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Josh Thompson
How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook' A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd — Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017 Since then, I occasionally...
The Marginalian
Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the... On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl...
a year ago
20
a year ago
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet. The year is 1836. No university anywhere in the...
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Laravel
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind "A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 377 ...
3 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Every map of China is wrong. And this is intentional… If you’ve never looked at a digital map of China, I urge you to do it now — initially, if you look...
9 months ago
43
9 months ago
If you’ve never looked at a digital map of China, I urge you to do it now — initially, if you look at the street view, it looks like any other map you’ve encountered. However, if you overlay the satellite view you can see things are out of whack. Visit original link → or View on...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
29
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
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...
a year ago
50
a year 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."
Blog -...
Book Review - Codependent No More With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary nearly a decade ago,...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary nearly a decade ago, Codependent No More is a startling, powerful book that has touched the lives of so very many.
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
9 months ago
The American Scholar
Diana Antohe Threads of memory and home The post Diana Antohe appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Escaping Flatland
A greeting They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
a year ago
32
a year ago
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas day, sometime in the 1570s, he was out walking when he came upon a rose that had, in the blistering cold, put forth a flower. It was a hellebore, a winter rose. Moved by the...
Ben Borgers
Read the Dang Thing Out Loud
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Issues related to the city of Golden While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden. I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot. Here’s the lot in question: I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Least Motion of Wonder in Himself' In 1968, my high-school English teacher loaned me the anthology of short stories she had used at...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
In 1968, my high-school English teacher loaned me the anthology of short stories she had used at Kent State University just a few years earlier. Included were the usual suspects -- Maupassant, Hemingway, Chekhov, Eudora Welty – but I read them because I knew nothing. Among the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Person With No Public Appeal' Interviews with writers are now accepted as a discrete literary form, like rondeaus and...
a month ago
10
a month ago
Interviews with writers are now accepted as a discrete literary form, like rondeaus and villanelles, probably for the same reason people read the biographies of writers whose work they have never read. I suppose the Paris Review encouraged the trend starting in the Fifties by...
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
over a year ago
74
over a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus.  The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons.  Plautus was...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Nothing Bad About It A year ago, Jen and I made an overland run from the south end of Anza-Borrego to the northern end....
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
A year ago, Jen and I made an overland run from the south end of Anza-Borrego to the northern end. On the last night in Hawk Canyon, a super windy night made for less than ideal sleep. We ended up closing up the tent and sleeping in the front seats. Thankfully, the seats in a...
Josh Thompson
How to Move Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen: We both are in process with new jobs I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Foursquare Open Source Places: A new foundational dataset for the geospatial community It is reasonable to ask, why a company like Foursquare who has spent years building a proprietary...
7 months ago
21
7 months ago
It is reasonable to ask, why a company like Foursquare who has spent years building a proprietary dataset would freely open a layer of that data to the community. So reasonable in fact that many of my colleagues thought I had lost my mind when I shared the news that we would be...
The American Scholar
“Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 367.5 ...
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
Habit Toddler
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Rescuer In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
a year ago
53
a year ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Power of a Thin Skin "To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that...
a year ago
28
a year ago
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice."
Naz Hamid
Less Precious Social networking is about reach. It started small: your friends first, then grew outwards towards...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Social networking is about reach. It started small: your friends first, then grew outwards towards acquaintances and your professional life. It grew out to people who might follow you because of some shared interest, and then to complete strangers. Social media likes to tell you...
The American Scholar
American Horror Story Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear The post American Horror Story appeared first on The...
8 months ago
41
8 months ago
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear The post American Horror Story appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In...
7 months ago
30
7 months ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For? The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
When writing, look at what you are trying to describe more than at your words 9 reflections
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Pi
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Art of Coping In a time of anger, frustration, and anxiety, the humanities have much to teach us about how to deal...
a month ago
9
a month ago
In a time of anger, frustration, and anxiety, the humanities have much to teach us about how to deal with life The post The Art of Coping appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Canyon and the Meaning of Life Anything you polish with attention will become a mirror. Anything to which you give yourself fully,...
3 days ago
4
3 days ago
Anything you polish with attention will become a mirror. Anything to which you give yourself fully, vest all your strength and risk all your vulnerability, will return you to your life annealed, magnified, both unselved and more deeply yourself. It can be a garden, or a desert,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Word Is a World' When someone had eaten his fill and couldn’t take another bite, my maternal grandmother, born the...
2 months ago
10
2 months ago
When someone had eaten his fill and couldn’t take another bite, my maternal grandmother, born the same year as T.S. Eliot, would say, “His sufficiency is suffonsified.” I’ve never heard another person utter those words. For most of my life I assumed the fourth word in that...
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
80
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...
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz Playing with dolls The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The anatomy of Andy Spade's style You don’t have to spend a lot to look good; good taste isn’t bound by price. Spade is a testiment to...
7 months ago
35
7 months ago
You don’t have to spend a lot to look good; good taste isn’t bound by price. Spade is a testiment to this, while he’s a successful businessman. He sticks to his affordable, all-American classics. I'm somewhat entering my uniform years. I've come around to clothes that feel...
