The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
6 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
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: 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...
The American Scholar
Agent 37
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Pry-ing into a Stack Trace
I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting...
over a year ago
I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting errors. I git stashed, and re-ran my tests, and still got errors. Here’s the full stacktrace:
> b ruby -Itest test/models/model_name_redacted_test.rb -n=/errors/
# Running tests...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Discussian of General Ideas'
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever...
4 months ago
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever possessed tells me he plans to reread Animal
House and 1984. Neither have I
read since junior-high school, probably the ideal time for such books, which
are among the most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise'
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading...
4 months ago
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never
before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry.
First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Midst the Pomp and Toil of War'
I learned
that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never
read...
6 months ago
I learned
that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never
read poetry. I was a senior in high school. Days before we went to see the
Oscar-winning film Patton, he delivered
a lecture on the general’s military prowess, anti-Semitism and desire
to...
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
6 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual
+ reading recommendations
10 months ago
+ reading recommendations
ribbonfarm
Going Sessile
One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel...
7 months ago
One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel beyond local weekend getaways. Almost no destination has a pain/novelty ratio that makes it worth it. On the one hand, I’ve traveled enough that few places hold the promise of...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Enormous Yes'
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is...
5 months ago
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is my eleven-year-old Nissan. When
I play a CD, I listen and never treat
it as background. I hate the idea of music as ambient filler, a second
atmosphere. My youngest son plays music...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Breathing--Still'
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections,...
11 months ago
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections, “Snowfall in
Vietnam: Poems/Maxims,” consists of ten one-line, five-syllable poems and
accompanying titles, some of which are longer than the poems. Their extreme...
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
7 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
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
'Beauty, Clarity, Consolation, Truth'
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book
critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you...
a year ago
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book
critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you straight. Their world is
strictly binary -- like/dislike,
good/bad – and they are fond of superlatives: the best/the worst. Dissent sparks
crackdowns and there is no appeals...
This Space
39 Books: 2004
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
7 months ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks.
But do I really want to make such...
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
9 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
The American Scholar
Kinship and Contradictions
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and...
a week ago
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and Contradictions appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory...
a month ago
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
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
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something'
Four years
late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
8 months ago
Four years
late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a
Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the
collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the
other...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Garish, Clownish, Bizarre, Stills Blocks Away'
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river...
a year ago
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river there is serpentine and the city paved a walking path along its southern
shore that smoothed out some of the curves. Every day I walked two miles along
the asphalt trail, turned...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 2: Run your first tests (and make them pass)
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...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
6 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years.
the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Amuse and Gratify Her Own Self'
In her first
collection, A Good Time Was Had By All
(1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already...
a year ago
In her first
collection, A Good Time Was Had By All
(1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already suggesting themes that would go on preoccupying her:
“All things
pass
Love and
mankind is grass”.
In scripture,
grass is the default metaphor for the transience of life. In the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project'
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary
observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:
“The two
offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
"The people we love are built into us."
a year ago
"The people we love are built into us."
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018
Slides are available here on Dropbox
Git Push, Git Paid
Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned:
Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
Josh Thompson
Don't Focus on the Present
If you accept the premise that training
cycles are the method by which you will improve your...
over a year ago
If you accept the premise that training
cycles are the method by which you will improve your climbing, you
should be able to focus less on the day-by-day fluctuation in your performance.
At least, I should be able to, since I accept that premise. Yet I still struggle to not be...
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding
Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
Let's brainstorm the future together.
The Marginalian
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments...
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
a month ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
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....
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lack of Self-deception'
“There is a
difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is
an...
a year ago
“There is a
difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is
an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own
sake.”
A fine
distinction, one often lost on us. Auden is describing Shakespeare’s Richard
III and refers us to...
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 –...
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice.
I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
Escaping Flatland
On shortcuts and longcuts
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they...
7 months ago
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they make. This gives the path a lovely human fit. But sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to design ways to get people to take a longer path, a longcut, so they can see or...
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has...
