Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Which Is Spent in a Kind of Limbo'
A reader has
taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis
Wyndham...
a year ago
A reader has
taken my suggestion that she read the fiction of the English writer Francis
Wyndham (1924-2017), and reports she’s enjoying herself. “I see a little Henry
James in his stories,” she writes, “but he’s really not like anybody else.” Exactly
right.
Wyndham’s
writing...
Escaping Flatland
Thoughts on agency
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at...
6 months ago
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at 6 pm CET (9 am PST). Like last time, I’ll prepare a few questions (probably relating to today’s post since that is top of mind) but mostly we’ll just talk about whatever comes up....
sbensu
On becoming a person (book)
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
2 weeks ago
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
2 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five
volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel.
I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it,
but in a sense I did finish a...
The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish...
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes true psychic creativity from obsessional productiveness."
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs
Beware of what you actually want.
5 months ago
Beware of what you actually want.
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
3 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Disadvantages of Wine'
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking...
3 months ago
An offhand
recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:
“He has
great virtue, in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he
acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady M’Leod would hardly
believe him, and said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
7 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and...
The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
a year ago
The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government
Ok but what can we do about it?
a week ago
Ok but what can we do about it?
The American Scholar
Sienna Martz
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home
The wonders of the coastal redwood
The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood
The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable...
8 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable things, but I have limits.
Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post.
Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin
Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
This Space
39 Books: 2008
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
7 months ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism'
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The...
11 months ago
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was
married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking
at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
ben-mini
The Most Mind-Blowing Tech Moments of My Life
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of...
5 months ago
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of life. There’s nothing too heady here- just an exercise in what might have made me get so into tech.
1. WarioWare: Twisted (2006)
At my community center, waiting for my friend’s karate...
Josh Thompson
An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers)
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.
Can you guess what’s coming?
(This is all going to happen...
over a year ago
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.
Can you guess what’s coming?
(This is all going to happen on
The Climber’s Guide)
(Warning to mobile users: big gif)
In case you didn’t guess, or you guessed wrong…
I’m shooting tons of video for a course. It’s going to be awesome. It’s...
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean...
4 months ago
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean Resort
Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman
Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he
snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Important Part of Anyone’s Reading'
A variation on
the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages...
2 weeks ago
A variation on
the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” – “How do you do it?” – is the one I get when a workman or
friend visits my home office where most of my books are shelved: “You read all
these?” I can reply with one of...
The Marginalian
Blue Glass
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
11 months ago
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and gasped at the sight of what looked like two extraordinary jewels sparkling on a bed of yellow leaves, right there on the sidewalk — chunks of cobalt glass, much larger than what a...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
3 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
The American Scholar
Tunneling to Freedom
In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp
The post...
6 months ago
In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp
The post Tunneling to Freedom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Amber of His Style'
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews...
8 months ago
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews -- Portraits (1931), Criticism (1932), Memories (1953) – with a promise of more to come. MacCarthy’s reputation
in the U.S. is almost sub-atomic. Devotees of Bloomsbury think of hm...
Escaping Flatland
On limitations that hide in your blindspot
and how to find them
9 months ago
The American Scholar
Thoreau’s Pencils
How might a newly discovered
The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
How might a newly discovered
The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
The American Scholar
Facing the Facts
An antiquated take on antiquity
The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
An antiquated take on antiquity
The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2002
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
7 months ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5.
Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...
over a year ago
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code.
Here’s the context:
In my day-to-day, I work on a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Tomorrow I Propose to Regulate My Room'
A reader in Columbus,
Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December...
a week ago
A reader in Columbus,
Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December 21,
1968 issue of The New Yorker he found
the poem “Is There a Dr. Johnson in the House.” It’s a typical irregularly lined,
jokily rhymed production by Nash that begins:
“Do you...
The American Scholar
Rap Rap Rap
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the...
a year ago
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."
Josh Thompson
Growing in your first software development job
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously...
over a year ago
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like:
I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...
ben-mini
Old School Business
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs...
6 months ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users.
They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction).
