Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks. A medical deadline approaches. That will help.
As usual, I read good books.
PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP
Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Wisdom As a Kind of Courtesy'
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more...
a year ago
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more difficult than unreflective complacency and more interesting than
madness.”
That’s how
the poet Dick Davis characterized the concerns of Janet Lewis and her husband Yvor
Winters in his...
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good.
I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
a month ago
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff`
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API.
One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it.
I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
4 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative...
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in July 2023
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month,
but I promise I had a good excuse. ...
a year ago
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month,
but I promise I had a good excuse. Posts
on Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism will appear this month, I swear, or at
least hope. My eventual excuse this month will
be, I am afraid, even better.
Still, I...
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: October
This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get...
over a year ago
This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get right to it. If you don’t want to read a lot of introspective Josh, stop reading. I use the word “I” dozens of times. Consider yourself warned.
For a long time I have feared life...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
The Broadest Portal to Joy
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Role Is a Role Worth Perfecting'
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than...
11 months ago
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than he does of death. But that sort of free man is no more than a dead
man; he is free only from life’s wellspring, lacking in love, a slave to his
freedom. The thought that I must...
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...
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
a year ago
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
Josh Thompson
Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts
Someone said:
People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...
over a year ago
Someone said:
People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly.
I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Thinking This May Be My Last Summer'
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first...
6 months ago
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first war – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon – but the
second seemed a blank. On my own, I learned of the Americans – Karl Shapiro,
Anthony Hecht, Howard Nemerov. Only...
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 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.
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
This Space
39 Books: 2010
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad."
By this time I had given up reviewing...
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Though Lightly Made, Are Hard to Keep'
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is...
11 months ago
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is endemically human and not always a bad thing. It can serve as a useful
motivator. Take the annual farce of New Year’s resolutions, those earnestly mustered plans for...
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,...
The American Scholar
Parque de la Música
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
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...
Josh Thompson
I Once Worked Hard
When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career...
over a year ago
When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career there. I was a college graduate (that means something, right?) working at a climbing gym, part time, teaching seven-year-olds how to climb at about $10 an hour.
I had no idea what I...
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
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise'
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading...
4 months ago
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never
before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry.
First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Drowning is Fine by Darren Allen
For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born...
over a year ago
For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born in 1932 to a German-speaking Jewish family in what was also Paul Celan’s hometown, Czernowitz, then in Romania, now in Ukraine, and who wrote exclusively in Hebrew after he had...
The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
8 months ago
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos."
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
2 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
3 months ago
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Jewish Kind of Feeling of the World'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer...
a month ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer can have a programme. Many have; they say, ‘I’m writing
about alienation’, or whatever they call it. I don’t have this programme. I
have a story to tell and I sit down to tell the...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About'
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness...
2 months ago
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read
Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I
sympathize. I remember reading...
The Marginalian
The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the...
a year ago
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things."
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
Ben Borgers
Class Council: “Brutally Honest”
over a year ago
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Perry Bible...
Us
The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...
over a year ago
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome.
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer.
Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...
The Elysian
One year of my work, printed
The Elysian Volume II is here.
2 months ago
The Elysian Volume II is here.
Josh Thompson
Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...
over a year ago
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it.
Since I’m trying to write...
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy'
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong,...
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”
One hint: it’s
a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy.
Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines'
When I returned
to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I
took...
3 days ago
When I returned
to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I
took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was
personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could
write about any stray...
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 Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
a month ago
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant...
2 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark
The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Learning Is Not Defunct in the Republic'
“As you
probably don’t read National Review,
I enclose proof that learning is not defunct in the...
3 months ago
“As you
probably don’t read National Review,
I enclose proof that learning is not defunct in the Republic. Buckley had
printed a note . . . praising Waugh’s delightful whimsy in coining a nonsense
phrase like tohu bohu. Catholics tend
not to have read a word of Holy Writ.”
I...
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.
The American Scholar
Rap Rap Rap
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Resources for People with Jobs
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...
over a year ago
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re
not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you
are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...