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of... “I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
10 months ago
67
10 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Unbuilding the Mystery What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared...
a month ago
5
a month ago
What might Indigenous spiritual practices have in common? The post Unbuilding the Mystery appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Can't Quite Recall Your Name' My first high-school reunion was postponed for a year by the COVID-19 lockdown. We met in 2021 for...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
My first high-school reunion was postponed for a year by the COVID-19 lockdown. We met in 2021 for the fifty-first at a supper club on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Lake Erie was a hundred yards to the north and when conversation lagged, I could watch the ore boats moving down...
Josh Thompson
Piece by Piece The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product (of the digital variety) that will be so damn goodpeople will pay me $100 or more to get it.  I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of it littered around the internet, my computer,...
The American Scholar
Writer on Board The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
10 months ago
55
10 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Against Death: Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti on Grieving a Parent, Grieving the World, and What Makes... The year is 1937. Elias Canetti (July 25, 1905–August 14, 1994) — Bulgarian, Jewish, living in...
4 weeks ago
14
4 weeks ago
The year is 1937. Elias Canetti (July 25, 1905–August 14, 1994) — Bulgarian, Jewish, living in Austria as the Nazis are rising to power — has just lost his mother; his mother, whose bottomless love had nurtured the talent that would win him the Nobel Prize in his seventies; his...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 361 ...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid
Quality, Maintenance & Craft We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman,...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle Coffee was in conversation with Jeff Veen, and one of the attendees asked him: “How do you maintain such high quality?” Freeman answers, “‘Maintaining’ is a...
Ben Borgers
Thinking in Silence
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Owl Lake: A Vintage Treasure from Japanese Artist Keizaburo Tejima That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of...
a month ago
23
a month ago
That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of the most exasperating things in life, but also one of the most humbling, the most catalytic to our creative energies: the great calibrator of our certainties, the ultimate...
ben-mini
Old School Business In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs...
a year ago
18
a year 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...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Msty The easiest way to use local and online AI models. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
The easiest way to use local and online AI models. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Midlife Malaise Part II It’s been an interesting year so far. Overall, I can’t overtly complain: I find my work gratifying,...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
It’s been an interesting year so far. Overall, I can’t overtly complain: I find my work gratifying, and have been fortunate to take some great trips this year both internationally (Mexico City and Kuala Lumpur), as well as some off-roading and camping locally. But there’s a...
The American Scholar
“how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The...
7 months ago
54
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shut Not Thy Purse-Strings' Unlike his friends Coleridge, Hazlitt, Wordsworth and Hunt, who often made fools of themselves as a...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
Unlike his friends Coleridge, Hazlitt, Wordsworth and Hunt, who often made fools of themselves as a result, Charles Lamb had little interest in the momentous events of his day. About “Boney” – Napoleon Bonaparte – he wished only to know the dictator’s height, unlike Hazlitt, who...
The Marginalian
Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality "We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
The advantage of low friction goals If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day for a month. Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there. “Customization”...
Ben Borgers
The real reason for my multiple majors
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Some Blessings to Begin with It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are...
6 months ago
58
6 months ago
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are some gladnesses I have gathered, and two new bird divinations I have made, as a conscious way of consecrating our days with the blessed fact that we weren’t promised any of this —...
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and... "Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
over a year ago
96
over a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our... How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
a year ago
74
a year ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
The Elysian
We're writing a better future into existence A media collective imagining the future of nation-states, capitalism, and humanity.
6 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
a year ago
93
a year ago
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist literature": this year's choice is a collection of lectures delivered in the early 1960s at the University of Zürich, published in English translation in 1970, with this edition being...
Josh Thompson
Tiny Habits take 2 Dr. BJ Fogg runs Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits. Since most of what we do is...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Dr. BJ Fogg runs Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits. Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones. I have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading Freewith Kristi and...
Ben Borgers
Charles’ Sandwiches
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Light in the Abyss Between Us Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a friend’s son came home from school to recount with something between shock and exhilaration how he realized while talking to a classmate that the notion of a mental image is not merely...
sbensu
Designing for support teams Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
The American Scholar
The Writer in the Family The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero The post The Writer in the Family appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Things That Might Have Been and Never Were' My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the American novelist Harry Turtledove. As I understand it, the premise is simple: change an event in the past and see what happens in subsequent history. Hitler, for instance, dies...
The American Scholar
Bathing Badasses Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses...
a year ago
61
a year ago
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming The post Bathing Badasses appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Redemption Arc Is Coming
over a year ago
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
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
a year ago
41
a year ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Unceasingly Amused According to My Taste' Certain writers inspire profound ambivalence. We admire them for something – often style – and they...
5 months ago
21
5 months ago
Certain writers inspire profound ambivalence. We admire them for something – often style – and they let us down by writing something stupid, dull or otherwise offensive. It’s easier dealing strictly with good guys (Chekhov, for instance) and bad guys (like Louis-Ferdinand...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors. Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But No One Style, I Think, is Recommended' A reader tells me of her disgust with most insects and reptiles, the small creatures, almost...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
A reader tells me of her disgust with most insects and reptiles, the small creatures, almost domestic, that surround us. She resents the “nature sentimentality” such “vermin” rouse in some people. They “make [her] skin crawl,” she writes – an idiom I’ve always found amusing....