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of
lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from
the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy'
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong,...
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”
One hint: it’s
a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy.
Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Marsh Light Is Still Burning Hard'
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute...
10 months ago
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute for
actually reading them, a ruse for flaunting one’s hipness or sophistication. My
late friend David Myers was fond of assembling such lists, which are likely to
assure higher-than-average...
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
Rules for Fighting Fair
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...
over a year ago
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean?
So, rather than asking more...
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...
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
"Bystander Angel, He Records the Dying'
My late-life
swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission
but I’m...
a year ago
My late-life
swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission
but I’m unlikely to read Proust for a third time. The shorter form is ideally
adapted to my circadian rhythms. I can read two or three before going to bed.
Of late, the masters: Chekhov,...
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...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of...
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
a month ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin. Here I will write about the second volume of
the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club. Last time, after reading the first fifth of
the novel, I...
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...
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
12 months ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
This Space
39 Books: 2022
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
6 months ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe."
This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
3 months ago
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
The Marginalian
The 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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context'
An old
friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects
what he calls...
3 months ago
An old
friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects
what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a
connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in
both of them.
“[I]t's a
similar sense of...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
8 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
The Marginalian
200 Years of Solitude: Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists in Praise of the Creative and...
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows...
5 months ago
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In...
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by...
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in...
10 months ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in February. I gotta catch up on my
posts.
One big book
down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible.
TRAVEL, let’s
call it
Black Lamb
and Grey Falcon
(1941), Rebecca...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning?
new essay in Asterisk
2 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons
and what's on my mind
9 months ago
Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
...
over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
1. Roman plays. Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Don’t See Other People As Peculiar'
For my
money, the Canadian short story
writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is...
11 months ago
For my
money, the Canadian short story
writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is too dull to endure.
(Joseph Epstein said of her work: “Humor never obtrudes.”) Born in Montreal, Gallant
moved to Europe in 1950, hoping to give up journalism and write fiction....
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism?
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals.
I’ll record some...
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals.
I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go.
Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator
I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation.
So, in the book,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need'
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most...
6 months ago
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late
nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial
translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up.
(If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Silence Suddenly Erupts in Speech'
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy,...
a year ago
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy, France again and back to Poland. His budget was tight but Herbert was
no hedonistic tourist. Nor was he a stuffy academic or critic. The essays in Barbarian in the Garden (1962;...
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...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
The Marginalian
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
a year ago
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Than Documentary'
“Literariness,
as I understand it, does not necessarily entail any particular set of...
3 months ago
“Literariness,
as I understand it, does not necessarily entail any particular set of formal
qualities. What makes a work literary is the ability to be understood and
appreciated outside the context of its origin. That is why a literary work, however
valuable as a document of its...
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.
This Space
39 Books: 2016
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are
interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than
the alternatives?
Trope: The Chosen One
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of...
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...
The Marginalian
The Power of a Thin Skin
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that...
a year ago
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice."
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Lofty Vehicle, High Dudgeon'
A friend is studying
Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside...
a year ago
A friend is studying
Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside George Chapman’s version of Homer from the seventeenth
century. Like me, she’s a reader not a scholar, and like generations of
students and common readers I first encountered Chapman...
The Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
3 weeks ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At Least When Practised By a Master'
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly...
a year ago
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly not biographies, poetry or other forms of nonfiction. Some are
devoted to genre fiction – mysteries, science fiction – and at least one sticks
to the “classics” -- Austen and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poet's Hope'
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville...
7 months ago
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville scholar. We exchange emails several times each year, usually devoted
to what we are reading. This week she reported reading some of the writers and books I’ve
mentioned recently at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Profoundly Bitter Lesson'
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum...
a year ago
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum George
Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering. He has published
an essay, “A Moral Rot at Rice University”:
“I was well
aware that antisemitism is alive and well in the US,...
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 Elysian
Who's qualified to save the world?
Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
5 months ago
Two climate dystopias on unlikeable saviors.
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
The American Scholar
“The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me?
