right...
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
This Space
A rare sort of writer
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've...
over a year ago
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've written over the years – after a brief interlude.
I read him first in July 1988 after borrowing The Lessons of Modernism from the second floor of Portsmouth Central Library because...
The Marginalian
From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the...
a year ago
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into...
Ben Borgers
Class Council: “Brutally Honest”
over a year ago
The Elysian
I’m building a cooperative media ecosystem
Owned by writers interested in a better future.
2 days ago
Owned by writers interested in a better future.
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Ben Borgers
The Beginning of College Sucks
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
No New Books
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library.
Why?
I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Postmodern Pigeonhole Is a Shuck'
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short...
a month ago
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short stories and of one novel, Camp
Concentration, but perhaps the most entertaining of our critics. His only
recent rivals have been Turner Cassity and R.S. Gwynn. “Entertainment” and...
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
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...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original...
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most
Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I
have seen outside of Latin American literature.
Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
This Space
39 Books: 2017
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
7 months ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Island Within
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no
beginning and no end,...
over a year ago
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no
beginning and no end, and perhaps, to the unmindful, no meaning. To those
who remain anchored emerges buried treasure from every line. I kept being
drawn back in, not as an addiction, but, as I...
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
7 months ago
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a...
Josh Thompson
Falling into Place
I recently started a job with
Litmus.
A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100%...
over a year ago
I recently started a job with
Litmus.
A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100% remote.
At my last job, I worked remote regularly, at least one day a week, but the rest of the week, I was in the office.
Remote work is becoming established around the world,...
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
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 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
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Such as It Is
The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate...
a year ago
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go."
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: How do we create the next Renaissance?
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create...
8 months ago
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create a world where artists are better funded and…
Josh Thompson
How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook'
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep...
over a year ago
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd
— Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017
Since then, I occasionally...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Hurricane's Usefulness Has Outlasted It'
Ambrose
Bierce’s entry for hurricane in The Devil’s Dictionary (1906):
“An
atmospheric...
6 months ago
Ambrose
Bierce’s entry for hurricane in The Devil’s Dictionary (1906):
“An
atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the
tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the West Indies
and is preferred by certain old-fashioned...
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative?
We're asking the wrong questions.
a month ago
We're asking the wrong questions.
Escaping Flatland
Seeing people clearly
Head of people operations for the entire friend group
a year ago
Head of people operations for the entire friend group
Ben Borgers
Lessons Learned from Hanging Posters
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thus Massive Was the Vessel, Built in Vain'
Gee-whiz technology soon grows
obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy...
5 months ago
Gee-whiz technology soon grows
obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy airship – blimp, dirigible, Zeppelin –
successfully tracked the heavy cruiser USS
Houston as it carried President Franklin Roosevelt on a secret voyage from
Annapolis, Md., to...
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the...
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
2 months ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds'
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on...
8 months ago
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political
or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker
moments I wish I could.” Never a...
sbensu
Pricing APIs
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
11 months ago
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Intense Enthusiasm for Good Literature'
I was
reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He
was, of all...
8 months ago
I was
reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He
was, of all the people I ever met, the one who had the most intense enthusiasm
for good literature.” Spoken by another, this might amount to glibly rendered
bullshit, the sort of thing junior...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Immense Special Talent'
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his...
3 months ago
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his oncologist. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and talked for hours, then
I drove him to the hospital. He gave me the Library of America’s collection of
Henry James’ writings on...
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Anecdotal Evidence
''He Knew It Was All Wrong for the Season'
Once I
listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a
diner eating his...
a week ago
Once I
listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a
diner eating his Christmas dinner, separated from his wife and children. He
recalled the moment with good humor. What had depressed him was eating canned
corn. He had grown up associating good food...
Josh Thompson
Streets in Asheville
Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC
A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a...
over a year ago
Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC
A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a nice town, and has a great pedestrian life, as far as I can tell.
As a thought experiment, I decided to see how well I could make the case for reducing the road width of a few...
Wuthering...
Books I read in August 2024
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I...
4 months ago
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save
Ibn Battuta’s Travels and the second half of Leg over Leg for
some other time.
FICTION
The Arabian Nights (14th c.), many hands – In the
great Hassan Haddawy...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,...
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries. I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which...
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
2 months ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
The Marginalian
The Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking,...
"If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of...
a year ago
"If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of all, that new emotional imagination... begotten of enlarged sympathies and a more sensitive habit of feeling."
The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
2 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
This Space
Further in the opposite direction
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal...
a year ago
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood as a religious claim: the very...
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
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...
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting...
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Smart Dinner Jacket and Patent Leather Pumps'
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which...
a year ago
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which was more genteel and less interesting than it sounds. Reading the police
blotter each morning or scanning new filings in the county clerk’s office left this
reporter feeling less...
Josh Thompson
Josh Thompson presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes...
over a year ago
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes nothing but encouraging members of the GASB board (Joel Black, Jeffrey Previdi, James Brown, Brian Caputo, Kristopher Knight, Dianna Ray, and Carolyn Smith) to spend 15 minutes...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thoughts Wait Here for Future Readers'
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh,
2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater,...
a year ago
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh,
2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater, the Jagiellonka
Library in Kraków, and calls it a “botanical garden of ideas,” a metaphor
worthy of the librarian Borges. I briefly visited the Jagiellonka, as it’s
known, in 2012...
