Josh Thompson
Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too)
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that...
over a year ago
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that make my life better, and might do the same for you.
(If you’re an iPhone user, just Google for the iOS version of the following tools. They’re all out there)
Rewire App:...
Ben Borgers
Everyone’s Asking for Tips Now
over a year ago
This Space
The end of literature, part five
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Glory Seemingly Reserved For Poems'
“He was born
in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894.
Irreparably...
5 months ago
“He was born
in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894.
Irreparably Semitic, Isaac was the son of a rag merchant from Kiev and a
Moldavian Jewess. Catastrophe has been the normal climate of his life.”
Though born
within five years of each other,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects'
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with...
11 months ago
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from
college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J.
Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy...
2 weeks ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Meaning of Sidereal Time'
Years ago I
was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and
part-time...
a year ago
Years ago I
was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and
part-time journalist who lived in Woodstock, N.Y. He was smart, quick, funny
and surprisingly well-read (he knew who Edward Dahlberg was). Neither of
us was much of a party-goer so we spent...
Escaping Flatland
In praise of insular groups
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a...
7 months ago
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!...
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
a month ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal
shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and
sometimes about the past.
These are all old moves, old techniques. I was a...
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
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.
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We...
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
This Space
39 Books in one
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books:...
6 months ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books: PDF
As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
The Perry Bible...
Pop
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
6 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
Josh Thompson
Depression
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words'
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely...
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s
novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I
noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Less Energy to Do Wrong'
On his
thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal:
“Thirty years...
10 months ago
On his
thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal:
“Thirty years old! Now I’m convinced I shall not escape death.”
At thirty I
was still immortal, blundering through life, plan-less but confident I could
transcend mere death. I don’t remember my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passions and Perturbations of the Mind'
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates
fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s...
11 months ago
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates
fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): addle, colly, costard, doter, to filch, to fleer, giddyheaded, griper, hotspur, to macerate, muckhill, mutter, oligarchy, quacksalver
and squalor....
Josh Thompson
My terminal setup
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....
over a year ago
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post.
Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup.
First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe …
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It...
6 months ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Snow!
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
7 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later!
What are bollards
The what and the why in a single image:
The what and why in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daft in a Socially Useful and Quite Pleasant Way'
A young man
and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to
discourage...
6 months ago
A young man
and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to
discourage them. Nor do I want to encourage costly foolishness. He’s twenty-one,
my age when I indulged in a similar fantasy half a century ago. With a poet and
his wife – hardly the most...
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,...
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read,...
a week ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by
Charlotte Lennox. I had not read it, so
I trailed along.
An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her
brain addled by novels:
From...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit'
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool...
4 months ago
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool head in a tight situation.”
Long before
he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a
patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Colder Here Than Organized Charity'
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once...
9 months ago
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once business-like and chatty: “I hope subsequent activities haven’t yet
sufficed to obliterate our Boston dinner last fall from your memory.” The men had
first met in 1953 when each...
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist?
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the...
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did.
Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted'
A human being
is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
a week ago
A human being
is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of
learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity
for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that
makes us...
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
The context is smarter than you.
4 months ago
The context is smarter than you.
sbensu
There Is No Antimemetics Division
Notes on the book.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'For a Dream's Sake'
Interviewer:
“Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”
Philip
Larkin: “Not without...
a year ago
Interviewer:
“Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”
Philip
Larkin: “Not without being someone else. I think it is very much easier to
imagine happiness than to experience it. Which is a pity because what you imagine
makes you dissatisfied with what you experience,...
Josh Thompson
Parking in Golden
Parking in Golden is broken.
This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian...
over a year ago
Parking in Golden is broken.
This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian traffic in Golden to break, in the same way that if a machine on a manufacturing line breaks, adjacent components need to stop, or it will also malfunction.
The topic of parking (at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic'
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener...
9 months ago
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated
from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially
biodegradable. Who...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection'
“This
impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual
state of...
a week ago
“This
impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual
state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay
but never completely still.”
In their moral
and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate"
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you!
Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
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
'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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fruit of My Studies'
I’ve been invited to join an online book club and
have politely declined. I even like some of the...