Letters to an anarchist, part one.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part one.
The American Scholar
Our Pets, Our Plates
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
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.
Escaping Flatland
Look for people who likes the illegible you of today, not your past achievements
Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth...
a year ago
Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth about the world, there exist groups that encourage divergence and healthy individuation.
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines Part 2 - Get Your Data (as a polyline) From Strava
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map.
It wasn’t just any polyline,...
3 months ago
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map.
It wasn’t just any polyline, though, it was a path of a walk I went on. (Technically, just a fragment of a path).
this is a heavy draft, I’ve had issues getting this all working well in the past, still have...
The American Scholar
Moondance
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Human mind at its deepest and highest'
Vladimir
Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational
Program in...
12 months ago
Vladimir
Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational
Program in New York:
“One of the
saddest cases is perhaps that of Osip Mandelshtam--a wonderful
poet, the greatest poet among
those trying to survive in Russia under the...
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Success is not support
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and...
over a year ago
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and customer success.
Support vs. Success
First, what’s the difference between “customer support” and “customer success”?
Lincoln Murphey says:
Customer Success is proactively working...
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
10 months ago
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
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
'A Similar Universality of Voice'
I reproach
my younger self for being lazy and not seriously studying languages other than
English. I...
5 months ago
I reproach
my younger self for being lazy and not seriously studying languages other than
English. I dabbled in Latin and German and retain a smattering of vocabulary
and little grammar. If I were to study another language today my first choice
would likely be Italian in order to...
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes. Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted.
The conceit is as usual excellent. Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
9 months ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting with
orcs, walking, walking, walking, anguish, walking, walking, walking, bit
more fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking.
—Goodreads review of “The Lord of the Rings”
Im returning...
The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work...
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be interested in humans and to be in touch with yourself as a human."
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical
literature. I had never heard of him, partly
because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean
satire” even though...
This Space
The opposite direction
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact...
over a year ago
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact paperback from Spurl Editions came just as I had given up hope of ever discussing what I believed had long fascinated me about a feature of Bernhard's prose-texts. A fascination...
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...
Ben Borgers
War Room — using the native date picker
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Finest of Human Creatures'
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S...
10 months ago
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S Pritchett and drawn from The New Statesman and Nation. Founded in
1913 by the Webbs and others associated with the Fabian Society, the magazine’s
politics were left-wing and many of...
The American Scholar
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Realises How Absolutely Modern the Best of the Old Things Are'
My late
father-in-law left me The Works of
Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American...
10 months ago
My late
father-in-law left me The Works of
Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American edition published by
Scribner’s in 1899 when the author was thirty-four years old. As a writer, Kipling
was a wonder of nature, as prodigious as Shakespeare and Dickens. To put...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Accepter and Recorder of Things as They Are'
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and...
a year ago
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and enjoyed. A reader in New York City tells me the title character of
V.S. Pritchett’s 1951 novel Mr. Beluncle
reminds her of her late father, a man she describes as “feckless.” And...
Josh Thompson
On Learning
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development.
I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
Josh Thompson
On Friction
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...
over a year ago
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want.
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on.
One of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Hears of Life's Intent'
“. . . I’ve had it. No more pronouncements on lousy
verse. No more hidden competition. No
more...
a year ago
“. . . I’ve had it. No more pronouncements on lousy
verse. No more hidden competition. No
more struggling not to be square.
Etc.”
Louise Bogan
is writing to her friend Ruth Limmer on October 1, 1969, announcing her
retirement as poetry reviewer from The
New Yorker after...
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.
Ben Borgers
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus. The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons. Plautus was...
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
a month ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
The American Scholar
Camouflage
The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
'Anticipating Since Morning a Successful Hunt'
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks...
9 months ago
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks were a favorite perch for Polyphemus and especially cecropia moths. These
are large insects, beautifully colored, with “eyes” on their wings. To budding lepidopterists
they were...
The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being'
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I...
10 months ago
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians
and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing.
It’s as though AI created them.” No...
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...
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...