They demeaned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
6 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I
saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was
abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1)
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and...
over a year ago
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying
so hard to figure out some moves high above...
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues...
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations. A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument. You say there are many gods? But what if there were one? Or none? ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
Blog -...
Book Review - Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 2019 Edition
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating...
over a year ago
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating page-turner packed full of aha moments. The authors have
woven together decades of personal research and experience in the field of
intimate relationships to create a classic...
Josh Thompson
Winter on Two Pairs of Socks
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the...
over a year ago
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the wardrobe.
I’ll cover more about what we wear another time, but for now, I want to give you an idea. With the right socks, you can go an entire winter with just two pairs of socks. You...
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
Josh Thompson
How to Wake Up Early
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early
(Read Part Two, and Part Three)
My...
over a year ago
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early
(Read Part Two, and Part Three)
My understanding of sleep has evolved. When I was born, I spent most of my time asleep (if I recall correctly…) and gradually spent less and less time sleeping, until I was down to about...
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
“[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...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise...
3 months ago
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge — a tender...
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
The American Scholar
“A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats appeared first on...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Minimalism
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”.
This reluctance...
over a year ago
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”.
This reluctance is because I think the label brings in a bunch of connotations that I don’t like.
Our apartment never looked like this. Source: home-designing.com
What is Minimalism?
a removal or...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early, Part 3
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep...
over a year ago
I’ve written about my attempts to
wake up early before.
Most recently, I
promised to take a sleep log, to track trends. Fortunately, I did not intend to try to wake up early, because I didn’t.
Here’s what I learned in the last three weeks:
Benadryl messes with your ability to...
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
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often
discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which
eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be'
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along...
3 months ago
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite
boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
sbensu
Semantic gaps
Swedish has a specific word for each of the four grandparents: mormor, morfar, farmor, farfar....
11 months ago
Swedish has a specific word for each of the four grandparents: mormor, morfar, farmor, farfar. English doesn’t. So when you mention your 'grandma' to a Swede, they are left wondering 'which grandma?' even if it is not relevant to the story. That is a semantic gap.
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief'
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
5 days ago
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or
even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt
seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
The American Scholar
Un Tinto
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Things That Pass'
Among the
books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of...
8 months ago
Among the
books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of The American Scholar, which
I bought for a quarter. Joseph Epstein was still the editor. On Page 97 is a
poem, “Old
Man Sitting in a Shopping Mall,” by a writer whose name was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living'
“After
someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels
cruel somehow, as...
3 months ago
“After
someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels
cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”
I didn’t
know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing
Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
Part 1: The thought behind the thought
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6)
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Jewish Kind of Feeling of the World'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer...
a month ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer can have a programme. Many have; they say, ‘I’m writing
about alienation’, or whatever they call it. I don’t have this programme. I
have a story to tell and I sit down to tell the...
The American Scholar
The Wonder of It All
In search of awe
The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
In search of awe
The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long'
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
8 months ago
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It’s a symptom-less and in most cases benign
disorder, but it can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. It means I see my
oncologist once a...
The American Scholar
Changing the Lens
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale)
The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale)
The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words'
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
a year ago
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations (1957):
“When books
have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading
and even speaking have been replaced
By other,
less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Landscape in One Word!'
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone,...
a month ago
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone, that is more than enough.”
Enough for what? Probably to have established a minimum standard of decency and contentment. Jules Renard (1864-1910) is no stuffy moralist. There’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'First Find a Thinking Being. Lots of Luck'
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself....
7 months ago
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself. That’s a confession of inadequacy, though I’m not one of those people
who says, “I don’t have a head for math,” when what they really mean is arithmetic.
Because of my job I’ve learned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Taste for Strolling in Cemeteries'
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not...
a year ago
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not even
linger in memory, as they stir neither distaste nor devotion, so it is with
books and writers. Had I been one of those desperately obsessive readers who
records every title read, I...
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
11 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015.
for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
Josh Thompson
Train Hard
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever)
When’s the last time you
trained for that activity?