3 months ago
I’ve been invited to join an online book club and
have politely declined. I even like some of the readers who already belong, but
by nature I’m not a joiner of anything. As soon as an arrangement among friendly
individuals becomes formalized – by that I mean, organized, with...
This Space
39 Books: 2006
My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The...
7 months ago
My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The Human Race. Instead I wondered if I could say something about Timothy Hyman's Sienese Painting. While I have little or no feeling for art, I am drawn to reading about it. The book's...
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the...
a year ago
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear."
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance
From our May writing prompt.
4 months ago
From our May writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned'
In Wednesday’s
installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
In Wednesday’s
installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism” -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I
suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world
unaccompanied by...
The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist...
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
7 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
The Marginalian
Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be...
a year ago
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams."
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?'
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland...
3 months ago
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France.
This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits
annihilation and destruction....
ribbonfarm
Bangalore Meetup Report
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal...
6 months ago
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal for organizing. I think this is the first meetup I’ve done since the last Refactor Camp in 2019. It was kinda last minute, which is why I only posted on Substack rather than here...
The Marginalian
What Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art...
"We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
a year ago
"We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
Josh Thompson
Processes Vs. Goals (or, Systems vs. Accomplishments)
In this
excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any...
over a year ago
In this
excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any specific goals, with the right
system, you will still go a long way.
This idea has been floating around my head for over a year, now, and I think it’s slowly coalescing into something...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How It Sounds When Read Out Loud'
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written...
a month ago
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written seventy-five years earlier and picked students to read aloud each of
its four, eight-line stanzas. She suggested we pay attention to who is
speaking, as the poem is written as a dialogue...
The Marginalian
Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love
"Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
a year ago
"Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
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...
The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous...
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
11 months ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dubious or Questionable Medium'
In 1972,
Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested
poems “protesting the acceleration of the...
10 months ago
In 1972,
Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested
poems “protesting the acceleration of the undeclared Indo-Chinese War” for a
special issue to be published in September of that year. Hine said he would be “grateful
to consider any poem on this terrible and topical subject...
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations."
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Least Appealing Aspects of Our Species'
The twentieth
century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances...
2 months ago
The twentieth
century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances were
extraordinary – antibiotics, insulin, the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Airplanes, television,
computers, space exploration. And yet Guy Davenport was not being needlessly morbid
when he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Diana Steads Him Nothing, He Must Stay'
For earned emotional
intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you...
a year ago
For earned emotional
intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you can
hardly outdo A.E. Housman, as recounted by one of his students in Richard
Perceval Graves’ A. E. Housman: The
Scholar-Poet (1979):
“One morning
in May, 1914, when the trees in...
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."
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
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...
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,...
Josh Thompson
Issues related to the city of Golden
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...
over a year ago
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden.
I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot.
Here’s the lot in question:
I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
8 months ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daring to His Own Disadvantage'
“The words
poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is
against...
5 months ago
“The words
poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is
against mock society, mock poetry, mock justice, mock spirituality—against any form of enslavement—is a benefit.”
Marianne
Moore could be a soft touch when it came to reviewing. She could...
The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of...
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
a year ago
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship."
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual
+ reading recommendations
10 months ago
+ reading recommendations
Wuthering...
The books I read in November 2024 - like a hideous spinster who has learned the grim humor of the...
Thank goodness I write these down.
FICTION
The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower...
a week ago
Thank goodness I write these down.
FICTION
The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: The Crab-flower Club
(c. 1760), Cao Xueqin – written up long ago.
Cartucho (1931) &
My Mother's Hands (1938), Nellie Campobello – Brutal
vignettes of the Mexican revolution by a diehard partisan, a...
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.
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...
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
4 days ago
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts:
So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”.
I...
Escaping Flatland
On limitations that hide in your blindspot
and how to find them
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poem Calls For a Formal Reading'
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized...
6 months ago
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized solipsism makes it difficult for me to breathe. Sugary adulation induces
diabetic comas. Free verse is emetic and I’m allergic to hipsters but Thursday
evening I broke my vow and went...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 360.5
...
3 days ago
The American Scholar
Guillermo
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a...
a year ago
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being."
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are.
Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
The Elysian
What futuristic projects should I visit around the world?
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your...
6 months ago
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your city or project? I’d love your help plannin…
Josh Thompson
Continuous Glucose Monitors: Why & What
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the...