Escaping Flatland
Seeing people clearly
Head of people operations for the entire friend group
a year ago
Head of people operations for the entire friend group
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where They Grind the Grain of Thought'
Let me sing
the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin,
Miss...
a year ago
Let me sing
the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin,
Miss Rose, Miss Whistler – my teachers, K-6, at Pearl Road Elementary School.
Most were young and pretty, more like big sisters than mothers. On the
television in Miss Shaker’s class we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something'
Four years
late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
8 months ago
Four years
late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a
Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the
collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the
other...
The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
5 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
The American Scholar
Kinship and Contradictions
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and...
a week ago
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and Contradictions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Streets in Asheville
Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC
A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a...
over a year ago
Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC
A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a nice town, and has a great pedestrian life, as far as I can tell.
As a thought experiment, I decided to see how well I could make the case for reducing the road width of a few...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas...
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 days ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
The Elysian
Am I a Democrat or a Republican?
The case for going label-less.
2 days ago
The case for going label-less.
The American Scholar
Aging Out
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
2 weeks ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Brave Respect the Brave'
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read...
6 months ago
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read before, “To E.S. Salomon” (Black Beetles in Amber, 1892). Here is the memorably pertinent third stanza:
“The brave
respect the brave. The brave
Respect
the dead; but you -- you...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark'
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of...
a year ago
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair,
juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard.
He will never be hip except...
The American Scholar
The Source
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose'
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything...
7 months ago
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls
for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty
and impose it on others; humility because...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects'
Published in
the January 1821 issue of London Magazine
are thematically linked essays by two...
11 months ago
Published in
the January 1821 issue of London Magazine
are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William
Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is
better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors
I’m learning Spanish right now,
as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...
over a year ago
I’m learning Spanish right now,
as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of
learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature'
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to...
7 months ago
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take
a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern
English language...
Josh Thompson
OK, some new books
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that...
over a year ago
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that proclamation.
Do I really want to limit myself to just the books that I’ve already picked for myself?
Yes. Maybe.
There’s a kind of book I don’t want to read any more of. That’s the “get...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
9 months ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
Josh Thompson
Train Hard
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever)
When’s the last time you
trained for that activity?
Finally:
When is the last time you trained for that activity
with someone else?...
The Marginalian
What Makes a Compassionate World: Sophie de Grouchy’s Visionary 18th-Century Appeal to Parents and...
The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood...
11 months ago
The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood under a totalitarian dictatorship. Desperate for assurance that the future need not hold the total moral collapse of democracy, I reached out to my eldest friend for perspective....
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past?
Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
2 months ago
Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding
Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
Let's brainstorm the future together.
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...
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing)
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing:
what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently
I feel...
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.
Ben Borgers
Work-Life Separation in College
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed...
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
10 months ago
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art
history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid. The book is of the highest interest, and is a
long way from the catalogue of...
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley
The video from our live event.
2 months ago
The video from our live event.
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting...
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night.
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
6 hours ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791). First, David Hawkes, the original translator
of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job. Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin,
dies,...
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two things:
The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence
Most dangerous books of 2016
Tactical Silence
I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
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...
4 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
'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...
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...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not More Respected, Though Less Loved'
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s...
a year ago
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s birthplace
and the butt of many jokes by the former. The journey lasted eighty-three days
and both men published books recounting their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands...
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path”
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 days ago
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Creative kernels
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
5 months ago
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
Josh Thompson
Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in
Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...
over a year ago
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in
Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations.
Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious'
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time.
It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone,
someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
Josh Thompson
Be a little better at personal email
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my...
over a year ago
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my phone, computer, and brain. There is no unifying theme to what will be written here.
Three recommendations to email better
TL;DR Email should usually be as short as possible. More of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful'
“There have
been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious,
too...
3 weeks ago
“There have
been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious,
too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry
is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my
sorrows down on the page.”
Janet...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise...
3 months ago
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge — a tender...
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play...
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy. Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do. If we...
The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply...