Finally:
When is the last time you trained for that activity
with someone else?...
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist?
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the...
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did.
Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
The American Scholar
“how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1996
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my...
7 months ago
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the...
This Space
39 Books: 2007
When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I...
7 months ago
When I chose the book for 2007, the constraint of the 39 Books series presented a problem: how can I write about a 350-page novel last read 17 years ago without taking several days to reread it? Answer: not at all, so I started reading. What good fortune! How well Hugo Wilcken...
Anecdotal Evidence
'If You Want Less Trouble, Plow the Sky'
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers...
a year ago
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers tilling the soil and bringing in the sheaves. Working for
rural newspapers in the Midwest and upstate New York educated me to the
realities of mortgages, tractor accidents,...
Josh Thompson
A message for high schoolers
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three...
over a year ago
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three topics:
Credentialism
Signaling
Opportunity cost
If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers. I’ve got a few links for you farther down in this...
Escaping Flatland
The third chair
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
ribbonfarm
Harberger Tax
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked...
9 months ago
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks. A medical deadline approaches. That will help.
As usual, I read good books.
PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP
Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
Josh Thompson
Corollas and U-Hauls
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a...
over a year ago
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a lot, and a lot of work went into it.
When moving across the country, you have a few options. You could higher a moving company, who comes and boxes up your house, packs a truck,...
sbensu
How to: friction logs
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the...
a year ago
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the produdct the way a real user would and write down every single moment you experience some form of negative emotion.
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
3 weeks ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty'
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree...
a month ago
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it
while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before
revealing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Soothe the Soul and Nurture the Imagination'
“Among the
lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic,
climate crisis...
a year ago
“Among the
lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic,
climate crisis and political discord is that beauty and nature matter more than
ever, and that if our homes are to be sanctuaries from an often harsh outside
world, then we should fill them with...
Josh Thompson
Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...
over a year ago
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it.
Since I’m trying to write...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects'
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with...
11 months ago
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from
college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J.
Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction
...
2 weeks ago
ribbonfarm
Imagination vs. Creativity
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with....
5 months ago
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with. Imagination is the ability to see known possibilities as being reachable from a situation. Creativity is the ability to manufacture new possibilities out of a situation. The two...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert'
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and
thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not
rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
The American Scholar
Magic Men
The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Spring” by J. R. Solonche
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amateurism (in the Original Sense of the Term)'
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of...
11 months ago
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of the Greek for “self-taught.” The
range of the word’s uses in our university-smitten age is vast. Some academics apply
it to anyone without an advanced degree who presumes to have...
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
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...
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
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few examples:
Animated, interactive curves(dynamic)
OMG Particles II(dynamic)
simple map of the us(static) <= very little code
Radial Dendrogram(static)
circle wave(dynamic)
Force-directed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Book You Know You Don’t Understand'
Some thirty
years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted
me to...
a year ago
Some thirty
years ago, at his request, I met with an author in upstate New York who wanted
me to write a feature story for my newspaper about him and the small-press book he had
written. Frank had been lobbying me for weeks by telephone. He was middle-aged
but carried himself...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning?
new essay in Asterisk
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods
A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Smart Dinner Jacket and Patent Leather Pumps'
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which...
a year ago
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which was more genteel and less interesting than it sounds. Reading the police
blotter each morning or scanning new filings in the county clerk’s office left this
reporter feeling less...
This Space
39 Books: 2020
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years...
6 months ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance'
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained...
5 months ago
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s
drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street,
top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence
"We make our lives by what we love."
7 months ago
"We make our lives by what we love."
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object'
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses...
4 months ago
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses me and all make life less annoying. I’ve never been seriously
ill. I take my handful of vitamins and meds in the morning. I no longer drink
and never smoked. Among the last things I...
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish?
That depends on us.
a month ago
The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community
The one where communes aren't the answer.
6 months ago
The one where communes aren't the answer.
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of...
over a year ago
I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of recommended books, but they come and go with time. This list is sorta ‘older’, circa 2021. 1 A newer/different list is available here
These are a collection of books that come up in...