7 months ago
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the rear of my upper arm, usually sparks a question or two, I’ve usually stumbled through a response, now I can simply pass this page along to anyone who asks.
Since maybe 2018, every...
Ben Borgers
Why Do I Care About Grades?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Stand for the Unacademic'
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and...
9 months ago
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and readers. Something vital was lost when the
profs colonized and laid claim to literature. John Gross puts it like this in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters
(1969; rev. ed....
The Marginalian
Turning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of...
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from...
a year ago
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from the Garden of Eden — a deeply damaging story about human nature, damning us and our relationship to nature. Unthinkingly, we have perpetuated this story in our present narrative...
The American Scholar
“The Last Words of My English Grandmother”
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
'Fond of Books and Fond of Reading'
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled...
8 months ago
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled A Note Book with Commentaries. This
is the 1950 edition published by William Heinemann and comes with an indecipherable
pencil inscription on the front end paper that may be...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike'
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Point of Literature'
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible...
a month ago
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible human
being, as though this constituted recently declassified information. Such an understanding
of literature and literary history, if followed to its logical conclusion, will
result in a...
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
over a year ago
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
'A Kind of Masochism Afoot in Modern Aesthetics'
“Is there a
kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull
acquire...
5 months ago
“Is there a
kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull
acquire significance simply because the beaten spirit would seem to claim more
seriousness than a more robust struggle with the exigencies of things?”
This
elegantly crafted question, at...
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance'
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained...
5 months ago
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s
drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street,
top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
Steven Scrawls
Against Confidence
Against Confidence
I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel
confident.
If my...
11 months ago
Against Confidence
I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel
confident.
If my writing makes me feel confident, it probably has a title like
“Look At My Cleverly Constructed Argument/Insight” (subtitle: “Also Look
At My Pretty Words”). If I release writing...
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...
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
6 months ago
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Quietly, an Aside'
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the...
11 months ago
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the opening sentence or paragraph
of a news story. The idea is to quickly grab the reader’s attention and, with
luck, hold on to it. Subtlety is discouraged in journalism. There’s much...
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For?
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Doomr
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the...
10 months ago
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the website for this one.
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
8 months ago
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I
had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional
desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just
been pretending not to notice.
How...
Josh Thompson
Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing?
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it.
This is an odd...
sbensu
Breaking changes in JSON APIs
A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
a year ago
A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
Josh Thompson
On Minimalism
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”.
This reluctance...
over a year ago
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”.
This reluctance is because I think the label brings in a bunch of connotations that I don’t like.
Our apartment never looked like this. Source: home-designing.com
What is Minimalism?
a removal or...
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Go to the Bookcase'
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself....
a month ago
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself. It nagged me, like a commercial jingle from fifty years ago playing in my
head. The harder I dredged to recover the source, the deeper it sank. I let go
and an hour later it bubbled...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness'
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
4 months ago
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,” J.V.
Cunningham replied:
“You can
write on politics or not. I do not. But is politics meant here? Or is it,
rather, ideology? The latter is religious, not political, though religion...
Wuthering...
Notes on Aristotle's Poetics - What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends?
Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The...
over a year ago
Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The Frogs – but for centuries it was the base of Western literary criticism, not a source of insight but rather a set of rules. The Unities, the Tragic Flaw, catharsis, the ranking of...
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
3 weeks ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
Josh Thompson
Three Levels of Competence
Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing.
Yeah. Me too.
I’ve spent an unusual amount...
over a year ago
Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing.
Yeah. Me too.
I’ve spent an unusual amount of time working with beginners, to help them improve at climbing. I’ve also worked a lot with (what I would consider to be) intermediate climbers, so
can get better. I’ve certainly...
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction
The post Riding With Mr....
6 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction
The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
Blog -...
Welcome to Anchor Point Blog
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that
self-discovery does not have to be...
over a year ago
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that
self-discovery does not have to be a solo journey. Through this blog men
can connect to resources that will help to enhance their personal
development. Many of these resources have deeply impacted my growth, and...
Blog -...
Book Review - Zen in the Art of Archery
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow,
Zen Arrow as likely...
over a year ago
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow,
Zen Arrow as likely being the most popular book about Japanese culture and
martial arts ever. This is a bold statement I cannot contest, having read
only three other books about Zen: the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Close to the Caliber of Mark Twain'
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three...
