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The Marginalian
Audubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” Henry Beston observed of other animals two generations before naturalist Sy Montgomery...
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Single Line of Calm' Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned the book but not the cash. It...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Take Measure of the Loss' The youngest poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of...
10 months ago
17
10 months ago
The youngest poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English (1969) was M. Scott Momaday, a former Winters graduate student at Stanford who was then thirty-five years old. Winters, who died in 1968, also considered...
Josh Thompson
Streets in Asheville Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a nice town, and has a great pedestrian life, as far as I can tell. As a thought experiment, I decided to see how well I could make the case for reducing the road width of a few...
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
48
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Little Towns Should Have Had Their Chroniclers' Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white knitted shamrock and reminded me of the origin of my first name. Her father was born in County Cork, as were her mother’s parents. I waited until the third grade to rebel against...
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity "The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
6 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1987 From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
24
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever' Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I have seen in person,...
The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind "A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
The Marginalian
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired... Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Quietly, an Aside' Reporters and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
Reporters and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the opening sentence or paragraph of a news story. The idea is to quickly grab the reader’s attention and, with luck, hold on to it. Subtlety is discouraged in journalism. There’s much...
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
Ben Borgers
Stickies: Spatial note-taking
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Taking the Plunge with Colemak This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words. I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...
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...
2 months ago
38
2 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...
Josh Thompson
Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the topics was using “whole values”, instead of being “primative obsessed”. The example Avdi gave was clear as day. He used a course with a duration attribute to show the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are Many Real Things of Beauty Here' A reader sent me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
A reader sent me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating its opposite, ugliness, exactly, though his prose definitely leans in that direction. Only a graduate-school alumnus could come up with such silly ideas. Rather, he seemed to be saying that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Hallmark of What Is Truly Priceless' “. . . what literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”  A bit melodramatic, no?...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
“. . . what literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”  A bit melodramatic, no? Grandiose? Perhaps expressed by a writer worried about sales or a reader boosting his self-esteem? Could be. But there’s something to it. Maybe it amounts to more than...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are' “What’s essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his foolishness; not his...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
“What’s essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’ but his honesty, his complete leveling with the reader.”  I tried a little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
The Marginalian
An Ecology of Intimacies At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of...
9 months ago
27
9 months ago
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, undergirded by a mycelial web of trust and tenderness. One is profoundly changed by it and yet becomes more purely oneself as projections give way to...
Astral Codex Ten
Claude Fights Back ...
3 days 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
1
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...
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep Deep work over shallow TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here. This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work. Here’s the gist: One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
5 months ago
64
5 months ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it: The results: B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study – relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
The Marginalian
How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön "We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Caught the Christmas Beetle' I understand why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow...
yesterday
6
yesterday
I understand why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow in nostalgia can prove deadly. But the language in Clive James’ twelve stanzas cataloging an Australian childhood is exotic enough to interest this American reader, apart from their poetic...
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,... Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read,...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by Charlotte Lennox.  I had not read it, so I trailed along. An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her brain addled by novels: From...
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
11
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...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Ben Borgers
r/AskReddit
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–c. 1040), known in the West as Alhazen, began his life studying religion, but grew quickly disenchanted by its unquestioned dogmas and the way it turned people on each other with...
The Marginalian
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism "Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
7 months ago
34
7 months ago
Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some twentie sev’rall men at least / Each sev’rall houre.” What sounds self-dramatizing in the American simply acknowledges our inconstancy, our fickle nature, in Herbert’s poem “Giddinesse.” In...
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Pi
over a year ago
sbensu
Everybody is the main character People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
a year ago
1
a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Sky Seems to Turn Into Rain' The storm was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne river. The tops...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
The storm was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne river. The tops of newly planted trees touched the ground. Yard and street filled with branches, leaves and pine cones. A block away, an oak cracked and fell, blocking the street. We lost power at...
The Elysian
Week 5: Write one (pitchable) think piece
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative... The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
39
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
9
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
'Personal Affections' Only recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies. It...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Only recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies. It seems to be rooted in the conviction that readers ought to read writers in their original volumes, not someone’s curated selection, or something like that. In common with most...
Josh Thompson
Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go read this article by James clear. It’s called “ The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action”. I’ve linked it a third time here. Go read it. James starts with...
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here. Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around. Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
The Marginalian
Henry James on Losing a Mother "These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Much Can Be Accomplished' Cleveland is traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though I...
