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Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the... Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever: 0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet. They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death" More than any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of an...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
More than any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane, metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
The American Scholar
Moondance Experience the marvel that is The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on Including me
a year ago
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
Josh Thompson
Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing? A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it. This is an odd...
The Elysian
I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Immense Special Talent' D.G. Myers and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see his...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
D.G. Myers and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see his oncologist. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and talked for hours, then I drove him to the hospital. He gave me the Library of America’s collection of Henry James’ writings on...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bluster (New Style) Invokes the Public Good' I write about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand that...
a year ago
14
a year ago
I write about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand that research can be costly and professors don’t work for the love of it, but money has become the barometer of worth. Small grants can be ignored regardless of the intrinsic worth of the...
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path” Three new prompts The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School' When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
11
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
The American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt The fabric of life The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose' “Where did you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”  Creating anything...
7 months ago
40
7 months ago
“Where did you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”  Creating anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty and impose it on others; humility because...
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Him a Favor By Taking His Money' Of all things, I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second Story...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Of all things, I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second Story Books in that city earlier this week. The volumes in the outdoor stalls are priced at $4 each. My friend collects Lionel Trilling and he found a copy of Of This Time, Of That Place...
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation "There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com. This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...
This Space
39 Books: 1998 I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
8 months ago
53
8 months ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - The Way of The Superior Man There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that The Way of the...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that The Way of the Superior Man has. Even though it was first published more than twenty years ago, its message could not be more fitting for heterosexual men trying to navigate the intricacies of being...
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?' “What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
“What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life...
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019 I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are. Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
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
59
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.
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
4 months ago
4
4 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out' Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted....
6 months ago
27
6 months ago
Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend, respect the reader’s intelligence....
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Elysian
Further reading on employee ownership My notes from the margins of my research.
4 months ago
This Space
Literature likes to hide Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's...
a year ago
78
a year ago
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's first book, published in 1954. It is difficult to find a copy now but you can download a digital version of the book via the link. The opening chapter is a 50-page study of "Tintern...
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
55
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
"A Fury of Self-Deception, Malice, and Conceit' There’s no getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the collective,...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
There’s no getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the collective, could carry on this way? An innocent question or observation prompts a sonic explosion. I’m unable to get that angry and loud so quickly. Perhaps if my family were threatened....
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the... "I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Ben Borgers
Heart Reacts
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Entirely Sure That I Like It' On March 27, 1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the United...
9 months ago
32
9 months ago
On March 27, 1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the United States when he wrote a letter to a little-known poet living in Boston:  Dear Mr. Robinson: I have enjoyed your poems especially The Children of the Night so much that I must write to...
Wuthering...
Jeremy Denk plays Charles Ives and Blind Tom Wiggins - a pleasing conjunction of Wuthering... More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures. Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox,...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures. Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of insurance executive Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata (c. 1913).  It was a pleasing congruence of Wuthering Expectations themes.  I have nothing...
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas... Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 weeks ago
24
2 weeks ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Carry on With the Business of the Day' Beware of “nature poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding...
4 months ago
46
4 months ago
Beware of “nature poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding epiphanies. Perhaps our finest nature poet is Yvor Winters. A basic understanding of biology is useful in discouraging pantheism and other forms of fashionable nature mysticism.  We...
ribbonfarm
The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5...
8 months ago
4
8 months ago
My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5 most successful memes) is featured in this cute little collectible book, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet put together by Yancey Strickler (whom you may have heard of as the...
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
8 months ago
5
8 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
The American Scholar
Un Tinto The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State This cooperative could be its own country.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
Couch Guy
over a year ago
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
11
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...
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
66
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...
Josh Thompson
Whole Messages in Slack I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy,...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy, #DenverDevs). My last job, I used Slack. The job before that, I got the whole company on Slack. I’ve used it for years. Slack delivers value to me, and induces little anxiety, and...
The American Scholar
Going for Gold Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten The post...
5 months ago
37
5 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
3 months ago
45
3 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
Ben Borgers
Instagram’s Lifespan
over a year ago
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is. We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Dead in Their Silences Keep Me in Memory' Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels and stories. I remember chancing on The Castle at the public library in the mid-sixties, knowing nothing about Kafka. Only now do I appreciate the debts incurred – to Kafka, to the Muirs....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dubious or Questionable Medium' In 1972, Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested poems “protesting the acceleration of the...