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
8 months ago
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized as mutually dependent."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not the Head But the Seat'
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English,...
a year ago
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English, sitzfleisch. The
etymology is straightforward: sitzen
(“to sit”) + Fleisch (“flesh”). In
other words, what we sit on -- the buttocks, ass or derriere. Metaphorically, the
OED tells us,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense'
“Most poetry
is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
6 months ago
“Most poetry
is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so
aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be
altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I
am always hesitant to make them...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A General Effect of Pleasing Impression'
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of
which roughly coincided with the arrival of...
a year ago
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of
which roughly coincided with the arrival of Anecdotal Evidence in 2006, literary
memes were far more popular. Some were trivial parlor games, a way for certain readers
to safely show off without having ever opened a book....
Wuthering...
Diogenes Laertius and the fun of the fragment
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book...
a year ago
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book (widely copied scroll) of Aristotle’s, but a large mass of what are perhaps transcribed lecture notes survived, barely, in a single manuscript, so that is our Aristotle. I don’t know...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At Least When Practised By a Master'
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly...
a year ago
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly not biographies, poetry or other forms of nonfiction. Some are
devoted to genre fiction – mysteries, science fiction – and at least one sticks
to the “classics” -- Austen and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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 Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
a year ago
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border."
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...
Josh Thompson
Rules for Fighting Fair
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...
over a year ago
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean?
So, rather than asking more...
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house)
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English'
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All...
a year ago
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the
same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”
It’s
fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Lead the Thoughts Into Domestic Privacies'
A friend tells me a newspaper is looking for a fulltime
obituary writer and she thinks it would be...
a year ago
A friend tells me a newspaper is looking for a fulltime
obituary writer and she thinks it would be an ideal job for me. I’m not in the
market but she’s right. Good obituaries are small-scale biographies and always a
privilege to write. The first thing I wrote as a newspaper...
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...
Robert Caro
In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars...
a year ago
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars from people who cannot afford it.
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken'
“This is
beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”
As the
horrors...
2 months ago
“This is
beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”
As the
horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as
useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and
understanding, and often still do. The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Georgeade as a Summer Drink'
While
looking for something else I blundered on an Anglo-American writer and cartoonist
new to me...
a year ago
While
looking for something else I blundered on an Anglo-American writer and cartoonist
new to me whose name and one-time popularity long ago evaporated: Oliver Herford (1860-1935), author, co-author and illustrator of more than sixty books
for adults and children. There was a...
Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour...
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters
from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help
book, one of the founding self-help books.
The Meditations of...
Josh Thompson
Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People')
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a...
over a year ago
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a program like the Flatiron School or the Turing School).
I’m a graduate of the Turing School, and have written a lot about the program, like:
My reflections on Turing
an 8-part guide to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Read the Wild Wallpaper of My Heart'
Meade
Harwell, Gordon H. Felton, M.J.A. McGittigan, Jess H. Cloud, Byron Vazakas,
Ellis Foote, Myron...
a year ago
Meade
Harwell, Gordon H. Felton, M.J.A. McGittigan, Jess H. Cloud, Byron Vazakas,
Ellis Foote, Myron H. Broomell, Celeste Turner Wright.
Who are
these strangers? What brings them together? They recall a walk in the cemetery,
reading on the stones the names of people we have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books, Books, Books'
The name I remembered
but not what he had written, which is hardly unusual when the writer...
a year ago
The name I remembered
but not what he had written, which is hardly unusual when the writer in
question was first encountered in childhood and his readability hasn’t survived
into adulthood. Very young children pay attention to the work, not its author.
In this case, “Wynken,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'If You Want Less Trouble, Plow the Sky'
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers...
a year ago
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers tilling the soil and bringing in the sheaves. Working for
rural newspapers in the Midwest and upstate New York educated me to the
realities of mortgages, tractor accidents,...
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel...
4 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
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…
sbensu
High Variance Management
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
Josh Thompson
Denver.rb meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018
We talked about performance profiling!
Here’s the slides, on Dropbox
I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of...
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
6 months ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Marsh Light Is Still Burning Hard'
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute...
10 months ago
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute for
actually reading them, a ruse for flaunting one’s hipness or sophistication. My
late friend David Myers was fond of assembling such lists, which are likely to
assure higher-than-average...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells...
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I
gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief! When I get home, I pour out my treasures into
the...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
11 months ago
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance
From our May writing prompt.
4 months ago
From our May writing prompt.
Josh Thompson
Growing in your first software development job
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously...
over a year ago
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like:
I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...