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ There's a Tarantula In Our Room “Err, I just saw a head poke out.” “What?” “I think there’s a rat or mouse in our...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
“Err, I just saw a head poke out.” “What?” “I think there’s a rat or mouse in our room.” “Where?” “Near your bags. I saw a head.” Gingerly and slowly, I tiptoe over to my pile of bags, just a few feet away and peer around them. I see nothing, and my bags are leaning against an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Ledge Itself Invents the Leap' Good hearts try to talk us out of phobias. After all, people are naïve about the powers of...
2 weeks ago
10
2 weeks ago
Good hearts try to talk us out of phobias. After all, people are naïve about the powers of rationalism: “Explain it, and it goes away.” As a kid I fell for that, almost literally, when I tried to muscle my way with sheer will power past the Terminal Tower in downtown...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and... I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this chunk up. In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life "It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
26
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
a year ago
23
a year ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
a year ago
28
a year ago
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are “shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of “profound...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 13, 2022
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ 46 Celebrating another year around the sun in one of our favorite cities in the world, for this...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
Celebrating another year around the sun in one of our favorite cities in the world, for this one. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
This Space
39 Books: 2003 This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
a year ago
101
a year ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
The Elysian
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
a year ago
The American Scholar
A Messy Mix The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Art of Taking It Slow Petersen believes that the bike industry’s focus on racing—along with ‘competition and a pervasive...
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
Petersen believes that the bike industry’s focus on racing—along with ‘competition and a pervasive addiction to technology’—has had a poisonous influence on cycling culture. He dislikes the widespread marketing to recreational riders of spandex kits, squirty energy gels, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Chockfull of Love, Crammed With Bright Thoughts' Several years have passed since I last entered a bookstore selling new books, such as Barnes and...
3 months ago
26
3 months ago
Several years have passed since I last entered a bookstore selling new books, such as Barnes and Noble or the late Borders. Long ago they stopped feeling like home and a visit usually turned out to be a waste of time. Serendipitous discovery was rare. The portion of the goods on...
The Marginalian
A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality "Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Getir Colors
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Survival Situation The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The...
a year ago
41
a year ago
The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Competency vs. Mastery Another Zoom call ended. As is common, a few attendees would unmute themselves to speak temporarily....
7 months ago
21
7 months ago
Another Zoom call ended. As is common, a few attendees would unmute themselves to speak temporarily. I noticed when people knew the unmute keyboard shortcut. Despite using the software for years now, it had eluded me (spacebar!). This was partly because I forgot to look it up...
Wuthering...
Andrey Platonov's "Soul" - the universal happiness of the unhappy I read Andrey Platonov’s novel Chevengur (1929) not too long ago and the collection of stories Soul...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
I read Andrey Platonov’s novel Chevengur (1929) not too long ago and the collection of stories Soul (1935-46) last month.  Here we will have some notes.  These are the Robert and Elizabeth Chandler translations (four additional translators assist with Soul).  Those dates are for...
Ben Borgers
Bubble Tea Snobbery
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ We're definitely in Kansas, Dorothy Day 9: Sept 18, 2023 — One more person to see before we leave Colorado. Matt Jacobs is a longtime...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 9: Sept 18, 2023 — One more person to see before we leave Colorado. Matt Jacobs is a longtime friend formerly of New York and Brooklyn, but now lives in Denver with his family. He’s another part of the bevy of people we know who’ve relocated to this great state. We meet at...
The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living... Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
46
a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
The Marginalian
What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness “Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science...
11 months ago
63
11 months ago
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science first began raising questions with spiritual undertones: What is life? Where does it begin and end? What makes it alive? But in the epochs since, having discovered muons and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read Well, Read Little' A reader asks what novels by William Makepeace Thackeray I would suggest he read. My answer is brief...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
A reader asks what novels by William Makepeace Thackeray I would suggest he read. My answer is brief and not terribly helpful: Vanity Fair. It’s the only book by Thackery I have read, and that was a long time ago. I saw Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Barry Lyndon in 1975....
Wuthering...
How A Dance to the Music of Time works, so far - I always enjoy hearing the details of other... My writing here is often about what surprised me or did not.  So let’s have that about the first...
a month ago
22
a month ago
My writing here is often about what surprised me or did not.  So let’s have that about the first four novels of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, the twelve volume sequence published from 1951 to 1975 and covering a refracted version of Powell’s life from his later...
Josh Thompson
Habits Take Preparation Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to quickly settle into a routine that makes sense for both of us. For example - I work for a company in Boston. While I could keep local working hours (Mountain Time) I prefer to...
The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
a year ago
83
a year ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues... The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
over a year ago
55
over a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations.  A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument.  You say there are many gods?  But what if there were one? Or none? ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely and Permanently Interested in Literature' Another request for a reading list from a young reader. Any reply will be incomplete and...
5 months ago
23
5 months ago
Another request for a reading list from a young reader. Any reply will be incomplete and risk discouraging aspiring literati. The only infallible inducement to literature is personal pleasure, a notoriously subjective criterion. I love Gibbon and Doughty, and you may find them...
Escaping Flatland
Take a part of the world that you love and give it your care Edward Weston, Armco Steel, Ohio, 1922
3 months ago
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poor Naked Wretches, Whereso’er You Are' Aleksander Wat (1900-67) was a Polish poet and one-time Communist hounded and imprisoned by Nazis...
2 months ago
11
2 months ago
Aleksander Wat (1900-67) was a Polish poet and one-time Communist hounded and imprisoned by Nazis and Soviets alike. In 1964 while visiting California, he recorded lengthy conversations with fellow poet and Pole Czesław Miłosz. The transcripts were translated by Richard Lourie...