Josh Thompson
Content but Restless
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more.
We have all heard...
over a year ago
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more.
We have all heard the “serenity prayer”:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
This prayer is...
The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different
A travel writer’s education
The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
7 months ago
A travel writer’s education
The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appetizing, Clear and Understandable'
This I found
in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to
mirrors....
a year ago
This I found
in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to
mirrors. Not just for diversion, or something to study. I like new
vocabularies, rhythms, ways of thinking, associations of every sort.”
Stern (1928-2013)
was seventy-one at the time and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Scrawls With a Lavish Hand Its Signature'
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives /...
2 months ago
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives / Or wandering gooseflesh.”
Carl George is the sort of scientist whose company I most enjoy. He is a generalist, what
used to be called a naturalist. Now an emeritus professor of...
The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine
"In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
5 months ago
"In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what poems are, or forget."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Man Can Be Judged By His Favorite Books'
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas...
6 months ago
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas Rudd, who quotes her subject: “Each
man can be judged by his favorite books.” She adds of the great Spanish thinker
and novelist:
“Throughout
his long life Unamuno returned to...
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
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...
Robert Caro
Anatomy of a $9 Burglary
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all...
a year ago
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all signs indicated a simple case of burglar
The American Scholar
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Pristine Caldera of Consonants'
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I...
5 months ago
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I got to explain its etymology. The word for the subatomic particle was
coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who borrowed it from Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster
Mark!”...
Josh Thompson
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept
The following is recounted on
Quora, from a lecture by Stanford
professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...
over a year ago
The following is recounted on
Quora, from a lecture by Stanford
professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department):
Here’s today’s thought for the weekend. A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept.
[Laughter]
So at a mathematical level this is...
The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our...
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
8 months ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
Ben Borgers
I’m a Sucker for the Brand
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Will Leave Behind Trenches'
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune...
a month ago
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune heirs / To the bloody myths of the twentieth city.”
Today is the
centenary of Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert. The
Anglophone world has been fortunate. Herbert’s poems...
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the...
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
a month ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Anecdotal Evidence
'If the Nation Is to Be Saved From This Menace'
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming...
10 months ago
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming a nation of minor poets.”
P.G.
Wodehouse is being kind. He wrote “The Alarming Spread of Poetry” in 1916 when
the blight was fresh and perhaps still reversible. His Exhibit A is...
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
over a year ago
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
2 months ago
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist'
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries
and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary.
I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
Astral Codex Ten
Against The Generalized Anti-Caution Argument
...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fundamental Truth of His Periodic Law”
My middle
son is given to serial enthusiasms, what others call hobbies. He’s a second
lieutenant in...
a year ago
My middle
son is given to serial enthusiasms, what others call hobbies. He’s a second
lieutenant in the Marine Corps, now in training at Quantico, and spends his weekends
rock climbing in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. This lends a
pleasing symmetry to his life, as one...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No'
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
4 weeks ago
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English
fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For
me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
The Marginalian
The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind
"Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
7 months ago
"Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
The American Scholar
The Patron Subjects
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The...
a month ago
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The post The Patron Subjects appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
a year ago
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicency, domination and oppression. It’s a condimnation of evangelicalism, but not, necessarily, any particular evangelical. There are those within evangelicalism who are ethical,...
This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Jell-O Once a Week'
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It...
4 months ago
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It wasn’t
plagiarism, exactly, and it was paraphrased. It’s a well-known passage from the
essay “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” one that always reminds me of
Spinoza:
“It is
uncertain...
sbensu
Enterprise sales meets product development
What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide...
10 months ago
What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide and more of a cautionary tale.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Balance Sheet of Conscience'
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had...
a year ago
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had no doubt at all that I’d end up in a camp, and yet I wasn’t much interested
in them. Could I have been wearied in advance, by the monotony and dullness of
mass atrocities?”
That...
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project)
As part of the HTTP Server project.
First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project.
First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding.
I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference.
Lastly, I just...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer'
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick.
I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim
1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in
a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist?