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...
ben-mini
Old School Business
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs...
6 months ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users.
They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction).
They demeaned...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023
I had a good time.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
I had a good time.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon.
FICTION
Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann
The Long Valley (1938)
&
The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Age of Terror'
If “terror”
meant anything to me as a kid it was probably an episode of The Twilight Zone. Some were...
a year ago
If “terror”
meant anything to me as a kid it was probably an episode of The Twilight Zone. Some were ridiculous, others remain watchable after more than sixty years. At least one, “Night Call,” left me so frightened I didn’t want to return to my
darkened bedroom.
I grew up safe...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Remarkable Literary Judgment'
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her...
4 months ago
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her mother. She sat on the aisle two rows ahead of me. The cabin of
the plane glowed with screens while she was reading Andrew R. MacAndrew’s 1961 translation
of Dead Souls, the Signet...
Josh Thompson
HTTParty and to_json
I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request.
A few tools that were useful to...
over a year ago
I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request.
A few tools that were useful to me:
post DEBUG info to STDOUT
netcat to listen to HTTP requests locally
I had this code:
options = {
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/json",
authorization: "Bearer...
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.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With Squeaky Wit the Light, Improper Verse'
Without
context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart...
6 months ago
Without
context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart little
couplet?:
“With
squeaky wit the light, improper verse
Falls on the
heavy lunch and makes it worse.”
I first encountered
him in the eighth grade, in English class. He was sold to us as the “poet...
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
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.
The Elysian
Week 4: One pitch several places
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Illdefined Success is Unattainable
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t...
over a year ago
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t seem daunting, it’s not much of a project, and you should either ramp it up until it’s daunting, or discard it.
So - we have a daunting project. Now what? If you’re like me, you’ll...
The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
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.
Josh Thompson
Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er)
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to...
over a year ago
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to a stranger and say “Excuse me, sir, I noticed that your poor belaying is totally crippling your climber’s ability to try hard, and actively eliminating any hope you had of...
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a
big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers). Both movements were popular in the Roman
Republic as...
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...
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
a month ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical
literature. I had never heard of him, partly
because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean
satire” even though...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Generous Humanity to the Miserable'
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women,...
a year ago
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women, acquaintances
of my wife, both recently divorced. The latter would likely otherwise spend the holiday
alone. The only serious expression of gratitude is welcoming others and sharing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beauty, Clarity, Consolation, Truth'
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book
critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you...
a year ago
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book
critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you straight. Their world is
strictly binary -- like/dislike,
good/bad – and they are fond of superlatives: the best/the worst. Dissent sparks
crackdowns and there is no appeals...
Astral Codex Ten
How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test?
...
a month ago
This Space
The Lascaux Notebooks by Jean-Luc Champerret
Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there...
over a year ago
Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there after millennia in darkness, and Notebooks, suggesting a private endeavour, preparation, a work to come. While neither is secret as such, neither was meant for the light. Two intrigues...
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
4 months ago
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Hope This Explanation Is Wrong'
One of life’s
unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements
of...
4 months ago
One of life’s
unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements
of words encountered in childhood or youth, and revisited regularly for a
lifetime, still inspire delight, while others, in effect, evaporate before we
hear them? In the latter...
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction
...
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
A Five-Hour Experiment
Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called
The First 20 Hours.
In it, he carefully plots out a...
over a year ago
Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called
The First 20 Hours.
In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours.
He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming,
Colemak typing,
a form of Chinese chess...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Amuse and Gratify Her Own Self'
In her first
collection, A Good Time Was Had By All
(1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already...
a year ago
In her first
collection, A Good Time Was Had By All
(1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already suggesting themes that would go on preoccupying her:
“All things
pass
Love and
mankind is grass”.
In scripture,
grass is the default metaphor for the transience of life. In the...
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
9 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Principle Is Growth'
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in...
9 months ago
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in our front yard – all are gone,
one carried away by a tornado) in a field guide: the study of trees. From the
Greek for “tree.” A close synonym is silvics,
this time from the Latin. I...
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.
The Elysian
I'd like to open a Singapore franchise please?
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
8 months ago
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
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...
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
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools'
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in...