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife "Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Accomplishments and Achievements We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these milestones grow in complexity as we add to our abilities - it’s been a while since I’ve been rewarded for not wetting myself - but they are usually on par with our abilities. For...
The Elysian
What if your side hustle is being in Congress? The future of democracy is direct, online, and doesn't require politicians.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Index A curated online gallery with the best design studios, designers, type foundries, and other...
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
A curated online gallery with the best design studios, designers, type foundries, and other creatives worldwide. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
9 months ago
38
9 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
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...
8 months ago
57
8 months 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...
Ben Borgers
Software Seems Resilient
over a year ago
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
60
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...
ben-mini
The Inner Game of Tennis I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the...
9 months ago
32
9 months ago
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the book explores how the thoughts of an athlete affect their game. It’s lauded as being at the forefront of what we now call “sports psychology”. Although my competitive sports days...
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
over a year ago
81
over a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher, independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible.  The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds is not much help.  But luckily we have Xenophon, a close...
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
On a Phrase by Jane Greer “. . . I pounce on quiet when I find it.”  Do you hear that sound? A low vibrato in the distance?...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
“. . . I pounce on quiet when I find it.”  Do you hear that sound? A low vibrato in the distance? Sometimes it swells and the windows seem to rattle. It’s a pedal point reminiscent of hornets in a jar, but less reassuring. It’s the collective drone of chatter, of casually...
Ben Borgers
Instagram’s Lifespan
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Things That Might Have Been and Were Not' An old friend has grown uncharacteristically introspective and is finding much to regret. It’s a...
a week ago
11
a week ago
An old friend has grown uncharacteristically introspective and is finding much to regret. It’s a function of age. A widower in retirement from teaching high school, he seems no longer the buoyant social creature I’ve always known. In fact, I envied his gregariousness when we...
Ben Borgers
The Content Machine
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Up Close The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken "The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
over a year ago
80
over a year ago
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 379 ...
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
Teaching Enthusiasm
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Sunday, January 16, 2022
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
11 months ago
92
11 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
Twentieth anniversary post On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have...
9 months ago
91
9 months ago
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have reflected on the past and present of literary blogging (there is no future) so I will not go over that waste land again except to wish more had followed the example of This Space. One of...
The American Scholar
Verse 31 from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore...
3 weeks ago
17
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 HEX – A typographic company HEX Projects is a typographic company founded by Nick Sherman that makes fonts and websites. — Nick...
6 months ago
35
6 months ago
HEX Projects is a typographic company founded by Nick Sherman that makes fonts and websites. — Nick Sherman Gah, Nick Sherman's typefaces are lovely. HEX Franklin is used in a few places I've spotted but I'm particularly interested in Manifold, NYC Sans, Jubilee, and...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity ...
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and... A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
a year ago
83
a year ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 WebGlossary.info As per the official description, “the glossary covers the major standards and concepts of the Web,...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
As per the official description, “the glossary covers the major standards and concepts of the Web, beginning with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, security, performance, code quality and testing, internationalization, localization, frameworks and editors and tooling. It then...
The American Scholar
The Snow Maiden Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice The post The Snow Maiden appeared first on...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice The post The Snow Maiden appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and... "While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
year 1
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Going for Gold Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten The post...
11 months ago
56
11 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
60 kHz
over a year ago
Naz Hamid
Goodbye, Instagram Thanks for the memories, but good riddance. I deleted Instagram. Two days ago. The reasons are as...
4 months ago
44
4 months ago
Thanks for the memories, but good riddance. I deleted Instagram. Two days ago. The reasons are as you would expect: doomscrolling, fatigue, vapidness, and of course, all of the horrifying[1] things Meta enables. Concerning Instagram itself, the list is long. The app started...
This Space
The Opposite Direction, a book Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of...
over a year ago
62
over a year ago
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of this blog.  This is the second collection after This Space of Writing and the title comes from the adolescent Thomas Bernhard's phrase repeated to an official at the labour exchange...
Wuthering...
What I Read in June 2025 - A life of agony was all for naught. My summer plan was to read, short, easy books, and I almost succeeded.  I read short, difficult...
2 weeks ago
19
2 weeks ago
My summer plan was to read, short, easy books, and I almost succeeded.  I read short, difficult books in French, and accidentally read several grim, sad, violent books, alongside some playful nonsense.   FICTION The Field of Life and Death (1935), Xiao Hong – For example.  Ninety...
The Elysian
Yes, it can be profitable to sell print magazines and books Collectable print projects don't have to be an expensive vanity project.