4 months ago
39
4 months ago
Cleveland is traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though I haven’t lived in the city since 1977. The designation suggests working-class neighborhoods, many of them Slavic. Ethnicity was important, and not usually in the sense of bigotry. I was...
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating: An Uncommon Meditation on Presence and the Aperture of Wonder "Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the...
a year ago
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
40
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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Moralizing Purge of the Past' "I think we are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that early...
8 months ago
19
8 months ago
"I think we are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that early Christianity inflicted on the same pagan learning. There will be another Dark Ages in our lifetimes; and another Renaissance, too, but not one that we will live to see.”  I’m...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
10
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...
The American Scholar
Interlude: The Idea of “The West” A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The...
8 months ago
25
8 months ago
A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Bony Ramirez Beautiful parasites The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
sbensu
Payments vs Transfers Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has a lot more requirements than a transfer system and I rarely see the crypto ecosystem acknowledge these when building "payment" products.
The Elysian
Week 3: The dream pitch
9 months ago
sbensu
Lieutenants are the limiting reagent Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do we mean when we say "this company lacks focus"?
Wuthering...
Many of Plato's early Socratic dialogues - It was quite lovely. I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently.  I’d read some of them before, at university or...
a year ago
37
a year ago
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently.  I’d read some of them before, at university or during my last Greek phase 25 years ago, and this time I hope to read almost all of them. I will make some notes on them in a few posts.  Give them a tag if nothing else, and make some...
The Marginalian
The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily...
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily envisioned, for he was a toddler in Germany when a British chocolatier created the first modern version of what we now think of as chocolate: a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor, and...
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism "Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Simply Bad Prose' “It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78)...
10 months ago
32
10 months ago
“It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture “celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
Josh Thompson
A Five-Hour Experiment Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours. He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming, Colemak typing, a form of Chinese chess...
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks 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.
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Generosity “Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her beautiful essay on generosity. “You open your safe and find ashes.” I feel this truth deeply, daily — for nearly two decades of offering these writings freely, I have lived by the...
The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence "We make our lives by what we love."
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Climbing in "decking range" In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you need to be ready for any situation. Here’s how to give a kick-ass lead belay when your climber is close enough to the ground they could potentially deck. This is part of a series on...
Josh Thompson
Rules for Fighting Fair When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean? So, rather than asking more...
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process The context is smarter than you.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
Muted
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Becoming an Early Riser Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.  -The man no child likes to...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.  -The man no child likes to hear about when being awoken by their parents Getting out of bed is a struggle. I’ve spent the better part of twenty four years setting my alarm as late as possible so I could have...
Anecdotal Evidence
Kenneth C. Kurp 1955-2024 My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
My brother died Saturday afternoon in the hospice in Cleveland, Ohio where he spent the last two weeks of his life. He was age sixty-nine. I was with him as was his son, Abraham Kurp. I watched as his eyes closed and he stopped breathing. There was another sense, too, of a sudden...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dull Night in a Buffalo Hotel' When writing journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form of...
7 months ago
34
7 months ago
When writing journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form of Impressionism. He would organize isolated bits of description, usually snapshots of people, without explicit narration or formal structure. The effect, sometimes satirical, was...
The American Scholar
Facing the Facts An antiquated take on antiquity The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are “shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of “profound...
The American Scholar
From Las Cosas Nuevas by Ennio Moltedo The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
60
6 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Hears of Life's Intent' “. . . I’ve had it. No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“. . . I’ve had it. No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be square. Etc.”  Louise Bogan is writing to her friend Ruth Limmer on October 1, 1969, announcing her retirement as poetry reviewer from The New Yorker after...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Originality, Learning, Acuteness, Terseness of Style' Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in...
10 months ago
19
10 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...
The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will... Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
9 months ago
54
9 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel (2009). ...
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch The astonishing breadth of our passions The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions The post For Want of Touch 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
23
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...
Wuthering...
Naming the garden in The Story of the Stone - the pleasures of incomprehension The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was born with the jade stone in his...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was born with the jade stone in his mouth, is an Imperial Concubine, a high prestige slave of the Emperor.  She is likely herself still a teen when we learn, in Chapter 16 of The Story of the Stone, that she has been...
