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...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Memories Packed in the Rapid-Access File'
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to...
4 months ago
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to hospice in the morning went by the professional name “Lazarus” –
an omen I choose to leave unexamined and merely enjoy. Ken would have enjoyed
it.
Shortly after his death one of the...
Josh Thompson
Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft...
over a year ago
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft document
Inspiration comes from many places, but most strongly it draws heavily from Order Without Design. I’ve quoted in depth two pages below, but there is many other sections of the book...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
The Market for Takes
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
Josh Thompson
What I've learned from cooking in 36 kitchens in the last year
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for...
over a year ago
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for (usually) ourselves and (sometimes) others in 36 (!!!) kitchens.
Sometimes we’ve used a kitchen for just one night, sometimes it’s every night for two months.
Needless to say, we’ve...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Finally Written on Politics"
The April
1970 issue of the now-defunct New
American Review included one of those self-important...
a year ago
The April
1970 issue of the now-defunct New
American Review included one of those self-important symposia beloved by
editors, this one titled “The Writer’s Situation.” A surprising participant was
J.V. Cunningham, who seldom played the conventional literary game. A poet,
critic,...
Escaping Flatland
After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is...
11 months ago
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is possible to play. Then AI beat them.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish That He’d Arrived Much Sooner'
I offended
a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.”
Let’s...
a year ago
I offended
a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.”
Let’s consider each part of the epithet. “Brilliant”? Without question. He wrote
three incontestably good poems but Coleridge is an early specimen of the “public
intellectual,” bristling...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Punners and Rhymers Must Have the Last Word'
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The...
3 months ago
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The Latin
tag is proverbial, deriving from Cicero’s Catiline orations: “O times, O manners!”
It’s the template for all lamentations. Jonathan Swift is repeating it in the
opening lines of...
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War,
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
8 months ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
This Space
39 Books: 2018
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
7 months ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
The Marginalian
Love Anyway
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the...
9 months ago
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects'
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with...
11 months ago
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from
college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J.
Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
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
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish...
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes true psychic creativity from obsessional productiveness."
Josh Thompson
Tiny Habits take 2
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is...
over a year ago
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones.
I
have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading
Freewith Kristi and...
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
'He Is the Andy Warhol of Art'
Guy
Davenport was our Johnny Appleseed of culture. He was an academic who published
in Harper’s and...
6 months ago
Guy
Davenport was our Johnny Appleseed of culture. He was an academic who published
in Harper’s and the Journal of the American Institute of Architects;
Life magazine and Art News; National Review and Inquiry.
He sowed allusions without regard for pretentious pieties. He loved...
Escaping Flatland
On shortcuts and longcuts
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they...
8 months ago
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they make. This gives the path a lovely human fit. But sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to design ways to get people to take a longer path, a longcut, so they can see or...
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
6 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 359.5
...
3 weeks ago
ribbonfarm
News from the Universe
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special...
7 months ago
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special bucket-list effort I had no particular intention of making. Though now I might. It feels a bit like I’ve just seen giraffes in the wild without going to Africa. You’ve probably seen some of...
Ben Borgers
Giving Out Chick-fil-A on a Schedule App
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Does Not Make a Nice Old Man'
A friend who
is a great admirer of Thomas Carlyle sent me an excerpt from a letter the Scotsman...
10 months ago
A friend who
is a great admirer of Thomas Carlyle sent me an excerpt from a letter the Scotsman wrote to his mother on September 12, 1843:
“I spent a
forenoon with Jeffery who is very thin and fretful I think; being at any rate
weakly, he is much annoyed at present by a hurt on...
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
'The Poem Saves Time and Space'
Discovering
a good writer long after his death is a gift and a betrayal. Gratitude mingles
with...
7 months ago
Discovering
a good writer long after his death is a gift and a betrayal. Gratitude mingles
with regret and even guilt. Selfishly, we wish he had truly been our
contemporary and we had been smarter and watched him develop as a writer.
Instead, we compensate by scrambling after his...
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It...
over a year ago
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills.
Why do social skills matter?