The Elysian
Free speech in the age of social media
A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create...
3 weeks ago
A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create something better.
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes. Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted.
The conceit is as usual excellent. Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
Josh Thompson
Write Less Say More
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one...
over a year ago
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one of the suggestions: “do away with weasel words, the passive voice, adverbs, cliches.”
I’m adding “complex sentences” to the list.
Out of curiosity, I looked through things that...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Way of The Superior Man
There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that
The Way of the...
over a year ago
There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that
The Way of the Superior Man has. Even though it was first published more
than twenty years ago, its message could not be more fitting for
heterosexual men trying to navigate the intricacies of being...
The Marginalian
The Wild Iris: Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering
"Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
8 months ago
"Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
Josh Thompson
LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...
over a year ago
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution.
Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission.
So, once I fixed it so it...
The American Scholar
Others
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first...
3 months ago
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Word Should Be Looked Through'
Carpenters work in wood
and welders in metal -- raw materials. Extend the logic just a little:...
3 hours ago
Carpenters work in wood
and welders in metal -- raw materials. Extend the logic just a little: writers
work in words. An obvious point but one often forgotten or never learned,
especially by those who think they work in ideas. It’s a phenomenon I first
encountered while working...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kind of Things I Love'
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little...
12 months ago
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little White Attic appends a bookish cri de coeur, one I have echoed many
times:
“I
increasingly feel at odds with modern culture,” she begins. “I’m indifferent to
contemporary music,...
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
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...
Ben Borgers
I’m a Sucker for the Brand
over a year ago
This Space
Atheism of the novel
"Here it comes: the information dumping..."
From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest...
a year ago
"Here it comes: the information dumping..."
From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest novel, the part that is commentary on his attempt to destroy a commercially successful novel emulating "the style that The Guardian liked and promoted":
The narrator is a young...
The Marginalian
Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building...
10 months ago
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms."
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries...
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
4 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Craft Is Perfected Attention'
The
campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan
Williams...
a year ago
The
campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan
Williams (1929-2008) is in the neighborhood, but he’s always festive, the sort
of fellow you could hire to turn around tedious parties or staff meetings. A
reader says she is enjoying Williams’...
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting with
orcs, walking, walking, walking, anguish, walking, walking, walking, bit
more fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking.
—Goodreads review of “The Lord of the Rings”
Im returning...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June. Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
6 months ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June. Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it:
The results:
B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study
– relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
Wuthering...
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of...
over a year ago
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete plays. The last surviving tragedy, even if it hardly recognizable as a tragedy, it provides a coherent ending to the tragic tradition. It is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Remarkable Literary Judgment'
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her...
4 months ago
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her mother. She sat on the aisle two rows ahead of me. The cabin of
the plane glowed with screens while she was reading Andrew R. MacAndrew’s 1961 translation
of Dead Souls, the Signet...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Actually Read the Dictionary'
In one of
the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English...
a year ago
In one of
the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English Dictionary. Was this mere
bravado, another instance of Sacks polishing his image as a lovable, learned
eccentric? Or, like his friend W.H. Auden, was he gleaning the dictionary...
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s.
I know that some people like to complain about...
This Space
Proust regained
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Persistence
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an...
over a year ago
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an unlimited amount of money, because an unlimited amount of money would complicate my life (and probably yours) far more than we can possibly imagine.
Persistence. I keep trying to...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
5 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Born to Be Wild
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government
Ok but what can we do about it?
3 weeks ago
Ok but what can we do about it?
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
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
“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...
The Marginalian
From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became
The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
a year ago
The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
6 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play...
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy. Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do. If we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Brave Respect the Brave'
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read...
7 months ago
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read before, “To E.S. Salomon” (Black Beetles in Amber, 1892). Here is the memorably pertinent third stanza:
“The brave
respect the brave. The brave
Respect
the dead; but you -- you...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Only Little People Frightened By the Long Night'
The calendar
and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the
people in our...
a year ago
The calendar
and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the
people in our neighborhood as expressed through the “group chat” I have never
looked at moved the celebration to October 29. The reasons are unclear. What
this means in practical terms is two...
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better.
Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
The American Scholar
A Stranger in the Seven Hills
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City
The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on...
4 months ago
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City
The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Divided Providence
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
a month ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
5 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chap Who Doesn't Care Much About Anything'
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed...
4 months ago
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed announcement:
“Today is
National Orangutan Day. The apes are the largest tree-dwelling animals on
Earth. They spend 90 percent of their time in trees, even sleeping in leafy
nests. No wonder...
Josh Thompson
Deliberate Practice in Programming with Avdi Grimm and the Rake gem
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while.
I want to improve at...
over a year ago
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while.
I want to improve at things (all the things!) in general, but writing and reading code, specifically. Writing and reading code is germane to my primary occupation (software developer) and drives most of my...
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise?
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
9 months ago
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Perry Bible...