3 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Mesa goodie Day 23: Oct 2, 2023 — Thunderstorms roll in and out most of the night, and the morning is dark and...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 23: Oct 2, 2023 — Thunderstorms roll in and out most of the night, and the morning is dark and moody. We all rise, and the dimmer lights come on, keeping a warm glow intact. Grant starts coffee, Jen straightens up our makeshift sleeping area, and I capture a few...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Without One Wonder in the Sky!' John Partridge (1677-1715) was an English shoemaker-turned-astrologer who claimed to have refined...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
John Partridge (1677-1715) was an English shoemaker-turned-astrologer who claimed to have refined his “science.” Don’t smirk or pity our benighted forebears. Newspapers still publish astrology columns and dozens of astrological publications remain in print. See Modern Astrology...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our World Has Passed Away' Dinant is a small city in the Walloon region of Belgium, on the Meuse River. It is one of those...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
Dinant is a small city in the Walloon region of Belgium, on the Meuse River. It is one of those otherwise obscure places (Fort Pillow, Lidice, My Lai) that has lent its name to an atrocity. On August 23, 1914, in the early weeks of World War I, German troops slaughtered almost...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Her Smile and Keep Her in Their Game' A friend called to chat while driving to Dallas to visit her mother. My friend is my age. Her mother...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
A friend called to chat while driving to Dallas to visit her mother. My friend is my age. Her mother is ninety-six years old. She lives on her own and only recently, after falling, did she agree to start using a cane. I’m not sure anyone is prepared to get old (or not get old)....
Ben Borgers
Music at 20%
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
2020 Annual Review please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now. Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives "Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a...
a year ago
23
a year ago
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."
Wuthering...
The endlessly adaptable plays of Plautus - I’ll make it into a comedy with some tragedy mixed in The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of...
over a year ago
81
over a year ago
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of Menander and the other Greek New Comedy writers was irrelevant, since all of those texts were soon lost.  Plautus (and his successor Terence) carried the stage traditions, the...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate" Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you! Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
Ben Borgers
Welcome to TikTok
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Lies Until the Trauma Trots Away' At age fourteen, our dog, if human, would be eligible for Social Security. Luke sleeps more than he...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
At age fourteen, our dog, if human, would be eligible for Social Security. Luke sleeps more than he did when a pup. His rear end aches and he takes nearly as many meds each day as I do. He throws up more often and has trouble jumping on the bed. We indulge him as we would a sick...
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ A Second Shot It sunk in. Both the needle and the fact that life had indeed changed. I turned to my left and...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
It sunk in. Both the needle and the fact that life had indeed changed. I turned to my left and looked at her. She, the same Black woman who had administered the first, and this time I tucked her name away into my memory, having forgotten it in the excitement and overwhelming...
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month. I did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
The Marginalian
Lights On: Consciousness, the Mystery of Felt Experience, and the Fundamental Music of Reality When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of people on the yellow brick plaza in front of the Bulgarian Parliament singing protest songs to take down the Communist dictatorship, my parents got us a hamster. I would say got me a...
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Everyone's A Based Post-Christian Vitalist Until The Grooming Gangs Show Up ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Is My Time and Theme' “I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
“I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the very impalpability of its grayish gauze, in the coolness of its continuum.”  You may recognize the almost overripe prose. Ingesting so rich a diet too early in life can spoil one for plainer...
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance "Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
8 months ago
The American Scholar
“Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz appeared first on The...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922 A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Departure Mono Departure Mono is a monospaced pixel font with a lo-fi technical vibe. Visit original link → or View...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
Departure Mono is a monospaced pixel font with a lo-fi technical vibe. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Ben Borgers
Semester 3
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy ...
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Opsimath That I Am in So Many Matters' I was a lazy student who worked hard when the task interested me and coasted the rest of the time....
2 months ago
10
2 months ago
I was a lazy student who worked hard when the task interested me and coasted the rest of the time. I dropped out of Latin prematurely because I couldn’t be bothered to master the ablative absolute, among other things. Formal education was an evasive game played with teachers....
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Buh-bye, Spotify I finally ditched Spotify at the end of 2024. I never loved it, and I felt extra icky about giving...
6 months ago
35
6 months ago
I finally ditched Spotify at the end of 2024. I never loved it, and I felt extra icky about giving them my money ever since they had no trouble finding $250 million for the sham supplement salesman and douchebag magnet Joe Rogan, despite their inability to promote or pay the vast...
Ben Borgers
What is JumboCode?
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Links For January 2025 ...
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Then, Look Up!' Robert Conquest begins his poem “Nocturne” with a challenge to convention and cliché: “’Broad...
5 months ago
20
5 months ago
Robert Conquest begins his poem “Nocturne” with a challenge to convention and cliché: “’Broad Daylight’ – words you speak or write / Imputing narrowness to Night?’” Seven sections follow, including the second:  “Night’s only moonlit, starlit, yet See from that...
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1) Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying  so hard to figure out some moves high above...
The American Scholar
Such People The post Such People appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
Gimme Back My Headphones
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1991 One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is...
a year ago
49
a year ago
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is Beauty Good. I had seen it two years earlier chosen in a newspaper books of the year listing alongside Jacques Roubaud's Le Grand Incendie de Londres and Thomas Bernhard's Old...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
ben-mini
IMG_0416 Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
8 months ago
34
8 months ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app. The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
Josh Thompson
Processes Vs. Goals (or, Systems vs. Accomplishments) In this excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
In this excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any specific goals, with the right system, you will still go a long way. This idea has been floating around my head for over a year, now, and I think it’s slowly coalescing into something...
The American Scholar
Imperiled Planet The ecological havoc we’ve wrought The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
42
10 months ago
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Typing in Colemac 2.0 I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill. My hope is that as...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 2: Run your first tests (and make them pass) Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Elysian
Week 6: Examples of Pitches
a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in June 2023 If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or...
over a year ago
92
over a year ago
If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or Tall Tales (4th C. BCE), Diogenes the Cynic, tr. Guy Davenport Cynics (2008), William Desmond - for an entry in a series aimed at students, surprisingly well written.  It helps that...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
a year ago
21
a year ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
Wuthering...
Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz - What I wanted now was the adventure of being... Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.  Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to...
over a year ago
62
over a year ago
Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.  Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to me because of its unusual use of the Pre-Socratic philosophers.  This is a domestic novel, a fine example of, borrowing from Trollope, the way we live now (or, to me, the way they...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So a Fool Returneth to His Folly' Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller,...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller, more annoying versions of themselves. My father had an acquaintance even he knew was a fool. By admitting such knowledge, he was violating adult solidarity. His friend's customary...
ribbonfarm
Covid and Noun-Memory Effects Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of...
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day. I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 How to Monetize a Blog Regardless, if this is the game, we can still be its players. Hats off to you. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Visit...
10 months ago
11
10 months ago
Regardless, if this is the game, we can still be its players. Hats off to you. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist? The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow. Then, I left the...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow. Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did. Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 This Glorious Machine Riding an e-bike is like discovering a long forgotten secret of the universe or, perhaps, inventing...
6 months ago
17
6 months ago
Riding an e-bike is like discovering a long forgotten secret of the universe or, perhaps, inventing something worthy of a heartfelt ‘eureka.’ — Robin Rendle Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
This Space
39 Books: 2002 The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
a year ago
85
a year ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5. Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
The Marginalian
Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard... An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War with What He Does Not Understand' “. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
“. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one or another type of knowledge to exist, whereas I’m talking about peace, not rights. I want people not to see war where there isn’t any. Different branches of knowledge have always...
The American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites The post A Toothsome...
10 months ago
38
10 months ago
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites The post A Toothsome Tale appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Myth of “Do What You Love” The most striking point, to me, from Tokumitsu’s book is how easily the myth of ’do what you love’...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
The most striking point, to me, from Tokumitsu’s book is how easily the myth of ’do what you love’ cracks when you press on it. The underlying message of such a myth, she writes, is that ‘each individual’s specialness will guide him or her to work that he or she enjoys and that...
The American Scholar
Guillermo The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
Ben Borgers
Thumbs up for Six Flags
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
80
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,... I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
65
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries.  I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality "We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Soliloquy for Two' The ideally named English neurologist Russell Brain died in 1966 but his textbook, Brain’s Diseases...
2 months ago
12
2 months ago
The ideally named English neurologist Russell Brain died in 1966 but his textbook, Brain’s Diseases of the Nervous System (1933), remains in print. The Royal College of Physicians has called it “the standard British textbook on his subject.” Brain was also a poet and...
The Marginalian
Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season... "There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and...
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Casa Gorín The post Casa Gorín appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
46
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
The Marginalian
How to Get Out of Your Own Way: John Berryman on Defeating the Three Demons of Creative Work John Allyn Smith, Jr. was eleven when, early one morning in the interlude between two world wars,...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
John Allyn Smith, Jr. was eleven when, early one morning in the interlude between two world wars, not long after his parents had filed for divorce, he was awakened by a loud bang beneath his bedroom window. He looked to see his father dead by his own gun. Within months, his...
The Elysian
Week 4: One pitch several places
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Links For December 2024 ...
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Anki and Memorization with Spaced Repetition Software This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead of time to grasp the material. For the full context, start with Learning how to Learn I’ve not been able to find any comprehensive guides to using Anki to learn programming, so this...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ 11,218 feet We roll into Rico, Colorado, parking in front of the local post office. It’s rustic. Cute....
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
We roll into Rico, Colorado, parking in front of the local post office. It’s rustic. Cute. Mountain-town vibes are abundant. Like a peacock, the foliage on the drive from Cortez is in full plumage. During the drive, neither Jen nor I, and even Grant, can’t not marvel at the...
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6) I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby . These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby . These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
Josh Thompson
On Fables: Finishing up Antifragile I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile, says: The great economist Ariel Rubinstein gets the green lumber fallacy - it requires a great deal of intellect and honesty to see things that way. Rubinstein refuses to...
The Marginalian
Carl Linnaeus’s Flower Clock “The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours,” the Canadian...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours,” the Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne observed in his 1964 classic Games People Play. Four centuries earlier, Galileo had both combated and complicated the problem by inventing timekeeping and with it,...
The Marginalian
Silence, Solitude, and the Art of Surrender: Pico Iyer on Finding the World in a Benedictine... "Such a simple revolution: Yesterday I thought myself at the center of the world. Now the world...
a month ago
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
16
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
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Pic-nic and Polka' Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) was an English theologian, a learned man who amassed a library of...
4 months ago
32
4 months ago
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) was an English theologian, a learned man who amassed a library of more than 12,000 volumes. In 1828, Walter Savage Landor published the third volume of his Imaginary Conversations and included one titled “Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor.” The...
The Marginalian
Annie Dillard on Unselfconsciousness Walking through the white-walled gallery at the graduation show of one of New York’s most esteemed...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
Walking through the white-walled gallery at the graduation show of one of New York’s most esteemed art schools, between beautiful young people with Instagram faces, I was struck to see project after project take up as its subject the least durable, most illusory aspect of human...
Josh Thompson
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
The Marginalian
The Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself "...or there will be genocide, atomic bombs, and we'll all perish and take the planet with us."
a year ago
Wuthering...