Most people get...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
9 months ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
Wuthering...
What has happened to me may well be a good thing - the death of Socrates
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts,...
a year ago
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts, especially the last three, are a large part of the fame of
Socrates, the reason he is an exemplar of the wise man to this day. He asked annoying questions, he rejected
material...
Josh Thompson
How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We...
over a year ago
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We discussed two things:
asking good questions
having a good workflow
After the session, I promised an overview of what we discussed. Here’s that overview for “Asking good questions”....
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy
Entries to the March writing prompt.
8 months ago
Entries to the March writing prompt.
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…
This Space
Blood Knowledge by Kirsty Gunn
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem"...
a month ago
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem" said Muriel Spark, adding by explanation: "The longer they become, the more they seem to lose value". We might wonder then if the most value is to be found in the shortest novels,...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early, Part 3
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep...
over a year ago
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep log, to track trends. Fortunately, I did not intend to try to wake up early, because I didn’t.
Here’s what I learned in the last three weeks:
Benadryl messes with your ability to...
Ben Borgers
The Code That Keeps Me Alive
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'By Studying Little Things'
“He advised
me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”
So did my high-school
English...
5 months ago
“He advised
me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”
So did my high-school
English teacher two centuries later. Boswell took Dr. Johnson’s advice and
later mined the resulting journal when assembling his Life of Johnson (1791). Much of Boswell’s London Journal...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appear to the Public to be Some Sort of Miracle'
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both...
5 months ago
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both [Robert] Koch and spermine, and I praise the Lord. Kochines, spermines,
etc. all appear to the public to be some sort of miracle that has sprung
unexpectedly from someone’s head like...
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
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive'
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making...
a year ago
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making concentration on other things difficult. . . . I wish I could tune the news out. But
the stakes for the future of Israel and of Jewish life generally are too great
for me to be...
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Georgeade as a Summer Drink'
While
looking for something else I blundered on an Anglo-American writer and cartoonist
new to me...
a year ago
While
looking for something else I blundered on an Anglo-American writer and cartoonist
new to me whose name and one-time popularity long ago evaporated: Oliver Herford (1860-1935), author, co-author and illustrator of more than sixty books
for adults and children. There was a...
This Space
39 Books: 2010
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad."
By this time I had given up reviewing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Is Not Dead'
Sadness
nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories
abound. We...
a week ago
Sadness
nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories
abound. We underestimate ourselves when it comes to emotional capacity. Only
the insane know one emotion at a time, which is why bliss and clinical
depression are rare states and why Joseph...
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence
"We make our lives by what we love."
7 months ago
"We make our lives by what we love."
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?'
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland...
4 months ago
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France.
This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits
annihilation and destruction....
The American Scholar
We Are the Borg
Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us?
The post We Are the Borg appeared first on...
7 months ago
Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us?
The post We Are the Borg appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Back in the Saddle
There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your...
over a year ago
There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your ability to switch tasks to another project diminishes.
There’s plenty of evidence that humans can’t multi-task, and those who try just end up doing a lot of things poorly.
On the...
Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour...
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters
from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help
book, one of the founding self-help books.
The Meditations of...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
7 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
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."
The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water?
The post...
7 months ago
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water?
The post Downstream of Fukushima appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
3 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Richly, Sometimes Dreamily, Melodic'
A friend has
given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt...
9 months ago
A friend has
given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt and Co., 1930), with a printed note
before the title page:
“Three
hundred copies of ‘Poems for Children’ have been specially printed and bound,
and have been signed by the...
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
a year ago
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series, “Misery Acres,” a withering expose of fraud.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War Had Won'
“The war had
taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the
destined...
a year ago
“The war had
taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the
destined anguish’ - revealed itself gradually and became a presence in his
poetry for the rest of his life.”
Margi
Blunden, speaking in 2014, is remembering her father, the poet and Great...
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...
over a year ago
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others.
A question came up recently:
My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical
literature. I had never heard of him, partly
because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean
satire” even though...
This Space
39 Books: 1985
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When Young Men Go to Die'
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I...