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the...
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did.
Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not At All Abashed Before the Fact'
“We do not
go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man
who has...
a year ago
“We do not
go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man
who has least fear for his own carcass, has most time to consider others.”
What a
remarkable sentence, one I would never have the guts to write. It’s not the
sentiment but the form that’s so...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us'
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but
I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his
eighties, much honored as a poet,...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Cheap and Commercial'
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment,...
9 months ago
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment, and I had never heard of the man. Indirectly,
generations after his time, Henry G. Bohn (1796-1884) served as one of my
tutors. His celebrator above is Theodore Dalrymple writing in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Writes On, Day After Day'
Clipped from
the New York Times, folded and tucked
into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was
the March...
11 months ago
Clipped from
the New York Times, folded and tucked
into Dying: An Introduction (1968) was
the March 11, 1976 obituary for L.E. Sissman. The poet had died the previous day,
age forty-eight. On the same page is the obituary for the Italian politician
Attilio Piccioni, dead the same...
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where I Went and Cannot Come Again'
A brief
return to the Russian word toska
mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in...
8 months ago
A brief
return to the Russian word toska
mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in reference to Chekhov. Dave
Lull alerted me to Nabokov’s explication of the word in his translation of
Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In the
second of the four volumes, Nabokov writes:
“No...
Josh Thompson
The Complete Guide to Rails Performance: basic setup
You know the feeling.
You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and...
over a year ago
You know the feeling.
You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and start working through the environment setup.
Then… something goes wrong. Next thing you know, you’ve spent two three too many hours debugging random crap, and you’re not even done...
Wuthering...
it’s right about here that there would normally be a gap - Peter Adamson's Classical Philosophy, the...
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without...
a year ago
Peter Adamson is an English philosopher with a long-running podcast, History of Philosophy without Any Gaps. What can that mean, without any gaps?
We’ve finished Aristotle, and it’s right about here that
there would normally be a gap. In an
undergraduate philosophy course you...
Josh Thompson
Blessed to be Sick
Yesterday, I wrote about
reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week.
Yesterday, I was...
over a year ago
Yesterday, I wrote about
reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week.
Yesterday, I was struggling to be engaged in my work. I was easily distracted, and didn’t feel very efficient during the day. Once I identified the tasks I needed to complete before I could walk away from...
Wuthering...
Books Read in May 2024 – Some are certainly knowing what they are meaning, some are certainly not...
A month without writing anything. Plenty of reading, though.
FICTIONS
The Autobiography of an...
6 months ago
A month without writing anything. Plenty of reading, though.
FICTIONS
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James
Weldon Johnson
The Making of Americans (1925), Gertrude Stein – read
over the course of months. The quotation
up above is from p. 783. I will write
about...
Josh Thompson
Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life)
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today:
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
After...
over a year ago
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today:
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...
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...
Wuthering...
Sōseki's Kokoro and two Tanizaki genre exercises - I resolved that I must live my life as if I were...
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days...
a year ago
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days for some reason we “challenged” people to read – which reminded me, as it often has, that I have never read anything by Natsumi Sōseki, the earliest of the greatest 20th century...
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...
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World'
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility....
4 months ago
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the
end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined
to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
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
What I've learned from cooking in 36 kitchens in the last year
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for...
over a year ago
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for (usually) ourselves and (sometimes) others in 36 (!!!) kitchens.
Sometimes we’ve used a kitchen for just one night, sometimes it’s every night for two months.
Needless to say, we’ve...
This Space
Proust regained
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
sbensu
The Perfectionists (book)
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
4 months ago
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
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 American Scholar
On Book
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On...
3 weeks ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
2,000 Years of Kindness
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
a year ago
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me...
a year ago
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face
as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part.
The pathos and grandeur of these...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School'
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS
bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS
bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from
a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish
outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buy Something Before You Get Socked in the Eye'
The indispensable
Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had
never...
a year ago
The indispensable
Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had
never known before, Margaret Fishback (1900-85). Like L.E. Sissman she worked
in advertising and published in The New
Yorker. Unlike Sissman, she wrote light verse almost exclusively and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change'
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put...
