Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
Top Categories > literature
#all #programming #history #startups #technology #science #life #literature #architecture #travel #creative #design #comics #cartography #finance #AI #indiehacker Muted Categories [alt+←][alt+→]
Anecdotal Evidence
'Midst the Pomp and Toil of War' I learned that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never read...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
I learned that General George S. Patton, Jr. wrote poetry from my father, a man who never read poetry. I was a senior in high school. Days before we went to see the Oscar-winning film Patton, he delivered a lecture on the general’s military prowess, anti-Semitism and desire to...
The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions "This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
52
a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Leave Him Something to Imagine' “I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable strait line.”  By the time a persevering reader has reached Book...
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
6 months ago
4
6 months ago
this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path...
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
4
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...
Escaping Flatland
After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is...
11 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
‘Of Course’ “Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.” —Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
Anecdotal Evidence
"A Fury of Self-Deception, Malice, and Conceit' There’s no getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the collective,...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
There’s no getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the collective, could carry on this way? An innocent question or observation prompts a sonic explosion. I’m unable to get that angry and loud so quickly. Perhaps if my family were threatened....
The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
10 months ago
56
10 months ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Word Can Open Like a Tomb to Reveal Its Past' The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the...
9 months ago
35
9 months ago
The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death and he was in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is interred and his sister is speaking to mark the occasion. Wenthe looks...
Ben Borgers
Not Developer Enough
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
3
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...
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
8 months ago
39
8 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.* Many of...
The American Scholar
Battle Hymns Charles Ives and the Civil War The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
IKEA Backpack
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
For Want of Touch The astonishing breadth of our passions The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
The astonishing breadth of our passions The post For Want of Touch appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Also Read for Ecstasy' A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her questions aren’t cynical. She sounds like a reader driven by the sort of bookish hunger I recognize. Her tastes are eclectic, not confined strictly to the American or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be at Home in Other Places' At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or...
a month ago
12
a month ago
At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or drug problems. Like most in that field, he values his clients and dislikes the bosses, who live by the dictates of bureaucracy. Barbers are like bartenders. The good ones usually...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Talked Down Speechless Death' In my November 1 post I asked, “Does anyone know anything about Edward Case?” I had stumbled on a...
2 days ago
4
2 days ago
In my November 1 post I asked, “Does anyone know anything about Edward Case?” I had stumbled on a gifted poet previously unknown to me who had died in 1985. This week I heard from his son James Case, an architect living in New Jersey, who briefed me on his father and his work....
The American Scholar
The Weight of a Stone Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of...
yesterday
1
yesterday
Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology The post The Weight of a Stone appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist... Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Hundred Words for the Word Brother' One of the stranger events recounted by Montaigne:  “[I]f I must bring myself into this, a brother...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
One of the stranger events recounted by Montaigne:  “[I]f I must bring myself into this, a brother of mine, [Arnaud, Lord of] Saint-Martin, twenty-three years old, who had already given pretty good proof of his valor, while playing tennis was struck by a ball a little above the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Wagon-Load of Monkeys' “It is not an accident that Gulliver has become a child’s book; only a child could be so...
a year ago
31
a year ago
“It is not an accident that Gulliver has become a child’s book; only a child could be so destructive, so irresponsible and so cruel.”  And only a parent could acknowledge the potential for raw nastiness in the heart of a child. V.S. Pritchett had two children and few illusions...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Minute Passage of Private Life' A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision that Sunday afternoon almost...
a year ago
37
a year ago
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision that Sunday afternoon almost eighteen years ago. I had it narrowed down to three or four potential titles but liked the legal/criminological connotation of “anecdotal evidence,” which is always judged suspect by...
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
65
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
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
41
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learned to Dance' Hugh Kenner glosses a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Hugh Kenner glosses a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by reference to Newton’s second law of motion (published in 1687 in his Principia Mathematica, one year before Pope’s birth) and “numerous points of disequilibrium”:  “True ease in writing...
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
Wuthering...