The Hare and the Tortoise
The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The American Scholar
Sienna Martz
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
High Variance Management
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Right Things in the Right Order'
“But surely
the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because
they are...
a year ago
“But surely
the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because
they are so well done, but because in each case the artist has arranged exactly
the right things in the right order. The choice of subject matter has been at
least half of the achievement....
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark'
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of...
a year ago
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair,
juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard.
He will never be hip except...
The Marginalian
What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science...
5 months ago
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science first began raising questions with spiritual undertones: What is life? Where does it begin and end? What makes it alive? But in the epochs since, having discovered muons and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation'
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer...
a year ago
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and
tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
This Space
39 Books: 2009
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't...
7 months ago
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't already written about and among those few that I feel able to write about. For 2009 there is one outstanding exception: another book about a writer exiled in Paris. Already in this...
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC.
This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
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
"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...
The Marginalian
The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter...
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
a year ago
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s...
2 months ago
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s notebooks, collected in Notes
from Hampstead (trans. John Hargraves, 1998). While I admire the work of a
handful of critics – Dryden, Johnson, Winters, Cunningham, a few others –...
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of...
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
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
"Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
The American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
3 months ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
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
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...
Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who...
11 months ago
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who refuse to believe in his divinity into what “we in
English language Backes or Reermice call the same” (Golding, 99) “[Or, as we
say, bats.]” (Martin, 140). How sad that
we lost the...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof).
I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel...
4 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
7 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years.
the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Silent Conversation'
“To talk and
dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and
meditate....
11 months ago
“To talk and
dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and
meditate. Talkative men seldom read. This is among the few truths which appear
the more strange the more we reflect upon them. For what is reading but silent conversation?”
This passage
is...
The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living...
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
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
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...
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
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 Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert'
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary...
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...
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
"These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.'
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the...
2 weeks ago
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the January 2025 issue of The
New Criterion.:
“Rickard
often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to
speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our...
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
a year ago
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his might revealing the extent of his degradation."
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also...
a month ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also mention my health. A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius
removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with
it. My recovery went well, and my liver
grew...
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
2 weeks ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two things:
The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence
Most dangerous books of 2016
Tactical Silence
I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
Josh Thompson
Do Not Work in Isolation
I fear criticism. I don’t have nightmares about it, and I’m not (too) crippled by a desire to avoid...
over a year ago
I fear criticism. I don’t have nightmares about it, and I’m not (too) crippled by a desire to avoid it, but I absolutely don’t like criticism, or being disappointing, or any of those things.
If my ego were making all decisions, I would move even slower than I do today into “new”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Interior Decoration Doesn't Count"
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland,...
9 months ago
Just last
week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown
Cleveland, where I visited often as a kid and worked in 1975. I was in the
basement in the general hardback fiction section where I saw the copy of Under the Volcano I bought there
forty-nine...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Milestone, Insignificant'
Understandably,
readers and critics like to take credit for rediscovering forgotten writers...
a month ago
Understandably,
readers and critics like to take credit for rediscovering forgotten writers and
resuscitating their reputations. Imagine being the guy who, in 1909, read Moby-Dick (1851; out of print, 1887) and
declared Melville (d. 1891) a genius a decade before Van Doren,...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
2 months ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
The American Scholar
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
A loss of problems
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being...
a year ago
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being talked about on television and in newspapers. Money was the first quickly followed by each and every one that preceded it, including the journalism in The Moronic Inferno, which I...
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light'
Chard Powers
Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers
with Three...
a year ago
Chard Powers
Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers
with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell
Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten
than the others, though in 1939 he...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whispering Parasite'
In Act III, Scene 2 of Henry IV, Part 1, Prince
Hal hopes to convince his father that he has mended...
10 months ago
In Act III, Scene 2 of Henry IV, Part 1, Prince
Hal hopes to convince his father that he has mended his ways, is a worthy
successor and will in the future avoid the riff raff (“rude society,” the king
calls them; i.e., Falstaff). Hal says:
“So please
your majesty, I would I...
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
“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...
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it.
So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Honest Before Anything Else'
A reader
doesn’t understand how tastes in books and writers might evolve across a
lifetime, how...
a week ago
A reader
doesn’t understand how tastes in books and writers might evolve across a
lifetime, how indifference might replace enthusiasm and love, indifference. He
mentions Hart Crane, a poet I’m unlikely ever to reread. I swooned over The Bridge in high school, spurred on by
our...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike'
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
Escaping Flatland
The third chair
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
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
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:...
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
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...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what...
a year ago
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what we combat."
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on What Books Give Us and the Heart of Wisdom
Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to...
a year ago
Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to learn how to live — how to love and how to suffer, how to grieve and how to be glad. We read to clarify ourselves and to anneal our values. We read for the assurance that others...
Josh Thompson
Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet
I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish.
That’s not to say...
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2019
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance'
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained...
6 months ago
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s
drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street,
top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
Josh Thompson
The How and Why of BlockValue
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...
over a year ago
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer.
I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...
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
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial...
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
a year ago
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays
Notes on process
a month ago
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
8 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium'
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and...
7 months ago
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and translator Clarence Brown published The
Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy
and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
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