2 months ago
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often
discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which
eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
The Marginalian
The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds...
a year ago
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds — enchanting emblems of the water cycle that makes this rocky planet a living world, drifting across our shared dome as if exhaled by some lovesick god. That we should have such a...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
3 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Love of Reading Is Caught, Not Taught'
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to...
2 months ago
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to sound a little pretentious. For now I’ll keep it at “books.” Nadya Williams
titles her essay “Home Libraries Will Save Civilization,” which, I understand, is
more reader-enticing than...
The Marginalian
John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding...
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and...
7 months ago
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and life's challenges."
The Perry Bible...
Turn That Frown
The post Turn That Frown appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The post Turn That Frown appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
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."
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
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...
The Marginalian
Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of...
4 months ago
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of the heart graver than making another our higher power. This may seem inevitable — because to love is always to see the divine in each other, because all love is a yearning for the...
The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
6 months ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also...
a month ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also mention my health. A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius
removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with
it. My recovery went well, and my liver
grew...
This Space
The end of something
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike...
a year ago
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike Magazine (not to be confused with Spiked), which I helped to found when the world wide web was forming, and to comment on the direction online literary culture had taken. By that...
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
3 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives
The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
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.
Josh Thompson
Winter on Two Pairs of Socks
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the...
over a year ago
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the wardrobe.
I’ll cover more about what we wear another time, but for now, I want to give you an idea. With the right socks, you can go an entire winter with just two pairs of socks. You...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think?
+ links
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Then Came the Barbarians'
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at...
3 months ago
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at least make him sick. When I confront a prose poem I run, though
sometimes I pause to laugh and then run. The question becomes, which is worse:
the poet’s ineptness or his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death'
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished,
no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning
reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without
once using any of...
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API.
We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON.
Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep'
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else.
Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say
Hey, there’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement'
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
2 months ago
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of
intoxications.”
Driving while
reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light,
I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
The American Scholar
The Redoubtable Bull Shark
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared...
7 months ago
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
The American Scholar
Good Vibrations
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound
The post Good Vibrations appeared...
8 months ago
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound
The post Good Vibrations appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How To Procfile: Run Just a Single Process
Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile:
web: PORT=3000...
over a year ago
Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile:
web: PORT=3000 RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec puma -C ./config/puma_development.rb -e development
devlog: tail -f ./log/development.log
mailcatcher: ruby -rbundler/setup -e...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Pick Up a Machete and Start Exploring'
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov...
9 months ago
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov (1920) and Richard Wilbur (1921). I’m reminded of how important contemporary
American writers were to me when I was young, in the 60s and 70s. Everything
was new and promising, and I...
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
a month ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
'I See Only Their Marvelous Works'
“How
pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how
the authors...
11 months ago
“How
pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how
the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.”
A reader
reprimands me for dismissing Ezra Pound from serious consideration. “We can’t
imagine modernism without him,” he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Songful, Tuneful Land'
"None
can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the
sound of names;...
11 months ago
"None
can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the
sound of names; and there is no part of the world where nomenclature is so rich,
poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the United States of America.”
Robert Louis
Stevenson means place names. He’s...
Josh Thompson
Persistence
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an...
over a year ago
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an unlimited amount of money, because an unlimited amount of money would complicate my life (and probably yours) far more than we can possibly imagine.
Persistence. I keep trying to...
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
6 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture'
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin...
4 months ago
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin lymphoma at age forty-eight. Out in the hall I spoke with three
oncologists after they had yet again examined
my brother. I asked the question no one had yet asked: How much time does...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too'
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he...
10 months ago
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he was
reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his
voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him
silently reading and never...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Be Gentle to You
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....
over a year ago
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?)
These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Now I Am As Lilliputian As All the Rest'
“My mood is
like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work,
just...
8 months ago
“My mood is
like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work,
just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the
time to read. It’s more enjoyable than writing. I feel that if I could live
another forty years and spend the whole...
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...
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 Marginalian
bell hooks on Love
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until...
a year ago
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago... All awakening to love is spiritual awakening."
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...
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of...
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Always at Home in One’s Past'
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any...