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was...
over a year ago
55
over a year ago
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after The Frogs.  In the interval many things had changed.  Athens had been conquered; democracy was overthrown but restored; one endless war ended...
The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine "In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
a year ago
The American Scholar
Verde Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
7 months ago
29
7 months 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.
The Marginalian
Reworldling Humanity: E.B. White’s Magnificent 1943 Response to a Politician Who Wanted to Make the... On September 11, 1943, E.B. White (July 11, 1899–October 1, 1985) reported on the pages of The New...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
On September 11, 1943, E.B. White (July 11, 1899–October 1, 1985) reported on the pages of The New Yorker that Clarence Buddhington Kelland — a writer prolific and popular in his lifetime, now forgotten, onetime executive director of the Republican National Committee, described...
The Marginalian
The Mind in the Machine: John von Neumann, the Inception of AI, and the Limits of Logic "Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can...
a year ago
29
a year ago
"Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can nonetheless open up a new and radiant perspective, because through it a higher order of being is trying to express itself."
Ben Borgers
RealMoji
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books. Related but in a different...
Astral Codex Ten
Subscrive Drive '25 + Free Unlocked Posts ...
6 months ago
The Elysian
Week 7: Boost your essays all over the internet
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Is this the slow decline of the Apple 'cult'? Meanwhile, I drive a Kia, I like Kia, and I’ll probably default to looking at a Kia the next time...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
Meanwhile, I drive a Kia, I like Kia, and I’ll probably default to looking at a Kia the next time I’m in the market for a car, but I don’t know anything at all about the company’s executives and I don’t think about their product line beyond my own personal car. I’m certainly not...
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel fragments
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Lynn And IQ ...
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective "No guarantees in this life."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Familiar Hearts of Strangers' “At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the...
3 months ago
21
3 months ago
“At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the holiness and immaculate fragility of the hidden striver below.”  In his letters to family and friends, Chekhov can be harsh, hectoring and even smutty, though seldom in the stories except...
This Space
No safe landing A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
9 months ago
84
9 months ago
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that as a critic he is conservative but as a novelist he is radical. The second claim may not be controversial but the first will come as a surprise to those who remember what he said...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
9 months ago
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the... "I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
8 months ago
49
8 months ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
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...
a year ago
65
a year 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…
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
8 months ago
Naz Hamid
Barbara “Nuggie” Schuetz-Hamid Rest in peace little one. I never would have guessed that a 4-lb Chihuahua would come into our...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Rest in peace little one. I never would have guessed that a 4-lb Chihuahua would come into our lives, let alone be the animal to steal my heart before Jen’s. Our previous animals — two cats and a Boxer dog — are a stark contrast to a tiny dog that we would carry around in a sling...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Something Irrepressibly Celebratory' A longtime reader of Anecdotal Evidence has commented on my March 1 post:  “One of my...
4 months ago
31
4 months ago
A longtime reader of Anecdotal Evidence has commented on my March 1 post:  “One of my worst apprehensions about my son’s college education came true in his freshman English class. The professor brought up Lamb only to highlight something he said that would strike modern...
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
11 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time ...
7 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The New Design A few times a week, we get emails from students and young designers looking for an internship or...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
A few times a week, we get emails from students and young designers looking for an internship or full-time opportunities at the studio. We’re not quite ready in terms of needing outside help, so these are unsolicited inquiries. We don’t make any mention of not accepting them as...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Towards Standardizing Place The difference between locations and places is an important nuance. Humans build out, demarcate, and...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
The difference between locations and places is an important nuance. Humans build out, demarcate, and describe discrete venues and areas in space. The questions we ask only deal in coordinates because they have to; we’d rather ask questions about roads, paths, houses, stores,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Rising and His Fading Is Most Beautiful; A librarian friend and I were talking about the similarities between library cataloguing and...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
A librarian friend and I were talking about the similarities between library cataloguing and taxonomy in biology – the art of classification – and the sort of people such specialized disciplines attract. Formerly a piano teacher, she was attracted to library science by way of...
Ploum.net
La colère de l’écrivain La colère de l’écrivain RAPPEL: je serai à Louvain-la-Neuve mardi 10 décembre à 19h à La Page...
7 months ago
15
7 months ago
La colère de l’écrivain RAPPEL: je serai à Louvain-la-Neuve mardi 10 décembre à 19h à La Page d’Après pour ma dernière rencontre de l’année. Rencontre Littéraire Bikepunk avec Ploum (mobilizon.fr) Comme je l’explique dans la suite de ce billet, le succès de Bikepunk a pris le...
Wuthering...
Let's read Ovid's Metamorphoses! And perhaps more. Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE) with me?  We have had some discussion of this...
a year ago
35
a year ago
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE) with me?  We have had some discussion of this good idea, and I feel I am up to it now.  Up to writing about it. Metamorphoses is a compendium of Greek myths that feature transformation, which turns out to be hundreds of pages...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
a year ago
87
a year ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
Astral Codex Ten
Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats ...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Be A Property Owner And Not A Renter On The Internet We are tenants with landlords who want to make sure that we can’t leave the building or go hang out...