7 months ago
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I was a kid and often fired
my brother’s pellet gun. My experience with firearms is entirely second- or
third-hand via the movies, which give me the illusion that I know...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poem Calls For a Formal Reading'
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized...
6 months ago
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized solipsism makes it difficult for me to breathe. Sugary adulation induces
diabetic comas. Free verse is emetic and I’m allergic to hipsters but Thursday
evening I broke my vow and went...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Have Part of His Life to Himself'
“I am not
obliged to do any more.”
Retirement
is my choice. For most of my life I assumed I would...
a week ago
“I am not
obliged to do any more.”
Retirement
is my choice. For most of my life I assumed I would drop dead at the keyboard in my office, mid-sentence,
but next week I retire. I have always enjoyed work, the
sense of contributing something to an enterprise, no matter how...
The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V...
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
a month ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,...
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read,...
3 weeks ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by
Charlotte Lennox. I had not read it, so
I trailed along.
An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her
brain addled by novels:
From...
Josh Thompson
My terminal setup
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....
over a year ago
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post.
Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup.
First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...
The Elysian
This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation
Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
a week ago
Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and...
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
sbensu
Creative kernels
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
6 months ago
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
The American Scholar
“Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality
"Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
a week ago
"Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
3 months ago
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
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
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds...
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
4 months ago
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me...
a year ago
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face
as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part.
The pathos and grandeur of these...
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
11 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015.
for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
Ben Borgers
Apple Credit Card Rewards
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
10 months ago
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
5 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Exhausted By Their Long Dying'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it...
a year ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it passionate and grief-stricken,
spoken by well-educated, middle-class Jewish characters in New York City
shortly after World War II. Chief among the title’s Shadows are the victims of the...
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...
Josh Thompson
Upgrade your job
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet
another email...
over a year ago
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet
another email I sent to a friend, recorded here.
Hi [redacted],
First I want to highlight is that flexible/remote jobs are
just like normal jobs, but more people want them, so the companies...
The American Scholar
The Given Child
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The...
7 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance...
a year ago
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World'
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility....
5 months ago
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the
end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined
to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
Josh Thompson
Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something...
7 months ago
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then.
Cut forward to...
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff`
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API.
One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it.
I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
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...
Josh Thompson
Learn to Type - Again
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve...
over a year ago
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve learned from learning Colemak
Short, focused practice yields great results.
When I start a timer for twenty minutes, I feel a sense of urgency, rather than defeat. Time boxing...
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
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...
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
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...
This Space
39 Books: 2011
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth.
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night. The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example.
Hippias is...
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.
sbensu
Twitter's Sith and Jedi
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can...
11 months ago
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can reach. But when they lean into hate, they lose their soul to it. Twitter offers the same bargain as the Force.
The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom'
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944...
3 months ago
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with
ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising
here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
Josh Thompson
Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994)
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the...
over a year ago
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...
sbensu
APIs as ladders
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
7 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
The American Scholar
Jason Middlebrook
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Five and Ten Cent Store'
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays,...
a month ago
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays, including
Thanksgiving Day: “My needs are small, I buy ’em all / At the five and ten cent
store. / Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for.” Bing Crosby, a serious Roman
Catholic, introduced “I’ve Got...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Courage to Face Reality Squarely'
I’m flying to
Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has
already...
5 months ago
I’m flying to
Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has
already metastasized and he’s in the Cleveland Clinic, waiting to be admitted to
their hospice program. Ken turned sixty-nine in April and is two and a half
years younger than me. My...
Steven Scrawls
Not As Giants Love
Not As Giants Love
Short story, ~2000 words
A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I...
6 months ago
Not As Giants Love
Short story, ~2000 words
A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I thought the
most painful thing you could’ve said was no. I don’t know if you
remember, but when you said “Of course I still love you” and asked if
I still loved you, I started to...
Robert Caro
In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars...
a year ago
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars from people who cannot afford it.