11 months ago
41
11 months ago
In 1972, Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested poems “protesting the acceleration of the undeclared Indo-Chinese War” for a special issue to be published in September of that year. Hine said he would be “grateful to consider any poem on this terrible and topical subject...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season... "There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and...
2 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Authenticity as dialogue John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
a month ago
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative? We're asking the wrong questions.
a month ago
The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Someone Who Could Never Be a Peasant' I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov,...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, already one of my favorite writers. Alter’s contribution was “Invitation to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics,” which Nabokov later described as “practically flawless.” A...
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
9 months ago
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection “To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
8 months ago
61
8 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
The Marginalian
From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer "I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
4 months ago
The Marginalian
Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular chance-constellation of atoms has never before existed and will never again recur in the history of the universe. The fact of each such singularity is a wonder...
The American Scholar
Mystery Solved! The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House ...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922 A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes,...
a year ago
61
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century, perhaps written when Seneca was in...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Preparing to adopt a habit There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work. Almost as many...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light' Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten than the others, though in 1939 he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everything is Singing, Blooming and Sparkling' In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no...
8 months ago
45
8 months ago
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no interest in “reviews, conversations about literature, gossip, successes, failures, high royalties,” and adds: “[I]n short, I’ve become a damn fool. My soul seems to be stagnating. I...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Writes On, Day After Day' Clipped from the New York Times, folded and tucked into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was the March...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Clipped from the New York Times, folded and tucked into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was the March 11, 1976 obituary for L.E. Sissman. The poet had died the previous day, age forty-eight. On the same page is the obituary for the Italian politician Attilio Piccioni, dead the same...
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
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Winter Came in August Killing Fruit and Seed' A sad and sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
A sad and sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The American Scholar:  “Edward Case’s work has appeared in various journals, including the New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, and Modern Age. This poem was taken from a collection of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Which Is Spent in a Kind of Limbo' A reader has taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis Wyndham...
a year ago
12
a year ago
A reader has taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis Wyndham (1924-2017), and reports she’s enjoying herself. “I see a little Henry James in his stories,” she writes, “but he’s really not like anybody else.” Exactly right.   Wyndham’s writing...
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual + reading recommendations
11 months ago
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting... The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
37
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets Who Are Plain and Gladsome' Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses...
9 months ago
36
9 months ago
Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses (“Books are a load of crap”). It’s certain to rile the pompous and pretentious, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the sputtering. I’ve happened on a first-rate anthology of...
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
Ben Borgers
Three People Talking
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers).  Both movements were popular in the Roman Republic as...
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
57
a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher, independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible.  The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds is not much help.  But luckily we have Xenophon, a close...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Pick Up a Machete and Start Exploring' A splendid day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard Nemerov...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
A splendid day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard Nemerov (1920) and Richard Wilbur (1921). I’m reminded of how important contemporary American writers were to me when I was young, in the 60s and 70s. Everything was new and promising, and I...
This Space
The end of something Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike...
a year ago
55
a year ago
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike Magazine (not to be confused with Spiked), which I helped to found when the world wide web was forming, and to comment on the direction online literary culture had taken. By that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November' The final stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
The final stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the Ruins (1950):  “We enter again November; cold late light  Glazes the field, a little fever of love,  Held in numbed hands, admires the false gods;  While lonely on this coast the...
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018 Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on 2017 thoughts on going into 2018 book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
The Marginalian
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living "The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and...
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 358 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture' My tutelary spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from Hodgkin...
5 months ago
34
5 months ago
My tutelary spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from Hodgkin lymphoma at age forty-eight. Out in the hall I spoke with three oncologists  after they had yet again examined my brother. I asked the question no one had yet asked: How much time does...
The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
44
a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist literature": this year's choice is a collection of lectures delivered in the early 1960s at the University of Zürich, published in English translation in 1970, with this edition being...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief' With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
2 weeks ago
19
2 weeks ago
With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
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
4
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
A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey. In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories: What went well What didn’t go well What I might have...
Ben Borgers
elk.sh
over a year ago
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
43
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...