6 months ago
37
6 months ago
We are tenants with landlords who want to make sure that we can’t leave the building or go hang out with friends elsewhere, all while showing us how happy we should be with the limitations imposed on us. — Den Delimarsky A long, weighty one, but very worth the read. Visit...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He’s Not the Only One' My newly graduated youngest son is visiting Thailand with friends from his alma mater, Rice...
a month ago
16
a month ago
My newly graduated youngest son is visiting Thailand with friends from his alma mater, Rice University. Most of the photos he has sent document meals eaten and temples visited, but among them is this one, my favorite image:  The smiling head of the Buddha sunk among the...
This Space
39 Books: 1993 I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in...
a year ago
53
a year ago
I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in the US edition), but not his short stories. In the year Hofmann died aged only 62, I bought and read Balzac's Horse and other stories in the wonderful Minerva paperback imprint....
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
19
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...
The Marginalian
2,000 Years of Kindness From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
over a year ago
82
over a year ago
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
This Space
Proust regained I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
26
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
The Elysian
Social Development > Self-Development We need one much more than the other.
6 months ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby meticulously shares the...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby meticulously shares the journey of Kobe Bryant, from ancestral influences up through his final game in the NBA. He is a clear fan of Kobe’s inarguable work ethic, but he allows readers to reinforce their...
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish? That depends on us.
8 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual + reading recommendations
a year ago
The American Scholar
Who Would I Be Off My Meds Can weaning oneself off pharmaceuticals ease the cycle of perpetual suffering? The post Who Would I...
4 months ago
24
4 months ago
Can weaning oneself off pharmaceuticals ease the cycle of perpetual suffering? The post Who Would I Be Off My Meds appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my... Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
a year ago
113
a year ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are, because of Metamorphoses.  Venus and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion.  Icarus –...
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays Notes on process
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Write It Now The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took 2x as long as I wish it had. I could make it 10x better with another hour of work, but I only have 20 minutes. I’m a fan of “conceptual frameworks” This concept has been important...
The Marginalian
Excellent Advice for Living: Kevin Kelly’s Life-Tested Wisdom He Wished He Knew Earlier "The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Troubleshooting Chinese Character Sets in MySQL A while back, I picked up a bug where when a customer tried to save certain kinds of data using...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
A while back, I picked up a bug where when a customer tried to save certain kinds of data using Chinese characters, we were replacing the Chinese characters like 平仮名 with a series of ?. This will be a quick dive through how I figured out what the problem was, and then validated...
This Space
Wall by Jen Craig “This novel gives the reader one of the best depictions of thinking in fiction that I have read in a...
over a year ago
51
over a year ago
“This novel gives the reader one of the best depictions of thinking in fiction that I have read in a long time” – Talking Big "... combines exactitude and vagueness, immediacy and distance, to approximate how scatty, worm-like human thought might be represented on the page" – The...
The Marginalian
Forgiveness Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare,...
6 months ago
75
6 months ago
Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare, splendid poem “blessing the boats.” We had met at a poetry workshop and shared a resolution to write more poetry in the coming year, so we began taking turns each week choosing a line...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With Purple Prose and a Bad Actor’s Gestures' On April 9, 1778, Johnson and Boswell dined at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where Edward Gibbon...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
On April 9, 1778, Johnson and Boswell dined at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where Edward Gibbon and Davide Garrick, among others, were also present. The subject of translations, including Pope’s Homer, emerged. “We must try its effect as an English poem,” Johnson said, “that...
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland That's the joy of being a writer.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
2023 in review
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
40
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
This Space
39 Books: 2020 It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years...
a year ago
93
a year ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots. Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at...
Ben Borgers
Did MCAS Matter?
over a year ago
Ploum.net
The candid naivety of geeks The candid naivety of geeks I mean, come on! Amazon recently announced that, from now on, everything...
3 months ago
47
3 months ago
The candid naivety of geeks I mean, come on! Amazon recently announced that, from now on, everything you say to Alexa will be sent to their server. Pluralistic: Amazon annihilates Alexa privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading (15 Mar 2025)...
Josh Thompson
The Slight Edge, and why you should read it I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to most people. (I don’t make book recommendations willy-nilly, but if something seems relevant to what the person I’m speaking to is experiencing/thinking about, I make a...
The Elysian
Participatory science makes everyone a researcher So we can study the Earth at scale.
a week ago
The Marginalian
The Hot Shower as Uncommon Prayer One of the paradoxes of being alive is that it is often through the extremes of sensation, through...
6 months ago
46
6 months ago
One of the paradoxes of being alive is that it is often through the extremes of sensation, through the shock of having a body, that we come most proximate to the subtleties of the soul. Walt Whitman knew this: “If the body is not the soul,” he sang electric, “what is the soul?”...
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books Which Can Be Read Again and Again' “The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
“The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which survive the wear of time, only a few withstand the effects of time on the reader himself. Out of all the novels ever written there...
Astral Codex Ten
Moldbug Sold Out "At long last, I've created the populist strongman from my classic 11,000 blog post series 'Don't...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
"At long last, I've created the populist strongman from my classic 11,000 blog post series 'Don't Create The Populist Strongman'"
Wuthering...
Please read the Roman plays with me (although not all of them) - Plautus, Terence, Seneca Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the...
over a year ago
80
over a year ago
Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the surviving Roman plays to remind myself what they are like.  Twenty-six comedies and ten tragedies have survived.  I read about half of them long ago and plan to reread fewer than...