3 months ago
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three volumes of The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974) was asked by Bill
Kauffman about the scarcity of politicians who are today capable of formulating their
own coherent let alone eloquent...
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6)
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Art Must Be Giving Pleasure'
On May 14,
1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of...
a year ago
On May 14,
1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of Shakespeare’s
plays at the New School of Social Research in New York City, W.H. Auden
delivered a concluding lecture. He roots Shakespeare’s vision in the notion of original sin
and what he...
The American Scholar
Un Tinto
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
A greeting
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
12 months ago
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas day, sometime in the 1570s, he was out walking when he came upon a rose that had, in the blistering cold, put forth a flower. It was a hellebore, a winter rose. Moved by the...
The Elysian
I'd like to open a Singapore franchise please?
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
9 months ago
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
Wuthering...
Books I read in March 2024 - Literature was a game of pillaging, and this book showed it.
A nice little run at Persian literature this month. And I am reading in Portuguese again,...
8 months ago
A nice little run at Persian literature this month. And I am reading in Portuguese again, slowly,
slowly.
PERSIAN LITERATURE, MOSTLY CLASSICAL
Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1110), Abolqasem Ferdowsi – See here for notes on this
big epic in Dick Davis’s translation.
The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists'
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters...
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the
same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get
a craving for spaghetti...
This Space
39 Books: 1993
I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in...
7 months ago
I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in the US edition), but not his short stories. In the year Hofmann died aged only 62, I bought and read Balzac's Horse and other stories in the wonderful Minerva paperback imprint....
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad'
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
6 months ago
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift
was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”
Now there’s a
metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
Anecdotal Evidence
'First Find a Thinking Being. Lots of Luck'
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself....
7 months ago
As a
non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math
itself. That’s a confession of inadequacy, though I’m not one of those people
who says, “I don’t have a head for math,” when what they really mean is arithmetic.
Because of my job I’ve learned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Art and Practice of Reading Aloud to Others'
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19...
11 months ago
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown he has been reading books
aloud to his wife, most recently The Wife
of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis. His list of more than a dozen titles includes
Moby-Dick (“our overall...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
6 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books.
(Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books.
(Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).
My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not
know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian
literature project, which is...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest...
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
a month ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
The Marginalian
Don’t Waste Your Wildness
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable,...
2 months ago
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. In...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Naming the garden in The Story of the Stone - the pleasures of incomprehension
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was
born with the jade stone in his...
2 months ago
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was
born with the jade stone in his mouth, is an Imperial Concubine, a high
prestige slave of the Emperor. She is
likely herself still a teen when we learn, in Chapter 16 of The Story of the
Stone, that she has been...
The American Scholar
From Las Cosas Nuevas by Ennio Moltedo
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'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...
The American Scholar
All Talk
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is...
7 months ago
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates
I’m still catching up with myself.
I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.
I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher,
independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible. The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds
is not much help. But luckily we have
Xenophon, a close...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Interesting to Me Than the Future'
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists...
4 months ago
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than
successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles
or that everyone should share them; in...
Josh Thompson
Wrapping my head around local politics 001
Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.*
As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local...
over a year ago
Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.*
As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local community”, and don’t know the best way to “mobilize my resources”.
vomit. I hate admitting that. But I still want to figure out
if it is possible for me (little old me) to do...
Escaping Flatland
After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is...
11 months ago
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is possible to play. Then AI beat them.
The Marginalian
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective
"No guarantees in this life."
11 months ago
"No guarantees in this life."
This Space
A rare sort of writer
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've...
over a year ago
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've written over the years – after a brief interlude.
I read him first in July 1988 after borrowing The Lessons of Modernism from the second floor of Portsmouth Central Library because...
This Space
39 Books: 2000
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
7 months ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
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...
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...
14 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,...
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
How Can You Buy Happiness?
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy
things. But we should do more than just buy
things.
Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November'
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
a month ago
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the Ruins (1950):
“We enter
again November; cold late light
Glazes the field, a little fever of love,
Held in numbed hands, admires the false gods;
While lonely on this coast the...
Blog -...