This Space
Favourite books 2021
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
Josh Thompson
Benchmarking a page protected by a login with Apache Benchmark
I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and...
over a year ago
I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and concepts from Nate’s book and working on applying the lessons to the app I work on in my day job.
I had a chance to attend Nate’s workshop in Denver a few days ago, as well; while...
The American Scholar
From Las Cosas Nuevas by Ennio Moltedo
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Grand Marxist Stalin Did Ten In'
In one of
the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990,...
3 weeks ago
In one of
the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990, 2008), Robert Conquest (1917-2015)
writes matter-of-factly: “We are told in recent Soviet articles that on 12
December 1937 alone, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned 3,167 death...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Masochism Afoot in Modern Aesthetics'
“Is there a
kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull
acquire...
5 months ago
“Is there a
kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull
acquire significance simply because the beaten spirit would seem to claim more
seriousness than a more robust struggle with the exigencies of things?”
This
elegantly crafted question, at...
Josh Thompson
Cancel Your Cable. Seriously.
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to...
over a year ago
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to waste.
Time
Energy
Money can be earned, and if more is needed, you can spend less or earn more. Energy is what you need to bring ideas to fruition. Unlimited time with no energy gets you nowhere, as...
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles.
Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night.
You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep.
You
can...
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
6 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has...
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of
lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from
the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote...
"War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
11 months ago
"War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being."
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,...
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods
A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
sbensu
Designing for support teams
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
11 months ago
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.
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Be Able to Call It a Poem'
A few poets
are born into each generation. A measure of the rareness of their gift is...
6 days ago
A few poets
are born into each generation. A measure of the rareness of their gift is the
proliferation of wannabes who make poetic gestures, relish the title “poet” and
write undistinguished prose. I was given an issue of American Poetry Review, a magazine I
haven’t looked at in...
Ben Borgers
Read the Dang Thing Out Loud
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er)
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to...
over a year ago
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to a stranger and say “Excuse me, sir, I noticed that your poor belaying is totally crippling your climber’s ability to try hard, and actively eliminating any hope you had of...
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...
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing)
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing:
what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently
I feel...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'New Eyes Each Year'
From 1955
until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin worked as a librarian at the Brynmor
Jones Library...
10 months ago
From 1955
until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin worked as a librarian at the Brynmor
Jones Library at the University of Hull, eventually becoming its director.
Although Larkin complained about the time-consuming nature of the job, taking
him away from poetry and other writing,...
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory'
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
2 months ago
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older
contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and
the 117-line title poem appeared in The
Massachusetts Review in 1970....
This Space
39 Books: 2007
When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I...
7 months ago
When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I write about a 350-page novel last read 17 years ago without taking several days to reread it? Answer: not at all, so I started reading. What good fortune! How well Hugo Wilcken...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books in the Running Brooks'
One of my
favorite literary analogies:
“The work of
a correct and regular writer is a garden...
11 months ago
One of my
favorite literary analogies:
“The work of
a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently
planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of
Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower
in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long'
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
9 months ago
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It’s a symptom-less and in most cases benign
disorder, but it can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. It means I see my
oncologist once a...
Josh Thompson
On Friction
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...
over a year ago
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want.
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on.
One of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ill-Assorted Collection'
A friend has
broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty
emails in...
2 months ago
A friend has
broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty
emails in her direction. As prose they are better than average. There have been
no threats of violence and little profanity. The ex’s weapon of choice is a
detailed critique of every aspect...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Pristine Caldera of Consonants'
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I...
6 months ago
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I got to explain its etymology. The word for the subatomic particle was
coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who borrowed it from Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster
Mark!”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows'
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little
frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
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 American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
'Steeplejacks Top Out the Chrysler Building,'
A friend
sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England.
I had never...
6 months ago
A friend
sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England.
I had never heard of Fred Dibnah, practitioner of a trade I didn’t know was still
extant: steeplejack. In the words of the OED:
“a person who climbs steeples or tall chimneys to repair them.”...
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book)
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
a month ago
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
Ben Borgers
How You Perceive the World
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'. . . Or That He Did Not'
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older...