The American Scholar
Good Intentions The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: How do we create the next Renaissance? Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create a world where artists are better funded and…
Josh Thompson
Back in the Saddle There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your ability to switch tasks to another project diminishes. There’s plenty of evidence that humans can’t multi-task, and those who try just end up doing a lot of things poorly. On the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Godforsaken Province' After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already occupied by...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already occupied by the Soviets. He was arrested by the NKVD the following year and held in a military prison in that city, then moved to Kiev, the Lubyanka in Moscow, and Saratov, more than...
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government Ok but what can we do about it?
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Never Relied on His Sensibility Alone' In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
In 1937, Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of the three-volume Hours in a Library (1874-7) and father of Virginia Woolf. For a century England had specialized in producing formidably well-read, non-academic literary critics. In addition...
The Elysian
Week 7: Boost your essays all over the internet
8 months ago
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news media following the death of John Pilger reveal the state of journalism in our time. [1] Can you name one living Anglophone journalist whose loss would prompt such widespread notice?...
Ben Borgers
Semester 3
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Will Leave Behind Trenches' “You wouldn’t give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of fortune...
a month ago
30
a month ago
“You wouldn’t give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of fortune heirs / To the bloody myths of the twentieth city.”  Today is the centenary of Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert. The Anglophone world has been fortunate. Herbert’s poems...
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious... In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...
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
30
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...
Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted... Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
5 months ago
58
5 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H. Lawrence and Ronald Firbank!  I feel I should write about it; I feel I should read...
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dubious or Questionable Medium' In 1972, Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested poems “protesting the acceleration of the...
10 months ago
38
10 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...
The Perry Bible...
Invasion The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details. Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
46
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Always Singular, and Never Trite or Vulgar' “He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but rarely Merry, at any sensible Rate, seldom heard to break a Jest; and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the Levity of it: His Gravity was Natural and without Affectation.”  The...
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Hash Tables [explained for anyone]
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom' I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people...
a year ago
24
a year ago
I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists, super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph McElroy. That each of...
The American Scholar
Magic Men The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
This Space
39 Books: 2022 "Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
6 months ago
66
6 months ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe." This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let One Book Lead Him to Another' I have not run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf life and...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
I have not run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf life and largest number of citations is “Joseph Epstein’s Lifetime Reading Plan,” published in The American Scholar in 1983 and collected four years later in Once More Around the Block. A...
The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions "This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Top Thing of the World' John Keats’ meditation on a reader’s paradise:  “I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
John Keats’ meditation on a reader’s paradise:  “I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it and reflect from it, and dream...
The American Scholar
What Comes Naturally The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The American Scholar
Bathing Badasses Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100%...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100% ineffective. I discussed with a friend the other day why they should switch from Yahoo to Gmail, and how to reduce the useless emails they receive. Below is how I suggested they move from...
The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the... “To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
2 months ago
13
2 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless...
2 weeks ago
8
2 weeks ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About' A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I sympathize. I remember reading...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: October This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get right to it. If you don’t want to read a lot of introspective Josh, stop reading. I use the word “I” dozens of times. Consider yourself warned. For a long time I have feared life...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonplace Insights' The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio was founded in...
3 months ago
20
3 months ago
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio was founded in 1970, the year I entered BG as a freshman. Today it’s the only institution in the country to have a Department of Popular Culture. As an English major I hung around with professors who...
Josh Thompson
Driven by Compression Progress Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!' Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the details of the...
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Brief, Dry, Almost Colorless Account ' The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and...
a year ago
28
a year ago
The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and author of A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II (1951) – has sent me back to Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma stories. Herling-Grudziński in 1971...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and... I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
a week ago
16
a week ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this chunk up. In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
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...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
11 months ago
14
11 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
Love's Executioner (book) Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
3 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
50
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
49
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus.  The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons.  Plautus was...
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...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
D.G. Myers and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see his oncologist. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and talked for hours, then I drove him to the hospital. He gave me the Library of America’s collection of Henry James’ writings on...
The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks... There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early 2.0 A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win. From mid-may until June 7, I...
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
9 months ago
19
9 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Confined to Famous Defunct Chefs' Never underestimate the satisfactions of contrariness. It starts as an impulse in adolescence,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Never underestimate the satisfactions of contrariness. It starts as an impulse in adolescence, of course, when the will to disagree and provoke comes naturally. It’s enormously entertaining to the provokers, irritatingly tiresome to the rest of us. We outgrow it or at least it...