8 months ago
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any other and whose birthday we observed earlier this week: “One is always at home in one’s past.” That might
serve as a gloss on his autobiography, Speak,
Memory, in which he writes at...
Josh Thompson
Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...
over a year ago
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code.
Here’s the context:
In my day-to-day, I work on a...
Ben Borgers
Lessons Learned from Hanging Posters
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture'
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.”
Understandably,
Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless
destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or
destroying books, even...
The American Scholar
Agent 37
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
Blog -...
Book Review - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the...
over a year ago
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the masculine. Published in 1990, King, Warrior,
Magician, Lover introduces readers to the concept of mature masculine
archetypes and their immature shadows. The authors, Robert...
The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work...
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be interested in humans and to be in touch with yourself as a human."
This Space
The enigma for criticism
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I...
a year ago
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I watched when I was a kid. The great ones, even when I see them many times, are just an enigma.
Werner Herzog describes a few "bad films" in his autobiography, all from his...
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Cool Malignity of Othello'
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own...
a year ago
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own advantage but for its own sake.”
In his
lecture on Othello, W.H. Auden understands,
as a growing number of our contemporaries do not, that evil is autonomous and
self-justifying....
Escaping Flatland
Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various...
a year ago
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various poets I knew and submitted the results to a fanzine.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find Other Things Which We Liked Better'
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if...
9 months ago
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if he wished to join them at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street in London.
Johnson was “indisposed” and Goldsmith said, “[W]e will not go to the Mitre to-night,
since we cannot have the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth'
“If love of
beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.”
The...
12 months ago
“If love of
beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.”
The late
Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I
have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too
often earns contempt...
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...
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
6 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On a Certain Street There Is a Certain Door'
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street...
6 months ago
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street there is a certain door
shut with
its bell and its exact address
and with a
flavor of lost Paradise,
which in the
early evening I can never
open to
enter. The day’s work at its...
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
11 months ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
Josh Thompson
How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim...
over a year ago
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim the gifs from >3Mb/each to <1Mb each, so I didn’t. If you’re on mobile, or trying to conserve data, you might want to come back to this one later.
I value my attention and focus. I...
The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right...
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
Josh Thompson
Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the...
over a year ago
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the sake of exercising - you can stop reading now. This information is probably not relevant to you.
Those of you who don’t like to exercise, but know you really should exercise...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude'
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and...
7 months ago
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying'
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy,...
a year ago
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy, though the first of its three sentences is twenty-five lines long. Its
earliest readers perhaps flipped past it in The
Whitsun Weddings (1964) -- it’s the first poem in the collection –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Chevengur'
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published...
11 months ago
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published in the Wall Street Journal.
The American Scholar
The Patron Subjects
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The...
a month ago
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The post The Patron Subjects appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Godforsaken Province'
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by...
7 months ago
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by the Soviets. He was arrested by the NKVD the following year and
held in a military prison in that city, then moved to Kiev, the Lubyanka in Moscow, and Saratov, more than...
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...
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better.
Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium'
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and...
7 months ago
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and translator Clarence Brown published The
Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy
and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
a year ago
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products.
How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month?
Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays
Notes on process
2 weeks ago
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...
Josh Thompson
Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something...
7 months ago
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then.
Cut forward to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When Young Men Go to Die'
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I...
7 months ago
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I was a kid and often fired
my brother’s pellet gun. My experience with firearms is entirely second- or
third-hand via the movies, which give me the illusion that I know...
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 American Scholar
Verde
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
2 weeks ago
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew
The post Verde appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
5 months ago
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and throw it at the sun—the way the water falls apart into drops, and then into mist, the way a rainbow appears for a second and is gone.
This Space
The opposite direction
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact...
over a year ago
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact paperback from Spurl Editions came just as I had given up hope of ever discussing what I believed had long fascinated me about a feature of Bernhard's prose-texts. A fascination...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Will Be No One Left Who Knew Their Cost'
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups...
8 months ago
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups were leaving us alone was “playing Army.” All of us had toy guns or at
least sticks. Given our ages, when dividing into good guys and bad guys, the
latter were always Germans and...
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence 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 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 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.
sbensu
The Perfectionists (book)
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
4 months ago
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5
...
2 weeks ago
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