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete plays.  The last surviving tragedy, even if it hardly recognizable as a tragedy, it provides a coherent ending to the tragic tradition.  It is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned' In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
10
a year ago
In Wednesday’s installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism”  -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world unaccompanied by...
sbensu
How to: friction logs Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the...
a year ago
3
a year ago
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the produdct the way a real user would and write down every single moment you experience some form of negative emotion.
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration' The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
11
a year ago
The upstairs neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September 1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
Josh Thompson
Climbing in "decking range" In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you need to be ready for any situation. Here’s how to give a kick-ass lead belay when your climber is close enough to the ground they could potentially deck. This is part of a series on...
The American Scholar
Bitten The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
60
a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
The American Scholar
Up Close The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
A Small Life Radius
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted... Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
6 months ago
61
6 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H. Lawrence and Ronald Firbank!  I feel I should write about it; I feel I should read...
Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API. We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON. Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
Ben Borgers
Kid Money
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Divided Providence Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Bagel Institute
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There’s No Such Thing As a Synonym' My favorite literary non-form may be commonplace books, those magpie collections unified only by the...
3 days ago
6
3 days ago
My favorite literary non-form may be commonplace books, those magpie collections unified only by the sensibilities of their hunter-gatherers. They are kept by industrious readers and serve as literary Wunderkammern, cabinets of bookish wonders that may reveal a reader’s truest...
Josh Thompson
First pass with Elixir/Phoenix I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The tutorial author says At the time of writing, I have ~1 week experience with Phoenix. Similar to Rubber Ducky Debugging, I am writing this blog post to force myself to think differently...
Ben Borgers
Girl Talk: All Day
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Blessed to be Sick Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was struggling to be engaged in my work. I was easily distracted, and didn’t feel very efficient during the day. Once I identified the tasks I needed to complete before I could walk away from...
Ben Borgers
The TikTok Peer Group
over a year ago
The Marginalian
D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo "We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that...
a year ago
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few examples: Animated, interactive curves(dynamic) OMG Particles II(dynamic) simple map of the us(static) <= very little code Radial Dendrogram(static) circle wave(dynamic) Force-directed...
Ben Borgers
Three People Talking
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Look Out! Why did it take so long to protect The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality' This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four...
8 months ago
58
8 months ago
This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows' Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
50
8 months ago
Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
ribbonfarm
Arbitrariness Costs I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary....
7 months ago
4
7 months ago
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the...
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
3 months ago
20
3 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
The Marginalian
“Little Women” Author Louisa May Alcott on the Creative Rewards of Being Single "Liberty is a better husband than love."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Must Start Rewriting in Your Head' “Rhythm is never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then continue...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
“Rhythm is never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then continue rewriting on the page. The hallmark of a seductive style is to extend natural speech rhythm over the distance of a complex sentence.” When I applied for my first job on a...
Escaping Flatland
Ethos and imagination Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton,...
a month ago
30
a month ago
Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton, 1957
Wuthering...
Books I Read in August 2023 As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted to more important things.  Plenty of...
a year ago
395
a year ago
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted to more important things.  Plenty of energy to read, though. With a respite in September, I should soon be able to write a bit on the Greek philosophers I have been reading.  The Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics work...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath' I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved,...
a month ago
20
a month ago
I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened, carapaced,” to...
The American Scholar
The Support Ship The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Masochism Afoot in Modern Aesthetics' “Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
“Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire significance simply because the beaten spirit would seem to claim more seriousness than a more robust struggle with the exigencies of things?”  This elegantly crafted question, at...
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
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.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Maintaining a Stable and Orderly Civilization' On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves and reorganized the volumes, one of our cats leaped into an open cupboard in the kitchen. One of the four pegs supporting the middle shelf was missing and Trane’s weight tipped it enough so a...
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive? There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them! So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life... Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects' Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang' I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a young man asked if he...
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
Josh Thompson
Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer. Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Right Things in the Right Order' “But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are so well done, but because in each case the artist has arranged exactly the right things in the right order. The choice of subject matter has been at least half of the achievement....
Josh Thompson
How Can You Buy Happiness? You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little. We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little. We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy things. But we should do more than just buy things. Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
Ben Borgers
gerp
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will... Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
10 months ago
56
10 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel (2009). ...