Book Review - Owning Your Own Shadow
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough
exploration of personal...
over a year ago
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough
exploration of personal development. According to the classic resource
Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, “The
shadow is that which has not entered adequately into...
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
The American Scholar
Jason Middlebrook
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life...
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
Josh Thompson
Crock Pots are Foolproof, Right?
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND...
over a year ago
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND hang out with good friends. I wanted to try a
really good looking recipe, and watch Django Unchained.
The cooking instructions for the recipe was “cook on low for 7-9 hours”. I...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Amores and Marlowe's Ovid - Love slack’d my muse
Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s
Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter...
10 months ago
Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s
Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter Green in The Erotic Poems
(1982) and Christopher Marlowe as Ovid’s Elegies (1599). A statement of purpose:
I, Ovid, poet of my wantonness,
Born at Peligny, to write more address.
So...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Little Towns Should Have Had Their Chroniclers'
Every St.
Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green
and white...
9 months ago
Every St.
Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green
and white knitted shamrock and reminded me of the origin of my first name. Her
father was born in County Cork, as were her mother’s parents. I waited until
the third grade to rebel against...
The Marginalian
About War
"Outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all...
a year ago
"Outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace."
The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and...
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Just to Sweeten the Cup'
“It is to be
remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The
March of Literature (1939), “that a passage...
a week ago
“It is to be
remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The
March of Literature (1939), “that a passage of good prose is a work of art
absolute in itself and with no more dependence on its contents than is a fugue
of Bach, a minuet of Mozart, or the writing for piano of...
The Marginalian
Yellow Butterfly: A Moving Wordless Story About War, Hope, and Keeping the Light Alive
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that...
a year ago
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that every great moral and spiritual leader in the history of our civilization has shared “the great goal of the internal and external liberation of man* from the evils of war” as Freud...
Josh Thompson
2018 Reading Review & Recommendations
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”:
👍 = I recommend this book. (This metric is intentionally fuzzy.)
😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself
🏢 = Book topic is...
The Marginalian
Love Anyway
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the...
9 months ago
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway...
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...
Wuthering...
The sophists and their rehabilitation - they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their...
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato. Minimized for...
a year ago
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato. Minimized for centuries in the history of philosophy as, following Plato (but not Socrates), hucksters, they, or some of them, are now taken seriously as an intermediate step between the cosmological...
Josh Thompson
Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress)
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...
over a year ago
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...
Josh Thompson
Becoming an Early Riser
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to...
over a year ago
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to hear about when being awoken by their parents
Getting out of bed is a struggle. I’ve spent the better part of twenty four years setting my alarm as late as possible so I could have...
The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
9 months ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
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 American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt
The fabric of life
The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The fabric of life
The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How to Wake Up Early
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early
(Read Part Two, and Part Three)
My...
over a year ago
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early
(Read Part Two, and Part Three)
My understanding of sleep has evolved. When I was born, I spent most of my time asleep (if I recall correctly…) and gradually spent less and less time sleeping, until I was down to about...
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
Josh Thompson
My Thoughts on Eric Weinstein's Thoughts on Pia Kalani's Thoughts
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment,...
over a year ago
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment, police brutality, a vaccine, elections, so much politics, China, Tik-Tok, the Twitter-dm-hack-bitcoin-scam-or-was-it-dm-content hack happened.
Tiger King, Cheer, Filthy Rich are...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early 2.0
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...
over a year ago
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win.
From mid-may until June 7, I...
The Marginalian
The Wild Iris: Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering
"Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
7 months ago
"Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths
The...
2 weeks ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths
The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 359.5
...
a week ago
The American Scholar
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory...
a month ago
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Josh Thompson presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes...
over a year ago
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes nothing but encouraging members of the GASB board (Joel Black, Jeffrey Previdi, James Brown, Brian Caputo, Kristopher Knight, Dianna Ray, and Carolyn Smith) to spend 15 minutes...
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
This Space
39 Books: 2014
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
7 months ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity.
This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will...
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
9 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least
one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel
(2009). ...
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 355.5
...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...
over a year ago
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year.
Samples:
Kristi
1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other.
We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House
...
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Richly, Sometimes Dreamily, Melodic'
A friend has
given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt...