Ben Borgers
I Run My Life on Reminders
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Sōseki's Kokoro and two Tanizaki genre exercises - I resolved that I must live my life as if I were... It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days...
a year ago
33
a year ago
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days for some reason we “challenged” people to read – which reminded me, as it often has, that I have never read anything by Natsumi Sōseki, the earliest of the greatest 20th century...
The American Scholar
Our Pets, Our Plates In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
52
a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Maintaining a Stable and Orderly Civilization' On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves and reorganized the volumes, one of our cats leaped into an open cupboard in the kitchen. One of the four pegs supporting the middle shelf was missing and Trane’s weight tipped it enough so a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End' In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult,...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m visiting my brother in hospice. No...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Close to the Caliber of Mark Twain' I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The American Enterprise. The author of the three...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The American Enterprise. The author of the three volumes of The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974) was asked by Bill Kauffman about the scarcity of politicians who are today capable of formulating their own coherent let alone eloquent...
The Perry Bible...
The Hare and the Tortoise The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stimulated to Vigour and Activity' When John Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small volumes of...
8 months ago
30
8 months ago
When John Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small volumes of Dr. Johnson’s Rambler and Idler essays. In his peculiar memoir Praeterita (1885), Ruskin tells us “had it not been for constant reading of the Bible, I might probably have...
The American Scholar
Caprock Adventures worth the silence The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Software Seems Resilient
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision” Three prompts The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Originality, Learning, Acuteness, Terseness of Style' Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in...
11 months ago
22
11 months ago
Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in dress, some in polity, some in language.”  John Horne Tooke: “I wonder whether they invented the choice appellations you have just repeated.”   Johnson: “No, sir! Indignant wise men...
Ben Borgers
Class Council: “Brutally Honest”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Look for Truth, for Knowledge, for Wisdom' “The library is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors of...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“The library is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors of the humanities, at any rate--as much as students, are the creatures of the library. Just as the laboratory is the domain of the sciences, so the library is the domain of the...
Josh Thompson
RailsConf CFP Outline I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit rushed: Idea 1: “Junior” Developers are the Solution to Many of Your Problems Abstract: Our industry telegraphs: “We don’t want (or know how to handle) ‘Jr. Devs’.” Jr. Devs, or as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Stand for the Unacademic' “I stand for the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.” As do most of the better sort among writers and...
9 months ago
18
9 months ago
“I stand for the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.” As do most of the better sort among writers and readers. Something vital was lost when the profs colonized and laid claim to literature. John Gross puts it like this in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969; rev. ed....
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
4
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...
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
9 months ago
6
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...
This Space
The withdrawal of the novel We are subjected to that which does not exist        Simone Weil When an old friend who...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
We are subjected to that which does not exist        Simone Weil When an old friend who has drunk deep from the puddle of the New Atheism complained on social media that religious people believe things that are “inventions, fairy stories, not real, made up", I was...
The American Scholar
“The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on...
8 months ago
28
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on The American Scholar.
ben-mini
Building FirstMover I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly...
3 months ago
6
3 months ago
I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly all of them pointed me to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned NYC real estate search platform. Some of my more Type-A friends gave me extra helpful advice: Narrow your search to 2-4...
Wuthering...
Please read the Roman plays with me (although not all of them) - Plautus, Terence, Seneca Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the...
over a year ago
55
over a year ago
Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the surviving Roman plays to remind myself what they are like.  Twenty-six comedies and ten tragedies have survived.  I read about half of them long ago and plan to reread fewer than...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of 2023 To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of...
a year ago
16
a year ago
To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night. While the literature of the present comprises only a tiny fraction of my own reading, here are a...
The Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
a month ago
29
a month ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
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
58
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...
Josh Thompson
STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak. QWERTY...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak. QWERTY has problems. Here are a few, shamelessly borrowed from Colemak.com It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more. It suffers from a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Are Wary of My Plain-speaking' A reader alerts me to a parlor game proposed by The Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my...
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
A reader alerts me to a parlor game proposed by The Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my younger self had read? Julian Barnes suggests volumes devoted to “the true nature of war, empire and race,” which sounds a bit like retrospective virtue-signaling. William Boyd’s...
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
48
6 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along' “Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
“Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World' “His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course,...
a year ago
15
a year ago
“His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let the Words Glide Through the Air' Some years ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly...
a year ago
33
a year ago
Some years ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly Estate: The Religious Poetry of Patrick Kavanagh (The Columba Press, Dublin, 2002) by Father Tom Stack. I was grateful because it sent me back to the Irish poet (1904-67) who seems...