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish? That depends on us.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
13
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
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
4
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
3blue1brown.elk.sh
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry' “[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were...
10 months ago
18
10 months ago
“[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”  Things get sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling species of serious...
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain "Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
65
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
Ben Borgers
Dark Sky
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Amuse and Gratify Her Own Self' In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already...
a year ago
14
a year ago
In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already suggesting themes that would go on preoccupying her:   “All things pass Love and mankind is grass”.   In scripture, grass is the default metaphor for the transience of life. In the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out' Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted....
6 months ago
27
6 months ago
Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend, respect the reader’s intelligence....
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it. So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
Ben Borgers
Class Council: “Brutally Honest”
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2015 In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
7 months ago
50
7 months ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
This Space
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
The American Scholar
Jason Middlebrook Tree rings in time The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs Beware of what you actually want.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Use an Alarm to Go to Bed Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes. I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Money (again) Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about,...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.  Money is hard to write about, because there are many different ways we can approach it. It’s easy to feel judged when someone does something with their money that I don’t do with mine. That all said, there...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Neither Angels Nor Devils' A favorite story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had written...
10 months ago
33
10 months ago
A favorite story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had written on his blog five years ago. In a post titled “Curse Words,” abbreviated by Simon throughout as “CW,” he reviews profanity as used in various settings and languages, including Croat,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Half-Buried Sense for Poetry' It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or...
2 weeks ago
14
2 weeks ago
It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or naively unprofessional, a mask worn to conceal the shark within, especially among literary types. Of course, critics are born to be severe, nobody’s pal. How many critics can you name whose...
ribbonfarm
Covid and Noun-Memory Effects Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of...
6 months ago
3
6 months ago
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of...
Ben Borgers
What is JumboCode?
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected... I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
37
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all... When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1999 I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
8 months ago
61
8 months ago
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others published around the same time, such as from Quartet Encounters and Carcanet, the latter with a fussy variant on the title: The Book of Disquietude. But this one is the most pleasurable...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
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
4
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose' “Where did you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”  Creating anything...
7 months ago
39
7 months ago
“Where did you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”  Creating anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty and impose it on others; humility because...
This Space
39 Books: 2009 The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't already written about and among those few that I feel able to write about. For 2009 there is one outstanding exception: another book about a writer exiled in Paris. Already in this...
The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light “One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
38
a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books Here’s how that could look.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel" My review of The Pensive Citadel by Victor Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
14
a year ago
My review of The Pensive Citadel by Victor Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing "No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Twitter Not Found
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018 Slides are available here on Dropbox Git Push, Git Paid Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned: Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too' St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him silently reading and never...
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Till Love and Fame to Nothingness Do Sink' Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.” The reader reads the life of another, reflects on it and applies the lessons he deduces to himself. In the early pages of his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown' Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
a month ago
21
a month ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:  “O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,     Student of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Has Embalmed So Many Eminent Persons' Over the years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns, obituaries,...
9 months ago
28
9 months ago
Over the years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns, obituaries, reviews of books, movies and music – for the newspapers where I worked in Ohio, Indiana and New York. They’re clipped and saved in a chaotic file cabinet. Most, I, like the rest of the...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Island Within With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end,...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end, and perhaps, to the unmindful, no meaning. To those who remain anchored emerges buried treasure from every line. I kept being drawn back in, not as an addiction, but, as I...
Josh Thompson
Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on. I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30... "We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
48
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd...
7 months ago
33
7 months ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house) Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
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
43
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...
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
4
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”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter' Call me an aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
Call me an aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled with not stinging like...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False' “It’s against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”  That’s from one of Elias Canetti’s...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
“It’s against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”  That’s from one of Elias Canetti’s notebooks, collected in Notes from Hampstead (trans. John Hargraves, 1998). While I admire the work of a handful of critics – Dryden, Johnson, Winters, Cunningham, a few others –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Until He Un-Alived' “But at bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and if a poet...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
“But at bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and if a poet loses his pleasure-seeking audience he has lost the only audience worth having, for which the dutiful mob that signs on every September is no substitute.”  Philip Larkin’s...