9 months ago
A friend has
given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt and Co., 1930), with a printed note
before the title page:
“Three
hundred copies of ‘Poems for Children’ have been specially printed and bound,
and have been signed by the...
The Marginalian
From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became
The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
a year ago
The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
Ben Borgers
The Beginning of College Sucks
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
The How and Why of BlockValue
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...
over a year ago
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer.
I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...
The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
9 months ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
The Marginalian
D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that...
a year ago
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that we are almost crushed to death. Now let us move it."
The American Scholar
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Cost of Building an Idea
over a year ago
This Space
Favourite books 2022
This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable...
over a year ago
This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable books of the year lists, though I enjoyed those not included in this selection.
Jon Fosse – Septology
Thomas Bernhard – The Rest is Slander
"we are concealing a secret, a secret...
The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
The Elysian
Week 4: One pitch several places
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it.
So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
Josh Thompson
An Intro to Customer Success
Customer Success - what is it?
When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately...
over a year ago
Customer Success - what is it?
When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately think I do either Customer Support, or sales. In a way, they are correct. I do both. Today, and more in the future, I’ll dig deep into this particular industry.
A traditional...
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Carry on With the Business of the Day'
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding...
4 months ago
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding epiphanies.
Perhaps our finest nature poet is Yvor Winters. A basic understanding of
biology is useful in discouraging pantheism and other forms of fashionable nature
mysticism.
We...
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy
You're welcome.
8 months ago
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.
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals?
Lose weight/get in shape
Make more money/start budgeting
Learn a language
Learn a skill
Read more
Stop doing something (smoking, drinking)
Statistically, all of...
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
2 weeks ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil
The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Worked His Weaponed Wit'
A reader is
displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a...
a year ago
A reader is
displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a long time ago about Robert Bly. Granted, criticizing Bly is like
shooting fish in the bathtub with a bazooka. I was a little ashamed of myself
but that passed. My consolation is...
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
2 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five
volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel.
I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it,
but in a sense I did finish a...
The American Scholar
Born to Be Wild
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Why Not Get Out of This Rut?'
"Books offer
what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal
Christmas-present...
2 days ago
"Books offer
what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal
Christmas-present problem.”
Well, yes
and no. I’m a graceless gift giver and receiver, especially when it comes to
books. People like my middle son are inspired and have a knack for...
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
a week ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
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
'You Must Start Rewriting in Your Head'
“Rhythm is
never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then
continue...
10 months ago
“Rhythm is
never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then
continue rewriting on the page. The hallmark of a seductive style is to extend
natural speech rhythm over the distance of a complex sentence.”
When I
applied for my first job on a...
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Quicksilver and Clay
Quicksilver and Clay
Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of
quicksilver and...
11 months ago
Quicksilver and Clay
Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of
quicksilver and clay. The pieces of my body—my sense of humor, my
beliefs, my opinions and artistic sensibilities and worldviews,
everything—combine to present a cohesive self to be...
The Elysian
I'm not going to have kids to save the economy
Not on my list of reasons to have children.
8 months ago
Not on my list of reasons to have children.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Not Far From Me'
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves...
9 months ago
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves their purposes. Even the strictest formalist bends a little in the
service of what works aesthetically. The byproduct of that decision-making
process is “style.” Good work can come out...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope'
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century,
the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the
modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Ben Borgers
Class Council: “Brutally Honest”
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Acting Out
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry'
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when...
9 months ago
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a
discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard
Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
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.
Josh Thompson
Aggregate and deduplicate your deprecation warnings in Rails
We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a...
over a year ago
We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a 4.2 -> 5.2 upgrade because Rails 4.2 is no longer supported.
You, dear reader, have just suddenly found an interest in resolving deprecation warnings, and as one jumps a few Rails...
The Marginalian
Marie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated
"It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
8 months ago
"It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Although Too Many Readers Have Forgotten'
My education
continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards,
1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson...
3 weeks ago
My education
continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards,
1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, previously unknown to me:
“All night I
sat beside the bed
And watched
that senseless moaning head
Backwards
and forwards toss and toss,
When
suddenly he sat upright
And...
ben-mini
IMG_0416
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
a month ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app.
The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
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...
The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes...
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
7 months ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books
Here’s how that could look.
7 months ago
Here’s how that could look.