The American Scholar
“The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
41
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
81
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False' In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells...
a year ago
13
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief!  When I get home, I pour out my treasures into the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Poem Becomes Molten with Activity' I’m in debt to anthologies for much of my education. When you’re young and hungry and everything is...
a year ago
13
a year ago
I’m in debt to anthologies for much of my education. When you’re young and hungry and everything is new, such collections are like well-stocked cafeterias. You push your tray down the line and sample what looks good. Once seated, if a friend recommends a dish you avoided, you can...
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own. Previous reviews: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 My review breaks down into a few broad categories: Travel Relationships & Community Leadville Trail...
The Marginalian
What Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art... "We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
a year ago
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
20
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...
Blog -...
Welcome to Anchor Point Blog I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be a solo journey. Through this blog men can connect to resources that will help to enhance their personal development. Many of these resources have deeply impacted my growth, and...
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
5 months ago
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed... Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
11 months ago
25
11 months ago
Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid.  The book is of the highest interest, and is a long way from the catalogue of...
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
ribbonfarm
Ribbonfarm is Retiring After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be...
This Space
Drowning is Fine by Darren Allen For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born...
over a year ago
42
over a year ago
For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born in 1932 to a German-speaking Jewish family in what was also Paul Celan’s hometown, Czernowitz, then in Romania, now in Ukraine, and who wrote exclusively in Hebrew after he had...
The American Scholar
This Woman’s Work Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared...
3 months ago
25
3 months ago
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2002 The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5. Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
Ben Borgers
Novel Food
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Did MCAS Matter?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Least Appealing Aspects of Our Species' The twentieth century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
The twentieth century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances were extraordinary – antibiotics, insulin, the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Airplanes, television, computers, space exploration. And yet Guy Davenport was not being needlessly morbid when he...
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel fragments
5 months ago
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
38
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
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects' Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Landscape in One Word!' “When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone,...
a month ago
24
a month ago
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone, that is more than enough.” Enough for what? Probably to have established a minimum standard of decency and contentment. Jules Renard (1864-1910) is no stuffy moralist. There’s...
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Heart of Semi-Darkness A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The...
4 months ago
31
4 months ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself "What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find Other Things Which We Liked Better' One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and asked if...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and asked if he wished to join them at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street in London. Johnson was “indisposed” and Goldsmith said, “[W]e will not go to the Mitre to-night, since we cannot have the...
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
46
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes.  Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted. The conceit is as usual excellent.  Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Less Energy to Do Wrong' On his thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal: “Thirty years...
10 months ago
18
10 months ago
On his thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal: “Thirty years old! Now I’m convinced I shall not escape death.”  At thirty I was still immortal, blundering through life, plan-less but confident I could transcend mere death. I don’t remember my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learn’d to Dance' Alexander Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:  “At length, my Friend (while Time, with...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
Alexander Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:  “At length, my Friend (while Time, with still career, Wafts on his gentle wing his eightieth year), Sees his past days safe out of Fortune’s power, Nor dreads approaching Fate’s uncertain hour; Reviews his life, and in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope' Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of...
4 months ago
18
4 months ago
Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century, the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chronic Independence of Mind' “A chronic independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly been safer...
a month ago
18
a month ago
“A chronic independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly been safer to praise independence than to exemplify it.”  Bracing words from one of literature’s inveterate outsiders, English poet and critic C.H. Sisson (1914-2003). He’s writing about...
Ben Borgers
60 kHz
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others who did something similar, and discussed all the benefits. I’ve found myself struggling with creating something and then making it public. (Public here, on another project, or at...
Ben Borgers
Cheating on Field Notes
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Right Things in the Right Order' “But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are so well done, but because in each case the artist has arranged exactly the right things in the right order. The choice of subject matter has been at least half of the achievement....
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
56
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Jon Fosse's Septology - art "can only say something while keeping silent about what it actually... Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter...
a month ago
32
a month ago
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand one of his paintings.  Each of the novel’s seven sections begins with Asle looking at the painting: AND I SEE MYSELF STANDING and looking at the picture...