6 months ago
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older texts can identify historical figures and help us decipher obsolete words. As
Joyce advised in the Wake: “Wipe your
glosses with what you know.” My preference with Shakespeare...
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in a daily fidelity."
Ben Borgers
It's Fun to Do Things with Care
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2013
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right:
Real...
This Space
39 Books in one
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books:...
7 months ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books: PDF
As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details.
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure
in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure
in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to
revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the
project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
The American Scholar
Bridges
The post Bridges appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post Bridges appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t:
I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it.
I felt like nothing I...
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...
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Poets'
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all...
a year ago
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all you’re your friends like jazz it will present no problem.”
It’s
December 14, 1963, and Philip Larkin is reviewing an assortment of releases for
the Daily Telegraph in time for...
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house)
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
4 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives
The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Why Worry About Incorrigible Claude?
...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are'
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his...
3 months ago
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’
but his honesty, his complete
leveling with the reader.”
I tried a
little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Off to Welter and Waste'
The
Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the
Night of the...
a year ago
The
Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the
Night of the Murdered Poets, and he wasn’t among them. In the final stanza of his
poem “About the Jews” (trans. G.S. Smith), dating from the 1950s, Slutsky
writes:
“From the
war I came back safe
So...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
7 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I
saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was
abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
The Elysian
Hint #2
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
The 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish He Would Explain His Explanation'
On this
date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the
latter’s...
9 months ago
On this
date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the
latter’s house in Piccadilly. Earlier, Coleridge had a friend deliver to Byron
a copy of his latest and last play, Zapolya,
and a letter explaining that for the previous fifteen years he had...
Josh Thompson
The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This...
over a year ago
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is:
Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper)
Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...
Josh Thompson
Lay a foundation
Yesterday I mentioned that
low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals.
This is...
over a year ago
Yesterday I mentioned that
low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals.
This is just another way of saying “easy things are easier to do than harder things”. Revelatory, I know.
Similarly,
I wrote a long time ago that:
We tell ourselves we can’t accomplish...
The American Scholar
Femmes Fantastiques
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing
The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing
The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Wuthering...
The endlessly adaptable plays of Plautus - I’ll make it into a comedy with some tragedy mixed in
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy. That they are based on the plays of...
a year ago
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy. That they are based on the plays of Menander and the other Greek New Comedy writers was irrelevant, since all of those texts were soon lost. Plautus (and his successor Terence) carried the stage traditions, the...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in...
7 months ago
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in stories and suggested that some stories might explore
certain questions not because those questions are interesting, but
because engaging with those questions allows the story to...
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
5 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten
The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Ben Borgers
It Does Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves?
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle'
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of...
8 months ago
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir
Nabokov on May 6, 1923:
“No, life is
no quivering quandary!
Here under
the moon things are bright and dewy.
We are...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks. A medical deadline approaches. That will help.
As usual, I read good books.
PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP
Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
Wuthering...
The Bacchae by Euripides - O gods, I see the greatest grief there is.
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive...
over a year ago
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive Euripides was, he did not write a play quite at the level of Agamemnon or Oedipus the King, at least until his brief exile in Macedon, where he wrote The Bacchae just before his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words'
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely...
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s
novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I
noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
The Marginalian
William James on Love
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
9 months ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist?
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the...
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did.
Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'No Secret Element of Gusto Warms Up the Sermon'
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck...
a month ago
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck does not. A.J. Liebling has it. Woodward and Bernstein have never
heard of it. Gusto is taking pleasure in the job at hand. About writers it
suggests energy and enjoyment in playing...
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: October
This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get...
over a year ago
This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get right to it. If you don’t want to read a lot of introspective Josh, stop reading. I use the word “I” dozens of times. Consider yourself warned.
For a long time I have feared life...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration'
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn...
a year ago
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn to for comfort, solace, inspiration.” The reviewer identifies a slightly
different category, “the books we find ourselves crazy about and hope to
revisit someday,” as distinguished,...
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Josh Thompson
Growing in your first software development job
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously...
over a year ago
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like:
I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the...