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred "I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
a year ago
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me? Letters to an anarchist, part one.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Meaning of Sidereal Time' Years ago I was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and part-time...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Years ago I was at a birthday party where one of the other guests was a stand-up comic and part-time journalist who lived in Woodstock, N.Y. He was smart, quick, funny and surprisingly well-read (he knew who Edward Dahlberg was). Neither of us was much of a party-goer so we spent...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World' “His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Someone Who Could Never Be a Peasant' I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov,...
4 months ago
33
4 months ago
I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, already one of my favorite writers. Alter’s contribution was “Invitation to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics,” which Nabokov later described as “practically flawless.” A...
The Marginalian
Yellow Butterfly: A Moving Wordless Story About War, Hope, and Keeping the Light Alive In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that...
a year ago
12
a year ago
In his little-known correspondence with Freud about war and human nature, Einstein observed that every great moral and spiritual leader in the history of our civilization has shared “the great goal of the internal and external liberation of man* from the evils of war” as Freud...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2023 In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to...
a year ago
14
a year ago
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were—it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the...
Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023 I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long...
a year ago
58
a year ago
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long overdue loot at Seneca's plays, a glance at Gide's Counterfeiters, and some messing around with Plato's Republic. If I did not write in April, I at least read: GREEK PHILOSOPHY The...
The Marginalian
Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and... In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a...
a year ago
48
a year ago
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a memorial profile of “California’s Mother of Gardens” — a hopeful antidote to the undoing of the human world, celebrating the woman who covered Southern California with the loveliest...
Josh Thompson
Build a Personal Website in Jekyll - A Detailed Guide For First-Timers You’re a turing student, in the backend program. You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
You’re a turing student, in the backend program. You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but everyone who says go start a blog Seems to also think you have 10 hours (or 20 hours? or 2 hours? how long does this take) to sit around dealing with setting up a personal website. Lets...
Josh Thompson
Preparing to adopt a habit There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work. Almost as many...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cloudy, Cloudy Is the Stuff of Stones' The best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s...
9 months ago
24
9 months ago
The best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s theory of subjective idealism – he called it “immaterialism” -- is recounted by James Boswell on August 6, 1763:  “After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time...
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
sbensu
High Variance Management How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
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...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely... Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
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
4
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
Bards Behind Bars Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
7 months ago
20
7 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
a month ago
10
a month 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.
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom' I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people...
a year ago
25
a year ago
I’ve reminded my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists, super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph McElroy. That each of...
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
6 months ago
42
6 months ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How...
over a year ago
42
over a year ago
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How tastes, or circumstances, had changed in the seventy years since Wealth, our last Aristophanes play.  The political and social satire is gone, the sexual and scatological jokes are...
This Space
Favourite books 2021 If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
31
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Principle Is Growth' I remember learning as a kid the word dendrology while reading about maple trees (we had seven in...
9 months ago
28
9 months ago
I remember learning as a kid the word dendrology while reading about maple trees (we had seven in our front yard – all are gone, one carried away by a tornado) in a field guide: the study of trees. From the Greek for “tree.” A close synonym is silvics, this time from the Latin. I...
Josh Thompson
Content but Restless There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard the “serenity prayer”: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. This prayer is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Half the Pleasure of Reading New Books' “[M]ost American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“[M]ost American boys are hurried into active life so early, that even the few who have the possibility of developing literary taste have scarcely time to do so. Unless they read the great English classics in high school and in college, they never find time to read them.”  In...
The Elysian
Hint #2 I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
4 months ago
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
12
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."
Ben Borgers
Late Night Sprints
over a year ago
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something' Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
8 months ago
29
8 months ago
Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the other...
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
a month ago
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset...
7 months ago
21
7 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
6 months ago
65
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
No Dessert Challenge
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fragility of Happiness' Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review a new translation...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review a new translation of a Russian novel due for publication in November. The proofs arrived on Thursday and I sent Chris an email letting him know I was already reading the book. The email bounced back...
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For? The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures Inside my writing philosophy.
9 months ago
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
10
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."