Josh Thompson
Falling into Place I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100%...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100% remote. At my last job, I worked remote regularly, at least one day a week, but the rest of the week, I was in the office. Remote work is becoming established around the world,...
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs Beware of what you actually want.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Word Can Open Like a Tomb to Reveal Its Past' The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the...
9 months ago
35
9 months ago
The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death and he was in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is interred and his sister is speaking to mark the occasion. Wenthe looks...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry' I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
Astral Codex Ten
Links For December 2024 ...
2 weeks ago
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Dream Big, and Build Optionality We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on. But then we go right along doing all the normal...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Soften, Not to Wound My Heart' It may seem unfair to reduce a poet to a single poem but consider the thousands who never wrote even...
a year ago
14
a year ago
It may seem unfair to reduce a poet to a single poem but consider the thousands who never wrote even one memorable line. Take Thomas Gray. His reputation, if any, amounts to “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751). Generations of school children once recited the poem and...
This Space
39 Books: 2014 One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity. This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
The Marginalian
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization "Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous...
a year ago
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a year ago
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but... the prime moral privilege."
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 2) Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave it on such a pessimistic note. First, I commend you both for getting out there. You both invested a lot in making that weekend happen. You acquired the correct tools, and spent...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project' Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:  “The two offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
Ben Borgers
Website Rewrite
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing "Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward...
8 months ago
31
8 months ago
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward the object and envelops it in warm corroboration, uniting us with it and positively affirming its being."
Josh Thompson
Processes Vs. Goals (or, Systems vs. Accomplishments) In this excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
In this excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any specific goals, with the right system, you will still go a long way. This idea has been floating around my head for over a year, now, and I think it’s slowly coalescing into something...
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
39
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
Josh Thompson
A 40 Hour Work Week Business Insider posted an article on why we have a 40 hour work week. The author blames big...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Business Insider posted an article on why we have a 40 hour work week. The author blames big business for why we’ve not dropped below 40 hours per week. He thinks that if America became less consumer-driven, our economy would collapse. He’s got the wrong starting assumptions...
The American Scholar
“To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love "Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both...
a year ago
57
a year ago
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged."
The American Scholar
Femmes Fantastiques Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
15
a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
9 months ago
4
9 months ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection' “This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of...
3 weeks ago
8
3 weeks ago
“This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay but never completely still.”  In their moral and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
Josh Thompson
Issues related to the city of Golden While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden. I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot. Here’s the lot in question: I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...
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
9
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...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese Taking flight The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Make Memory Speak so Volubly' A reader shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First,...
a year ago
15
a year ago
A reader shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First, Kipling’s Kim: “I was twelve. I was very interested in ‘spiritual’ things. It was the Beatles and the Maharishi, you know. I got it from the library and it was love at first sight. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Has Embalmed So Many Eminent Persons' Over the years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns, obituaries,...
9 months ago
28
9 months ago
Over the years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns, obituaries, reviews of books, movies and music – for the newspapers where I worked in Ohio, Indiana and New York. They’re clipped and saved in a chaotic file cabinet. Most, I, like the rest of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Friends They May Become To-morrow' “New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in...
a month ago
17
a month ago
“New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 359 ...
4 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Midst the Pomp and Toil of War' I learned that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never read...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
I learned that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never read poetry. I was a senior in high school. Days before we went to see the Oscar-winning film Patton, he delivered a lecture on the general’s military prowess, anti-Semitism and desire to...
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun Tenderness and grit The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 weeks ago
Ben Borgers
Overwhelmed
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible. Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
The Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world? Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
‘Of Course’ “Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.” —Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Is Some Twentie Sev’rall Men at Least' Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some twentie sev’rall men at least / Each sev’rall houre.” What sounds self-dramatizing in the American simply acknowledges our inconstancy, our fickle nature, in Herbert’s poem “Giddinesse.” In...
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
33
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
Escaping Flatland
The third chair I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality' This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four...
8 months ago
59
8 months ago
This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
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
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details. Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
50
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...
Ben Borgers
The Brain Can Observe Itself
over a year ago
The Elysian
I'm not going to have kids to save the economy Not on my list of reasons to have children.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Till Love and Fame to Nothingness Do Sink' Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.” The reader reads the life of another, reflects on it and applies the lessons he deduces to himself. In the early pages of his...