Steven Scrawls
"Progress"
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions...
a year ago
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s
list of most-visited websites (see Notes for
details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments,
and come to your own...
This Space
The last novel
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his...
over a year ago
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his review of JM Coetzee's The Death of Jesus captures the pervasive anxiety experienced while reading this novel better than even the most detailed plot summary, which is anyway likely...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Liked to Hold Ideas Up to the Light'
The single most
influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not...
11 months ago
The single most
influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not just what I think, is Guy’s Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination (North
Point Press, 1981). I bought it that year in a lesbian bookstore in Manhattan. Over
the previous decade...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
a month ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
Wuthering...
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was...
over a year ago
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after The Frogs. In the interval many things had changed. Athens had been conquered; democracy was overthrown but restored; one endless war ended...
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
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
'Not Merely Mental Stenography'
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a...
4 months ago
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a literary magazine. There are too many essays, and vanishingly few good
essayists. There seems to be real confusion about whether style can conceal a
fundamental incuriosity, whether...
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual
+ reading recommendations
10 months ago
+ reading recommendations
Anecdotal Evidence
'Personal Affections'
Only
recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies.
It...
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...
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
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
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Good Intentions
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Challenge
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write
some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous...
6 months ago
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write
some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a
History of a Family’s Progress (1925).
It is a monster. Why did I read
it? No, that is not the right
questions. There are good reasons to
read...
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
This Space
The end of something
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike...
a year ago
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike Magazine (not to be confused with Spiked), which I helped to found when the world wide web was forming, and to comment on the direction online literary culture had taken. By that...
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"*
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
Wuthering...
Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz - What I wanted now was the adventure of being...
Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to...
a year ago
Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to me because of its unusual use of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. This is a domestic novel, a fine example of, borrowing from Trollope, the way we live now (or, to me, the way they...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master of Light But Stinging Irony'
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that...
5 months ago
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that time I was giving up the
practice of writing in books, which had always left me a little uncomfortable. Instead,
I switched to keeping notebooks. In The
Golden Gate I see that I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonplace Insights'
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio was founded in...
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
`ls` command to show directory contents
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...
over a year ago
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory.
tree -L 2
will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this:
> tree -L 2
.
├──...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter'
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
4 months ago
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears
at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled
with not stinging like...
Wuthering...
The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander. How...
over a year ago
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander. How tastes, or circumstances, had changed in the seventy years since Wealth, our last Aristophanes play. The political and social satire is gone, the sexual and scatological jokes are...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Poets'
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all...
12 months ago
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all you’re your friends like jazz it will present no problem.”
It’s
December 14, 1963, and Philip Larkin is reviewing an assortment of releases for
the Daily Telegraph in time for...
The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
a month ago
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot
Word Rot
Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever
face will have been...
a year ago
Word Rot
Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever
face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you.
That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and
that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
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
"A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going."
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
Wuthering...
Books finished in March 2023
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a...
a year ago
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a common practice, although mostly with photographs of book stacks. I am not sure why I have not put the lists here as well. I guess I am not sure any of this is interesting.
Soon,...
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
The American Scholar
From All Souls by Saskia Hamilton
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
a month ago
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
The American Scholar
Three Poems
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who...
11 months ago
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who refuse to believe in his divinity into what “we in
English language Backes or Reermice call the same” (Golding, 99) “[Or, as we
say, bats.]” (Martin, 140). How sad that
we lost the...
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
Josh Thompson
Cancel Your Cable. Seriously.
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to...
over a year ago
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to waste.
Time
Energy
Money can be earned, and if more is needed, you can spend less or earn more. Energy is what you need to bring ideas to fruition. Unlimited time with no energy gets you nowhere, as...
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
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4
The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of...
3 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds...
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
3 months ago
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
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
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
Josh Thompson
What Do You Do?
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...
over a year ago
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?”
They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?”
Sometimes this is a conversational...
ribbonfarm
Covid and Noun-Memory Effects
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of...