The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
5 months ago
39
5 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
Ben Borgers
Trash Bags in the Laundry Room
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Poets' “Hooray for Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if all...
a year ago
16
a year ago
“Hooray for Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if all you’re your friends like jazz it will present no problem.”  It’s December 14, 1963, and Philip Larkin is reviewing an assortment of releases for the Daily Telegraph in time for...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Review Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals were an extension of October’s goals. I feel comfortable with long-term unchanging goals. They were: Deepen my knowledge of front-end web...
Ben Borgers
Gerald R. Gill Papers
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Disadvantages of Wine' An offhand recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:  “He has great virtue, in not drinking...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
An offhand recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:  “He has great virtue, in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady M’Leod would hardly believe him, and said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry...
The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings “There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
8 months ago
25
8 months ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 13, 2022
over a year ago
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty' Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree...
a month ago
26
a month ago
Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before revealing...
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
2
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...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about... The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
a month ago
18
a month ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Anticipating Since Morning a Successful Hunt' The neighbors had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the trunks...
9 months ago
23
9 months ago
The neighbors had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the trunks were a favorite perch for Polyphemus and especially cecropia moths. These are large insects, beautifully colored, with “eyes” on their wings. To budding lepidopterists they were...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Prison ...
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement' “There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
“There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of intoxications.”   Driving while reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light, I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
sbensu
Twitter's Sith and Jedi In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can...
11 months ago
4
11 months ago
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can reach. But when they lean into hate, they lose their soul to it. Twitter offers the same bargain as the Force.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose' Yvor Winters published his final book, Forms of Discovery, in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Yvor Winters published his final book, Forms of Discovery, in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an understanding of the...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof). I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of... "Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where I Went and Cannot Come Again' A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in...
8 months ago
41
8 months ago
A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in reference to Chekhov. Dave Lull alerted me to Nabokov’s explication of the word in his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In the second of the four volumes, Nabokov writes:  “No...
The American Scholar
Such as It Is The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
The Source The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
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
4
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Silent Conversation' “To talk and dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and meditate....
10 months ago
15
10 months ago
“To talk and dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and meditate. Talkative men seldom read. This is among the few truths which appear the more strange the more we reflect upon them. For what is reading but silent conversation?”  This passage is...
The Marginalian
William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships "Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Thoughts on agency If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at 6 pm CET (9 am PST). Like last time, I’ll prepare a few questions (probably relating to today’s post since that is top of mind) but mostly we’ll just talk about whatever comes up....
The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It "Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
This Space
The last novel "(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)" John Self's aside in his...
over a year ago
40
over a year ago
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)" John Self's aside in his review of JM Coetzee's The Death of Jesus captures the pervasive anxiety experienced while reading this novel better than even the most detailed plot summary, which is anyway likely...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Brief, Dry, Almost Colorless Account ' The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and...
a year ago
30
a year ago
The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and author of A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II (1951) – has sent me back to Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma stories. Herling-Grudziński in 1971...
Ben Borgers
Learnings from JumboCode
a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
3 months ago
44
3 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert' Dr. Johnson describes the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fruit of My Studies' I’ve been invited to join an online book club and have politely declined. I even like some of the...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
I’ve been invited to join an online book club and have politely declined. I even like some of the readers who already belong, but by nature I’m not a joiner of anything. As soon as an arrangement among friendly individuals becomes formalized – by that I mean, organized, with...
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting... The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
37
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a legendary author who has...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
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
3
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...
Ben Borgers
Basecamp Talks to You
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Our Pets, Our Plates In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
65
6 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit' “A 21-year old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team — kept a cool...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
“A 21-year old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team — kept a cool head in a tight situation.”  Long before he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Loss Not to Be Repaired' “We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he treated...
a year ago
8
a year ago
“We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and untaught. He had a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches, and a yellow uncurled wig; and his...
Ben Borgers
Pluto was 2006??
over a year ago
ben-mini
Making My SQL Skills Obsolete Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under...
a week ago
27
a week ago
Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under ben-mini.github.io will automatically redirect, so no changes are needed on your end. By far, the most useful LLM app I’ve made is the Kibu Schema God: I try not to make my posts too...
Wuthering...