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Now You Are Elsewhere' I came late to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and promptly fell...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
I came late to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and promptly fell for his charms. Chief among them are elegance, technical virtuosity, wit and devotion to his native turf, Southern California. Like one of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler,...
The Marginalian
The Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking,... "If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of...
a year ago
30
a year ago
"If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of all, that new emotional imagination... begotten of enlarged sympathies and a more sensitive habit of feeling."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change' Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . . When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist' My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
26
7 months ago
My review of William Maxwell’s The Writer As Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
Astral Codex Ten
It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism Responding to a recent essay on wealth inequality in a post-singularity economy
5 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'But There Must Have Been More' One of the unexpected gifts of being young and working as a newspaper reporter was the...
a year ago
11
a year ago
One of the unexpected gifts of being young and working as a newspaper reporter was the giddy sensation of being thrown into life and finally mistaken for an adult. Some of the one-time abstractions – murder, suicide, cancer – become real. Once you’ve interviewed the parents of a...
Steven Scrawls
I want to love fiction I want to love fiction I want to love fiction. I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I...
8 months ago
5
8 months ago
I want to love fiction I want to love fiction. I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I want to obsess over the craft of fiction, to pore over characterization and structure, to create stories that radiate color and humanity and hope. I want fiction to be a tool for...
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
52
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...
Wuthering...
Some lesser works of Sōseki and Tanizaki - deep in the earth directly beneath Lady Kikyō’s toilet Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge.  Amazing, well done, etc. I read...
11 months ago
23
11 months ago
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge.  Amazing, well done, etc. I read some short works for it, which I will pile up here: three short works by Natsume Sōseki, collected in a Tuttle volume that looks like it is titled Ten Nights of Dream Hearing...
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
33
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
The American Scholar
Sheep Jones Swimming below the surface The post Sheep Jones appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
Muted
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - The Island Within With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end,...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end, and perhaps, to the unmindful, no meaning. To those who remain anchored emerges buried treasure from every line. I kept being drawn back in, not as an addiction, but, as I...
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all... When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
39
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair "To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
a year ago
The Marginalian
Some Blessings to Begin with It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are...
a week ago
9
a week ago
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are some gladnesses I have gathered, and two new bird divinations I have made, as a conscious way of consecrating our days with the blessed fact that we weren’t promised any of this —...
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.) Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.) Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
2 weeks ago
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer "When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
17
a year ago
"When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay' “A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says,...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
“A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre to which no reader under sixty...
This Space
The end of literature, part five "Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
61
5 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?” The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Hope This Explanation Is Wrong' One of life’s unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements of...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
One of life’s unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements of words encountered in childhood or youth, and revisited regularly for a lifetime, still inspire delight, while others, in effect, evaporate before we hear them? In the latter...
The American Scholar
Martha Foley’s Granddaughters What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett The...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett The post Martha Foley’s Granddaughters appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Its Masters’ Love Is' The late D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according to some...
6 months ago
45
6 months ago
The late D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according to some aspect of their subject matter. Melville is your go-to cetology guy and Edith Wharton took care of sleds. Or, as Nabokov said of Hemingway’s books: “something about bells, balls and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Express It As Nearly As I Can' Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the...
a month ago
21
a month ago
Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the blogosphere. This would be around 2006, the year I launched Anecdotal Evidence. The proprietor and I exchanged a few emails. He was a reader though his blog was not exclusively devoted...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken' “This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
“This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and understanding, and often still do. The...
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
8 months ago
7
8 months ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Escaping Flatland
Seeing people clearly Head of people operations for the entire friend group
a year ago
Ben Borgers
3:00 a.m. Radio
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Feel With Melancholy Wonder' I was introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies by...
6 months ago
29
6 months ago
I was introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies by Edward Dahlberg, a difficult man who furthered my education. Collected in Epitaphs for Our Time: The Letters of Edward Dahlberg (George Braziller, 1967) are five letters to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful' “There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too...
a month ago
19
a month ago
“There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my sorrows down on the page.”  Janet...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously' “Montaigne is heavy going, it has to be said.”  For once the commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
“Montaigne is heavy going, it has to be said.”  For once the commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature' “We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
“We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the writer of English...