6 months ago
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of...
Escaping Flatland
Pseudonyms lets you practice agency
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
4 months ago
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
7 months ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month.
I
did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
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
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 Perry Bible...
Turn That Frown
The post Turn That Frown appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The post Turn That Frown appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
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
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...
Wuthering...
Books I read in March 2024 - Literature was a game of pillaging, and this book showed it.
A nice little run at Persian literature this month. And I am reading in Portuguese again,...
8 months ago
A nice little run at Persian literature this month. And I am reading in Portuguese again, slowly,
slowly.
PERSIAN LITERATURE, MOSTLY CLASSICAL
Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1110), Abolqasem Ferdowsi – See here for notes on this
big epic in Dick Davis’s translation.
The...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...
over a year ago
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome.
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer.
Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...
Josh Thompson
The Present You
It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the
present you, or the
future you. I...
over a year ago
It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the
present you, or the
future you. I wish the future me could sit beside the present me, and discuss how I was going about my day. Instead, it’s a rather one-sided conversation.
There are obvious choices, like food,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Adieu! for Once Again the Fierce Dispute'
Among John
Keats’ closest friends was the modestly gifted poet John Hamilton Reynolds...
a year ago
Among John
Keats’ closest friends was the modestly gifted poet John Hamilton Reynolds (1794-1852).
It was to Reynolds that Keats wrote in a February 3, 1818 letter:
“We hate
poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put
its hand in its breeches...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Punners and Rhymers Must Have the Last Word'
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The...
3 months ago
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The Latin
tag is proverbial, deriving from Cicero’s Catiline orations: “O times, O manners!”
It’s the template for all lamentations. Jonathan Swift is repeating it in the
opening lines of...
The American Scholar
From Las Cosas Nuevas by Ennio Moltedo
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
a week ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets Who Are Plain and Gladsome'
Being or
pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite
ruses...
9 months ago
Being or
pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite
ruses (“Books are a load of crap”). It’s certain to rile the pompous and
pretentious, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the sputtering. I’ve
happened on a first-rate anthology of...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Cantos II and III - or just III, it turns out - And Cole and Swift, and little...
A month ago I wrote about the first Canto of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Now I will move through the...
11 months ago
A month ago I wrote about the first Canto of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Now I will move through the Cantos two or
three at a time, just leafing through the books, really, with luck getting at
what Ovid is doing. Cantos II and III
today.
Ovid established his cosmology and created...
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
6 months ago
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s,
This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s.
I know that some people like to complain about...
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sodding Good and Touching Was the Poem'
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his...
11 months ago
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his first and finest novel, Lucky
Jim. Three days later, Philip Larkin completed “Born Yesterday” (The Less Deceived, 1955) and dedicated it
to the little girl:
“Tightly-folded
bud,
I...
The Marginalian
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife
"Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and...
9 months ago
"Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and open ourselves to a greater wonder."
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day.
I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Elysian
Hint #2
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
This Space
Notes from overground
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and...
12 months ago
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and arrived long after the novel had been reviewed in all the big newspapers so, instead of riding the wave of publication, I was dragged under by its backwash. I had to answer a question...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
8 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished...
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
This Space
39 Books: 2003
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
The Marginalian
Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum...
a year ago
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge."
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Won’t You Turn Your Radio Down'
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with...
a year ago
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with yellow-on-black KTRU bumper stickers. In some cases, students have cut up
the stickers and rearranged the letters into the same timeless obscenities we
scrawled on the walls of the...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity
...
a month ago
The Marginalian
John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding...
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and...
7 months ago
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and life's challenges."
The American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed...
4 months ago
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Habits, Milestones, and Climbing
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...
over a year ago
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months.
I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby.
It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
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
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
The Rescuer
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem?
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
5 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Departure Destroys a Class of Sympathies'
As a boy I
was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close
friends...