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but with a big grain of salt. Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.” This seems to be an aspirational...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Used to Stand in Front of the Windows' In my dream I was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would bleach the...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
In my dream I was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would bleach the color from the cover of a book. At the center of a display that seemed to be made of cotton gauze was not just any book but a first edition of Ulysses. In the rare books collection...
ben-mini
Making My SQL Skills Obsolete Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under...
20 hours ago
1
20 hours ago
Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under ben-mini.github.io will automatically redirect, so no changes are needed on your end. By far, the most useful LLM app I’ve made is the Kibu Schema God: I try not to make my posts too...
Astral Codex Ten
Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste ...
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
Finding an Edge These last two weeks have been the hardest, or the most frustrating, of my time at Turing so...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
These last two weeks have been the hardest, or the most frustrating, of my time at Turing so far. I’ve been put a little off-balance by this difficulty, and I think I’m close to uncovering some useful tidbit or idea that will serve me well, and might serve someone else...
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...
9 months ago
17
9 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...
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish He Would Explain His Explanation' On this date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the latter’s...
8 months ago
29
8 months ago
On this date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the latter’s house in Piccadilly. Earlier, Coleridge had a friend deliver to Byron a copy of his latest and last play, Zapolya, and a letter explaining that for the previous fifteen years he had...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Forlorn Hope' Published in the February 1950 issue of Partisan Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Published in the February 1950 issue of Partisan Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature beloved by editors and loquacious respondents – this one titled “Religion and the Intellectuals.” Such things tend to be heavy on posturing and vast generalizations. I might have been...
The American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation' There’s an art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the reviewer...
a year ago
7
a year ago
There’s an art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
The American Scholar
Mystery Solved! The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
93
a year ago
I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon. FICTION Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann The Long Valley (1938) & The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Did MCAS Matter?
over a year ago
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
36
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...
Josh Thompson
Switching to Jekyll Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog post. So, I put it in a gist on Github. I’m an advocate of writing publicly, and making it a habit, so why was I putting it in a gist, instead of here, on my website, where I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Thing Always to Be Guarded Against' “Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history,...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
“Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is, not to admire and applaud...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Sweaty Midnight I’m a Lifer' Think of this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,” in which I...
4 months ago
34
4 months ago
Think of this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,” in which I asked readers to report anything they knew about the war correspondent Albert W. Vinson. He was author of a dispatch recounting a 1968 reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam led by the...
This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912: This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
4 months ago
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and... Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symposium is fiction, a long story.  It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
The Marginalian
William James on Love "If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
Ben Borgers
Security Questions
over a year ago
The American Scholar
On Book August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning "Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below. When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Google Won the Kids
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi "It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have...
9 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1986 In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them. Both the title...
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken "The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection' Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful' “There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
“There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my sorrows down on the page.”  Janet...
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project) As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding. I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference. Lastly, I just...
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house) Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go. Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation. So, in the book,...
Ben Borgers
Trash Bags in the Laundry Room
over 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
4
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...
Josh Thompson
June trip to the New River Gorge The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until Friday, near-certain thunderstorms. Typical of the New, the weather proved unpredictable, and we had glorious sun the entire trip. I was eager to get out to the New, since my last...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
15
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death' I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
22
a month ago
I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished, no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without once using any of...
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship "A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us."
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine' The large bay window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
a month ago
25
a month ago
The large bay window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the show in the garden. Butterflies,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Postmodern Pigeonhole Is a Shuck' With Tom Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer of short...
a month ago
19
a month ago
With Tom Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer of short stories and of one novel, Camp Concentration, but perhaps the most entertaining of our critics. His only recent rivals have been Turner Cassity and R.S. Gwynn. “Entertainment” and...
The American Scholar
Cancer The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2017 The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
7 months ago
36
7 months ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
Josh Thompson
Wrapping my head around local politics 001 Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.* As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.* As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local community”, and don’t know the best way to “mobilize my resources”. vomit. I hate admitting that. But I still want to figure out if it is possible for me (little old me) to do...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cursed with an Acute Literary Conscience' Who among critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:  “Some writers...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Who among critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:  “Some writers have a dread of platitudes. I have not. What is a platitude but an expression of the wisdom of the ages, the synopsis of a theory that was long ago propounded, tested, established,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sodding Good and Touching Was the Poem' Kingsley Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father published his...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
Kingsley Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father published his first and finest novel, Lucky Jim. Three days later, Philip Larkin completed “Born Yesterday” (The Less Deceived, 1955) and dedicated it to the little girl:  “Tightly-folded bud, I...