Josh Thompson
Write It Now The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took 2x as long as I wish it had. I could make it 10x better with another hour of work, but I only have 20 minutes. I’m a fan of “conceptual frameworks” This concept has been important...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration' The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
11
a year ago
The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September 1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Talked Down Speechless Death' In my November 1 post I asked, “Does anyone know anything about Edward Case?” I had stumbled on a...
6 days ago
9
6 days ago
In my November 1 post I asked, “Does anyone know anything about Edward Case?” I had stumbled on a gifted poet previously unknown to me who had died in 1985. This week I heard from his son James Case, an architect living in New Jersey, who briefed me on his father and his work....
Josh Thompson
"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling" Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer to sport as “lead” climbing from here on out. Sorry, trad climbers). If someone is enjoying top roping, (or bouldering) why should they take on the work of learning to lead climb,...
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
4
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...
Ben Borgers
5% of things go wrong
a year ago
Robert Caro
Six Books, Six New York Times Book Review Covers Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Don’t See Other People As Peculiar' For my money, the Canadian short story writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is...
12 months ago
16
12 months ago
For my money, the Canadian short story writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is too dull to endure. (Joseph Epstein said of her work: “Humor never obtrudes.”) Born in Montreal, Gallant moved to Europe in 1950, hoping to give up journalism and write fiction....
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine "In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
6 months ago
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
9 months ago
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
How to Move Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen: We both are in process with new jobs I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
This Space
39 Books: 2003 This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
69
7 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter... "Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
a year ago
The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long' Several years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
9 months ago
24
9 months ago
Several years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It’s a symptom-less and in most cases benign disorder, but it can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. It means I see my oncologist once a...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable...
9 months ago
55
9 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable things, but I have limits.  Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post. Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
Josh Thompson
Train Hard When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever) When’s the last time you trained for that activity? Finally: When is the last time you trained for that activity with someone else?...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Scrawls With a Lavish Hand Its Signature' “Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is touched with a light case of hives /...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is touched with a light case of hives / Or wandering gooseflesh.” Carl George is the sort of scientist whose company I most enjoy. He is a generalist, what used to be called a naturalist. Now an emeritus professor of...
Josh Thompson
Krav Maga, or "Crush Balls, Gouge Eyes, and Break Bones" In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was just trying to choke me, but sometimes he was trying to throw me to the ground. After a few minutes of fighting, I would attack him. Then we’d both shake hands, say “thank you”, and...
Josh Thompson
My all-time favorite question to ask people (and why you should ask it too) I met two people yesterday from Colorado, while in Spain. We climbed together yesterday and today,...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I met two people yesterday from Colorado, while in Spain. We climbed together yesterday and today, and Kristi and I had dinner with them. Half way through the meal, I asked my all-time favorite question: If you could go back to twenty five year old you, and tell yourself...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Reticent Humor' “For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“For nearly twenty years after the publication of The Children of the Night in 1896, poetry comprised the only notable American literature.”  A provocative statement that sends one scrambling for counter-examples, which aren’t difficult to find. Between 1896 and 1916 appeared...
Wuthering...
Daryl Hine's Ovid's Heroines - I, who could a dragon hypnotize An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides (25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of...
10 months ago
25
10 months ago
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides (25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of fictional letters in verse written by mythical heroines to their no-good boyfriends and husbands.  Many end in suicide.  Dido castigating Aeneas, Phaedra mourning...
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it? Compare this wording: Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible. To this wording: Unless I hear otherwise,...
Ben Borgers
War Room
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Website Like a Library
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds — enchanting emblems of the water cycle that makes this rocky planet a living world, drifting across our shared dome as if exhaled by some lovesick god. That we should have such a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gave Themselves Without Idle Words to Death' Rudyard Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Rudyard Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties (1886), which includes these lines: “The deaths ye died I have watched beside, / And the lives ye led were mine.” Eugene Sledge was nineteen when he enlisted in the Marine Corps a year...
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
61
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...
Ben Borgers
Google Won the Kids
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Read the Dang Thing Out Loud
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Others Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem The post Others appeared first...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem The post Others appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
How You Perceive the World
over a year ago
This Space
The opposite direction The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact paperback from Spurl Editions came just as I had given up hope of ever discussing what I believed had long fascinated me about a feature of Bernhard's prose-texts. A fascination...
This Space
"When now?" Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
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
39
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
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
38
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...