My cancer - "It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is." Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since the diagnosis last summer, since it was known for a fact that I had something serious, things have moved fast.  It has been like boarding a train.  Once in motion there is no way...
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
This Space
The Lascaux Notebooks by Jean-Luc Champerret Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there...
over a year ago
53
over a year ago
Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there after millennia in darkness, and Notebooks, suggesting a private endeavour, preparation, a work to come. While neither is secret as such, neither was meant for the light. Two intrigues...
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made "Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Grand Marxist Stalin Did Ten In' In one of the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990,...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
In one of the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990, 2008), Robert Conquest (1917-2015) writes matter-of-factly: “We are told in recent Soviet articles that on 12 December 1937 alone, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned 3,167 death...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Now We Shall Never, Never See Her Again' Ian Donaldson begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his death...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Ian Donaldson begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his death but with his interment in Westminster Abbey. Though a popular playwright during his lifetime, Jonson died in poverty and was buried vertically in order to consume less valuable real...
The Elysian
I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
7 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2004 Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
7 months ago
42
7 months ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks. But do I really want to make such...
The Elysian
Week 6: Examples of Pitches
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Sensitive As Anyone Else' “In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as...
8 months ago
31
8 months ago
“In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as sensitive as anyone else. She renders their speech with a fine and subtle ear for the shy or strident inaccuracies, for the bewilderment of missed points and for the dim, sad rhythms...
The Elysian
This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive' I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various times to Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic, not to mention those periodicals subscribed to by my mother (McCall’s,...
The American Scholar
Writer on Board The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
33
4 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Interesting to Me Than the Future' “The past has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found pessimists...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
“The past has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles or that everyone should share them; in...
Josh Thompson
On Feedback Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback: Explicit feedback , which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss. Implicit feedback , which is...
sbensu
We need visual programming. No, not like that. Why do we keep building visual programming environments? Why do we never use them? What should we do...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope' Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
17
3 months ago
Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century, the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Signs His Name in Sparks' By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called “Muny Light." At home he was a welder, specializing in wrought-iron railings. His aesthetic sense could be summarized in a single word: big. Or heavy. Everything he built was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense' An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the...
a year ago
8
a year ago
An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband, who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to  go out of town, I would stay with him...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For a Dream's Sake' Interviewer: “Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”  Philip Larkin: “Not without...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Interviewer: “Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”  Philip Larkin: “Not without being someone else. I think it is very much easier to imagine happiness than to experience it. Which is a pity because what you imagine makes you dissatisfied with what you experience,...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023 Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
52
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks.  A medical deadline approaches.  That will help. As usual, I read good books.   PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
Ben Borgers
The Beginning of College Sucks
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Songful, Tuneful Land' "None can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the sound of names;...
12 months ago
15
12 months ago
"None can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the sound of names; and there is no part of the world where nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the United States of America.”  Robert Louis Stevenson means place names. He’s...
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We...
over a year ago
4
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...
Ben Borgers
Reading with RSS
over a year ago
The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings "Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The...
3 months ago
38
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle' It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of...
8 months ago
55
8 months ago
It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov on May 6, 1923:  “No, life is no quivering quandary! Here under the moon things are bright and dewy. We are...
ben-mini
IMG_0416 Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
2 months ago
6
2 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...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism? Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent "A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People') I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a program like the Flatiron School or the Turing School). I’m a graduate of the Turing School, and have written a lot about the program, like: My reflections on Turing an 8-part guide to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Actually Read the Dictionary' In one of the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English...
a year ago
13
a year ago
In one of the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English Dictionary. Was this mere bravado, another instance of Sacks polishing his image as a lovable, learned eccentric? Or, like his friend W.H. Auden, was he gleaning the dictionary...
Ben Borgers
Date Picker Details
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'On Satan’s Chamberlains Highseated in Berlin' In 2011, in an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of...
a year ago
11
a year ago
In 2011, in an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of Man, published as a wartime morale booster in 1916, edited by the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges. It’s the fourth edition, from 1923. I knew the title because of the contribution...
The American Scholar
Heart of Semi-Darkness A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
5 months ago
43
5 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...