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
6 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools'
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in...
3 months ago
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often
discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which
eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Empty Heart is Full at Length'
Two-hundred-fifty
years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made
their...
a year ago
Two-hundred-fifty
years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made
their grand tour of Scotland, including the Hebrides, and both would
publish accounts of their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland appeared in...
The Marginalian
How to Befriend Time: The Gospel of Pete Seeger and Nina Simone
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
a year ago
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction
...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Favourable Enough for a Writer'
Jules Renard
writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:
“I am in no
great hurry to see the...
a year ago
Jules Renard
writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:
“I am in no
great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a
writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it
nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men...
Wuthering...
On Great Writing by Longinus - But greatness appears suddenly; like a thunderbolt it carries all...
I will deposit my notes on On Great Writing, which is either a 3rd century text by Longinus, one of...
over a year ago
I will deposit my notes on On Great Writing, which is either a 3rd century text by Longinus, one of the great scholars and rhetoricians of his time, or was written earlier and is by someone else. Who knows. I will call the author Longinus, and call the work On the Sublime, the...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely Cultivated and Painstakingly Honest'
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as...
a month ago
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections
(1955), Marianne Moore writes as good an apologia for her manner of writing, among others, as I’ve ever encountered:
“Silence is
more eloquent than speech – a truism; but sometimes something that someone...
Josh Thompson
Input metrics vs. Output metrics
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something.
If you’re working on any...
over a year ago
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something.
If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come
slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all.
So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me.
I don’t believe...
Escaping Flatland
Relationships are coevolutionary loops
Looking for Alice, part 3
a year ago
Looking for Alice, part 3
ben-mini
The Inner Game of Tennis
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the...
2 months ago
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the book explores how the thoughts of an athlete affect their game. It’s lauded as being at the forefront of what we now call “sports psychology”. Although my competitive sports days...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sodding Good and Touching Was the Poem'
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his...
11 months ago
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his first and finest novel, Lucky
Jim. Three days later, Philip Larkin completed “Born Yesterday” (The Less Deceived, 1955) and dedicated it
to the little girl:
“Tightly-folded
bud,
I...
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here.
Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around.
Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
An Ecology of Intimacies
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of...
9 months ago
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, undergirded by a mycelial web of trust and tenderness. One is profoundly changed by it and yet becomes more purely oneself as projections give way to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Artist Knows He Is Ready'
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds...
8 months ago
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds as though he seizes up when he sits down at the keyboard. To
call his condition “writer’s block” would be premature. He’s too inexperienced
for that to be happening already. The...
The American Scholar
The Redoubtable Bull Shark
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared...
8 months ago
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia
An update about my life and artistic process.
6 months ago
An update about my life and artistic process.
Ben Borgers
How Recurring Tasks in War Room Work
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Becoming an Early Riser
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to...
over a year ago
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to hear about when being awoken by their parents
Getting out of bed is a struggle. I’ve spent the better part of twenty four years setting my alarm as late as possible so I could have...
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear."
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
4 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism?
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected...
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online
On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
9 months ago
On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gleams Like a Warm Homestead Light'
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as...
2 months ago
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as Martial:
“In private
she mourns not the late-lamented;
If someone’s
by, her tears leap forth on call.
Sorrow, my
dear, is not so easily rented.
They are
true tears that without witness...
The American Scholar
“I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Given Us to Keep Is Lost'
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the...
7 months ago
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the opposite end of Massachusetts, near Lee in the Berkshires. I was there to
interview Paul Metcalf (1917-99) and his wife Nancy for my newspaper in the
summer of 1988. Paul was a...
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s.
I know that some people like to complain about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Enormous Yes'
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is...
5 months ago
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is my eleven-year-old Nissan. When
I play a CD, I listen and never treat
it as background. I hate the idea of music as ambient filler, a second
atmosphere. My youngest son plays music...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang'
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
3 months ago
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to
my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a
young man asked if he...