8 months ago
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . .
When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling
man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy'
When I’m
told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me
dies. Just...
3 months ago
When I’m
told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me
dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations,
strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise
us. An
Australian, Clarence Caddell, has...
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I...
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
The Elysian
Week 5: Write one (pitchable) think piece
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Vacuum with American Light'
Edward Hopper
is often a favorite painter of literary-minded people because, I suspect, so
many of...
7 months ago
Edward Hopper
is often a favorite painter of literary-minded people because, I suspect, so
many of his works suggest in-media-res excerpts from larger narratives. Looking
as his paintings is like opening a novel to a memorable scene,
without access to backstory or subsequent...
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.
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? ...
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
3 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
Steven Scrawls
I want to love fiction
I want to love fiction
I want to love fiction.
I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I...
8 months ago
I want to love fiction
I want to love fiction.
I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I want to obsess
over the craft of fiction, to pore over characterization and structure,
to create stories that radiate color and humanity and hope.
I want fiction to be a tool for...
Josh Thompson
Benefits of helplessness
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best...
over a year ago
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best friend (who I happen to be married to), and I’ve got a pretty cool job to boot. That’s the “big three”, right? (Relationships, work, location.)
Yep. Except from Thursday through...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dictionary of Dead Words'
How to
account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language?...
a year ago
How to
account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language? I’ve
always supposed it was laziness or the absence of imagination. Why work hard at
writing or speaking when a ready-made word, phrase or thought shows up automatically
like pain with a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are No Millers Any More'
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always...
15 hours ago
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always unsettling, as though a fundamental law of nature had been violated. Given what we
know of the person, and it may be very little, we apply
her circumstances to our own and conclude,...
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking.
Last time, I argued that customer success is...
Blog -...
Book Review - Codependent No More
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary
nearly a decade ago,...
over a year ago
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary
nearly a decade ago, Codependent No More is a startling, powerful book that
has touched the lives of so very many.
The Marginalian
Audubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with...
3 months ago
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” Henry Beston observed of other animals two generations before naturalist Sy Montgomery...
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
9 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is.
We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
Blog -...
Book Review - Iron John
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I...
over a year ago
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I reluctantly admit I am not one of the more zealous.
Although the book has high points – the classic story of Iron John as put
down by the Grimm brothers stands out to me, as well as an...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into
life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us
when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture'
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.”
Understandably,
Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless
destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or
destroying books, even...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 13, 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Erudition is Possible Outside Academe'
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit...
5 months ago
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit that pushes “arts education,” whatever that might be. I don’t take
him for an idealist. He’s bright, personable, an ambitious reader and bored.
Our culture doesn’t know what to do...
The American Scholar
Last Laugh
The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Deliquescence of Our Quartz-like Loves!'
A chemical
engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word...
5 months ago
A chemical
engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word entered English
in the eighteenth century and its original context was strictly scientific: deliquescence
occurs when a substance absorbs moisture from the air and becomes a...
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her."
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
5 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
This Space
Blood Knowledge by Kirsty Gunn
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem"...
3 weeks ago
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem" said Muriel Spark, adding by explanation: "The longer they become, the more they seem to lose value". We might wonder then if the most value is to be found in the shortest novels,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But Johnson Fought Back'
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add...
3 months ago
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add little
or nothing to the manner in which we read the book and often amount to our
author showing off, touting his own vast reading or giving himself an unearned
endorsement. The most...
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 American Scholar
“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The...
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?'
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the...
10 months ago
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and
sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that
the man who sees the fun of life...
The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
7 months ago
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and neighbors who don’t always believe what they see
The post Red Tide Warning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Principle Is Growth'
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in...
9 months ago
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in our front yard – all are gone,
one carried away by a tornado) in a field guide: the study of trees. From the
Greek for “tree.” A close synonym is silvics,
this time from the Latin. I...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about!
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead. In what may be the most...