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
34
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...
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
37
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 Marginalian
The Rigor of Angels: Human Nature and the Nature of Reality "What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in...
a year ago
The American Scholar
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared...
3 months ago
20
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Culmination of Contemporary Economism' For half a century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were themselves...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
For half a century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were themselves works of art. In later years he relied more on accounts with hotel chains and the glass office buildings in downtown Cleveland. Frames for these corporate accounts he called...
This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
a year ago
Ben Borgers
I Love Email
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Illdefined Success is Unattainable We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting. If it doesn’t...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting. If it doesn’t seem daunting, it’s not much of a project, and you should either ramp it up until it’s daunting, or discard it. So - we have a daunting project. Now what? If you’re like me, you’ll...
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few examples: Animated, interactive curves(dynamic) OMG Particles II(dynamic) simple map of the us(static) <= very little code Radial Dendrogram(static) circle wave(dynamic) Force-directed...
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
a month ago
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about! The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead.  In what may be the most...
Ben Borgers
Software Seems Resilient
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Marge of Lake Lebarge' Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often feels alien, as though we were recalling the memories of someone else. In the past, of course, we were someone else. As a kid I watched ridiculous amounts of television, which is...
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with...
a month ago
11
a month ago
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with ghosts — all of our disappointed hopes and our outgrown dreams, all the abandoned novels and unproven theorems, all the people we used to love, all the people we used to be. A ghost is...
Escaping Flatland
In praise of insular groups Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a...
7 months ago
46
7 months ago
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work... "I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Depression I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Indubitably I Should Miss Them' Every year, in the weeks preceding Christmas, I face the question I’ve been asked since I was a kid,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Every year, in the weeks preceding Christmas, I face the question I’ve been asked since I was a kid, and my answer always leaves me feeling sheepish. “What do you want for Christmas?” “Well, ah . . .” “Yeah, we know: books.” Piteously, I’ll add, “Socks. I could use some socks,”...
Wuthering...
Diogenes Laertius and the fun of the fragment We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources.  We have lost every published book...
a year ago
36
a year ago
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources.  We have lost every published book (widely copied scroll) of Aristotle’s, but a large mass of what are perhaps transcribed lecture notes survived, barely, in a single manuscript, so that is our Aristotle.  I don’t know...
The Marginalian
Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the... “Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning...
8 months ago
60
8 months ago
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry' “[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
“[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”  Things get sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling species of serious...
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night.  That “end of night” is death.  The existence of death makes everything hateful and nullifies the value of anything else.  I gotta say that 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
42
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 Read You As I Listen to Rare Music' Rare is the writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our personal...
4 months ago
19
4 months ago
Rare is the writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our personal canons, and remains rereadable for the rest of our lives. For me that would include Swift, Defoe and a third English novelist, a rather exotic import from Poland: Joseph Conrad. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where They Grind the Grain of Thought' Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss Rose, Miss Whistler – my teachers, K-6, at Pearl Road Elementary School. Most were young and pretty, more like big sisters than mothers. On the television in Miss Shaker’s class we...
Josh Thompson
A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...
Escaping Flatland
Authenticity as dialogue John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines' When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took...
3 days ago
6
3 days ago
When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could write about any stray...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying' One of Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously flashy,...
a year ago
7
a year ago
One of Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously flashy, though the first of its three sentences is twenty-five lines long. Its earliest readers perhaps flipped past it in The Whitsun Weddings (1964) -- it’s the first poem in the collection –...
Ben Borgers
Web of Thoughts
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water? The post Downstream of Fukushima appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Ethan Magnass' sermons from Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of these sermons quite a few times. They’re worth your time. Ethan Magness is the rector at Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA. Sermon Series on Joseph Grace Anglican Church podcast...
The Perry Bible...
Please The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The American Scholar
Verde Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew The post Verde appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Friday, January 14, 2022
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Masochism Afoot in Modern Aesthetics' “Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
“Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire significance simply because the beaten spirit would seem to claim more seriousness than a more robust struggle with the exigencies of things?”  This elegantly crafted question, at...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now? And how do we build it?
3 weeks ago
The Perry Bible...