The American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
10 months ago
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
The American Scholar
Up Close
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
'The Soul of Reading!'
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress
out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was
like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the
details of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return'
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically
implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:
“Greasy,
grimy gopher guts!
Little dirty
birdie feet!”
As in any
folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
Anecdotal Evidence
'No Secret Element of Gusto Warms Up the Sermon'
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck...
a month ago
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck does not. A.J. Liebling has it. Woodward and Bernstein have never
heard of it. Gusto is taking pleasure in the job at hand. About writers it
suggests energy and enjoyment in playing...
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions
The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d...
a month ago
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time
living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children,
unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
The Marginalian
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
2 weeks ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
Astral Codex Ten
Against The Generalized Anti-Caution Argument
...
a month ago
sbensu
When coordination pays off
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
2 months ago
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
Wuthering...
Please read Greek philosophy with me - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, dog men, people jumping in...
Greek philosophy, readalong #2.
This idea got more interesting the more I thought about it, but...
a year ago
Greek philosophy, readalong #2.
This idea got more interesting the more I thought about it, but had more organizational problems, plus the greater problem that I do not think of philosophy as a strength of mine. My solution has been to convert the project into literature.
Is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When We Have Excellent Books, They Sell'
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But...
3 months ago
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But then we look at our sales details and we smile.”
John Byron
Kuhner posts a rare dispatch of hope from the world of books, the beating heart
of what remains of our civilization. In...
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,...
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.
The Marginalian
Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and...
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a...
a year ago
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a memorial profile of “California’s Mother of Gardens” — a hopeful antidote to the undoing of the human world, celebrating the woman who covered Southern California with the loveliest...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism?
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long. Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
Wuthering...
Philoctetes by Sophocles - Let me suffer what I must suffer
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in...
over a year ago
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in a mood of reconciliation and healing.
Literal healing. Philoctetes possesses the bow of Hercules. Either the bow, or Philoctetes himself, or both – prophecies are ambiguous...
The American Scholar
“The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along'
“Persistently
obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”
A truth I
had...
2 months ago
“Persistently
obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”
A truth I
had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not
the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy...
Ben Borgers
Giving Out Chick-fil-A on a Schedule App
over a year ago
This Space
Favourite books 2021
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
The Marginalian
Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea...
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or...
3 months ago
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or sanitation. Imagine being a gifted child in that world, knowing you are born into a body that will never be granted the basic rights of citizenship in any country, into a mind that will...
Steven Scrawls
"Progress"
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions...
a year ago
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s
list of most-visited websites (see Notes for
details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments,
and come to your own...
The Marginalian
The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter...
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
a year ago
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
Wuthering...
Many of Plato's early Socratic dialogues - It was quite lovely.
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or...
a year ago
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or during my last Greek phase 25 years ago, and this time I hope to read almost all of them.
I will make some notes on them in a few posts. Give them a tag if nothing else, and make some...
The 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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle'
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of...
7 months ago
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir
Nabokov on May 6, 1923:
“No, life is
no quivering quandary!
Here under
the moon things are bright and dewy.
We are...
sbensu
The Market for Takes
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
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
Josh Thompson
Use an Alarm to Go to Bed
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....
over a year ago
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes.
I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.)
Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.)
Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory'
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
2 months ago
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older
contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and
the 117-line title poem appeared in The
Massachusetts Review in 1970....
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Now We Shall Never, Never See Her Again'
Ian Donaldson
begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his
death...
a year ago
Ian Donaldson
begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his
death but with his interment in Westminster Abbey. Though a popular playwright
during his lifetime, Jonson died in poverty and was buried vertically in order to
consume less valuable real...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death"
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an...
2 months ago
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent
use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane,
metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the...
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
5 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know'
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own
when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens
puts it, “knows where the...
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Consider Seriously My Condition'
Soon after
he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished...
a year ago
Soon after
he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished salvaging
everything useful from the wreckage, Robinson Crusoe builds a calendar:
“After I had
been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts that I should
lose my reckoning of...
Josh Thompson
Whole Messages in Slack
I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy,...
over a year ago
I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy, #DenverDevs). My last job, I used Slack. The job before that, I got the whole company on Slack. I’ve used it for years.
Slack delivers value to me, and induces little anxiety, and...
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