Robert Caro
Robert Caro on the Art of Biography
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first...
a year ago
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar'
When high
summer arrives -- in Texas, long before this
Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
6 months ago
When high
summer arrives -- in Texas, long before this
Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where we bought our
first house and lived for seven years. The Saratoga Race Course was less than a
mile away. So were Yaddo and Broadway, the main drag downtown. We...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Important Medium''
I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should
embarrass me. When I went to college...
3 months ago
I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should
embarrass me. When I went to college and someone asked where I came from, invariably
I said “Cleveland” not “Parma Heights,” a suburb on the West Side of that city.
By age seventeen I was already sensitive to the...
The American Scholar
Snow!
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Oaks That Were Acorns That Were Oaks'
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like...
a year ago
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like slow hail. The crop this year is prodigious. The
patio is covered with them, more than the squirrels can keep up with. Stomping on them make a satisfying crack/pop sound. I’ve...
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
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed...
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
11 months ago
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art
history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid. The book is of the highest interest, and is a
long way from the catalogue of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers'
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it...
10 months ago
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should
equal Argus his Eyes . . .”
The first surgery
on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about!
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead. In what may be the most...
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of...
4 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Role Is a Role Worth Perfecting'
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than...
11 months ago
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than he does of death. But that sort of free man is no more than a dead
man; he is free only from life’s wellspring, lacking in love, a slave to his
freedom. The thought that I must...
The American Scholar
Look Out!
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
A greeting
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
a year ago
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas day, sometime in the 1570s, he was out walking when he came upon a rose that had, in the blistering cold, put forth a flower. It was a hellebore, a winter rose. Moved by the...
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."
The American Scholar
Insisting on the Positive
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The...
4 months ago
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
4 months ago
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
2 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five
volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel.
I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it,
but in a sense I did finish a...
The Marginalian
2,000 Years of Kindness
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
a year ago
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Chevengur'
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published...
a year ago
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published in the Wall Street Journal.
Josh Thompson
Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100%...
over a year ago
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100% ineffective.
I discussed with a friend the other day why they should switch from Yahoo to Gmail, and how to reduce the useless emails they receive. Below is how I suggested they move from...
Josh Thompson
Build a Personal Website in Jekyll - A Detailed Guide For First-Timers
You’re a turing student, in the backend program.
You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but...
over a year ago
You’re a turing student, in the backend program.
You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but everyone who says
go start a blog
Seems to also think you have 10 hours (or 20 hours? or 2 hours? how long does this take) to sit around dealing with setting up a personal website.
Lets...
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
5 months ago
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are
“shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that
his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of
“profound...
Wuthering...
How Ivan Bunin and Vasily Grossman spent the war - He was in the countryside then for the last time...
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of...
3 months ago
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of Russian literature: Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur
(1929 /1972, tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) in the Gogolian and
Dostoyevskian strand, Ivan Bunin’s Dark Avenues (1943/1946)...
The American Scholar
“The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are
interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than
the alternatives?
Trope: The Chosen One
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not More Respected, Though Less Loved'
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s...
a year ago
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s birthplace
and the butt of many jokes by the former. The journey lasted eighty-three days
and both men published books recounting their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands...
Wuthering...
My cancer - "It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is."
Liver cancer. That
was a surprise. I knew something was
wrong, but I was not expecting that.
Since...
a year ago
Liver cancer. That
was a surprise. I knew something was
wrong, but I was not expecting that.
Since the diagnosis last summer, since it was known for a
fact that I had something serious, things have moved fast. It has been like boarding a train. Once in motion there is no way...
The Marginalian
Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman...
5 months ago
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman exulted in his ode to the “puzzle of puzzles” we call Being. How puzzling indeed, and how miraculous, that of the cold silence of spacetime voice emerged, in all its warm loveliness —...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent'
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I
put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
a month ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I
put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby
is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that
most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30...
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music
"Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
a year ago
"Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything came."
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby.
It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
a month ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
Josh Thompson
A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...
over a year ago
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey.
In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories:
What went well
What didn’t go well
What I might have...
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the...
a year ago
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."
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