Clicked The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Anki and Memorization with Spaced Repetition Software This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead of time to grasp the material. For the full context, start with Learning how to Learn I’ve not been able to find any comprehensive guides to using Anki to learn programming, so this...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet "It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs Beware of what you actually want.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive? There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them! So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude “One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return' I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
10
a year ago
I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:  “Greasy, grimy gopher guts! Little dirty birdie feet!”   As in any folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base...
3 months ago
2
3 months ago
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base primative, in this case, a “polyline”. Read the rest of this post, understand what we’re going for, then go to part 2: get your own polyline from strava. It’s not trivial to get, but its...
Steven Scrawls
Against Confidence Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my...
11 months ago
2
11 months ago
Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my writing makes me feel confident, it probably has a title like “Look At My Cleverly Constructed Argument/Insight” (subtitle: “Also Look At My Pretty Words”). If I release writing...
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
7 months ago
37
7 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.* Many of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
12
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....
This Space
39 Books: 2012 Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I knew would be impossible to write about, at least in a couple of distracted hours. Imagine this: through mathematical calculation, close reading and literary detective work, a...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
11 months ago
The Marginalian
We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life... "Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
12 months ago
Wuthering...
"Socrates gone mad" - my hero Diogenes the Cynic He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the...
a year ago
9
a year ago
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing else, and was a sarcastic pain in the ass.  He took the example of Socrates to its limit.  Plato is the one who called him “Socrates gone mad,” but in a sense he is just the logical result of thinking through how Socrates...
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes Hope blooms The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The Marginalian
D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo "We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two things: The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence Most dangerous books of 2016 Tactical Silence I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
The American Scholar
Writer on Board The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader' “. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it,...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
“. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call it—by which a man rises to understand...
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble' “As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper,...
11 months ago
28
11 months ago
“As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead, allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser, some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
The American Scholar
Sienna Martz Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in both of them.  “[I]t's a similar sense of...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent "A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy You're welcome.
8 months ago
This Space
A review from abroad In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the Norwegian edition of Le Monde diplomatique as a supplement to the delightfully named Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. Even though I can't read Danish, it was not only a highlight of the...
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
16
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....
Ben Borgers
Pictures as Memories
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2015 In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
7 months ago
47
7 months ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously' “Montaigne is heavy going, it has to be said.”  For once the commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
2 months ago
32
2 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...
The American Scholar
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The...
6 months ago
23
6 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
7 months ago
30
7 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2001 In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
The Marginalian
The Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music “Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the Sahara Desert. No aliveness animates the nocturne with more grandeur than the migration of birds....
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise? An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People') I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a program like the Flatiron School or the Turing School). I’m a graduate of the Turing School, and have written a lot about the program, like: My reflections on Turing an 8-part guide to...
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of... "We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Pluto was 2006??
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
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
38
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 American Scholar
“Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The...
4 months ago
17
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success “You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
6 months ago
54
6 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
sbensu
Notes on UX and LLM integrations I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down...
11 months ago
1
11 months ago
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down when and why they work well, or poorly.
Josh Thompson
Success is not support We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and customer success. Support vs. Success First, what’s the difference between “customer support” and “customer success”? Lincoln Murphey says: Customer Success is proactively working...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion' “Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed,...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools' “Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
“Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
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
48
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."
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buy Something Before You Get Socked in the Eye' The indispensable Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had never...
a year ago
7
a year ago
The indispensable Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had never known before, Margaret Fishback (1900-85). Like L.E. Sissman she worked in advertising and published in The New Yorker. Unlike Sissman, she wrote light verse almost exclusively and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Loss Not to Be Repaired' “We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he treated...
a year ago
7
a year ago
“We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and untaught. He had a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches, and a yellow uncurled wig; and his...
Josh Thompson
2018 Reading Review & Recommendations I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. (This metric is intentionally fuzzy.) 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Related But Detached' I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971. The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson,...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971. The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson, unconvincing in her early seventies. Wrong sex, wrong age, wrong play – a stillborn theatrical stunt. My reaction was perhaps the worst that staged Shakespeare can inspire – boredom...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are All Potential Recruits for Anarchy' It’s an honor to be published in The New Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
It’s an honor to be published in The New Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years after it was founded by the late Hilton Kramer and Samuel Lipman. To share pages in the June issue with Gary Saul Morson, Victor Davis Hanson and other gifted writers is...
The American Scholar
Moondance Experience the marvel that is The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
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
57
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...