Ben Borgers
A Sixth Sense for Errors
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments... "The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
a year ago
33
a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us See Them There in the Shadows' A childhood acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still alive...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
A childhood acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still alive until a friend told me he was dead. What I remember is his face, his general demeanor, roughly the sort of behavior I could expect of him. I last saw him more than half a century...
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
39
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 361 ...
a week ago
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
A message for high schoolers tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three topics: Credentialism Signaling Opportunity cost If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers. I’ve got a few links for you farther down in this...
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl "If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
3 months ago
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d...
2 months ago
6
2 months ago
Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children, unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
2 weeks ago
Escaping Flatland
Relationships are coevolutionary loops Looking for Alice, part 3
a year ago
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Cantos II and III - or just III, it turns out - And Cole and Swift, and little... A month ago I wrote about the first Canto of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Now I will move through the...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
A month ago I wrote about the first Canto of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Now I will move through the Cantos two or three at a time, just leafing through the books, really, with luck getting at what Ovid is doing.  Cantos II and III today. Ovid established his cosmology and created...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature' “We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
“We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the writer of English...
The American Scholar
Teach the Conflicts It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Man of My Kidney' I met my nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the fourth...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
I met my nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the fourth floor of the hospital. Between patients he was eating a banana, his breakfast, and carried a stack of folders in his other hand. On the front of his white lab coat was his name, the...
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department): Here’s today’s thought for the weekend.  A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept.   [Laughter] So at a mathematical level this is...
The American Scholar
Guillermo The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort ‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean...
4 months ago
4
4 months ago
‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean Resort Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Originality, Learning, Acuteness, Terseness of Style' Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in...
11 months ago
21
11 months ago
Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in dress, some in polity, some in language.”  John Horne Tooke: “I wonder whether they invented the choice appellations you have just repeated.”   Johnson: “No, sir! Indignant wise men...
Ben Borgers
War Room — using the native date picker
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
8 months ago
58
8 months ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passions and Perturbations of the Mind' In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s...
11 months ago
30
11 months ago
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): addle, colly, costard, doter, to filch, to fleer, giddyheaded, griper, hotspur, to macerate, muckhill, mutter, oligarchy, quacksalver and squalor....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daft in a Socially Useful and Quite Pleasant Way' A young man and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to discourage...
7 months ago
68
7 months ago
A young man and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to discourage them. Nor do I want to encourage costly foolishness. He’s twenty-one, my age when I indulged in a similar fantasy half a century ago. With a poet and his wife – hardly the most...
sbensu
How to avoid breaking APIs The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
a year ago
4
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
sbensu
There Is No Antimemetics Division Notes on the book.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Website Rewrite
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Naming the garden in The Story of the Stone - the pleasures of incomprehension The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was born with the jade stone in his...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was born with the jade stone in his mouth, is an Imperial Concubine, a high prestige slave of the Emperor.  She is likely herself still a teen when we learn, in Chapter 16 of The Story of the Stone, that she has been...
Ben Borgers
Do You Subvocalize?
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Trip Report: New River Gorge Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s fantastic climbing here. I climbed with good friends, and was absolutely humbled by how strong they all are. (My defense, at least for the next few weeks, is that I’ve not climbed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonplace Insights' The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio was founded in...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio was founded in 1970, the year I entered BG as a freshman. Today it’s the only institution in the country to have a Department of Popular Culture. As an English major I hung around with professors who...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Man Can Be Judged By His Favorite Books' This I find in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
This I find in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas Rudd, who quotes her subject: “Each man can be judged by his favorite books.” She adds of the great Spanish thinker and novelist:  “Throughout his long life Unamuno returned to...
The Marginalian
How to Eat the Sun: A Blind Hero of the Resistance on Accessing the Light Within and Touching the... “There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.”
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night. At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
a week ago
24
a week ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791).  First, David Hawkes, the original translator of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job.  Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin, dies,...
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Greatness Is Difficult' “It is dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins for our own...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“It is dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.”  Among writers, Dr. Johnson is the first fallible...
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed The post Paradise Reclaimed...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed The post Paradise Reclaimed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills. Why do social skills matter? Most people get...
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.