Josh Thompson
Preparing to adopt a habit
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work.
Almost as many...
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder...
5 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
What Do You Do?
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...
over a year ago
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?”
They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?”
Sometimes this is a conversational...
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not.
The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the...
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
2 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
The American Scholar
Rhyme, Not Repetition
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
6 months ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here.
Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around.
Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
The Elysian
No one buys books
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Is My Ambition Here'
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965,...
a year ago
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965, when Miss Wagy had
us memorize it in eighth-grade English. The poem is irresistible for recitation,
whether privately in times of self-doubt or at the Kiwanis luncheon: “I am...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Judgment Day of Man’s Illusions'
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three
writers, critics and scholars to name the book...
7 months ago
In 1956, The American Scholar asked forty-three
writers, critics and scholars to name the book published in the preceding
twenty-five years they believed to have been “the most undeservedly neglected.”
For this reader, sorry to say, most of them remain neglected. I don’t even...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kind of Things I Love'
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little...
11 months ago
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little White Attic appends a bookish cri de coeur, one I have echoed many
times:
“I
increasingly feel at odds with modern culture,” she begins. “I’m indifferent to
contemporary music,...
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles.
Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night.
You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep.
You
can...
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
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang'
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
2 months ago
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to
my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a
young man asked if he...
Josh Thompson
A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and...
over a year ago
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and emotionally-charged operation to replace my 70-year-old newly-widowed mother-in-law's ancient desktop computer with a easy-for-me-to-manage Chromebook
Update: I posted to r/ChromeOS...
The American Scholar
Writer on Board
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Will Be No One Left Who Knew Their Cost'
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups...
8 months ago
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups were leaving us alone was “playing Army.” All of us had toy guns or at
least sticks. Given our ages, when dividing into good guys and bad guys, the
latter were always Germans and...
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,...
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
'Greatness Is Difficult'
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own...
a year ago
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction
occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.”
Among writers, Dr. Johnson
is the first fallible...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Hard to Find a Name in Human Speech'
After a stop
in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin
Island,...
a year ago
After a stop
in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin
Island, Chekhov’s ship encountered rough weather and high seas. Before reaching
Singapore, two men had died and their bodies were thrown overboard:
“When you
see a dead man wrapped in...
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely...
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
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...
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of...
"Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
"Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own weakness."
Anecdotal Evidence
'One I Loved Taught Here, Provoking Strife'
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the...
2 months ago
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the university published a commemorative volume, Laurel, Archaic, Rude: A Collection of Poems. It gathers twenty-six
poems written by former students, including Edgar Bowers,...
Wuthering...
How Ivan Bunin and Vasily Grossman spent the war - He was in the countryside then for the last time...
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of...
2 months ago
Without planning it I recently read three books by Russian
writers from three different strands of Russian literature: Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur
(1929 /1972, tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) in the Gogolian and
Dostoyevskian strand, Ivan Bunin’s Dark Avenues (1943/1946)...
Josh Thompson
Be Gentle to You
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....
over a year ago
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?)
These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
4 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors.
Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Make Memory Speak so Volubly'
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First,...
a year ago
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First, Kipling’s
Kim: “I was
twelve. I was very interested in ‘spiritual’ things. It was the Beatles and the
Maharishi, you know. I got it from the library and it was love at first sight.
I...
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 Marginalian
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult...
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a...
a month ago
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. “Words are events, they do things, change things,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a generation after her. To...
The Marginalian
The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the...
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote...
6 months ago
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, not yet knowing I too was to become a writer, I found myself wandering the vast cool halls of the Penn Museum. There among the thousands of ancient artifacts was one to...
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...
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
3 days ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World Has Always Seemed to Me So Various'
I dropped
out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to
complete my...
3 months ago
I dropped
out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to
complete my B.A. in English until 2003. The lack of a degree never got in the
way of working for almost a quarter-century as a newspaper reporter. I suspect
a degree in most non-STEM...
Josh Thompson
LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...
over a year ago
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution.
Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission.
So, once I fixed it so it...
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