5 months ago
As a boy I
was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close
friends when young, and wonder how they adapt to unprecedented loss. They have
nothing to compare it to. The death that hit me hardest was President Kennedy’s,
a month after my eleventh...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How It Sounds When Read Out Loud'
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written...
a month ago
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written seventy-five years earlier and picked students to read aloud each of
its four, eight-line stanzas. She suggested we pay attention to who is
speaking, as the poem is written as a dialogue...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Quickly It Would Slip By'
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events...
3 months ago
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events themselves
seemed to possess at the time, or rather – since memory has a filter of its
own, sometimes surprising in what it suppresses or retains, but always significant
– some of them stand out...
Wuthering...
Philoctetes by Sophocles - Let me suffer what I must suffer
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in...
over a year ago
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in a mood of reconciliation and healing.
Literal healing. Philoctetes possesses the bow of Hercules. Either the bow, or Philoctetes himself, or both – prophecies are ambiguous...
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive'
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making...
a year ago
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making concentration on other things difficult. . . . I wish I could tune the news out. But
the stakes for the future of Israel and of Jewish life generally are too great
for me to be...
This Space
Further in the opposite direction
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal...
a year ago
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood as a religious claim: the very...
This Space
The end of literature, part four
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my...
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
9 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have
their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are,
because of Metamorphoses. Venus
and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion. Icarus –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us See Them There in the Shadows'
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive...
6 months ago
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive until a friend told me he was dead. What I remember is his face, his
general demeanor, roughly the sort of behavior I could expect of him. I last
saw him more than half a century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Milestone, Insignificant'
Understandably,
readers and critics like to take credit for rediscovering forgotten writers...
2 weeks ago
Understandably,
readers and critics like to take credit for rediscovering forgotten writers and
resuscitating their reputations. Imagine being the guy who, in 1909, read Moby-Dick (1851; out of print, 1887) and
declared Melville (d. 1891) a genius a decade before Van Doren,...
The American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
5 months ago
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of...
5 months ago
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
Escaping Flatland
Life update
+ open thread and a few fragments of essays
11 months ago
+ open thread and a few fragments of essays
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Half-Buried Sense for Poetry'
It’s easy to
mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or...
6 days ago
It’s easy to
mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or naively
unprofessional, a mask worn to conceal the shark within, especially among
literary types. Of course, critics are born to be severe, nobody’s pal. How
many critics can you name whose...
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer
"When a
plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins,
Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
"When a
plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins,
Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
The Marginalian
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective
"No guarantees in this life."
11 months ago
"No guarantees in this life."
Blog -...
Book Review - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the...
over a year ago
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the masculine. Published in 1990, King, Warrior,
Magician, Lover introduces readers to the concept of mature masculine
archetypes and their immature shadows. The authors, Robert...
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
3 months ago
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs."
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
3 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
Ben Borgers
The Cost of Building an Idea
over a year ago
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
“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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Valuable Work in Literary Criticism'
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much...
4 months ago
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much classical or Christian
erudition one brings to the task) predict confidently how Johnson is going to
respond to this or that specific question; yet of course by the end one...
This Space
39 Books: 1989
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
7 months ago
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film.
The only thing I remember of the...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Here the Nothingness Shows Through'
I watched an
old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day...
8 months ago
I watched an
old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day and his best man, Stanley, gives him
a jigsaw puzzle as a wedding gift. Oliver dismisses it at first as “childish
balderdash” and promptly gets hooked putting it together along with,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Quite Vacant Is a Mind Distress’d'
I’ll be
going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring
later this...
6 months ago
I’ll be
going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring
later this year. I knew a guy in high school who already yearned for retirement
despite never having had a job, whereas I’d been working since I was twelve. He
wanted to play golf and go...
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Literature likes to hide
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's...
a year ago
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's first book, published in 1954. It is difficult to find a copy now but you can download a digital version of the book via the link. The opening chapter is a 50-page study of "Tintern...
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are.
Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
6 months ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
The American Scholar
Acting Out
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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 American Scholar
A Giant of a Man
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant...
2 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
8 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom'
I’ve reminded
my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring
people...
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
Caprock
Adventures worth the silence
The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Adventures worth the silence
The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the
available energy and concentration. Now,
though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again.
Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
No New Books
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library.
Why?
I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
The American Scholar
My Cousin Manya
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying'
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy,...
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 –...
This Space
The end of literature, part three
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there...
over a year ago
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there ever since. At that time a mild alternative to barbarism was being put to death. Back in 2015 when, against all odds, a lifelong socialist and campaigner against racism and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Signs His Name in Sparks'
By trade my
father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always
called...
5 months ago
By trade my
father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always
called “Muny Light." At home he was a welder, specializing in wrought-iron
railings. His aesthetic sense could be summarized in a single word: big. Or heavy. Everything he built was...
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online
On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
8 months ago
On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
Josh Thompson
Trip Report: New River Gorge
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s fantastic climbing here. I climbed with good friends, and was absolutely humbled by how strong they all are. (My defense, at least for the next few weeks, is that I’ve not climbed...
sbensu
Payments vs Transfers
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poem Calls For a Formal Reading'
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized...
6 months ago
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized solipsism makes it difficult for me to breathe. Sugary adulation induces
diabetic comas. Free verse is emetic and I’m allergic to hipsters but Thursday
evening I broke my vow and went...
The Perry Bible...
Invasion
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown'
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
3 weeks ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been
moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:
“O friend
unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of...
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
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
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature'
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to...
7 months ago
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take
a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern
English language...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Forlorn Hope'
Published in
the February 1950 issue of Partisan
Review was a “symposium” -- always a feature...
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...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think?
+ links
2 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God."
Josh Thompson
How to take payments via Stripe on a Static Site
I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I...
over a year ago
I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I wish existed, but have never been able to find.
For example, I’ve read a bunch of books that talk about good Object-Oriented design, or refactoring code, or writing better tests....
The Marginalian
Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love,...
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental...
3 months ago
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love. Half a century after Whitman’s atomic...
The Marginalian
The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the...
a year ago
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lasting Vivification of a Word'
I’ve read
Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the...
9 months ago
I’ve read
Walter de la Mare’s essay “A Book of Words” (Pleasures and Speculations, 1940) for the second time in a week,
and have decided one might easily write a book about it. The prose is dense
with interesting and useful ideas:
“The
prevalent weakness, too, of many minds–the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Is the Andy Warhol of Art'
Guy
Davenport was our Johnny Appleseed of culture. He was an academic who published
in Harper’s and...
6 months ago
Guy
Davenport was our Johnny Appleseed of culture. He was an academic who published
in Harper’s and the Journal of the American Institute of Architects;
Life magazine and Art News; National Review and Inquiry.
He sowed allusions without regard for pretentious pieties. He loved...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists'
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters...
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the
same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get
a craving for spaghetti...
Josh Thompson
Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in
Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...
over a year ago
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in
Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations.
Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Pure Absence, No Place, Nowhere, Not'
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of...
4 months ago
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of the book is the account of
Lenin’s autopsy, following his death at age fifty-two from atherosclerosis.
When tapped with tweezers, his cerebral arteries pinged like stone. They...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About'
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness...
2 months ago
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read
Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I
sympathize. I remember reading...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
Josh Thompson
OK, some new books
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that...
over a year ago
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that proclamation.
Do I really want to limit myself to just the books that I’ve already picked for myself?
Yes. Maybe.
There’s a kind of book I don’t want to read any more of. That’s the “get...
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
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that we are almost crushed to death. Now let us move it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Noble Unconsciousness Is in Him'
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s...
5 months ago
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s correct. “I think people are too cynical to have heroes today,” she
continues. “They’re embarrassed to say someone is a hero. Nobody’s good enough.
Everybody wants to look for failure...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Obscuration of the Luminaries of Heaven'
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the...
8 months ago
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the city
periodically coated it with tar. Rain fell on the morning of July 20 but by late
afternoon the skies had cleared and all that remained of the rain were puddles
in the water-proof street....
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 post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Change
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...
over a year ago
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference.
Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes.
I found it to be compelling...
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes.
I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books.
Related but in a different...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
5 days ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
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